Tikvah Bari Weiss Independent Thinking in Action (2): The Case of Catholic Fascist Kristin Collier
David Shasha
Tikvah Bari Weiss Independent Thinking in Action (2): The Case of Catholic Fascist Kristin Collier
Moving from White Snowflake Stuart Reges, we go to Catholic Fascist Kristin Collier, one more White Snowflake whiner:
Collier is a radical Anti-Abortion activist:
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/07/83675/
Being promoted by The New York Post:
The following article from Click on Detroit provides information from the University of Michigan Medical School on the Collier controversy:
Apparently, Dr. Collier was invited to deliver this year’s White Coat Ceremony speech, which then led to a student walkout because of her social media posts which could have been written by Whore of Trump Coney Barrett.
Collier is a “born again” Catholic Fascist who has shifted from Pro-Abortion Atheism to Religious Radicalism, which is her right.
The university did not rescind her lecture invitation, and she did not speak about Abortion in the speech.
Here we see the students as expressing their rejection of Collier’s views, in the context of the Trumpscum SCOTUS denial of Abortion rights based on the Roe and Casey precedents.
The Free Speech rights of both Collier and the students were respected, but Weiss is only on Collier’s side, as her Common Sense article attacks the students for protesting what they believe is an attack on their Civil Rights.
But when it comes to Civil Rights, Weiss is only on the side of those who would take them away from the vulnerable and oppressed.
It is The Tikvah Fund way.
David Shasha
The Message America's Future Doctors Need to Hear
By: Vinay Prasad
Dr. Kristin Collier is an assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan, where she has served on faculty for 17 years. She also is the director of the medical school’s Program on Health, Spirituality and Religion and has been published in publications including the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Annals of Internal Medicine.
Many describe her as a consummate physician and superb teacher—deeply liked and respected by her peers. That’s why, out of some 3,000 faculty at Michigan, Dr. Collier was chosen by students and her peers to be this year’s White Coat Ceremony speaker. The White Coat ceremony is one bookend of medical school (graduation is the other), where students put on their white coats for the first time, take a modified Hippocratic oath and begin the long path to becoming a doctor.
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.”
After Michigan announced her speech, the university made it clear that Dr. Collier would not be addressing abortion in her talk. “The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues, and Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks,” the dean of the medical school, Marshall Runge, wrote to students and staff earlier this month.
That didn’t stop hundreds of students and staff from signing a petition demanding Dr. Collier be replaced with another speaker. “While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care,” they wrote. “We demand that UM stands in solidarity with us and selects a speaker whose values align with institutional policies, students, and the broader medical community.”
The school stood firm. But on Sunday, just as Dr. Collier rose to give her remarks, dozens of students and family members began walking out of their white coat ceremony.
By now we are all accustomed to such displays from American students. The particular shame here is that those who walked out missed a transcendent lecture about the meaning of practicing medicine in a culture that increasingly treats human beings like machines.
“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.”
I urge you to watch the whole thing here, beginning at 1:45:50:
Dr. Collier has handled the whole thing with grace. She tweeted yesterday: “I’ve heard that some of the students who walked out have been harassed and targeted—please stop. Everyone has a right to stand up for what they believe in.”
I do not share Dr. Collier’s faith or her views on abortion. But ultimately, the decision of students to walk out of the lecture because they disagree with the speaker on another topic has no limit.
In medicine, abortion is an important life or death issue. So too is universal health care, immigration and school closure. All these topics have the highest stakes. And all are controversial. If students walk out on speakers discussing unrelated issues, where does it end? Would they learn about the nephron from a nephrologist who favors strict immigration limits? Could they learn how to perform CPR from an instructor who lobbied to keep schools open during Covid-19?
Most concerning, what does it mean for American patients, if their future doctors cannot sit through a speech by a beloved professor who has a different view on abortion? Could you trust a physician knowing that they may judge you for holding views that they deem beyond the pale?
As a professor at UCSF medical school, I worry deeply that we are not preparing our future doctors for practicing medicine on real people in the real world. Medicine has to meet patients where they are; often that means caring for people and working with people with whom we disagree. We can’t walk out on that.
The state of American medicine is a subject of profound importance to all of us.
If you missed Katie Herzog’s excellent reporting on the topic, we highly recommend:
What Happens When Doctors Can’t Tell the Truth?
Med Schools Are Now Denying Biological Sex
Vinay Pasad is Hematology Oncology Medicine Health Policy Epidemiology Associate Professor
From Common Sense with Bari Weiss, July 27, 2022
The Meaning of Medicine: Dr. Kristin Collier’s Speech at the University of Michigan Medical School
By: Kristin Collier
https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2022/07/83675/
Note from the Editors: Last weekend, Dr. Kristin Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at University of Michigan Medical School, delivered the keynote address for the school’s white coat ceremony—an event that marks the start of medical studies for the entering class. Members of the Gold Humanism Honor Society, which comprises students, residents, and faculty, voted to invite Dr. Collier to deliver remarks. Below is a lightly edited transcript of her speech.
