Jefferson medical students say president’s Twitter activity signifies a larger diversity problem

About a half dozen organizations made up of medical students at Thomas Jefferson University have called on the administration to take specific steps to improve diversity efforts and publicly hold the president accountable for social media activity that they see as emblematic of a larger problem at the school.

The students from LGBTQ and underrepresented racial groups said they found president Mark Tykocinski’s explanation for his social media activity — that he was “liking” controversial tweets in order to bookmark them for later learning — “difficult to comprehend.” One tweet he liked called transgender surgery “child mutilation;” another was critical of diversity efforts on college campuses.

“We believe this incident represents a broader issue concerning this institution’s lack of diversity and inclusion,” they wrote to Jefferson’s CEO Joseph Cacchione and the board of trustees in an open letter posted on Instagram.

Tykocinski’s “actions have harmed students’ trust in the institution’s commitment to its mission,” they wrote.

The students belong to several groups, including JeffLGBTQ and the Student National Medical Association, which supports current and future underrepresented minority medical students. In addition to penning the open letter, the students also started a change.org petition calling on Jefferson to “Hold Tykocinski accountable for Twitter activity and address lack of diversity at TJU,” which had garnered 378 signatures as of Sunday.

“We take the concerns of our students seriously,” said Bernard Lopez, the medical college’s senior associate dean for diversity and community engagement and associate provost for diversity and inclusion. “Conversations between university leadership and the student groups who have reached out are ongoing as we work to address their concerns.”

Also circulating is an email by the Medical Executive Committee, which represents the university’s medical staff, that called the recent social media posts “unacceptable.”

“Responsible engagement in social media is essential, and must reflect our commitment to Jefferson’s values, particularly when representing TJUH,” said the email, obtained by The Inquirer.

Cacchione received the email and “acknowledged their concerns,” a university spokesperson said.

Another letter also is being distributed by faculty that calls on the university to reaffirm its commitment to diversity, acknowledge that the scientific community has produced safe vaccines that minimize the harm of COVID-19, and that sexuality and gender identity “are matters of personal freedom and individual rights” and that health-care systems must ensure “access to gender-affirming medical interventions.” That letter, also obtained by The Inquirer, currently has more than 80 signatures, said an employee, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation. It has not yet been presented to the administration.

» READ MORE: Thomas Jefferson president has ‘liked’ tweets critical of COVID-19 vaccines, among other controversial topics

Tykocinski’s Twitter activity came into focus in late April after employees shared concerns about his interactions with tweets that were critical of COVID-19 vaccines and expressed other controversial takes. The account identified him as the president of Jefferson and dean of the Sidney Kimmel Medical College. In April, he had liked 539 tweets on the nearly year-old account, including Jefferson-centric posts.

The president, a Yale-educated molecular immunologist and academic leader who was elevated from provost to president July 1, told The Inquirer in April he did not endorse the tweets or the people tweeting them and that he regretted how his “lack of understanding of the Twitter platform caused some to question my views on these complex issues.” He also subsequently apologized to the campus, and deleted about half his likes.

» READ MORE: Thomas Jefferson president ‘should have known better,’ says the CEO in a note to the system’s community

Cacchione, the CEO, said in a campus message that he was disappointed in Tykocinski’s “careless use” of his Twitter account and that the president “should have known better.”

Students’ concerns over diversity and inclusion coincide with the release last month of U.S. News & World Report’s 2023 “Most Diverse Medical Schools” rankings. Jefferson’s medical college placed last for diversity of all medical schools in the region, and 115th of 130 medical schools nationally. With nearly 1,100 students, Jefferson — the second-largest of seven medical schools in the region ranked by U.S. News — was tied with the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the University of Kentucky, and the University of Oklahoma.

The news magazine said 9.7% of Jefferson’s medical school enrollment is underrepresented minorities, defined by the news magazine as Black or African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian or Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander.

Temple University, meanwhile, finished the best in the region, ranking 8th nationally, with 28.7% of its students from underrepresented groups. The University of Pennsylvania was 33rd, Drexel 80th, and Cooper Medical School of Rowan University 100th.

However, when the category of two or more races is added, Jefferson’s underrepresented minority enrollment jumps to 27.6%, second only to Temple in the region. That, however, is not the measure that U.S. News uses to calculate its diversity score. (The magazine has faced criticism over its rankings and saw several prominent medical schools, including Penn, pull out of them earlier this year.)

