The Tulane School of Medicine’s graduate medical education programs have been placed on probation by a national education accreditation organization following public allegations of racism at the institution.
On July 2, the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education sent an email to Lee Hamm, the dean of the medical school, who told The Lens that “given issues of confidentiality, we are limited in the information we can share about the ACGME’s decision.”
Hamm did note that there were two broad areas of concern outlined by ACGME, and they were “oversight of our [graduate medical education] programs” and “improving our learning and working environments, including enhancing equity, diversity and inclusion.”
Dr. Princess Dennar, who was the first and only Black woman to hold the role of program director, sued Tulane School of Medicine in October 2020, outing alleged racial discrimination at the university. In her lawsuit, she said she “observed and has been burdened by many acts of discrimination” that stalled her career and hindered her from recruiting students.
This February, she was suspended from her program director slot overseeing Tulane’s Medicine Pediatrics Residency. “I believe my termination from the position is a direct result of the allegations,” Dennar told The Lens.
A spokesperson responded at the time after the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education, an outside organization, put the Medicine Pediatrics Residency on “warning status,” that change “triggered an automatic review of the program by the Graduate Medical Education Committee, which is comprised of diverse Tulane faculty and medical residents from across the school and individuals from other institutions. It was the recommendation of this committee to remove Dr. Dennar as director.”
Dennar’s demotion prompted calls from alumni, students and faculty to offer more transparency in their disciplining of administrators.
The ACGME has said that they will visit Tulane in January 2022.
The university has hired a consulting group to “assist [Tulane] in better understanding individual experiences related to equity, diversity and inclusion.” That organization and the international law firm Norton Rose Fulbright will provide recommendations to the university over the summer.
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