Abraham Flexner’s legacy is problematic—not so much because his words are so distant from the present-day principles of the Association of American Colleges (AAMC) and American Medical Association (AMA), but rather because his thinking was so close to that of today’s AAMC and AMA.
Conventional Complaints
In 2020, the AAMC dropped Flexner from its pantheon, encouraged by the AMA, which commissioned his 1910 Flexner Report. The AAMC accused Flexner of “racist and sexist ideas” and blamed him for shuttering five of the then-extant African American medical schools. (Mea culpa: I used to make the same argument against Flexner.) But, on closer inspection, his racial and sexual notions are ambiguous. He may deserve credit for saving two Black medical schools. His “The Medical Education of the Negro” and “The Medical Education of Women” sound dreadful today, but their condescending tone may have been essential to overcoming the AMA’s and AAMC’s bigotry.
