TruthArchive.ai - Tweets Saved By @aaronsibarium
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab laid off 900 workers due to budget cuts. But it refuses to fire its top DEI officer, Neela Rajendra, who has said that "extreme deadlines" are an obstacle to "inclusion." The lab changed her title but kept many of her duties the same.🧵
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Rajendra said on a 2022 podcast that that "some people might be left behind" by the "super fast pace" of tight deadlines. That comment came two years before a pair of astronauts were stranded on the International Space Station for nine months due to a faulty propulsion system.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In 2024, the lab laid off 900 workers—or 13% of its staff—amid budget cuts due to delays on its Mars Sample Return program. Rajendra survived the cull, however. And even after Trump's executive order banning DEI in the federal government, the lab kept her around.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Rather than fire Rajendra, the lab created a new role for her—one with many of the same duties as the old. Instead of chief inclusion officer, the lab explained in March, Rajendra would henceforth serve as the "Chief of the Office of Team Excellence and Employee Success."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Ostensibly set up to "maximize our potential," the office would oversee the lab’s "affinity groups"— including "B.E.S.T," the Black Excellence Strategic Team—as well as "wellness" and "accessibility."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"I believe this change is essential for JPL’s future success and aligns well with Neela’s strengths and focus over the past year," lab director Laurie Leshin wrote in an email. She added that a "small number" of human resources officers would be reassigned to the new office.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Rajendra’s new role comes as NASA is under scrutiny for the sort of the diversity programs she helped organize, such as an industry pledge, "Space Workforce 2030," to hire more women and minorities.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
She also ensured that the leaders of affinity groups were paid for their DEI work, according to a 2023 article in Physics World, and spoke of the "world reckoning" that followed the death of George Floyd.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The lab told me that Rajendra’s new role would focus solely on "retaining our highly skilled workforce" in the wake of the budget cuts. But for more than 2 weeks after the title change, Rajendra’s bio on a NASA website continued to reference "diversity, equity, and inclusion."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The language was only scrubbed on March 27, the day after the Free Beacon asked the laboratory for comment.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In a 2022 presentation on "DEIA in the NASA Family," Rajendra suggested that the "failure to promote DEI" at SpaceX—"a fast paced, high innovation company"—was one reason why it had a higher attrition rate than Boeing, a "traditional corporate entity."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In June 2024, two astronauts were stranded when the thrusters malfunctioned on a Boeing spaceship. They were only rescued nine months later, when a SpaceX capsule brought them back.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Tldr: Budget cuts forced NASA's jet propulsion lab to fire 900 workers. But it still found the money to employ a chief diversity officer who has argued that deadlines harm inclusion and attacked SpaceX for being innovative—even after Trump's ban on DEI. https://freebeacon.com/campus/nasas-jet-propulsion-lab-laid-off-900-workers-due-to-budget-cuts-but-hasnt-fired-its-top-dei-officer/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: After Trump’s inauguration, the University of Michigan School of Nursing axed all its DEI programs. Or so it appeared—until we dug deeper. Turns out the school just renamed its DEI office the office of “community culture.” And all its DEI programs are still in effect.🧵
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Amid Trump’s blitzkrieg of executive orders, a "diversity" tab with links to DEI resources was removed from the school’s homepage. And pages with "DEI" in the title were renamed and purged of the offending adjective, according to web archives we reviewed.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The main page for the school’s diversity office was taken down entirely, replaced with a new page for "Community Culture” that declares that "culture is at the heart of everything we do." None of the revised pages use the terms "diversity" or "DEI."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The changes seemed to indicate that Michigan was finally downsizing a bureaucracy that employs more than 200 officials and has cost the university nearly $250 million since 2016. But Mark Perry, a retired professor at the university’s Flint campus, decided to take a closer look.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
It turns out the new pages link to the same DEI materials as the old ones, including a "DEI 2.0" strategic plan that is in effect through 2028. And lo and behold, the office of "Community Culture" employs all the same staff as the former diversity office.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The title of just one official, Patricia Coleman-Burns, has changed from "DEI Strategic Planning Co-Lead" to "Strategic Planning Co-Lead." The new office’s description also uses many of the same buzzwords associated with DEI, albeit not the acronym itself.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"When we talk about Community Culture," the new description says, "we're highlighting our commitment to addressing health disparities and making sure that equity and inclusion are integrated into every aspect of our work."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The tweaks to Michigan’s website illustrate how schools may attempt to get around Trump’s EOs and disguise their diversity initiatives without getting rid of them, keeping the programs and personnel but dressing them up in new language.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"These changes might serve as a blueprint for other schools to follow with similar deceptive changes," Perry told the Free Beacon.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Schools at Michigan like Nursing are now attempting to maintain the ‘DEI status quo’ while hiding their DEI programming and services from the regents, media, taxpayers, federal and state government, and the public."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
On Feb. 8, Perry wrote to Michigan’s Board of Regents about his concerns. By Feb. 11, the nursing school had removed many of the rebranded pages—as well as the list of staff members in the Community Culture office—from the public domain, though they still exist internally.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The rebrand is part of a larger game of cat and mouse between DEI officials and their newly empowered opponents. See, for example, PBS’s plans to defy Trump’s executive order by moving its top DEI officers to another department.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
At Michigan, DEI was under scrutiny even before Trump’s reelection. In October 2024, the New York Times had published a 9,200 word exposé on the university’s diversity programs, which included trainings on "antiracist pedagogy” and handouts on "white supremacy culture.”
