There is a controversy in Oregon over a proposed change in the ethics rule from the Oregon Medical Board. At issue is the use of “microaggressions” to discipline doctors and to make reporting such transgressions mandatory for all doctors. It seems before you can give stitches, you have to join snitches under one of the most ambiguous categories of prescribed speech.
I have been a critic of microaggression rules on college campuses and discuss this trend in my book out this week, The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage. In past debates over this category of offensive speech, I have objected that it is hopelessly vague and highly controversial.
That ambiguity creates a threat to free speech through a chilling effect on speakers who are unsure of what will be considered microaggressive. Terms ranging from “melting pot” to phrases like “pulling oneself up by your own bootstraps” have been declared racist. Some of those have been identified by Columbia professor Derald Wing Sue, cited by Oregon’s state government as a “microaggressions expert.”
Professor Sue considers statements like “Everyone can succeed if they just work hard enough!” as an example of a microaggression. Sue’s work on “microassaults,” “microinsults,” and “microinvalidations” are being effectively adopted by the Board.
Notably, when I have objected to this category, advocates have insisted that they are merely voluntary and instructive, not mandatory. I have long argued that they are used in a mandatory fashion by triggering investigations of professors and would inevitably be made mandatory.
That appears to be happening in Oregon. A couple of conservative sites have covered the controversy.
Under the new ethics rule from the Oregon Medical Board, “unprofessional conduct” (over which a doctor can lose his or her license) will include microaggressions:
“In the practice of medicine, podiatry, or acupuncture, discrimination through unfair treatment characterized by implicit and explicit bias, including microaggressions, or indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a non-majority group.”
The new section “J” ranks microaggressions with fraud, sexual assault, and ordering unnecessary or harmful surgeries.
Oregon Medical Board states that
“The proposed rule amendments update the definition of “unprofessional conduct” to include discrimination in the practice of medicine, podiatry, and acupuncture, which would make discrimination a ground for discipline. The proposed rule may favorably impact racial equity by making discrimination a ground for discipline for OMB licensees. It is not known how the other proposed rule amendments will impact racial equity in the state.”
The incorporation of microaggressions under the new ethic rules is precisely what some of us have been warning about for years. As is often the case, activists begin by insisting that language monitoring is purely instructional and optional before codifying those rules in mandatory terms.
We have seen the same trajectory in other areas like land acknowledgments where the line between the optimal and the mandatory is hard to discern. As discussed in my book:
“What began as voluntary statements have become either expressly or implicitly mandatory…George Brown College in Toronto requires faculty and students alike to agree to a land acknowledgment statement to even gain access to virtual classrooms. While such statements are portrayed as optional, they are often enforced as compulsory. The University of Washington encouraged faculty to add a prewritten ‘Indigenous land acknowledgment’ statement to their syllabi. The recommended statement states that ‘The University of Washington acknowledges the Coast Salish peoples of this land, the land which touches the shared waters of all tribes and bands within the Suquamish, Tulalip and Muckleshoot nations.’
Computer science professor Stuart Reges decided to write his own statement. He declared…’I acknowledge that by the labor theory of property the Coast Salish people can claim historical ownership of almost none of the land currently occupied by the University of Washington.’ … He was told that, while the university statement is optional, his statement was unacceptable because it questioned the indigenous land claim of the Coast Salish people. Reges’s dissenting statement was removed, and the university emailed his students offering an apology for their professor’s ‘offensive’ opinion and advising them on ‘three ways students could file complaints against’ him.”
Federal courts have ruled in favor of academics in disputes over microaggression rules, but the movement is expanding beyond campuses, as shown in Oregon.
I have no objection to the sharing of views of others on how certain phrases are received. I have dropped certain terms or phrases even though I did not see why a term or phrase is insulting. When others have a reasoned basis for objecting to language, I err on the side of caution to avoid making others uncomfortable. Yet, this category of speech was created to encompass a broad, ill-defined range of speech that falls below outright discriminatory or harassing language. That makes for a dangerously vague standard for a mandatory reporting rule.
