The medical profession is increasingly captured by DEI. My own professional limbo is only a small part of the story.

The edifice of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), a reasonable-sounding concept that serves as a dog whistle for critical race theory and is premised on the claim that our country is systemically racist, is cracking. But the road to the dismantling of this illiberal, anti-science, racist, and now antisemitic ideology promises to be long and hard. There will be a lot of collateral damage in this battle, as DEI ideology has spread everywhere, including the medical field.

Examples abound. Just recently, medical colleagues of my generation watched in disbelief as first-year students at UCLA’s School of Medicine were forced to attend a mandatory lecture on structural racism given by Lisa Gray-Garcia in which they were led in chants of “Free Palestine” and told to kneel in prayer to “Mama Earth.” Gray-Garcia is not a physician. She is a self-proclaimed “formerly unhoused, incarcerated, revolutionary journalist, lecturer, poet, visionary, teacher and single mama.” She is a “Poverty Scholar” in UCLA’s Activist in Residence program. This is who UCLA is enlisting to educate future physicians.