A prestigious Drexel fellowship for women in medicine is now open to men

During a 30th anniversary celebration for Drexel University’s prestigious female-only leadership medical fellowship in early May, the program’s executive director lamented the “frustratingly slow” progress of women’s advancement to top jobs in academic medicine.

But three days earlier, hundreds of the program’s alumnae nationwide were informed that Drexel had opened its Executive Leadership in Academic Medicine (ELAM) program to men.

The change deeply troubled some former ELAM fellows, who fear a program designed to address long-standing gender disparities in leadership at medical colleges and teaching hospitals was being weakened as President Donald Trump’s administration pushes for an end to diversity, equity, and inclusion programs at universities.

“I believe we are moving backward,” said ELAM founder Page Morahan, a professor emerita at Drexel’s College of Medicine, adding that the “job of gender equity in leadership is certainly not done.”

“The program at 30 years is needed as much as it was then,” Morahan, 85, said in an interview. “Whether it can achieve its goals with accepting men into the program is something none of us know.”

Drexel is not the only medical program rethinking women’s leadership training in a political climate in which DEI programs are being eliminated, overhauled, or paused across a broad spectrum of public and private organizations.

At universities, the White House has specifically challenged diversity programs centered on race and banned transgender athletes, threatening to pull federal funding. Woman-only training and leadership opportunities, including Drexel’s ELAM, have been facing heightened scrutiny in recent years from conservative-aligned groups that argue they are discriminatory to men.

Last month, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), a nonprofit that represents more than 570 medical schools, teaching hospitals, and health systems, opened up its woman-only academic medicine leadership development programs to men.

ELAM, a one-year fellowship program that offers coaching, networking, and mentoring opportunities, has earned a national reputation as a critical training pipeline for female deans, presidents, chairs, and hospital CEOs.

In 1994, the year before ELAM was started, women made up just 3% of permanent deans at all American medical schools, according to AAMC.

Since then, ELAM fellows have included more than a dozen deans of public health schools and more than 225 medical school deans, including Amy Goldberg, the first female dean at Temple University’s Lewis M. Katz School of Medicine.

Now, this year’s fellowship class for the first time includes two males among 148 females, according to ELAM.

Drexel did not specify what prompted the change, saying it was in line with the university’s “mission to expand educational access” to all qualified applicants “regardless of gender.”

“While the program’s mission remains steadfast — developing and connecting visionary leaders in academic medicine and healthcare — this new chapter marks a powerful evolution," Drexel said in a statement. “It broadens ELAM’s reach, amplifies its impact, and empowers a wider community to lead transformative change.”

Meanwhile, the AAMC recently removed the word women from the title of its premier leadership programs, designed to advance the careers of assistant and associate professors. References to women were also removed from webpages describing the applicant criteria.

“By renaming the programs, we are providing open access to all faculty who could benefit from the seminars’ content, while preserving their long-standing emphasis on leadership development, advancement, and support,” the AAMC said in a statement.

ELAM held its 30th anniversary celebration at the Four Seasons Hotel in Philadelphia on May 1 and 2. Nancy Spector, ELAM’s executive director and an alumna, acknowledged the ongoing challenge of gender inequity in a welcome note to anniversary attendees.

“Despite remarkable achievements by our graduates and the increasing presence of women in medical schools, progress toward equity in leadership has been frustratingly slow,” she wrote.

Women now make up more than 50% of U.S. medical school graduates, but represent 27% of medical school deans, 34% of division chiefs, 45% of senior associate deans, and only 25% of department chairs, according to the AAMC.

Morahan, one of ELAM’s three founders, said she worries “the gains are very fragile.”

ELAM was created to provide a “safe space” for women to speak candidly about discrimination they experienced or felt in their fields and brainstorm ways to get ahead, she said.

Another ELAM alumna, Laura Schweitzer, is a former college president and past dean at medical schools in New York and Kentucky. She now coaches women, mostly doctors, seeking high-level positions in medical schools.

Earlier this month, she wrote a letter to 110 women in her network, urging them to individually identify and mentor future female leaders.

Schweitzer, who is also an alumna of AAMC’s leadership programs, criticized Drexel and AAMC for their “obeyance in advance” to Trump’s agenda.

“I never thought that AAMC and Drexel would be among the organizations that prop up the authoritarian takeover in this way,” she wrote.

Schweitzer, a neurobiologist, said she’s participated in mixed-gender development programs and they are not as impactful as woman-only ones.

“I was surrounded by and immersed in women leaders who could show me what I could be,” Schweitzer said.

Goldberg was a trauma surgeon at Temple’s hospital when she began her ELAM fellowship in the 2004-2005 cohort, which she credits with helping her advance and become its medical school dean nearly two decades later.

Goldberg supports allowing men into Drexel’s ELAM program, so they can get the training and education that women have valued and “the additional benefit of seeing what women go through in the workforce.”

“This is the perfect time to invite our men colleagues in,” Goldberg said in an interview.

“Is there still some more work that needs to be done? Of course. But ELAM served the purpose that it meant to serve,” she said. “Now to be able to open up ELAM and all of that great education to anybody is really good.”

The two male ELAM fellows — both Philadelphia doctors and Drexel professors — did not return phone calls from a reporter.

Concerns about Drexel’s ELAM program were raised among the hundreds of complaints filed against woman-only science and medicine initiatives in recent years with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

The complaints largely cite a violation of Title IX, the 1972 federal law prohibiting sex discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.

Best known for ensuring equal access to academic and athletic opportunities for women, and efforts to protect them against sexual harassment, Title IX mandates equal access and protections for both men and women.

Leading the attack on woman-only scholarships, awards, and professional development workshops at universities are nonprofit groups, aligned with conservatives, such as Do No Harm and Stop Abusive and Violent Environments (SAVE).

Do No Harm advocates against DEI in medicine, which it views as “divisive,” while SAVE focuses on “due process, fairness and equal opportunities for men.”

Do No Harm senior fellow Mark Perry, a former University of Michigan-Flint professor, complained about Drexel’s ELAM program to the Office of Civil Rights in September 2020, prior to his involvement with Do No Harm.

SAVE and Do No Harm argue that woman-only programs are unlawful under Title IX.

“Obviously, if men are being not allowed to apply for a program, that appears to be a violation of law,” said SAVE president Edward Bartlett, a former professor at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

SAVE also sees woman-only programs as a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which provides equal protection under the law for all citizens.

Aside from violating civil rights, Bartlett said he’s against woman-only programs because they further “polarize the sexes” and hinder women from mingling with potential male mates.

Advocating to protect woman-only opportunities, the National Women’s Law Center has countered that “gender-conscious programs” at universities help women overcome gender bias that has limited their access to opportunities.

As the debate spurs heightened scrutiny, Drexel’s decision to include males in ELAM would help protect the university against complaint investigations by the Office of Civil Rights and civil rights lawsuits, said KC Johnson, a Title IX expert who teaches history at Brooklyn College.

If a male applicant to ELAM had been rejected because of his gender and filed a lawsuit, Drexel would likely lose in federal court, he said.

Two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions — one effectively ending affirmative action in college admissions and another clarifying the standard for reverse-discrimination claims in employment — are also problematic for woman-only programs at universities, Johnson added.

“If I were general counsel for a university, you don’t have to be a genius to see which way the wind is blowing,” he said. “You can see why universities would be making these kinds of decisions.”