Jefferson — the second-most selective medical school in the region ranked by the magazine, accepting just 3.9% of applicants — said it has implemented numerous initiatives to improve diversity, including enhanced scholarships, which has led to gains: The most recent first-year class included 17.3% underrepresented minority students and 15.4% LGBTQ students.

“We’re proud of the strides that our university has made to become a more welcoming and inclusive community,” Lopez said.

It’s challenging to boost numbers of diverse candidates, said Annette C. Reboli, dean and professor of medicine at Cooper, which was ranked second from the bottom regionally in diversity. It takes scholarship dollars, and schools are all in competition for a limited pool of students, she said.

“The best and brightest minority students get recruited very heavily at a number of institutions,” she said.

Cooper, she said, offered admittance to 25 Black students in 2021; eight accepted. Of 29 Latino students that Cooper accepted that year, 11 enrolled, she said.

Cooper medical school had been striving to increase diversity even before its first class of students entered in 2012, Reboli said. It started a program for prospective students from underrepresented groups, including Black and Latino students and those from disadvantaged households, she said.

Of the 500 students who came through that program, which includes leadership training, preparation for MCATs — the medical school entrance exam — and shadowing professionals in hospitals, one-third have gone on to medical school, she said.

Temple credits its high diversity ranking to ongoing efforts the medical school has made, including giving a role in its admissions process to members of its North Philadelphia community, said Abiona Berkeley, interim senior associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion and professor of clinical anesthesiology.

For the first time last year, five people who live and/or work in the community surrounding the campus and its hospital helped interview hundreds of candidates for the class that entered last fall. And one of those members had a seat on the 25-member admissions decision committee, largely made up of medical school faculty and physicians.

She said it’s not as hard to increase diversity as some may think.

Medical schools, she said, need to recognize that a doctor no longer has to be someone who must memorize and retain everything or has taken courses such as algebra and calculus by a certain time in their high school careers. Other qualities, such as grit and perseverance, have become more important, she said.

“We ought to be relooking and reimagining what medicine is,” she said. “One of the great things about Temple is being intentional with recognizing where we sit and being bonded with our community and really trying to work toward improving relations there and thereby care for the population we serve.”

At Jefferson, a group of students involved in preparing the letter critical of Tykocinski met last month with Lopez. Students afterward said they would wait to see whether the university took any concrete actions.

In their letter, students have asked for a number of measures from Jefferson.

They want Tykocinski to clarify whether he agrees that transgender surgery is akin to child mutilation.

When this question was posed to the president by The Inquirer, he said: “This is not my clinical area of expertise. In general, any issue involving children should be referred to clinical experts at children’s hospitals who offer the full complement of services necessary.”

At the same time, he did say he did not think vaccines were harmful and that diversity efforts were “extremely important” to him.

“Trans healthcare is the only matter in which Dr. Tykocinski seems to equivocate,” the students wrote in their letter.

The students are asking for “safe spaces” and town halls for students and faculty to develop a plan on how the college will recruit and retain faculty and staff of color and institute better sensitivity and cultural competency training.

They want Jefferson to add gender-affirming care to students’ health insurance.

Several students and alumni told The Inquirer that their attempts to get the medical school to publish an “out list” of faculty who are openly LGBTQ were denied. The list, for which inclusion would be optional, would aid students in finding mentors and show prospective students the extent of Jefferson’s cultural competence, said Anthony DeLuca, a 2022 Jefferson medical graduate who is in his first year as a psychiatry resident in Miami, Fla.

He said he was the third student to request an out list, but the office of diversity and inclusion told him Tykocinski denied it. He was not permitted to speak to the president, he said.

“While [Tykocinski] was made aware of other schools Harvard, Penn, etc. that have had them for a while, it didn’t make a difference,” DeLuca wrote in an email.

Lopez said in his response to The Inquirer that the university is working with LGBTQ+ students to create that “resource” and make it available to all students.

A Black student who was involved in writing the letter but who asked not to be identified because she feared retaliation said she knew Jefferson didn’t have strong diversity numbers when she applied, but she had heard the school was making strides to improve. She was disheartened to find that faculty didn’t have the necessary sensitivity training to best deal with students from underrepresented groups, she said.

In the meantime, she said she found a safe community with other underrepresented students. Now, they want to make Jefferson a better place, she said.