A Johns Hopkins Medicine diversity officer has stepped down from her position after a backlash to a newsletter she sent to hospital staff, in which she declared that white men, Christians, and English speakers have inherent unearned privileges.
Dr. Sherita Golden will leave her role as chief diversity officer for Johns Hopkins Medicine and continue her research in endocrinology and metabolism as a faculty member, the medical school announced Tuesday.
“She has been a valuable member of the Johns Hopkins Medicine leadership team, and, like many of you, we wanted her to stay in her role, but we respect her decision,” said Dr. Theodore DeWeese, chief executive of Hopkins Medicine, and Kevin Sowers, president of Johns Hopkins Health System.
In her former role, the administrators said Dr. Golden worked to advance “healthy equity and access during the COVID-19 pandemic” and “diversity, inclusion and health equity initiatives,” as well as the “recruitment and retention of a more diverse workforce.”
Tuesday’s announcement did not mention a now-retracted email newsletter disparaging people of “privilege,” which drew widespread criticism on social media.
In a “monthly diversity digest” email sent in January, Dr. Golden defined privilege as “a set of unearned benefits given to people who are in a specific social group” that operates on “personal, interpersonal, cultural and institutional levels.”
“Privileges are unearned and are granted to people in the dominant groups whether they want that privilege or not, and regardless of their stated intent,” the newsletter read.
The newsletter then provided a list of social identity groups that supposedly possess such privilege in the United States, which included men, Christians, white people, able-bodied people, straight people, non-transgender people, middle-aged people, and English-speaking people.
Viral Backlash
The newsletter went viral soon after it was publicized on X in January, attracting more than 29 million views in the span of 24 hours.It also drew widespread criticism from conservative voices on social media, including U.S. Rep. Andy Harris, the sole Republican in Maryland’s congressional delegation.
A former anesthesiologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital, the congressman called Dr. Golden’s missive “racist,” and called on the medical school to fire her.
“This kind of woke discrimination has no place in modern healthcare and science,” he said in a statement, advising patients to “think twice” before seeking care at Johns Hopkins if they belong to one of the listed “privileged” identity categories and don’t wish to be treated as “second class individuals.”
“This blatant discriminatory sentiment is contrary to all the principles held dear in America, and certainly not expected from an institution that receives hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from the federal government—including dollars to fund that office of Chief Diversity Officer,” he added. “The only appropriate action on the part of Johns Hopkins Medicine is to fire that individual immediately.”
The letter even drew a reaction from X owner Elon Musk, who stated: “This must end!”
The backlash prompted Dr. Golden to issue an apology for her communication with hospital staff. She rescinded the letter in question, saying that it was “overly simplistic and poorly worded.”
“The intent of the newsletter is to inform and support an inclusive community at Hopkins, but the language of this definition clearly did not meet that goal,” she wrote. “It had the opposite effect of being exclusionary and hurtful to members of our community. I retract and disavow the definition I shared and I am sorry.”
Dr. Golden’s resignation comes amid a heated debate surrounding the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in academic institutions and corporate boardrooms across the country. The term DEI became popularized in the widespread racial unrest in 2020, as America’s academic and business leaders sought to display how they were taking a stance, such as pledging to hire more people from “oppressed” demographics.
In a congressional hearing on Thursday, Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania school of medicine, argued that America’s medical students are learning more about colonialism and global warming than actual medical knowledge as a result of prevalent DEI ideology.
“One medical student recently told my organization, ‘I’ve learned more about pronouns than I have about how the kidney functions,’” he said, referring to his group, Do No Harm, a nonprofit advocating against left-wing racial rhetoric in health care settings. “Patients should be concerned.”
