The nation’s top medical school accreditor has removed all diversity, equity, and inclusion requirements from its standards, the Wall Street Journal first reported Tuesday, marking a significant retreat from years of ideology-driven credentialing policy.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education (LCME) uploaded its updated 2027-2028 accreditation standards to its website without issuing any public announcement. The LCME accredits all M.D.-granting medical schools in the United States and Canada, giving it sweeping authority over how future physicians are trained.
The most substantial change came to Standard 7.6. Under the previous 2026-2027 guidelines, the standard required medical schools to provide students opportunities to “recognize and appropriately address biases in themselves, in others, and in the health care delivery process.” Schools were also mandated to teach “the importance of health care disparities and health inequities,” “approaches to reduce health care inequities,” and “culturally and structurally competent health care.”
In the newly published standards, all of that language is gone. The updated Standard 7.6 contains no reference to diversity, bias, disparities, or inequities.
The LCME’s updated document is dated March 13, 2026. The organization has issued no press release and made no public statement explaining the revisions.
The change builds on an earlier rollback. In May 2025, the LCME removed Standard 3.3, which had required medical schools to maintain programs or partnerships focused on achieving diversity. That move followed President Donald Trump’s executive order directing reforms to higher education accreditation, which specifically named the LCME and raised concerns about politicized credentialing standards.
Do No Harm had been pushing for the changes for years. In 2023, the group formally called for an investigation into the LCME. In March 2025, it released a detailed report flagging the accreditation standards it said promoted ideological priorities over merit-based training.
Because LCME accreditation determines whether medical schools retain their licenses to operate, its standards carry substantial weight. Even narrow language changes in its requirements can reshape how thousands of medical students are educated each year across hundreds of institutions.
