To the Editor: HMS Cannot Become a Soapbox

In an op-ed published last month, students Talat H. Aman and Josef G. Ernst contend that Harvard Medical School’s recent efforts to accept politically neutral approaches to many highly charged topics in healthcare are misguided and deleterious to their growth and development as physicians. They appear to have strong feelings about the origins and perhaps solutions to many of the problems that face America and medicine.

Would they be as vocal about this issue, however, if the school’s position were opposite their beliefs?

As chair of the Learning Environment Committee at HMS since 2018, I am privy to student evaluations of their courses and am charged with suggesting changes when solid evidence shows behavior that violates professional standards or inhibits learning.

Two required courses at HMS, called “Essentials of the Profession,” address healthcare policy, social medicine, and medical ethics. In recent years, these courses did what Aman and Ernst are demanding — professors were telling students what to think about a range of topics. On course evaluations, however, I found that a significant minority of students felt the assigned readings and lectures were biased and one-sided, and that their (perhaps more conservative) views were stifled; in many cases, they claimed professors or fellow students shouted them down during class discussions.

I shared these data with the LEC and met with the course directors to discuss a more balanced approach to the course material, an approach that supported critical thinking and analysis of opposing approaches, i.e., how to think, not what to think. These changes have been implemented, and the most recent course evaluations show that students on both sides of the political spectrum seem to want more of their viewpoint, a sign that we are getting close to the correct approach.

The first-year class at HMS recently experienced an extensive program on civil discourse during orientation. I participated in the final session and noted that the two most important traits in a physician are curiosity and intellectual humility. Truth is a journey, not a destination.

Richard M. Schwartzstein is the Ellen and Melvin Gordon Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Medical Education at Harvard Medical School. He is the Executive Director at the Carl J. Shapiro Institute for Education and Research and Vice President for Education at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.