Brown University is currently facing a massive deficit. Maybe this is one the reasons why.
The Washington Free Beacon reports:
Brown Medical School Gives DEI More Weight Than ‘Clinical Skills’ in Promotion Criteria for FacultyBrown University Medical School now gives “diversity, equity, and inclusion” more weight than “excellent clinical skills” in its promotion criteria for faculty, raising questions about the quality of teaching and patient care at the elite medical school and underscoring how deeply DEI has penetrated medical education.The criteria, which are posted on Brown’s website and have not been previously reported, list a “demonstrated commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion” as a “major criterion” for all positions within the Department of Medicine, which oversees the bulk of the school’s clinical units. Clinical skills, by contrast, only count as a “minor criterion” for many roles.Doctors who reviewed the criteria were alarmed, saying they reflect an unusually frank admission that merit is taking a back seat to DEI.”This is as stark as it gets,” said Bob Cirincione, an orthopedic surgeon in Hagerstown, Maryland. The criteria “say what DEI in medical schools is all about. And it’s not about clinical performance.”Hector Chapa, a clinical professor at Texas A&M College of Medicine, said it was “difficult to comprehend” why clinical skills get less weight than DEI. “That is heartbreaking,” Chapa told the Washington Free Beacon. “Clinical skills are of paramount importance and should be considered major criteria for any promotion.”The criteria, which were last updated in 2023, indicate that DEI gets more weight than clinical skills for positions focused on research and classroom teaching. It gets the same weight as “patient care” for doctors who train students in clinical settings.A university spokesman, Brian Clark, declined to comment on the criteria but noted that they apply only to the Department of Medicine—whose 11 divisions include cardiology, oncology, and primary care—not to the medical school as a whole.
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