Impassioned vs. Entitled

You’ve probably seen this story. Sadly, how you perceive it will probably be along the lines of ideology and Culture Wars stuff — that seems to be how everyone perceives everything these days, at least in America — but it’s an interesting discussion. A white coat ceremony is the front end of the whole “becoming a doctor” process, which won’t culminate for another 4–5 years when you graduate from said school.

Bari Weiss is pretty right-leaning in general, but this breakdown in her newsletter Common Sense (the breakdown is not written by her) is pretty good:

The trouble is that Professor Collier has views on abortion that are out of step with many Michigan medical students — likely the majority of them. She has stated that she defines herself as pro-life, though she does not state the extent of her position (i.e. whether she allows exemptions for rape or incest). In that same interview, in which she talks about her personal transformation from a pro-choice atheist to a Christian, she laments the intolerance for religious people among medical colleagues. “When we consider diversity in the medical profession, religious diversity is not — should not — be exempt from this goal.”

Here’s the actual speech that Collier gave (it did not mention abortion, which she had agreed to with the University beforehand):

Here’s some of what she said:

“The risk of this education and the one that I fell into is that you can come out of medical school with a bio-reductionist, mechanistic view of people and ultimately of yourself. You can easily end up seeing your patients as just a bag of blood and bones or human life as just molecules in motion,” Dr. Collier said.

“You are not technicians taking care of complex machines, but human beings taking care of other human beings,” she said. “Medicine is not merely a technical endeavor but above all a human one.”

OK, so … if you’re following along, here’s where we are:

Bad about the speaker: She is pro-life, albeit somewhat vaguely.

Good about the speaker: She is talking about how to humanize medicine in a time when it feels often that medicine is following a “call center” business model or increasingly become automated.

Going one level deeper →

What the “left” might say: “These students should walk out because this is about values, and it’s bigger than one speaker or one speech. It doesn’t matter if medicine is humanized if women’s rights are off the table.”

What the “right” might say: “This is typically of these entitled Gen Z brats. They have an amazing opportunity at this school to learn from the best professors and doctors possible and they open that experience by walking out over not wanting to kill babies. America is going to hell in a handbasket.”

The actual answer is probably somewhere between those two poles. I would probably say:

Why they should have walked out: Standing up for your causes is noble.

Why they SHOULDN’T have: At some point, life cannot just be all people and ideas you agree with. Otherwise you’re not living life, and you’re basically living social media in the real world.

Why they should have walked out: Heck, it was more attention for the program.

Why they SHOULDN’T have: The speech had nothing to do with abortion at all.

Where would you come down on this stuff?