Minnesota medical students recite anti-science woke pledge at white-coat ceremony

Minnesota medical students recite anti-science woke pledge at white-coat ceremony

To provide adequate healthcare, doctors have to recognize people’s biological sex, rather than wrongly dismiss sex-based differences as a “gender binary” socially constructed by the patriarchy. For example, some diseases are sex-linked.

But Minnesota medical students are reciting an anti-science woke pledge at their white-coat ceremony, a pledge they wrote under the supervision of their faculty. This pledge attacks “the gender binary” as a form of “oppression.” Campus Reform reports:

Students began the oath by stating, “Our institution is located on Dakota land…We commit to uprooting the legacy and perpetuation of structural violence deeply embedded within the health care system.”

“We recognize the inequities built by past and present traumas rooted in white supremacy, colonialism, the gender binary, ableism, and all other forms of oppression,” the oath continued.

UMMS Media Relations Manager Kat Dodge told Campus Reform that “[i]t is a common practice at medical schools in the United States to build upon the intent of the Hippocratic Oath to promote humility, integrity, and beneficence.” “Each year at the University of Minnesota Medical School, the incoming students work with faculty to write an oath that reflects these core elements, values, and ethics the class aspires to uphold,” Dodge explained.

The medical students pledged “to honor all Indigenous ways of healing” that are “historically marginalized by Western medicine.”

Honoring “all indigenous ways of healing” could lead to malpractice and death, since most folk remedies don’t work, and others that do can be toxic, or have worse side effects than modern medicine. A doctor needs to avoid folk remedies that harm patients.  (Boneset was used by Native Americans for colds, stomach aches, fever, and headache. But its “toxic compounds can cause liver damage. Side effects include muscular tremors, weakness, and constipation, and overdoses may be deadly.”).

Ignoring the “gender binary” is bad because sex differences are real, and linked to diseases and conditions doctors need to treat or be aware of. As the National Human Genome Research Institute notes, “some of the more familiar sex-linked traits are hemophilia, red-green color blindness, congenital night blindness, some high blood pressure genes, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and also Fragile X syndrome.”

The students’ oath begins with the claim that the University is “on Dakota land,” even though Minnesota has been inhabited by many different tribes over the centuries. Such “native land acknowledgments” are an increasingly common ritual on college campuses, in which college officials and staff acknowledge — often inaccurately — that the land on which a college is situated was once owned by a particular Indian tribe. They often assert that that a tribe has been in the college’s location “since time immemorial,” an assertion rooted in myth rather than history. In fact, Native Americans came to North America at different times, and routinely displaced or exterminated other tribes in the process. Conquest and migration have shaped the whole world, yet no one apologizes for the Norman conquest of England in 1066. These “land acknowledgments” often contain pseudo-pagan tributes to the tribes’ role as “caretakers” or “stewards” of the natural order.

Land acknowledgments can also lead to First Amendment violations. “When Stuart Reges, a University of Washington computer science professor, was directed to place a land acknowledgment in his syllabus, he wrote one of his own. That land acknowledgment may very well get him fired,” reports Reason Magazine:

For the fall 2021 semester, the university’s computer science department recommended that professors place a land acknowledgment in their syllabi….administrators gave the following language as a template: “The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.’….Reges wrote his own land acknowledgment. He wrote, ‘I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.’

Administrators quickly retaliated, calling the statement “offensive” and arguing that it would create a “toxic environment.” Administrators removed the land acknowledgment from the syllabus posted on Reges’ course website….In an email to Reges, the director of the engineering school, Magdalena Balazinska, claimed that the problem wasn’t Reges’ opinion, it was that he used language outside the exact phrasing recommended by the University….[But] Reges’ lawsuit alleges, “other faculty at the Allen School continue to include land acknowledgment statements in their syllabi that differ from the University’s own statement, so long as they express a viewpoint consistent with the University’s recommended version.”

After Reges announced his intention to put the “land acknowledgment” in his syllabus for the spring 2022 semester, administrators opened an investigation against him for alleged violations of university anti-harassment policies. The investigation has gone on for over 130 days and may result in Reges’ termination….Reges filed a lawsuit against the University of Washington. He claims that the University is violating his First Amendment rights by engaging in a retaliatory investigation of him under an overly broad “harassment” policy. Reges is backed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a nonpartisan First Amendment rights organization…university administrators also face scrutiny for their lengthy investigation of Reges for violating a bafflingly broad anti-harassment rule. The rule, Executive Order 31, allows the university to “discipline or take appropriate corrective action for any conduct that is deemed unacceptable or inappropriate, regardless of whether the conduct rises to the level of unlawful discrimination, harassment, or retaliation.”

 

 

Hans Bader

Hans Bader

Hans Bader practices law in Washington, D.C. After studying economics and history at the University of Virginia and law at Harvard, he practiced civil-rights, international-trade, and constitutional law. He also once worked in the Education Department. Hans writes for CNSNews.com and has appeared on C-SPAN’s “Washington Journal.” Contact him at hfb138@yahoo.com

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