Group calls on Johns Hopkins to eliminate DEI program after post on ‘privilege’ draws harsh criticism: report

A watchdog group is calling on Johns Hopkins Medicine in Baltimore to eliminate its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion program, a week after the program’s leader declared all white people, Christians and men were "privileged," creating a "toxic culture," according to reports.

After the post went viral, the school’s chief diversity officer Dr. Sherita H. Golden issued a statement and retracted the message, claiming she did not intend to offend anyone.

The Watchdog group Do No Harm called Golden’s apology "empty," and demanded the DEI department be eliminated, the New York Post reported.

"Johns Hopkins needs to completely eliminate their DEI department and channel those resources toward the primary objective of preparing the next generation of healthcare professionals to give the highest quality care to all patients," Do No Harm’s executive director Kristina Rasmussen told The Post. "They have created a toxic culture rooted in a DEI ideology that demonizes and indoctrinates the very students they’re tasked with training to become the next generation of medical professionals."

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Baltimore, MD, USA - June 28, 2015: The Johns Hopkins Hospital at night from Orleans Street. (iStock)

Rasmussen told the publication that the school official’s apology was "weak" and "insufficient," adding that Do No Harm’s campaign is "focused on raising awareness about the discriminatory ideas being taught to students and the hostile workplace imposed on employees."

Do No Harm put a mobile billboard on the streets of Washington, D.C. on Thursday, protesting the DEI program.

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Diversity, equity and inclusion agendas have frequently been enmeshed with concepts from critical race theory in education.  (Adobe Stock)

The billboard reads, "Racism is still racism when a DEI officer says it," and has an image of Golden’s face, The Post reported.

The @EndWokeness X account released an unearthed newsletter from Golden in the January 2024 issue of Monthly Diversity Digest. The message included "privilege" as the "Diversity Word of the Month" along with a series of descriptions considered "privileged."

"Privilege is an unearned benefit given to people who are in a specific social group. Privilege operates on personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels, and it provides advantages and favors to members of dominant groups at the expense of members of other groups," the newsletter read.

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It continued, "In the United States, privilege is granted to people who have membership in one or more of these social identity groups: White people, able-bodied people, heterosexuals, cisgender people, males, Christians, middle or class people, middle-aged people, and English-speaking people."

After the message went viral, Golden issued a statement on Jan. 11, retracting the letter and claiming it was not intended to offend anyone.

"The newsletter included a definition of the word ‘privilege’ which, upon reflection, I deeply regret. The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal. In fact, because it was overly simplistic and poorly worded, it had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community," Golden wrote.

"I retract and disavow the definition I shared, and I am sorry. I will work to ensure that future messages better reflect our organizational values."

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In May, Fox News Digital learned that employees at Johns Hopkins Medicine in Maryland were given a new pronoun usage guide that lists dozens of pronouns including "aerself" and "faerself" while staffers navigate a recent inclusive ID policy.

Fox News Digital's Emma Colton and Lindsay Kornick contributed to this report.