Good afternoon. I’m quite honored to have been chosen as this year’s white coat ceremony speaker.
For a medical student, outside of graduation, I think this is the day in your professional life that means the most. It represents the line between the before and the after. This morning you walked in here as someone outside of the profession, and this afternoon you will walk out of here as someone on the inside. And that is what I want to talk with you about today. How to make it on the inside. And not just how to survive, but to thrive and flourish.
But before I do, I want to acknowledge the deep wounds our community has suffered over the past several weeks. It will take a lot of work for healing to occur, and I hope that today we can focus on what matters most: coming together to support our newly accepted students and their families and welcoming them into one of the greatest vocations that exists on this earth—the vocation of medicine.
I was once like you—sitting in that seat in this very auditorium in 1997, that mixture of excitement and nerves, sort of wondering how I got here and how I was going to “do it.” Was I worthy of being here? Did I make the right decision? Why didn’t I go to business school?
I would like to share three pieces of advice that I hope will help you flourish. The first is: you are not a machine, and neither is your patient. The second is: ask big questions, and the third is: practice gratitude.
More than Machinery
You will soon realize that doctors speak in a language that is unique to the profession. One of the phrases you will often hear is “Oh, she is a MACHINE” to describe an unusually productive colleague. It’s meant to be laudatory—this person gets respect because she gets stuff done, often in a superhuman way, doesn’t need sleep, cranks it out, etc. While hard work and accomplishments are certainly respectable, I want to remind you that not only are you not a machine, neither should you strive to be one. By lapsing into this way of thinking, you strip away the very essence of what medicine is. You see, medicine is not merely a technical endeavor. Above all else, it is a human one.
In The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck writes a story about a family of low resources during the Great Depression, who are driven from their home because of drought and economic hardship. It was a time of great technological and industrial advancement especially, for farming. Steinbeck reflects on the nature of man when he writes: “Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water, nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. That man who is more than his chemistry . . . that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself.”
Let’s read that last line again—the machine man, “understands only chemistry” and “he is contemptuous of the land and of himself.” What if I substituted the word “patient” for the word “land”? He becomes contemptuous of the patient and of himself.
I’m sure you’ve heard a lot about the crisis of physician burnout. This syndrome and its causes are complex, but the result of burnout is depersonalization. When you start seeing the patient in front of you, the one that you went into medicine for, as a non-person, you can become contemptuous of the patient. They become an impediment to getting home. And your feelings about yourself become disordered as well.
You will soon start learning a lot of biochemistry. A lot of pharmacology. A lot of histology. And that’s great. The science is beautiful and there is so much science to know. But the risk of this education, and one that I fell into, was that you can come out of medical school with a 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 viewing life as mere molecules in motion.
I assume that most of you didn’t come into medicine to take care of a receptor, a symptom, an organ, or even a disease. These things are important, but they are inside human beings. Don’t take your eye off the ball! You are not technicians taking care of complex machines, but human beings taking care of other human beings. And human beings are fallible. You will soon learn all the ways in which human bodies are fallible, and this profession can test the limits of your bodies as well. Unlike a machine, you do need sleep, food, rest, relationships, and most of all love.
Medicine is an embodied profession in which two people come together in one of the most sacred relationships that there are. Get to know your patients as human beings—not just their scans, labs, chemistries, and data. The disease may not be unique, but every person is. Let’s resist a view of our patients and ourselves that strips us of our humanity and takes away from the very reason most of entered this profession in the first place: to take care of human beings in their moments of greatest need.
Ask Big Questions
Number two: ask big questions and lean in on the humanities to do so. Many of you have come from liberal arts colleges and universities and have studied big questions in fields like anthropology, sociology, philosophy, and literature. The big questions are more critical to ponder now than ever. And if you haven’t had a chance to ask big questions, now’s the time. Your answer to these questions has real impact on real lives. Questions like – what does it mean to be human? Why do human beings matter? Whom do we include in our moral sphere of concern? What is health? What is medicine and what is it for?
As we have discussed, biomedical education is heavy on science and technology. As it should be. But once you’re in practice, the scientific questions aren’t the hardest questions you face day-to-day in patient care. The great ancient philosopher Aristotle wrote about three types of knowledge. The first one is episteme, which is bare scientific knowledge, concerned with knowing what something is: the facts. The second type of knowledge is techne which is knowing how to do something, mechanically or procedurally. And the third type of knowledge is phronesis, which is a very different type of knowledge from the other two and what today we would call wisdom. Phronesis is practical wisdom: knowing the why of something and what good it aims at. Modern medicine is excellent at both episteme (knowledge of the what) and techne (knowledge of the how), but philosophical questions (questions of why) are largely absent in the practice of medicine.
