The accrediting agency for dozens of medical schools is stripping diversity standards from its curriculum requirements and adding a focus on nutrition that tracks with Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s agenda.
Academia has typically guarded its independence ferociously. But the decision by the accrediting agency, the Commission on Osteopathic College Accreditation, shows how the Trump administration is shaping academic life across the country.
The osteopathic commission, which accredits 46 schools serving more than a quarter of medical students in the United States, had previously said that a college “must incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into its curriculum to the extent permitted by law.”
According to documents the commission recently published online, the group is substituting that provision for one that schools “ensure that comprehensive evidence-based nutrition education” is part of their curriculums.
The commission did not respond to requests for comment.
Students may not use federal financial aid unless their school holds accreditation from a group approved by the Department of Education. President Trump and his allies have wielded tools like investigations and funding cuts to threaten colleges and universities. But Mr. Trump has called the accreditation system a “secret weapon” to change schools regarded as hostile to conservative values.
“A lot of the things that we’ve seen the administration target individual colleges for, it appears that they’re hoping to accomplish those things writ large through accrediting agencies,” said Antoinette Flores, a senior Department of Education official during the Biden administration who is now director of higher education accountability and quality at New America, a think tank.
The osteopathic accrediting commission decided last April to suspend its D.E.I. rules until May 2026. At the time, a top official told deans in an email that the commission was “confident” that the standards did not violate federal law but that state laws and Trump administration efforts were making it “increasingly complicated” for schools to comply.
The osteopathic commission’s standing as a federally recognized accreditor is up for review this year, and the Education Department has recently leaned on some agencies to abandon — not simply suspend — D.E.I. standards.
Ellen Keast, an Education Department spokeswoman, declined to discuss the osteopathic commission and whether the government had directly pressured it “as this matter may come before the department as part of the recognition process.”
But, she added in an email, D.E.I. rules had “politicized higher education and diverted attention away from core missions like teaching, research and student success.”
To be accredited, osteopathic schools will no longer have to commit to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion, have an office for D.E.I., or have plans to recruit diverse student populations, according to commission documents. Instead, the standards include a requirement, for example, for “community engagement.”
“I saw it as neutralizing all of the politics, maintaining the learning objectives that produce quality physicians and, finally, talking about community engagement and nutrition,” said Dr. Barbara Ross-Lee, an osteopathic physician who was the first Black woman to be dean of an American medical school.
Others, however, saw the commission’s decisions as unusual, particularly the one to substitute the diversity curriculum requirement for one centered on nutrition. But Mr. Kennedy announced in March that more than 50 medical schools had agreed to teach more about nutrition, after months of carrot-and-stick lobbying that included a threat to cut off federal money.
Graduates of osteopathic medical schools become licensed physicians, just like their counterparts at allopathic medical schools. At a March event with Mr. Kennedy, the president of the American Association of Colleges of Osteopathic Medicine, Dr. Robert A. Cain, argued that the “the job of the physician is to help the patient find health, not merely manage disease.”
“We teach our students that lifestyle, environment and social conditions influence health just as powerfully as prescriptions and procedures,” Dr. Cain said.
But the word “nutrition” was not in the osteopathic commission’s standards until now.
The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which accredits scores of other medical schools, is also adjusting its guidelines. Mr. Trump named that group in an executive order last year, when he asserted that “the standards for training tomorrow’s doctors should focus solely on providing the highest quality care, and certainly not on requiring unlawful discrimination.”
The L.C.M.E.’s curriculum standards currently include one focused on “cultural competence and health inequities.”
A revised version, expected to take effect in 2027, eliminates that standard but tucks some of its wording into other aspects of the curriculum. The standards do not include language about health inequities. The Trump administration did not pressure the L.C.M.E. to make those changes, said Dr. Veronica Catanese, a co-secretary for the group.
The latest standards also include a new requirement that medical schools train students in nutrition. That language was added after demands from Mr. Kennedy and Education Secretary Linda McMahon, according to L.C.M.E. documents posted online.
Neither the allopathic nor the osteopathic standards specify what, exactly, schools should teach about nutrition, beyond covering its role in maintaining health and preventing and managing disease.
Alan Blinder is a national correspondent for The Times, covering education.
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