Republicans on the House Committee on Education and Workforce slammed the leaders of three public medical schools on Tuesday over course offerings that they allege were intended to instill anti-Israel bias rather than teach medical knowledge.
Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.), chairman of the committee, said that the schools’ diversity, equity and inclusion agendas had fostered Jew-hatred.
“It soon became clear that the pervasive antisemitism we were investigating was the result of a deeper problem,” Walberg said. “It was a result of the activist infrastructure that these medical schools themselves had constructed.”
“This infrastructure puts people into categories based on race and identity rather than judging people as individuals,” he said. “It also incites antisemitism, among other hatreds, by labeling Jews as ‘white’ and, therefore, privileged and oppressors.”
The heads of the medical schools at University of Illinois and the San Francisco and Los Angeles campuses of the University of California told lawmakers that they have stopped teaching those courses.
“This course was stopped long before this committee’s inquiry,” said Dr. Steve Dubinett, dean of the UCLA medical school. “We determined that some of the content was not appropriate for a medical school curriculum.”
Dubinett and the other witnesses said that their schools had introduced courses with titles like “Colonialism and the Role of Medicine and Race” and “Race, Science and Hate: The Case of Antisemitism” to teach future doctors about the social determinants of health.
Democrats on the committee criticized the Republican-led hearing for rejecting scientifically established racial health factors, including diseases more prevalent in some minority populations.
“I seem to remember that Tay-Sachs disease affects a particular population, predominantly. Can you tell me which population it affects?” asked Rep. Mark Takano (D-Calif.).
“It’s more prevalent in Ashkenazi Jews,” replied Dr. Sam Hawgood, UCSF’s chancellor.
The most heated moments in the hearing came when Republicans pressed the medical school leaders on questions about transgender medicine, including whether they would say that only women could become pregnant.
“Transgender men get pregnant. That is your view,” said Rep. Randy Fine (R-Fla.) in one exchange with Hawgood. “That’s insane.”
Fine then pivoted to asking the deans whether their schools are doing enough to combat Jew-hatred.
“We’re doing a lot in the area of antisemitism and we stand against antisemitism strongly,” Dubinett said. “These issues I take very personally in that not all of my family escaped Europe during the Holocaust.”