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The report noted that Michigan’s school of nursing had gone on a DEI hiring blitz, bringing on a chief diversity officer, Rushika Patel, whose title has since been changed to "Assistant Dean for Strategic Education," according to the school’s online directory.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The change was one of the many made by Michigan in the wake of the New York Times report, which underscored how vulnerable the school could be when Trump returned to the White House.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
While Trump has not directly outlawed DEI at colleges and universities, he has pledged to target schools that discriminate "under the guise of … ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion.’"
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The nursing school’s DEI strategic plan, which is still available on the university’s website, could run afoul of Trump’s directive. It calls for expanding a "health equity" program designed for "disadvantaged and underrepresented minority (URM)" students, for example.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
And the success of the plan will be measured by "headcount and demographic diversity." The plan also lists "increasing the demographic diversity of graduate and doctoral students" as an explicit goal of the nursing school, which conducts a biennial "DEI campus climate survey."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In a section on "inclusive teaching," the plan says that "DEI, social justice, and health equity" will be woven throughout the curriculum.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"[W]e are aware that we are up against many forms of oppression," the plan reads. "Given this context, and during this next DEI 2.0 period, the [School of Nursing] remains committed to mobilizing the incredible strength and potential of our School."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
TLDR: It’s not clear how many universities are actually getting rid of their DEI bureaucracies. At schools like the University of Michigan, they’re just hiding them from public view. Read the fully story here: https://freebeacon.com/campus/exclusive-at-the-university-of-michigan-dei-now-hides-in-office-of-community-culture/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
How bad are hate speech laws in the UK? Saying "it's OK to be white" can result in a harsher sentence than child pornography. @abigailandwords found numerous cases in which UK judges jailed thought criminals while letting actual criminals off the hook. The list is shocking.🧵
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Judge Benedict Kelleher sentenced a man to 18 months in prison for chanting "who the fuck is Allah?" He gave a lighter sentence to a man who physically assaulted a police officer.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Judge John Temperley gave a man 12 weeks in prison for a racist Facebook post. He did not impose any prison time on a man with 46 indecent images of children.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
An incendiary Facebook comment earned a man 20 months in prison, in part because his lack of privacy setting was taken as evidence of incitement. But 8,000 images of child porn? That will only get you a six month sentence from Judge Kearl.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Judge Rupert Lowe sentenced a man to nine months in jail for shouting racist comments at a football player. Lowe gave no jail time to a doctor who ejaculated into a cup of coffee and gave the cup to a woman.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Read @abigailandwords's entire piece here: https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/in-britain-two-tier-policing-and-a-two-tier-judiciary/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
SCOOP: Whistleblowers at UCLA medical school say it has dramatically lowered admissions standards for minority applicants. As a result, they say, 50% of some cohorts now fail basic tests of medical competence. We've obtained shocking internal data.🧵 https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
UCLA medical school hired a new dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, In 2020. Since then, the number of students failing their shelf exams—standardized tests taken after each clinical rotation—has exploded, rising as much as tenfold in some subjects. That wasn't a coincidence.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a "failed medical school," said a former member of the admissions staff. "We want racial diversity so badly, we're willing to cut corners to get it." This is the story of how that happened.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Led by Lucero, who also serves as the DEI czar of UCLA's anesthesiology department, the admissions committee gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Committee members who try to uphold standards are silenced. Two sources said Lucero attacked an admissions officer for raising concerns about an applicant with low test scores. "Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?" she asked.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The candidate's scores shouldn't matter, she continued, because "we need people like this in the medical school." "We are not consistent in the way we apply the metrics to these applicants," one admissions official emailed colleagues after the incident. "This is troubling."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"I wondered," the official added, "if this applicant had been [a] white male, or [an] Asian female for that matter, [whether] we would have had that much discussion."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
This story is based on written correspondence between UCLA officials, internal data on student performance, and interviews with eight professors at the medical school—six of whom have worked with or under Lucero on medical student and residency admissions.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Together, they provide an unprecedented account of how racial preferences, outlawed in California since 1996, have nonetheless continued, upending academic standards at one of the top medical schools in the country.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The school has consequently taken a hit in the rankings and seen a sharp rise in the number of students failing basic standardized tests, raising concerns about their clinical competence. "I have students on their rotation who don't know anything," an admissions official said.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