The phronesis, or why, of medicine cannot be explored in a technical model. The word “philosophy” is literally translated, “the love of wisdom.” Medicine needs a philosophical lens to be able to see why medicine knows what it knows and does what it does. Without such a lens, medicine robs itself of a proper understanding of its goals, meaning, and purpose in its practice and reduces itself to a mechanistic production.
Here’s an example of what asking a big question looks like. I give a lot of talks on bioethics, and I love asking my audience, “what is health?” People assume everyone has the same general idea of what health is, but often folks actually haven’t deeply pondered this question. The best answer I ever received on this question was from a medical student here. She told me the following: she was an anthropology major in Iowa as an undergrad. She had done qualitative research interviewing farmers and asked them what they thought health was. They often said: I don’t consider myself healthy unless the soil on my farm is healthy, the crops are healthy, the animals on my land are healthy, my neighbors are healthy.
It was a beautiful antidote to the impoverished answer I often get, which is “the absence of disease.” This student’s answer about the farmers speaks to a vision of health that extends beyond the individual and to communal flourishing that involves the entire created order and a picture of “shalom.” Your answers to these questions have real consequences. They will impact your view of the patient, what you think healthcare is or isn’t, what you might want to advocate, write about, or research. If you don’t develop a philosophy of medicine, so to speak, you risk getting burned out and trained by a hidden curriculum to be a mere technician. Traditional medical education often doesn’t teach health as shalom, but health as techne.
Gratitude and Limits
Number three: practice gratitude and acknowledge the limits of medicine. This profession, unlike many others, provides ample opportunity to become acquainted with grief. (Remember, you could have gone to business school.) But in becoming acquainted with grief, you will hopefully develop an appreciation for what truly matters and what does not.
Not infrequently at this hospital, cars are left behind in our parking garages by someone who walked into this place but never walked back out. No matter how long your day has been, or what you’ve had to do, or what you’ve had to miss to be here, for that moment in time, you aren’t the one in the sick bed.
When I was a third-year resident here, my chief resident Jake became ill, and he became the one in the sick bed. He had been interviewing for a competitive fellowship position in academic cardiology. He had been losing weight, looking tired, but we all knew he had been busy. He kept telling us that he had been busy. One night, shortly after arriving home from a flight, he arrived at our emergency department with shortness of breath. It was discovered that he had massively enlarged liver due to the presence of multiple, terrible masses. We were hoping that this was something easy. Or at least easier than what he ended up having. But what he had was bad and ended up taking his life.
It was over the course of the year that our institution watched our friend die. But we also saw him live. And it was painful. And what was even more shocking to us, at some level, was that we couldn’t save one of our own. Here we were, at one of the largest academic hospitals in the world, with all the technology and treatments at our disposal—the Chair of Medicine at the time was an oncologist, for God’s sake—yet Jake got sicker. We couldn’t cure him. He died. On our watch.
We lost our friend, and the world lost a great son, husband, brother, and doctor. Collectively, we lost the deeply held belief that medicine could be our savior. What had happened, in part, is that many of us had made medicine into what theologians call an idol. We had placed unrealistic expectations on medicine that it didn’t deserve and couldn’t live up to. When our idols come crashing down, pain ensues. But the right order of things shines out of that darkness. I have since grown to understand the limits of medicine, which have helped me grow into a better physician.
I wish I could learned these painful truths in a different way. In an easier way. But I still talk about Jake and what he taught me about the limits of the vocation to which I have dedicated my life.
So how can we not be destroyed by the pain we see? How can witnessing suffering help us flourish on the “inside?” This profession tends to do one of two things: the suffering that comes with it can either harden you and make you into a burned-out machine, or you can allow the vocation to soften you. It can help you cultivate compassion, love, justice, and mercy. Let medicine do the latter of the two for you.
Medicine needs to come back to the humanities because they can help illuminate these truths most clearly. The mother of narrative medicine, Rita Charon, once wrote that training in the humanities lets one see the suffering. She says that is what the humanities are for. She writes: “What one gains by the sight of suffering is the knowledge of the cost of this life. For those who are prepared you receive a clear-eyed discernment of this thing, this life, its worth.”
In conclusion, in this work called medicine, we should give thanks to those who have come before us. The great philosopher Alasdair McIntyre once said that before you ask yourself, “what am I to do?” you must answer the question— “of what story am I a part?” You are now part of the story of medicine that is rich in both tragedy and joy. You have the potential to shape the future of medicine’s story if you resist the temptation to see yourself and others as machine, if you ask big questions, and if you practice gratitude along the way. Welcome to the profession of medicine, and Go Blue.
