A private university located in Nashville, Tennessee, Vanderbilt is known for its top-notch medical school and research facilities. But its prestigious reputation has been overshadowed recently by its medical center’s focus on radical gender ideology and “gender affirming” surgeries and hormones marketed to minors and their parents.

In September 2022, multiple videos from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center were uncovered by conservative blogger Matt Walsh. The videos clarified the clear profit motive for university doctors to promote gender “transition” surgeries—including performing permanent procedures on children. Even worse, the videos showcased the university’s explicit shaming of doctors and medical students who object to these procedures, making clear that they are not welcome on campus and face termination if they refuse to perform them.

One video featured Dr. Shane Taylor explaining that “Starting January 1, 2017, according to the Affordable Care Act, insurance carriers are mandated to cover medical expenses for trans folks,” before concluding that such surgeries could be highly profitable for the university. “It’s a lot of money,” Taylor reiterated. “These surgeries make a lot of money.”

In another video, Dr. Ellen Clayton warned of dire consequences for anyone not on board with the “gender affirming” surgeries. “If you are going to assert conscientious objection, you have to realize that that is problematic,” she said. “What I want you to take home is that saying you are not going to do something because of your religious beliefs is not without consequences. And it should not be without consequence. If you don’t want to do this kind of work, don’t work at Vanderbilt.”

So much for, “First, do no harm.”

Following the exposure of these materials, Vanderbilt promptly stripped its website of nearly all materials and information about its “pediatric transgender clinic”—a sure sign that the university feared ramifications from its exposure as a profit-seeking mutilator of children’s bodies.

Tennessee Governor Bill Lee has since called for an investigation into the university’s Transgender Health Clinic and has directed the state’s attorney general to proceed. “The ‘pediatric transgender clinic’ at Vanderbilt University Medical Center raises serious moral, ethical and legal concerns,” Lee said in a statement. “We should not allow permanent, life-altering decisions that hurt children or policies that suppress religious liberties, all for the purpose of financial gain.”

Vanderbilt has also taken additional steps recently to deliberately restrict speech on campus and institute kangaroo courts to handle potential violations. In November 2021, the university updated its Student Handbook to state that students may face disciplinary action for speech that is judged to be “inconsistent with the University’s values”—whatever that means. Even worse, students do not have the ability to appeal such rulings.

Calling the update a “chilling new policy,” the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), a non-profit group that protects free expression, detailed how Vanderbilt’s punitive approach to student speech will hinder free debate on campus.

“This means that if a student is reported for harassment over their subjectively offensive speech and an administrator determines that their speech doesn’t actually constitute harassment, the student can still be subjected to whatever ‘action to mitigate the effects of the conduct’ the school wishes to take, without the chance to appeal the decision,” FIRE explained. Vanderbilt’s promotion of child-mutilation, its threats against doctors who refuse to comply with such procedures, and its increasingly punitive speech codes, all combine to make it one of the most fascist American universities.