Commentary: I Challenged Duke’s DEI Dogma – and Paid With My Job

August 14, 2025 1 min read

Dr. Kendall Conger
RealClearInvestigations

Excerpt: I was heartened to see my former employer, Duke University Health System, quietly reverse its commitment to woke racism this year. I had joined the internal resistance to its diversity, equity, and inclusion crusade and was fired because of it. 

I worked at Duke for 10 years without incident before spending the last few years of my tenure battling the 2021 policy – at the cost of my job as an emergency room physician, which is now the subject of a separate lawsuit I have brought. As much as I would like to proclaim victory, I do not want this episode to get memory-holed by organizational leaders who would rather we forget the moral panic that gripped them and the price many of us paid for their destructive and divisive efforts.

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