Opinion | Anti-diversity laws will hurt colleges and professions

These bills would discourage minorities from pursuing training and employment in states that adopt these measures, worsening physician shortages, decreasing cultural competency and affecting health-care outcomes, including hindering access to trusted physicians, increased misdiagnosis and disparities in care. As health-care workers, we must educate elected officials, advocate for policies, build coalitions and pursue litigation strategies to protect DEI initiatives, programming and funding.

We cannot afford to move backward in our efforts toward health equity.

Franklyn Rocha-Cabrero, Long Beach, Calif.

The writer is an independent practitioner of neurology and clinical neurophysiology, a diplomate of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology and an American Academy of Neurology Education Committee member.

One of the foundational principles of academic integrity in institutions of higher education is that the faculties are responsible for defining the educational content of academic programs. The regional accreditor for institutions in Florida, inter alia, is the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges. Its Standard 10.4 states, “The institution … places primary responsibility for the content, quality, and effectiveness of the curriculum with its faculty.” There is no role for either a governor or a legislature in that clearly articulated standard. Each of the regional accrediting bodies for higher education institutions in the United States has similar language in its standards.

The recent actions by Florida’s governor and legislature would appear to us to have effectively neutered that requirement. How is it that the SACS has not immediately placed every public higher education institution it accredits in Florida on immediate probation, with the likely follow-on of removing accreditation entirely? Actions do have consequences — or, at least, they ought to.

Charles L. Rice, Bethesda

The writer is president emeritus of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences.

Arthur Kellermann, Richmond