It is almost unheard of for admissions officers to go public with stories from confidential deliberations, much less to accuse their colleagues of breaking the law or lowering standards. They've agreed to come forward because the drop in student performance has been so alarming.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"I wouldn't normally talk to a reporter," a UCLA faculty member said. "But there's no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school." Within three years of Lucero's hire, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report's rankings for medical research.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Failure rates have increased tenfold in some subjects since Lucero took over admissions. That uptick coincided with a steep drop in the number of Asian matriculants and tracks the subjective impressions of faculty who say that students have never been more poorly prepared.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don't know basic lab tests and, in some cases, are unable to present patients. "I don't know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors," the professor said.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students." And for those who've seen the competency crisis up close, double standards in admissions are a big part of the problem.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races," an admissions officer said. "For other people, those criteria are completely disregarded."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Another admissions officer said that the bar for underrepresented minorities is "as low as you could possibly imagine" and "completely disregards grades and achievements."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Several officials said that they support holistic admissions and don't want test scores judged in isolation. The problem, they say, is that the committee isn't just weighing academics against community service or considering how much time a given kid had to study for the MCAT.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
For certain applicants, they say, hardship and community service seem to be the only things that matter to the majority of the committee's 20-30 members, many of whom were handpicked by Lucero, according to people familiar with the selection process.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"We were always outnumbered," an admissions officer told the Free Beacon, referring to committee members who expressed concern about low grades. "Other people would get upset when we brought up GPA."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Lucero hasn't been kind to dissenters. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, six people who've worked with her described a pattern of racially charged incidents that has dispirited officials and pushed some of them to resign from the committee.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
She has lashed out at officials who question the qualifications of minority candidates, five sources said, suggesting naysayers are "privileged," implying that they are racist, and subjecting them to diversity training sessions.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
After a Native American applicant was rejected in 2021, for example, Lucero chewed out the committee and made members sit through a two-hour lecture on Native history delivered by her own sister, according to three people familiar with the incident.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In the anesthesiology department, where Lucero helps rank applicants for residencies, she has rebuffed calls to blind the race of candidates, telling colleagues in a 2023 email that, despite California's ban on racial preferences, "we are not required to blind any information."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
That alone could get UCLA in legal trouble, according to Adam Mortara, the lead trial lawyer for the plaintiffs in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the Supreme Court case that outlawed affirmative action nationwide.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Asking for information about an applicant's race when "no lawful use can be made of it" is "presumptively illegal," Mortara said. "You can't have evidence of overt discrimination like this and not have someone come forward" as a plaintiff.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Lucero has even advocated moving candidates up or down the residency rank list based on race. At a meeting in 2022, per two people present, she demanded a highly qualified white male be knocked down several spots because, as she put it, "we have too many of his kind" already.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
She also told those who voiced concern that they had no right to an opinion because they were "not BIPOC" and insisted that a Hispanic applicant who had performed poorly on her anesthesiology rotation in medical school should be bumped up. Neither candidate was ultimately moved.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Lucero's comments from the meeting were flagged in an email to UCLA's Discrimination Prevention Office, which has received several complaints about her since 2023, emails show.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The office has declined to act on those complaints on the grounds that they aren't "serious enough" to merit an investigation, according to a source with direct knowledge of the situation.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The focus on diversity has coincided with a dramatic shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the medical school, where the number of Asian matriculants fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2022. No other elite medical school in California saw a similar decline.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