The free speech concern is how such microaggressive terms can be used to curtail or punish speech, including supporting complaints for formal investigations. Disciplinary actions often seem based on how language is received rather than intended. Schools need to be clear as to whether microaggressive language can be the basis for bias complaints and actions.
Consider again the language from the Oregon Medical Board. It would encompass any “indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a non-majority group.” The standard is heavily laden with subjectivity. (Notably, it does not include making such comments about any majority group, presumably whites or males).
The board then amplifies the standard by making it mandatory for other doctors to report colleagues. Under the proposed ruled,
“a licensee must report within 10 business days to the Board any information that appears to show that a licensee is or may be medically incompetent or is or may be guilty of unprofessional or dishonorable conduct or is or may be a licensee with a physical incapacity.”
So doctors will have to police any “indirect or subtle behaviors” that “reflect negative attitudes or beliefs” . . . or face discipline themselves.
The hippocratic oath is based on the pledge that doctors will “first do no harm.” Unfortunately, that pledge does not appear to apply to free speech in Oregon. Rather than merely publish opinions on phrases or practices that can be seen as microaggressive, the Oregon Medical Board is about to impose an ambiguous speech regulation that is likely viewed by some doctors as turning them into social-warrior snitches.
The Oregon Medical Board should remove the microaggressive provision. Sometimes the best treatment is the least intrusive.
This column appeared on Fox.com
Immigrants with no understanding of American morals and customs are destroying our entire way of life
by Elon Musk and Rupert Murdoch
Which raises the age-old question: why do liberals never distinguish between legal immigration and illegal immigration?
Answer: that would require at least three functioning brain cells.
There is no distinction to be made between legal immigrants and illegal immigrants.
An immigrant is here legally. Someone who is not here legally is not an immigrant.
That’s why I didn’t find it necessary to define Musk and Murdoch as “legal” immigrants.
My point still stands.
Immigrants with no understanding of American morals and customs are destroying our entire way of life.
You didn’t make a point, actually.
Title 8 of the US Code is the portion of United States law that contains legislation on citizenship, nationality, and immigration. Defining the legal term alien as “any person, not a citizen or national of the United States,”[4] The terminology used in Title 8 includes illegal alien (33 times), unauthorized alien (21 times), undocumented alien (18 times), illegal immigrant (6 times), undocumented person (2 times), and others.[5]
Oops
Moron
My point still stands.
Immigrants with no understanding of American morals and customs are destroying our entire way of life.
Idiot who doesn’t know the difference between an immigrant and a naturalized citizen.
Citizens with no understanding of civics are ruining the discourse—-Anonymous
The dictionary defines immigrant as a person who travels to another country to live there permanently. Therefore, there is such a thing as an illegal immigrant. You can look it up.
The legal status of freed slaves changed from private property to illegal alien on January 1, 1863.
The utterly constitutional immigration law of the Founders, the Naturalization Act of 1802 required people admitted to become citizens to be “free white person(s).”
Freed slaves must have been compassionately repatriated, or deported, posthaste, lest a foreign, adverse-for-obvious-reasons, 4-million-man, standing army be abandoned on U.S. soil.
Roe v. Wade was corrected retroactively by 50 years.
Immigration must be similarly corrected retroactively by 150 years.
The dictionary??? LMAO
Title 8 numbskull
How does the dictionary define “naturalized citizen”. That’s what Musk is, not an immigrant.
“Fundamentally transforming the United States of America” is not “immigration,” it is invasion and conquest.
It is delivery-by-gifting of America to unassimilable, illegal alien, foreign invaders.
The “unassimilable” REQUIRE unconstitutional financial public assistance (i.e. welfare, etc.), affirmative action, quotas, forced busing, Obamacare, etc. ad infinitum to force “integration,” or the impossible mixture of “oil and water,” through the liberal application of the aforementioned “political emulsifiers.”
