(The Center Square) – After receiving a letter from a legal group, the University of Connecticut clarified that its medical school’s Hippocratic Oath – which pledges to promote social justice and other DEI principles – is optional for students.
According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) letter to UConn, portions of the school’s version of the Hippocratic Oath reads, “I will strive to promote health equity” and “I will actively support policies that promote social justice and specifically work to dismantle policies that perpetuate inequities, exclusion, discrimination, and racism.”
FIRE is a non-profit organization that exists to “[defend and promote] the value of free speech for all Americans,” according to its website.
FIRE Program Counsel Ross Marchand told The Center Square that “FIRE wrote the UConn School of Medicine on January 31, calling on the school to make clear that students have every right to refuse to pledge allegiance to DEI.
“At first, we got back radio silence,” Marchand said. “But when we followed up through email on March 31, the school responded the next day.”
Marchand told The Center Square that UConn’s “communications director clarified, ‘UConn’s medical school does not mandate nor monitor a student’s reciting of all or part of our Hippocratic Oath, nor do we discipline any student for choosing to not recite the oath or any part of it.’”
“We are pleased that the school ultimately clarified students are not required to choose between their beliefs and academic careers,” Marchand said.
UConn School of Medicine director of communications Lauren Woods likewise told The Center Square that the school’s Hippocratic Oath is not mandatory or monitored, and that students are not disciplined for declining to recite the oath.
“A medical student’s reciting of the oath at any time at UConn, whether fully or in part, never has been a requirement but is an individual’s choice,” Woods said.
Marchand told The Center Square that “public institutions have every right to hold and refine their own values. But forcing med students to pledge themselves to DEI – or any other political ideology – is First Amendment malpractice.”
“Fortunately, UConn students no longer have to wonder whether their refusal to state the DEI-infused oath will haunt them for the rest of their careers,” Marchand said. “FIRE applauds UConn and will continue to monitor the situation and ensure that students are not punished for their beliefs.”
UConn’s School of Medicine has a page dedicated to diversity, equity, and inclusion on its website that declares a mission of advancing DEI in the UConn Health Department of Medicine.
According to the website, one of the goals of UConn’s Department of Medicine Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee is “recruiting, hiring, and retaining excellent faculty and staff of diverse and/or underrepresented backgrounds.”
The webpage also mentions the revisions that were previously made to the school’s Hippocratic Oath in order to incorporate DEI principles, as now observed in the current version of the oath.
