A prominent emergency room physician says he was fired from Duke University’s health system after speaking out against its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) push.
Dr. Kendall Conger had worked at Duke Raleigh Hospital for roughly a decade when the prestigious university released a 2021 pledge against racism. Duke Health called racism a "public health crisis," and declared it was dedicated "to overcoming the painful separations that divide us." Conger felt the pledge was "somewhat radical," and decided to speak out.
"It wasn't so much a pledge to better medicine, but a pledge to left-wing ideology. And so, I felt if I did not say anything, I was giving tacit approval to what was in the pledge," Conger told Fox News Digital.
Conger, who said that he feels DEI stands for "didn’t earn it," disagreed with the notion that racism is a public health crisis, particularly because the pledge claimed it was "guided by science."
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Dr. Kendall Conger spoke out against Duke Health’s pledge.
"I thought that was odd. It wasn't something I'd recognized. I didn't know where they were getting that data from. I looked a little bit and couldn't find it, but I decided, well, they're the ones who made this statement. Let them defend it," he said.
Conger said he asked Duke Health for the data used to back up the statement, but the university failed to provide clinical or medical data. Instead, the school offered social science data.
"I thought to myself, ‘Social science data?' I have social science data, but we're a clinical institution and you guys made what seemed to be a clinical statement,’ and they said, ‘Well, maybe we could have worded that better,’ but they didn't change anything or let anybody know,’" Conger said.
Conger wasn’t done questioning the Duke Health anti-racism pledge but said the institution "refused to answer" why it prioritized equity over equality.
"Our country, our whole vision statement of our society, has been one where we're looking towards equality of the individuals, not of group outcomes being equal, which is what equity means," Conger said.
Conger said he eventually learned that Duke Health stopped engaging with his questions because he shared their answers with other people in the community. He expressed his concerns with fellow doctors, friends and family, but also in a scathing public editorial calling out his employer.
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Duke Health called racism a "public health crisis." (iStock)
He penned "Duke Health’s Antiracist ‘Pledge’ Is Not Guided by Science," which was published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a nonprofit institute dedicated to improving higher education, in May 2023
Ultimately, Conger believes Duke Health didn’t want to publicly defend its pledge.
"They eventually had enough with me and said I was being terminated, not for cause. So, I didn’t do anything ethically or medically wrong. It’s primarily they did not like my opposition to their left-wing ideology," Conger said.
Duke Health did not immediately respond to a series of questions.
A termination memo from Duke Raleigh Hospital noted he was "terminated not for cause," and his employment would end on June 30, 2024.
"We believe your behavior is negatively impacting the emergency physician team, which could jeopardize the care of patients. Given this, we are choosing not to renew your contract for emplacement," the memo, which has been reviewed by Fox News Digital, said.
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Conger doesn’t believe racism is a problem in medicine.
"Everybody is trying to do their best for every patient that they see … No surgeon wants to lose a life on the table, Black or White. It just looks bad on them regardless. None of us wants to have bad outcomes for any of our patients," he said.
Conger, who said he noticed a decline in the caliber of medical students Duke University sent to shadow him at the hospital since it stopped prioritizing merit, is now looking for a new gig. He’s hopeful he can find one that doesn’t push DEI into the emergency room.
"I hope I don’t have to move," he said. "Fortunately, I do have a couple of groups I'm looking at that don't push that ideology."
Fox News Digital’s Kiersten Harder contributed to this report.
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