Ronald Reagan thought he ended the invasion-by-immigration in 1987 through an agreement with the communists (liberals, progressives, socialists, democrats, RINOs, AINOs) to close the border and stop immigration by way of the amnesty to end all amnesties (involving only 3 million Mexicans, now 67 million hispanics, added to 50 million blacks).
Ronald Reagan was wrong.
What did the American Founders say about immigration?
What did the American Founders say regarding the populace?
____________________________________________________________________
Naturalization Act of 1790
United States Congress, “An act to establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization,” March 26, 1790
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America, in Congress assembled, That any Alien being a free white person, who shall have resided within the limits and under the jurisdiction of the United States for the term of two years, may be admitted to become a citizen thereof…
You got anything else really stupid you’d like to say, bug?
Yet again the NBA playoffs were unwatchable due to out of control DEI.
by Charlie Kirk
I remember when Americans played basketball, football, and baseball.
Oh, happy day!
Weren’t happy being made a fool with your last one…wanna go for two?
Not much inclusion in the NBA
DEI in duh NBA?
Whether it’s Matt Gaetz paying high-school students for sex or Joe Biden helping college students pay off their college loans, both sides have made some curious youth-related expenditures.
Give me the sex any day!
Interesting that you think “Joe Biden” helped them.
Moron
And if education weren’t run by Marxists the majority would recognize this as the micro aggressive stasi as the stasi wished they could have been.
Eric Hoffer wrote decades ago of the “tyranny of the weak”. “The True Believer”, a worthwhile read, true when written, true today.
Karl Marx, with endorsement from Lincoln, wrote about the “dictatorship of the proletariat (i.e. hired help),” which is the very definition of one-man, one-vote “democracy,” which, in turn, is chaos ripe for control buy the intelligentsia and has never happened since inception in Greece when the vote was restricted by rational and reasonable criteria—even now there is one voter restriction, to be 18 years of age.
Physicians’ involvement in potential micro-aggression complaints is highly dangerous. By nature, physicians are involved in personal and private matters, some of which are painful when acknowledged.
Consider the advice a physician gives to a patient on sexually transmitted diseases. His warnings can be interpreted as micro-aggressions. Decades ago, in San Francisco, there was a question of closing the bathhouses to prevent the spread of aids. That discussion involved many arguments that could easily be considered micro-aggressions.
The micro-aggression side of the argument prevailed, and the bathhouses were kept open. How many millions died because of these silly policies and the fear in people to do the right thing? (I will withhold discussion of the more recent Covid failure by those displeased with opinions by other experts that proved correct.)
If people enjoy freedom, they may conduct their affairs privately and without governmental interference. Congress has no Article 1, Section 8, enumerated power to regulate healthcare or personal lives. Government enjoys no “emergency powers” in the Constitution, with the sole exception of the suspension of habeas corpus by Congress in cases of rebellion or invasion. No health concern triggers emergency governmental powers of intervention in the Constitution. The 4th Amendment provides privacy, and the 5th Amendment provides private property. In the absence of probable cause, the government has no legal basis to interfere in the private conduct of personal lives or private enterprises.
Constitutional rights, freedoms, privileges, and immunities may not be denied.
_____________________________________________________________________________________
“[Private property is] that dominion which one man claims and exercises over the external things of the world, in exclusion of every other individual.”
– James Madison
____________________
4th Amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
5th Amendment
No person shall be…deprived of…property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The phrasing of the directive is puzzling. It states, “…including microaggressions, or indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes or beliefs about a non-majority group”. Women are in the majority of the population. So is it the intention that snide remarks about women go unpunished but snide remarks about men (non-majority group) do? I suppose that humans with a rate between x and y would be a majority group. The term non-majority applies to everyone except women in general, whites in general, right handed persons in general, and all living humans.