As the demographics of UCLA have changed, the number of students failing their shelf exams has soared, trends professors at the medical school say are connected.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Between 2020, the year Lucero assumed her post, and 2023, when the first classes she admitted were taking their shelf exams, the failure rate rose dramatically across all subjects, in some cases increasing tenfold relative to the 2020 baseline.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"1/3 to 1/2 of the medical school is incredibly unqualified," one prof said. The collapse in qualifications has been compounded by UCLA's decision, in 2020, to condense its preclinical curriculum from two years to one in order to add time for research and community service.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
That means students arrive at their clinical rotations with just a year of courses under their belt—some of which focus less on science than social justice.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
First-year students spend three to four hours every other week in "Structural Racism and Health Equity," a required class that covers topics like "fatphobia," has featured anti-Semitic speakers, and is now the subject of an internal review. https://freebeacon.com/campus/pedagogical-malpractice-inside-ucla-medical-schools-mandatory-health-equity-class/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
They spend an additional seven hours a week in "Foundations of Practice," which includes units on "interpersonal communication skills" and, according to one medical student, basically "tells us how to be a good person."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The two courses eat up time that could be spent on physiology or anatomy, professors say, and leave struggling students with fewer hours to learn the basics.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"This has been a colossal failure," one professor posted in April on a forum for medical school applicants. "The new curriculum is not working and the students are grossly unprepared for clinical rotations." https://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/ucla-medical-school-in-crisis.1494584/#post-24303365
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Nearly 1/4 of UCLA students failed three or more shelf exams in 2021, forcing some students to repeat classes and persuading others to postpone the Step 2 licensing exam that's typically taken in the third year of medical school and is a prerequisite for most residency programs. https://t.co/tpq5O76ejw
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Around 20 percent of UCLA students have not taken Step 2 by January of their fourth year, according to the data. Ten percent have not even taken the more basic Step 1—an "extremely high number," one professor said, that will force many students to extend medical school. https://t.co/X3RQrWlcjP
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"It's a combination of a bad curriculum and bad selection," another professor said, referring to the admissions process. Some students are accepted with GPAs so low "they shouldn't even be applying."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
As medical schools around the country adjust to the Supreme Court's affirmative action ban, the experience of UCLA offers a preview of how administrators may skirt the law and devise public-spirited excuses for violating it.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Lucero has told the admissions committee that each class should "represent" the "diversity" of California, including its remote and rural areas, so that graduating students will return to their hometowns and beef up the medical infrastructure there, officials say.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Race is rarely mentioned outright, and unlike the committee for anesthesiology residents, the committee for students does not see the race or ethnicity of applicants.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Instead, officials say, Lucero uses proxies like zip codes and euphemisms like "disadvantaged" to shut down criticism of unqualified candidates, citing a statistic that, technically, most students with below-average MCATs make it to their second year of medical school.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
How well they do after that point goes undiscussed and undisclosed. "We have asked for metrics on how these folks actually do," one committee member said. "None of that is ever divulged to us."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
EXCLUSIVE: UCLA medical school is launching a probe of its mandatory "health equity" class—and warning whistleblowers they could be punished if there are any more leaks. It's also promised to address concerns that the course is antisemitic with—you guessed it—more DEI.🧵
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, announced today that his office had formed a task force to review all first-year courses, including "Structural Racism and Health Equity," after the Washington Free Beacon published materials from the mandatory class.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
But the school isn’t happy about having its hand forced. In an email to students and faculty, Dubinett implied that the leaks were an "attempt to intimidate" the medical school and hinted that future leakers could face discipline—especially if they record lectures.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Recording class sessions is not permitted without express consent from the instructor and class participants," Dubinett wrote.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
That warning appears to be a reference to an earlier incident in which a guest lecturer, Lisa Gray Garcia, led the required course in chants of "Free, Free Palestine" as well as a prayer to "Mamma Earth," part of which was caught on tape and thrust the course into the spotlight.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Doxxing or publishing, posting or identifying private information of faculty, staff, trainees or students in any public forum, including social media, is contrary to UCLA policy and our core values of mutual respect and inclusion," Dubinett continued.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Guidelines for overseeing invited guest speakers are being developed that will address adherence to our policies."
