Feb. 17, 2021
On Thursday, the Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans dismissed physician Princess Dennar as the program director of its combined internal medicine and pediatrics residency program. She had been the first and only Black woman to be program director at Tulane’s medical school.
By Friday, the social media furor had begun.
The hashtag #DNRTulane, or “Do Not Rank Tulane,” flared on Twitter, referring to the match process medical students go through to express their preferred residency programs, as did #JusticeForDrDennar. Now, the outpouring of posts and petitions decrying the termination of Dennar’s position at Tulane is generating a national conversation about racial inequities and discrimination that physicians of color, especially underrepresented women of color, face in academic medicine.