Getting tired of the cancel culture of the political left and their followers? Well, it seems that the rest of America is too. And that just might include academia now.
Or at least that’s the message the University of Michigan Medical School gave this past week when left-wing students tried to get a known pro-life speaker and physician canceled.
UMMS hosted its annual White Coat Ceremony on Sunday, which is basically a welcoming ceremony and a milestone for incoming medical professionals. As such, Dr. Kristin Collier was scheduled to speak, as she is not only a professional in that field but also an assistant professor of medicine at UMMS.
But because she is also pro-life, not everyone took too kindly to her being a part of the ceremony.
According to The Washington Free Beacon, a group of over 300 students, physicians, and alumni signed a petition to get her barred from the White Coat Ceremony. However, the school and its administrators must not be of the most woke inclusion. Rather than agreeing with the petition and allowing Collier to be banned from the ceremony, the school’s dean, Dr. Marschall Runge, denied it.
The students organizing the petition claimed it was a matter of “diversity.” But as Runge pointed out in response to the petition, true diversity doesn’t mean canceling those whose opinions may differ from yours.
He wrote, “The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues, and Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks. Our values speak about honoring the critical importance of diversity of thought and ideas, which is foundational to academic freedom and excellence.”
And he’s right on multiple levels.
Firstly, Dr. Collier had not ever planned to speak about such a controversial topic as abortion at the ceremony, nor did she. Apparently, this is not what the organizers thought she would do.
My question is, what made them think she would stand up there and preach about the blessing of unborn life or work to “actively silence the voice of students and members of our community” during a speech meant to honor incoming medical students? Anyone with half a brain would have to guess that even a “deplorable” would have the sense that it was neither the time nor the place…
In fact, the only thing that might have been taken as even a reference to it and the events surrounding it of late was to mention that their community has been “wounded” and now needs “healing.” One could imagine that she is referring to the deep divide between pro-life and pro-abortion in the medical community right now.
However, she never specified that or mentioned any details to confirm it, just that “We have a great deal of work to do for healing to occur.”
Runge was also correct about diversity in its true form, being more inclusive on matters such as this. I mean, isn’t that very definition of diversity that many differences are included in one population?
Besides, as Dr. William Chavey, a UMMS faculty member, pointed out, it’s not like Dr. Collier’s pro-life views are uncommon.
Chavey said, “Dr. Collier’s views, described by MSFC as fringe, are shared by roughly half of the population. Current and entering medical students will encounter many patients and have numerous colleagues with whom they may disagree over this topic. They cannot all be canceled.”
Now, of course, the rejection of their petition didn’t make the organizing group, Medical Students for Choice, very happy. So instead, they tried to stage a walkout. So during Collier’s speech on Sunday, several dozen students got up and simply walked out.
However, it wasn’t anywhere close to the 300 number of petition signers. Nor did it have any effect on either the ceremony or Collier. Her speech went out without interruption, as did the ceremony.
The only thing to actually come from it was a video of the abysmally small walkout, which then earned more than 700,000 likes on Twitter for its ridiculousness.
Talk about an epic failure…
