My Farewell Address To The Duke University Health System

American Thinker ^ | 2 Jul, 2024 | Kendall Conger

[MtnClimber]

Our policy is to reprint only original material. However, Kendall Conger, a former Emergency Medicine Physician in the Duke University Health System, was fired from Duke University Health System for refusing to get with its DEI program. He has permitted us to reprint his farewell letter to that institution, and, because the letter itself is newsworthy, we have made this very limited exception to our usual rule.

Some precepts are inviolate, non-negotiable, and irreplaceable. America’s preeminent precept was penned by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence: “all men are created equal.” At Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln reiterated this core belief: “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” It justified the Civil War. Equality of its individuals was America’s foundational proclamation. Martin Luther King, Jr. appealed to it in his “I Have A Dream” speech: “When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir.”

However, Duke advocates replacing the equality of American individuals for the equality of American groups- calling it “equity.” Substituting equity for equality is a paradigm shift and a clash of visions. Individuals are equal, groups are not. The question I posed to Duke setting me at odds with them (and they with me) was: “Please explain why equity is preferable to equality.” Duke refused to answer despite inviting any “questions or concerns” employees had regarding their “Pledge” of allegiance to equity rather than equality. My repeated question given in person and in writing went repeatedly unanswered.

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TOPICS: Education; Health/Medicine; Society
KEYWORDS: equity

[MtnClimber]

I can identify with his situation. I experienced the same type of thing.

[FreedomPoster]

Critical Race Theory / DEI in one image:

I can't imagine having to sit through that struggle session.

[Hatteras]

Interesting. I have been contracting off and on for Duke Health for the past 6 years. There has always been a push by the white employees to get all white employees to march in their white guilt parades on Juneteenth. The older black women I worked with just rolled their eyes. Thankfully, I have been working remotely since 2020 and only go on site to meet with project managers and contractors and don’t see (okay, more truthfully, “pay attention to”) the memos.

[PGalt]

LOL! Thanks.

[Mr. K]

that guy writes a heckuva opus!

[Made In The USA]

The writing politely and professionally rips UNC a new one. This was well argued and rational, and I can predict with amazing precision what the UNC DEI capo di tutti capos immediate thoughts were: what a racist, another white male trying to hang on to the patriarchy….

Proponents of DIE, equity, reparations, and equity are the racists. They’re too stupid too see the irony. Especially the whites that play along and are adversely affected by it.

[FreedomPoster]

It’s funny from here, but MAN! If I had to sit in that room, it wouldn’t be funny. And that’s real.

[caddie]

Institutions like Duke, Harvard and other Ivys, Stanford: All have endowments that surpass any need for tuition or grant money.

They are beyond the reach of anyone. They have no need to be fair or responsive to anyone.

They just don't care what anyone, including this ER doctor, says.

The only thing that would make them change is their vanity, if they fell out of the 'cool' group of liberal schools. Or if no kids wanted to go there because it was no longer 'cool'. Or if no professor wanted to work there because it had lost its reputation.

Believe me there are LOTS of other not so famous schools where you would receive a better education in just about anything, including their so called great med school.

Their endowments and the vanity of their alums, faculty, and wannabe students keep them afloat and inflated.

They are walking dead in my mind. Legends in their own minds.

[John S Mosby]

The letter was written by a physician employed by the DUKE University (a private University) Medical School & Health System. He is leaving DUKE, because of DEI. This is amazing that a private, very expensive undergraduate, graduate, medical and law school university has DEI in its central tenets. But then, at one point a certain power faction on the main Duke campus, began to enact having-— the muslim “call to prayer” (in arabic) broadcast to the campus through loudspeakers (like it was Istanbul for crying out loud). This did not last long, and did not happen- because the Iron Dukes— the very wealthy alumni said they would cut off all funds and foundations supporting the Christian school (Methodist originally) were they to proceed having “allah snackbar” wailed from the Duke Chapel tower 5 times a day!

This is not concerning the Univ. of North Carolina (UNC-Chapel Hill) Medical School and Health System- which is controlled by the State of North Carolina Board of Governors headed up by the Chancellor of the University system statewide, all campuses.