A new report says Oklahoma State University’s medical school has incorporated “diversity, equity, and inclusion” practices into its medical training programs, potentially infringing on students’ free-speech rights and negatively impacting the quality of future medical care in Oklahoma.

“Critical Condition: How Medical Schools are Forcing DEI Orthodoxy on Future Physicians,” a report from Speech First, warns that medical students and faculty at colleges nationwide are being “pressured to conform to leftist ideological frameworks under the banner of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)” with negative consequences for basic medical care.

“Medical schools instruct students to view their role as future physicians as social agents responsible for addressing and correcting historical injustices, particularly through racial considerations in patient care,” the report stated. “Within this framework, race becomes a central factor in treatment, and, under this paradigm, the definition of racism is expanded, with micro-aggression training required or encouraged.”

Speech First describes itself as a membership association of students, parents, faculty, alumni, and concerned citizens committed to restoring the freedom of speech in higher education and counteracting the “increasingly toxic censorship culture in higher education.”

The group’s report is based on records obtained from 54 medical schools nationwide through Freedom of Information Act requests and open-source information.

Oklahoma State University is among several colleges singled out in the report.

“Even when terms like ‘microaggression’ do not explicitly appear in training modules, the underlying themes persist,” the report stated. “For example, Oklahoma State University’s School of Medicine (OSU) incorporates this under the banner of cultural competency and racial sensitivity. The OSU curriculum includes courses such as Culture & Medicine: CLME 8981, which require students to analyze health disparities through a racial lens and reflect on events like the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. These courses subtly reinforce the same divisive frameworks, ensuring that race remains a focal point throughout students’ training.”

Officials at OSU and at the OSU Center for Health Sciences did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Speech First found that 99 percent of all medical schools investigated in the report mandate commitments to racial justice, 89 percent mandate commitments to gender ideology, and 30 percent mandate commitments to weight inclusivity, a practice that treats obesity not as a medical condition but as a class of “oppressed” citizens.

Speech First said college programs embracing those worldviews effectively force future doctors to do the same.

“Such mandates create a chilling effect, discouraging students from questioning or speaking out against these standards,” the report said. “To avoid being labeled as biased or unfit to practice medicine, students feel pressured to conform to this belief.”

The report comes even as federal officials are cracking down on educational entities’ use of DEI and colleges could potentially lose federal funding if they continue requiring students to embrace the DEI worldview.

On Jan. 21, President Donald Trump issued an executive order regarding DEI in colleges. The order noted that federal civil-rights laws protect individual Americans from discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.

“Yet today, roughly 60 years after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, critical and influential institutions of American society, including the Federal Government, major corporations, financial institutions, the medical industry, large commercial airlines, law enforcement agencies, and institutions of higher education have adopted and actively use dangerous, demeaning, and immoral race- and sex-based preferences under the guise of so-called ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) or ‘diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility’ (DEIA) that can violate the civil-rights laws of this Nation,” the order stated.

In April, Trump signed an Executive Order to overhaul the higher education accreditation system to ensure colleges and universities deliver high-quality education free from unlawful discrimination and ideological overreach.

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