{"id":13861,"date":"2026-05-04T07:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/vulnerable-medical-schools-caught-in-magas-crosshairs-inside-higher-ed\/"},"modified":"2026-05-04T07:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-05-04T07:09:06","slug":"vulnerable-medical-schools-caught-in-magas-crosshairs-inside-higher-ed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/05\/04\/vulnerable-medical-schools-caught-in-magas-crosshairs-inside-higher-ed\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cVulnerable\u201d Medical Schools Caught in MAGA\u2019s Crosshairs – Inside Higher Ed"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Republicans are scrutinizing \u201cwoke\u201d medical schools. But experts warn that bowing to political pressure could hurt the future of public health, research and higher education. <\/span>
By <\/span> Kathryn Palmer <\/a>
Medical schools are under federal pressure to abandon once-popular DEI initiatives.
Photo illustration by Justin Morrison\/Inside Higher Ed | Saul Loeb\/AFP\/Getty Images | Chip Somodevilla\/Getty Images | JasonDoiy\/iStock\/Getty Images
When the Department of Justice demanded years of admissions data to identify possible racial discrimination<\/a> at three top medical schools in late March, one official called the federal government\u2019s latest efforts to dismantle diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education \u201canother day in paradise.\u201d
But experts say those and other moves by the second Trump administration to assert control over the nation\u2019s medical education system\u2014including terminating billions in grants and coercing changes to accreditation and curricular standards\u2014have felt more like an inferno fueled by growing public mistrust of scientists and doctors<\/a> in the aftermath of the pandemic.
\u201cI\u2019m not aware of there ever being such a wholesale attack on medical schools,\u201d said David Seres, retired director of medical nutrition and professor of medicine in the Institute of Human Nutrition at Columbia University Medical Center. \u201cFunding from the government is often impacted by politics, and it\u2019s not as if medical schools have always been immune. But [the Trump administration\u2019s actions] are so out of proportion to any of that impact. This has been an overt, politicized attempt to reshape medicine by people who are not experts in medicine.\u201d
And while it won\u2019t happen overnight, such political interference into medical schools could have long-term implications for the future of public health, research and higher education, Seres and others warn.
\u201cThe best and brightest are going to be less likely to apply to medical schools and medical care will suffer as a result,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople go into medicine with the idea that they can explore their own ideas in a supportive environment, as opposed to one where Big Brother is breathing down their neck.\u201d
The DOJ\u2019s inquest into the admissions policies of physician training programs at Stanford University, Ohio State University and the University of California, San Diego, is only the most recent example of Republican-led scrutiny of medical schools.
Last year, congressional Republicans introduced now-stalled legislation<\/a> to ban DEI in medical schools and cut off federal funding for those that don\u2019t comply; over the past decade, many medical schools have committed to diversifying<\/a> the physician pipeline and adopted equity-focused frameworks<\/a> in the name of improving patient outcomes.
\u201cMedical schools should be in the business of training our future doctors to save lives\u2014not indoctrinating students with anti-American DEI ideology,\u201d said Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana, who co-sponsored the bill. \u201cThe EDUCATE Act would make sure the government isn\u2019t wasting your money on woke struggle sessions and blatant discrimination in medical schools.\u201d
In addition to targeting once-popular DEI initiatives, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.\u2014who regularly espouses false claims about vaccines and nutrition\u2014has also pressured medical schools into requiring more nutrition education in support of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. So far, 53 of the nation\u2019s roughly 200 medical schools have agreed.<\/a>
State-level Republicans have even joined in on the medical school attacks to advance a political agenda. In February, the politically appointed leader of public universities in Florida pressed the Liaison Committee on Medical Education<\/a>, which accredits most medical schools, including eight in Florida, to justify its standards on gender-affirming care\u2014which the state has banned for minors.
And medical schools aren\u2019t in a position to ignore such political pressures, which often carry the threat of losing federal funding. In addition to receiving billions each year in federal student loans, medical schools also received more than $19\u00a0billion in grants<\/a> from the National Institutes of Health in 2024.
For example, despite calls from the American Association of University Professors to resist<\/a> the DOJ\u2019s data probe into the medical schools at UC San Diego, Ohio State and Stanford, both Ohio State and UC San Diego confirmed to Inside Higher Ed<\/em> last week that they are following the government\u2019s orders; not doing so could result in a loss of federal funding. Although Stanford didn\u2019t respond to Inside Higher Ed<\/em>\u2019s questions, over the past month it has scrubbed its web pages<\/a> of mentions of \u201cdiversity.\u201d In one instance, it rebranded the Office of Diversity in Medical Education as the Office of Community Health and Engagement.