From The Witherspoon Institute Public Discourse, July 28, 2022
University of Michigan students walk out on anti-abortion keynote speaker Kristin Collier
By: Jack Hobbs
Medical students at the University of Michigan walked out of their White Coat Ceremony in protest Sunday after Dr. Kristin Collier, a known anti-abortion professor, took the stage.
Video of the walkout, which has since gone viral on social media, shows a sea of students in white lab coats stand up en masse and leave the room as Collier begins to give her keynote address.
The clip had already been viewed almost 10 million times on Twitter as of early Monday afternoon.
Collier, an assistant professor of medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School, had previously called abortion “violence” and vowed to fight for her “prenatal sisters.”
“Holding on to a view of feminism where one fights for the rights of all women and girls, especially those who are most vulnerable,” she tweeted in May.
“I can’t not lament the violence directed at my prenatal sisters in the act of abortion, done in the name of autonomy.”
The protest came after a petition to have Collier replaced as the keynote speaker failed.The petition — signed by more than 340 incoming and current students and 72 alumni and community leaders — said the decision undermined the university’s pledge to uphold abortion care following the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade in June.
“While we support the rights of freedom of speech and religion, an anti-choice speaker as a representative of the University of Michigan undermines the University’s position on abortion and supports the non-universal, theology-rooted platform to restrict abortion access, an essential part of medical care,” the petition read, according to the Michigan Daily.
On the day of the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision, UM stressed it would “remain committed to providing high quality, safe reproductive care for patients.”“I strongly support access to abortion services, and I will do everything in my power as president to ensure we continue to provide this critically important care,” UM president Mary Sue Coleman said in a statement.
However, the university said it would not replace Collier as keynote speaker based on the speaker’s personal beliefs.
“Kristin Collier, M.D., was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 2022 White Coat Ceremony based on nominations and voting by members of the U-M Medical School Gold Humanism Honor Society, which is comprised of medical students, house officers and faculty,” a spokesperson for Michigan Medicine told Newsweek.“The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues. Its focus will always be on welcoming students into the profession of medicine.”
From The New York Post, July 25, 2022
Michigan Medicine issues statement on student walkout that made national headlines
By: Meredith Bruckner
ANN ARBOR – Michigan Medicine has responded to the protest staged by incoming medical students during University of Michigan’s annual White Coat Ceremony on Sunday.
The keynote speaker at the event was Dr. Kristin Collier, who has shared her anti-abortion views on social media.
“Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks,” reads a statement issued by Michigan Medicine on Tuesday. “However, the University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs.”
The video shared by Twitter user @PEScorpiio that shows students in white coats quietly stand and leave Hill Auditorium as Collier took the stage has been viewed more than 16 million times and has been featured in numerous national publications.
Prior to the event, more than 340 incoming and current medical students petitioned to have Collier removed as the keynote speaker.
See the full statement issued by Michigan Medicine on July 26:
Kristin Collier, M.D., was chosen as the keynote speaker for the 2022 White Coat Ceremony based on nominations and voting by members of the U-M Medical School Gold Humanism Honor Society, which is composed of medical students, house officers and faculty.
The White Coat Ceremony is not a platform for discussion of controversial issues. Its focus will always be on welcoming students into the profession of medicine. Dr. Collier never planned to address a divisive topic as part of her remarks. However, the University of Michigan does not revoke an invitation to a speaker based on their personal beliefs.
The University of Michigan and Michigan Medicine remain committed to providing high quality, safe reproductive care for patients, across all their reproductive health needs. This includes abortion care, which remains legal in Michigan, even following the recent U.S. Supreme Court opinion. While the state of Michigan has a 1931 abortion ban on the books, a recent Michigan Court of Claims order has temporarily blocked enforcement of that ban. Michigan Medicine will continue to offer abortion care for patients.
The incident comes as Michigan head football coach Jim Harbaugh has also been making headlines for his anti-abortion views.
Harbaugh recently shared his pro-life stance at a “right to life” dinner in Plymouth, Michigan. In a separate interview with ESPN, Harbaugh also shared that he has told his players and family members that if they were to have an unplanned pregnancy and couldn’t care for the child, then he would help raise the baby.
“I’ve told [them] the same thing I tell my kids, boys, the girls, same thing I tell our players, our staff members,” Harbaugh said. “I encourage them if they have a pregnancy that wasn’t planned, to go through with it, go through with it. Let that unborn child be born, and if at that time, you don’t feel like you can care for it, you don’t have the means or the wherewithal, then Sarah and I will take that baby.”
From Click on Detroit, July 27, 2022