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The veiled threats come days after the full syllabus for the course went viral online and sparked outrage from prominent doctors—including former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey Flier—who said it was filled with unscientific claptrap and called for an investigation.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Leaked readings claimed that weight loss is a "hopeless endeavor," described "anti-capitalist politics" as a tenet of "disability justice," and advocated for abolishing the police.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The syllabus was designed with input from Shamsher Samra, a professor of emergency medicine who has endorsed "Palestinians’ right to return" and published research on the "health of border abolition."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Though the course initially included an exercise that separated students by race, that lesson was canceled in January after it became the subject of a local civil rights complaint.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Some Jewish UCLA faculty have spoken out against the course, saying it perpetuates an "oppressor vs. oppressed" framework that fuels anti-Semitism. Dubinett's email alluded to those concerns, which he said had been sparked by "tensions" over "the conflict in the Middle East."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Like many university administrators since the October 7 attacks, he did not mention Jews specifically and appeared to suggest that anti-Semitism and Islamophobia were equally widespread, condemning them both in the same breath.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"We reiterate our stance against racism, antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination, harassment, intimidation or retaliation," Dubinett wrote.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The email, which was also signed by UCLA Health CEO John Mazziotta, said the school would be responding to concerns about anti-Semitism by giving diversity officials more say in the curriculum.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"JEDI teams and vice chairs will provide input for course lecturers and course topics to strengthen medical school course stands," the email says, referring to the medical school’s office of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
That office sponsored a talk this month that glorified self-immolation as a form of "revolutionary suicide" and told psychiatrists to "embed your practice with an anti-colonial lens."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: UCLA medical school’s psychiatry department hosted a talk this month that glorified self-immolation as a form of "revolutionary suicide." We have obtained audio of the talk, which argued taboos on self-immolation serve "the interests of power."🧵 https://freebeacon.com/campus/revolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Fostering a safe, respectful and professional environment is essential for training our future physicians," Dubinett wrote. "Our missions in education, research, clinical care and community engagement are our highest priorities."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
For more on the course and UCLA's review of its contents, head on over to the @FreeBeacon. https://freebeacon.com/campus/ucla-med-school-launches-review-of-health-equity-course-but-warns-that-whistleblowers-could-be-disciplined/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: UCLA medical school’s psychiatry department hosted a talk this month that glorified self-immolation as a form of "revolutionary suicide." We have obtained audio of the talk, which argued taboos on self-immolation serve "the interests of power."🧵 https://freebeacon.com/campus/revolutionary-suicide-ucla-psychiatrists-cheer-self-immolation-in-leaked-audio/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The talk, "Depathologizing Resistance," was delivered on April 2 by two psychiatry residents at UCLA, Drs. Ragda Izar and Afaf Moustafa, under the auspices of the department’s diversity office and UCLA’s Health Ethics Center.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The remarks centered on the suicide of Aaron Bushnell, the U.S. serviceman who set himself on fire in February to protest U.S. support for Israel—or, as Izar put it, "indigenous Palestine."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Bushnell was widely seen as a casualty of mental illness. The presentation argued he could also be considered a "martyr," a man in full control of his mental faculties who had responded rationally to a "genocide" unfolding thousands of miles away.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Yes, he carried a lot of distress," Izar said. "But does that mean the actions he engaged in are any less valid?" Isn’t it normal, she continued, "to be distressed when you’re seeing this level of carnage" in Gaza?
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
By "perpetuating the stigma of self-immolation," Izar and Moustafa said, psychiatrists "discredit" resistance to "power structures" like "colonization," "homophobia," and "white supremacy," framing legitimate acts of protest as signs of psychiatric dysfunction.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Psychiatry pathologizes non-pathological … reactions to a pathological environment or pathological society," Moustafa said. "It’s considered illness to choose to die in protest of the violence of war but perfectly sane to choose to die in service of the violence of war."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Their contentions undercut official guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which warns that "bestowing honor and admiration" on suicide victims can inspire others to take their own lives. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/su7302a3.htm
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
That guidance "was certainly violated by the presenters," said Elliot Kaminetzky, a psychiatrist who specializes in anxiety disorders and reviewed audio of the talk at the Free Beacon’s request.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"For mental health professionals to encourage removing the stigma is reckless" and could "lead to an increase in the number of individuals who protest in this tragic and horrifyingly painful fashion," Kaminetzky said.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
In a slide titled "Call to Action," which summarized the takeaways from the lecture, Izar and Moustafa told attendees to "cultivate safe spaces" for their patients.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Izar and Moustafa’s talk is the latest lecture to rock UCLA medical school, which hosted Lisa "Tiny" Gray-Garcia, a self-described "poverty scholar," as a guest speaker in its mandatory "structural racism" course in March. https://freebeacon.com/campus/ucla-med-school-requires-students-to-attend-lecture-where-speaker-demands-prayer-for-mama-earth-leads-chants-of-free-palestine/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Garcia led the class in chants of "Free, Free Palestine," derided the "crapitalist lie" of private property, and, in an audio clip that has since gone viral, had students kneel and pray to "mama earth."
