EXCLUSIVE — A red state public university held an “Equity and Inclusion Conference,” which included a lecture on the necessity of racial reparations despite a recently passed law prohibiting such institutions from hosting training programs promoting any form of racial discrimination.
The lecture, called “Health Care Reparations: Reversing the Impact of Race Corrections on Health Equity,” was held at Eastern Tennessee State University on Sept. 26, according to an event schedule obtained by the Washington Examiner.
Tennessee law bars the state’s public universities from “us[ing] training programs or training materials for students or employees if the program or material includes one or more divisive concepts.” The law’s definition of “divisive concepts” includes promoting the idea that “an individual should be discriminated against or receive adverse treatment because of the individual’s race or sex.” Reparations involve selectively giving resources to some racial groups but not others to right a perceived past wrong.
“Race corrections,” the practice under scrutiny at ETSU’s conference, refers to doctors taking into account a patient’s race when prescribing care. Some, like the American Medical Association, have advocated its elimination, while other scholars argue that, even though race isn’t a valid biological concept, it can still be a useful proxy for medically relevant information about a given patient.
Other racially themed events held at the September conference included a session on “Black Male Empowerment,” three talks on diversity, equity, and inclusion, a discussion on “racial equity in organizational leadership,” and a training on “facilitating cultural humility.” One event referred to mothers by using the gender-neutral term “lactating parents.”
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Keisha Blain, the conference’s keynote speaker, penned an opinion piece for MSNBC in October 2023, in which she criticized the United States for its “open embrace of white supremacist rhetoric during former President Donald Trump’s administration and the restrictive voting laws passed after his defeat in the 2020 election.”
ETSU has a history of embedding left-of-center ideas about race into its academic affairs. One of the secondary interview questions at the institution’s medical school, for instance, tells students that “social justice, systemic racism, and equity for all have been at the forefront of national conversations” and that it “recognizes that many barriers still exist for persons of color and those from historically underrepresented communities.” After that exposition, students are asked to share “reflections on how your life experiences have impacted the development of your values and attitudes toward others, particularly those with backgrounds or values different from your own.”
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The university’s medical school reinforced its diversity efforts after the right-of-center medical non-profit organization Do No Harm first reported on them. In an email obtained by the Tennessee Star, Dr. William Block, ETSU dean of medicine, said it was a “fact” that DEI efforts “have been repeatedly proven to improve outcomes for our patients and make us better doctors.”
ETSU did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