Has anyone thought that everyone can, and does, say stupid things but it is the intent that matters. Has anyone thought that there is no objective test for a “microaggression”. So how is anyone to fairly adjudicate this issue? Finally, is the most pressing issue in medical practice the elimination of “microaggressions”? I suspect that there are a lot more urgent public medical issues. This distracts from the solutions of those more urgent issues.
Simple response – All medical providers move out of Oregon to Idaho.
Louisiana state just passed a new law limiting free speech on college campuses. Using the same vague phraseology that Turley is critical of.
The law criminalizes protected free speech at college campuses.
The law states, “activities in which an individual or group is knowingly being monetarily funded or organized by any individual, corporation, business, or organization that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization or foreign adversary by the United States Department of State” this is barred from protection.
It’s essentially aimed at pro-Palestinian protests. States claim they support free speech except the speech they don’t like and the manner in which students choose to express it through civil disobedience and peaceful protest. States seeking to retaliate by expulsion and suspension because they exercised their free speech rights is contra the 1st amendment.
Louisiana is forcing students to speak in a certain way or because they don’t like the methods and rhetoric the students use. Will the professor criticize Louisiana’s Republican legislature’s infringement of student’s free speech?
Isn’t the Louisiana law limited to terrorist-funded civil disobedience (i.e., lawbreaking)?
https://lailluminator.com/2024/06/17/new-louisiana-law-seeks-crackdown-on-civil-disobedience-in-campus-protests/
No, it’s a law criminalizing student protests. The law does not define what terrorist funding is. It’s too broad and it’s going to be used to chill speech. All it would take is claim a protest is terrorist funded without verifying it.
It defines terrorist funding with very specific language: funding from an entity that the State Department has designated as a terrorist organization.
“No, it’s a law criminalizing student protests. “
George, that is a dumb response. The funding for these protestors was from a group that also funds terrorist activities. Much of the protest was organized in advance so that after the October 7th massacre, we were able to see protests start on October 8 in various parts of the world.
It is a law criminalizing student protests funded by foreign terrorists.
If you argue with the word terrorist, check the existing laws and then comment about how the laws define foreign terrorists.
Unfortunately, the US government hasn’t yet defined the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization like many other nations have. But you are not arguing about what is or isn’t terrorist; you are trying to insult Professor Turley with your usual silly and wordy responses.
S. Meyer,
“Much of the protest was organized in advance so that after the October 7th massacre, we were able to see protests start on October 8 in various parts of the world.”
You’re not making any sense.
Anonymous, I am not responsible for your lack of knowledge. Protests started on Oct 8. The massacre was on Oct 7. The protests against the Jewish state and Jews started before Israel was able to strike back.
How do you think these protests were organized so quickly? These protests prove they didn’t start organically. They were prepared by the same leaders that promote Hamas and that you so dearly tie yourself to. I can’t help it if you are an ignorant supporter of terrorism.
Sux don’t it
“SHALL NOT ABRIDGE”
It is unconstitutional and must be struck down to deny constitutional rights and freedoms to Americans.
Remember when “Crazy Abe” denied the not-prohibited and fully constitutional right to, and freedom of, secession to the Southern States?
All heck broke loose.
The singular American failure is the judicial branch, with emphasis on the Supreme Court.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
1st Amendment
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Dear Mr. Turley, thank you for your great article and pointing this out. Two of my adult children are in the medical field and they often run into people who cannot hear the truth about themselves or their loved ones. One is a R.N. in day surgery and the other is a N.P. in the ICU. These set of rules would only make it harder to tell patients as well as their families what the problem may be. If anyone needs to hear the unvarnished truth it would be those making a life-or-death decision. The Left has tread way too far.
Interesting that the article omits any discussion of the last sentence of the proposed rule that indicates that the rule is focused on discrimination that results in lower quality healthcare. It simply implies that the new rule requires reporting speech when in fact that rule requires reporting differences in the quality of healthcare that may be caused by a number of discriminatory behaviors.