@FreeBeacon - Washington Free Beacon
UCLA Med School Requires Students To Attend Lecture Where Speaker Demands Prayer for ‘Mama Earth,’ Leads Chants of ‘Free Palestine.’ https://freebeacon.com/campus/ucla-med-school-requires-students-to-attend-lecture-where-speaker-demands-prayer-for-mama-earth-leads-chants-of-free-palestine/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The spectacle followed news that UCLA had divided its medical students into race-based discussion groups and assigned them readings on "indigenous resistance," "decolonization," and "settler colonialism."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Such jargon was peppered throughout Izar and Moustafa’s talk. One slide asserted that psychiatry has "weaponized tools of colonization, racism, anti-blackness, homophobia, and various tools of oppressions." https://t.co/LU2w59Afe5
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Another told psychiatrists to "embed your practice with an anti-colonial lens" and "recognize that mental health is intimately tied to liberation." https://t.co/0GVilUGrcI
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Izar also castigated a statement from the American Psychiatric Association about Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, saying it "centered the suffering of one group of people"—Jews—without discussing the "trauma" Palestinians had faced "at the hands of colonizing forces for 75 years."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
hat remark drew blowback from Vivian Burt, an emeritus psychiatry professor at UCLA, who testified about the lecture at a meeting of the University of California Board of Regents on Wednesday. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtmJBNgsqwQ&t=831s
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"This is but the latest and most grotesque example of how anti-Semitism has been allowed to metastasize at UCLA," Burt said. "I implore the Regents to act for the safety of our students, faculty, and staff, as well as those in our care as healthcare professionals."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The talk argued that concerns about copycat suicide are selective and politically loaded, using former president Barack Obama’s praise of Mohamed Bouazizi—the Tunisian street vendor who helped jumpstart the Arab Spring when he self-immolated in 2010—as an example.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"We praise people who do it over there," Izar said. "But when it happens here, not so much." The talk also drew a distinction between Eastern and Western cultures, arguing that the Global South tends to view "protest suicide" as honorable and "heroic."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
It’s true that self-immolation is more acceptable outside the West, Kaminetzky said. And it’s true that Americans have greeted certain acts of self-immolation, including Bouazizi’s, with more fanfare than Bushnell’s. BUT...
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
The divergent reactions don’t necessarily reflect a double standard. Mental illness, after all, is often characterized by a disregard for social norms. Since those norms vary across cultures, a behavior that indicates mental illness in one country may not indicate it in another.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"Given that self-immolation is not part of Western culture, individuals in the West who choose to protest by ending their life likely have multiple mental health and other challenges," Kaminetzky told the Free Beacon.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
"I would not make the same assumption for individuals in Tibet"—where many monks have self-immolated in protest of China—"though I would discourage it for them as well."
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: The chief diversity officer of Columbia University's medical school, Alade McKen, plagiarized extensively in his doctoral dissertation, lifting huge chunks of material without attribution. Two pages in the dissertation come directly from Wikipedia.🧵 https://freebeacon.com/campus/columbia-university-hospital-dei-chief-is-serial-plagiarist-complaint-alleges/
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
Columbia Law School said it would require all applicants to submit "video statements" in the wake of the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling—to evaluate students’ “personal strengths,” of course. They backtracked within hours of me contacting them.
@aaronsibarium - Aaron Sibarium
NEW: Hundreds of Stanford students lined the halls yesterday to protest the law school’s dean, Jenny Martinez, for apologizing to Kyle Duncan, the judge shouted down last week. The students effectively subjected Martinez to an intimidating walk of shame.🧵https://freebeacon.com/campus/student-activists-target-stanford-law-school-dean-in-revolt-over-her-apology/