\u201cMedical schools are vulnerable to financial pressures,\u201d said Laura Hirshbein, a psychiatrist and professor of the history of medicine at the University of Michigan. \u201cThey depend on federal money in a profound sense. It\u2019s been quite effective for the federal government to threaten that funding to get medical schools to say, \u2018OK, we\u2019ll do whatever you want.\u2019\u201d
That\u2019s also what happened last year, right after President Donald Trump took office and unilaterally froze billions in funding for medical schools at some of the nation\u2019s wealthiest universities, including Columbia and Duke Universities and the University of Pennsylvania<\/a>.
The Trump administration targeted grants related to vaccines and health outcomes for women, minorities and transgender people, insisting they didn\u2019t hold scientific value despite vehement objections from the scientific community. In several cases, the government leveraged those freezes to strong-arm universities into adopting policies aligned with the president\u2019s ideological priorities. Many got their money back after agreeing to a flurry of ideologically driven demands, such as banning gender-affirming care for minors at university hospitals, turning over race-related admissions data, prohibiting DEI initiatives and adopting the Trump administration\u2019s approved definition of male and female.
\u201cIt\u2019s been a blow to medical authority,\u201d Hirshbein said. \u201cThe conversation about how to make better doctors and how to have a healthier population is taking a hit with the Trump administration because health and illness has become so caricatured. It\u2019s also reinforcing the idea that medical expertise and medical authority are arbitrary and can be dictated\u00a0\u2026 by the federal government.\u201d
Attacking medical schools also helps to advance Trump\u2019s broader goal of controlling higher education more broadly, added Kim Scheppele, a sociology professor at Princeton University with expertise in the rise of authoritarian governments.
\u201cPart of this is an effort to create a civil war within universities between the more right-leaning faculty, who tend to do science, and the more left-leaning faculty, who tend to be humanists and social sciences,\u201d she said. \u201cWhile scientists themselves tend not to be political activists and aren\u2019t the ones that immediately come to mind as political opponents, causing huge financial pain to the natural sciences\u2014because that\u2019s where the government\u2019s leverage is\u2014will force the universities to crack down on the humanists who are the ones causing trouble for the administration.\u201d
Another one of Trump\u2019s early hits to medical schools\u2014which are often intertwined with big-budget university hospital systems\u2014came in the form of the NIH\u2019s now-abandoned proposal to cap universities\u2019 indirect research cost reimbursement rates at 15\u00a0percent<\/a>, for an estimated savings of $4\u00a0billion. Higher education and patient advocates decried the plan as \u201cshortsighted and dangerous,\u201d<\/a> warning that such cuts would destabilize their budgets and stymie lifesaving medical research. Although it faced legal challenges and didn\u2019t come to fruition, some universities enacted campuswide hiring freezes and spending cuts in anticipation.
Going after such a critical source of funding follows the \u201cplaybook\u201d of Hungary\u2019s authoritarian former prime minister Viktor Orb\u00e1n, which calls for \u201canalyzing the national budget, looking at all the places where the budget harms the people who are likely to be opposed to you, and cutting all of it overnight,\u201d Scheppele added. In the United States, \u201cthe science grants happened to be the largest line item in the budget,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd in the opening salvo [of Trump\u2019s higher education overhaul], medical schools got hit the hardest.\u201d
The Trump administration isn\u2019t exactly thrilled with all of the content medical schools are teaching future doctors, either. And although medical education experts have spent the past decade advocating for more equity-focused frameworks, many of the medical curriculum decision-makers have rushed to address the Trump administration\u2019s recent criticisms of those practices.
Under the pressure of an executive order to investigate the Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits medical schools, the LCME voted to drop its DEI standards last summer. Earlier this year, it also agreed to dilute its recently adopted curricular standards on structural competency<\/a>, which teaches future doctors about how political, economic and social issues influence health outcomes.
But even if making changes to medical school curricula, accreditation standards and research inquiries may ease immediate political pressure, it could lead to the \u201cdeprofessionalization\u201c of medicine in the long run, said Kenneth Ludmerer, an internist and professor of the history of medicine at Washington University in St. Louis.
\u201cInternal professional standards should define education and work to serve the public interests,\u201d he said. But if politicians continue on the path of dictating what and whom medical schools teach, it will raise the question of \u201cwhat type of individual will be attracted to medical careers if medicine itself is changing in these nonprofessional ways.\u201d
Most likely, he added, the field would draw \u201ca less motivated type of individual who works for the clock and the needs of the employer rather than for the best interest of the patient.\u201d
Advocates and higher ed groups called on Congress to take action to expand the definition of professional programs.
Major research universities spent about the same in early 2026 as last year, lobbying on issues including federal res
The White House axed all members of the board overseeing the National Science Foundation Friday, leaving the ag<\/span>
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