“(J) In the practice of medicine, podiatry, or acupuncture, discrimination through unfair treatment characterized by
implicit and explicit bias, including microaggressions, or indirect or subtle behaviors that reflect negative attitudes
or beliefs about a non-majority group. Discrimination is differences in the quality of healthcare delivered that is
not due to access-related factors or clinical needs, preferences, and appropriateness of intervention.”
Doesn’t the rule indicate that so-called “microagressions” are actionable because they themselves constitute lower quality care? I think it can reasonably be read that way . . . which supports Prof. Turley’s point that there is so much vagueness that this type of thing will chill speech and be prone to subjective and discriminatory enforcement.
In light of the above, I would hope some doctor challenges this in federal court under the void-for-vagueness doctrine. Where First Amendment free speech is concerned, such regulations can be challenged as facially unconstitutional, rather than as-applied.
https://firstamendment.mtsu.edu/article/vagueness/
nope, that is not a reasonable reading of the rule.
Gee thanks for the detailed explanation. I guess you think if you declare something, everyone else is obligated to believe it. That’s called delusional.
We now effectively have two countries: USSA and UFSA (united Soviet states of America and United free states of America). Clearly Oregon is one of the Soviet states. The purple states will eventually have to choose for themselves whether they want to be slaves or free men. I really hope that last sentence was a microagression because I agree with other commenters who have said that the microagression theory is complete and total BS.
Remember this: the Left never creates, it always destroys. The Left’s instincts are always totalitarian.
Jonathan: “Microaggressions” come in all sizes. But you agreed to dropping “certain terms pr phrases even though I did not see why a term or phrase is insulting”. Apparently some in your law classes did find the terms or phrases you used “insulting”. Maybe you should have mentioned them so we can judge for ourselves.
That said Gov. DeSantis has taken microaggressions to a whole new level. “Don’t say gay” is now the law in Florida. In 2021 DeSantis signed a law banning gender-affirming care for minors and also banned transgenders from participating in certain school sports. That is now playing out in a case at Monarch High School in Ft. Lauderdale.
Jessica Norton is the mother of a 16 yr. old transgender daughter who played girls varsity volleyball at Monarch. The daughter was an outstanding student, elected freshman and sophomore class president and homecoming princess. Norton says her daughter started transitioning in the 1st grade. In 2021 Norton had her daughter’s birth certificate amended from “boy” to “girl”.
Apparently a “snitch” found out about the daughter and reported it to the Monarch School District that, in turn, reported it to the police. That started an extensive investigation and now Norton is facing being fired from her job as a computer info specialist with the Monarch School District. Due to the controversy the daughter is no long at Monarch High and now attends school online. Norton says: “They destroyed her high school career and her lifelong memories”.
Monarch investigators interviewed other players on the girls volleyball team. No one seemed concerned about the daughter’s transgender status. One girl on the team said: “I didn’t really have a problem with it because I didn’t think she was a threat or anything to anyone else”.
So a “snitch” has ruined the life of a 16 yr-old transgender girl who only wanted to participate in a sport she loved. Isn’t that equally unfair treatment and discrimination against a non-majority group? Something to think about.
Not really something to think about. Transgender girl = boy.
.
The effect of threat of punishment of such perceived “microagression language” in the medical arena is that there will be less personal interactions between provider and patient. Less provider empathy. Less provider discussion. More focus on illness and not on the individual.
Well Jonathan, Oregon wants “microaggressions” to be part of medical science and medical practice, right up there with heart transplants and brain surgery. The new medical science of “feelings”. Unbelievable.
Those idealists on the far prog/left never contemplate beyond the last agreed upon theory emanating from some academic faculty lounge. We see the failed “Great Society” legislation that has destroyed the very foundations of American culture, we witness, daily, the failure of affirmative action/DEI in destroying our meritocracy, we see the absurd stupidity of “defund the police/soft on crime policies turning our blue urban centers into garbage dumps, the unconstitutional basis for “hate speech” legislation; and now we only hope that enough sane adults will put an end to the tyranny of the insane in November. But those on the left should/would rue the day that all of these tools of government that they have created are not turned on them. I would love to see legislation that allows me to cry “microaggression” when ever I see a gay couple or a transgendered male mocking womanhood.
Leftists and Democrats argue against micro-aggressions but they hurl antisemitic insults at Jews with vigor, some as Members of Congress, some at the NY Times, and many behind masks like the KKK, which is no accident
Munk Debates on Anti-Zionism hosted in Toronto Canada June 17, 2024
Motion: Be it Resolved, anti-Zionism is antisemitism
Pro: Douglas Murray and Natasha Hausdorff
Con: Gideon Levy and Mehdi Hasan
Post-debate:
Pro-Motion: 66%
Against Motion: 34%
There may be hope for Canada!
You would’ve thought there would be some sympathy from the world; you might’ve thought the world would pay attention to the attack and at least pay attention to the people behind it. You might’ve expected, like me, there might have been worldwide opposition to the terrorists and rapists and murders of Hamas. But no, there was immediate outpouring of rage against the state that had been attacked.
– Douglas Murray
Thank you Estovir. I saw a few minutes but after seeing it, I will wait and look at the entire video with a few friends. Murray answers the questions being asked in a few minutes.
Estovir, at about 16 minutes, Murray mentioned Jonathan Sacks. I remembered those words, so I looked them up to find them, and I did. They are in the second paragraph. Though he passed away about four years ago, I still listen to his weekly Parsha sermon on video.
“First let me define antisemitism. Not liking Jews is not antisemitism. We all have people we don’t like. That’s OK; that’s human; it isn’t dangerous. Second, criticising Israel is not antisemitism. I was recently talking to some schoolchildren and they asked me: is criticising Israel antisemitism? I said “No” and I explained the difference. I asked them, “Do you believe you have a right to criticise the British government?” They all put up their hands. Then I asked, “Which of you believes that Britain has no right to exist?” No one put up their hands. “Now you know the difference,” I said, and they all did.
Antisemitism means denying the right of Jews to exist collectively as Jews with the same rights as everyone else. It takes different forms in different ages. In the Middle Ages, Jews were hated because of their religion. In the nineteenth and early twentieth century they were hated because of their race. Today they are hated because of their nation state, the state of Israel. It takes different forms but it remains the same thing: the view that Jews have no right to exist as free and equal human beings.”
https://rabbisacks.org/videos/mutating-virus-understanding-antisemitism/
Microaggression is MacroBS.
Micro aggressions, like “offensive language” is 100% subjective. We are to the point where our entire society is governed by the most sensitive person in the room. We should be much more concerned about MACRO aggressions like murder, rape, assault, and robbery than this b.s. Getting institutions to punish ‘micro aggressions’ gives weak minded people power where they would otherwise have none. These are the hall monitors from high school as adults. I, for one, refuse to censor my language to protect snowflakes. America is a great melting pot where people can pull themselves up by their bootstraps and succeed if they work hard enough and ignore liberal nonsense. To every doctor in Oregon I say, move to Texas, Florida or some other sane state while you can.
Jeff Mason,
Well said.
I can recall being in grade school and being taught that America was great for being a “melting pot.” My teacher then expanded on the fact of people were from all different cultures, different races, religions, etc. To hammer the point home, we spent a week learning about Japan to include some of the language.
The wife and I also pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps and are dang proud of it. How we got to where we are today, that being successful, hard work, saving, delayed gratification, making good life choices to name a few. I am sure I would be accused of “micoagressions” for that statement. I would be proud of it!
” I am sure I would be accused of “micoagressions” for that statement.”
True Upstate. I want to know how they will characterize MLK’s statement of character over color. Right now the left advocates color over character.
The purpose of vagueness in the description of the offense is to make everyone vulnerable to the charge of racism. Presto change-o, we have a racist country. Some must be punished.