Dear WSU President, Please Stand for Truth — An Open Letter from Dr. Erica Li
A Washington State University pediatrician appeals to her administration to resist censorship and protect scientific integrity.
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About the Author
Dr. Li is a pediatrician working in Washington State. Initially supportive of pediatric sex trait modification after attending Johanna Olson-Kennedy’s recruitment session in person, she changed her mind after further exploring the evidentiary basis of medical transition for minors. She explains her adherence to fundamental principles of Modern Medicine here.
Editor’s Note
In late October 2025, Washington State University’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine suspended a series of Continuing Medical Education (CME) modules developed by the Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine (SEGM) after pressure from transgender activists and inquiries from a national accrediting body. The SEGM courses—based on presentations from an academic conference—examined the evidence for puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries in minors.
WSU had approved the courses after a nine-month review confirming they met national standards for scientific balance and integrity. But hours after activist-journalist Erin Reed criticized the accreditation and cited the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” label for SEGM, the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) ordered the modules suspended pending investigation—an extraordinary move made before the review’s conclusion.
This incident may become a test case for whether American universities will defend scientific inquiry when it conflicts with activist demands. At stake is not just the fate of a few medical education videos, but the principle that evidence—not ideology—should guide medicine.
Below is an open letter by Dr. Erica Li, a pediatrician at WSU who facilitated the accreditation of SEGM’s courses. In it, she urges the university’s leadership to resist political intimidation, uphold its commitment to academic freedom, and remember that courage is what ultimately protects truth.
Colin Wright Reality’s Last Stand CEO & Editor-in-Chief
Dear WSU Office of the President,
My name is Erica Li. I am an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics at Washington State University. I write to you as an individual: I do not speak on behalf of my employer or any other academic or political group.
I expect that the last few days have been difficult as you weather activist pressure over WSU’s decision to accredit seven Continuing Medical Education (CME) modules on the sensitive subject of pediatric gender medicine. My purpose in writing to you today is not to add to that pressure, but to encourage you to stand firm.
I am the “match-maker” who introduced the Society of Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM) to the CME accreditation team at WSU’s Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine. I have known SEGM to be responsible and evidence-based, driven by compassion for a vulnerable patient population that is poorly understood and poorly served when politics distorts clinical care. I have also know my own university to promote academic freedom and uphold institutional neutrality. I trusted WSU to be fair, scientific, and sensitive when addressing the difficult topic of youth gender medicine.
There is a serious clinical knowledge gap in the United States regarding how best to care for children and adolescents claiming gender-related distress. To treat these patients responsibly, that gap must be filled. SEGM, as an organization dedicated to scientific rigor and the principles of evidence-based medicine, has been a leader in trying to do exactly that. Unfortunately, any effort to apply the same standards of evidence and ethics to pediatric gender medicine that we apply to every other area of medicine inevitably faces ferocious opposition—just as we see now.
It is obvious that the activists driving the current harassment campaign did not review all of the course materials before demanding their removal. There simply was not enough time to do so given that the series includes more than seven hours of lectures and panel discussions. This should come as no surprise. The primary concern of these activists is not the content but their own political objective: suppressing inquiry and open dialogue. That objective is fundamentally at odds with a university’s highest mission: the pursuit of truth.
I understand that, as activists filed a flood of complaints, WSU came under pressure from the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to suspend the SEGM courses during an investigation or face serious sanctions.
I do not know what ACCME will do next. I do know, all too well, what activists of this kind typically do next, given my parents’ traumatizing experience during the Cultural Revolution in China.
They will not be satisfied with the temporary suspension of a few CME modules. They will push until WSU is pressured into a public confession: an admission of “negligence” and “harm,” and an official denunciation of SEGM as a “hate group” to serve as penance. The truth is that there was no negligence, no harm, and no hate.
WSU’s team spent nine months carefully reviewing the SEGM courses, mitigating potential biases and conflicts of interest. The course series includes more than 150 citations from the scientific literature and features clinicians and researchers from multiple countries. WSU documented that the course material is impressive in its international scope and scientific rigor. The accreditation was granted because the university is committed to sponsoring and collaborating on evidence-based approaches to clinical medicine, not because it endorsed any particular policy agenda. Although the courses can no longer offer CME credit during the investigation, the video lectures remain freely available to the public, who can judge for themselves whether they contain “hate” or misinformation.
Activist movements often try to force their targets into making humiliating, false apologies to save their own skin, even at the cost of betraying friends, colleagues, and allies. This happened on a massive scale during the Cultural Revolution, and the psychological degradation techniques are well documented. The lies our harassers hope to extract will destroy our relationships and reputation, our public image and self-image. That is part of the intended punishment. They will work to make us, as a university, violate our own public promise to uphold academic freedom and institutional neutrality.
This will not happen all at once. Rather, they will count on us making one small concession at a time, rationalizing each step: We don’t have the resources to fight; we are a small school. If we stand up this time, we might be too drained to do good work later. What if someone becomes violent? We don’t have armed security. This is how psychological degradation proceeds: fear, shame, betrayal, and the gradual sacrifice of moral clarity. At the end, we may even feel compelled to thank our critics for making us “aware of our wrongs.”
But a public apology, no matter how abject and groveling, will never satisfy those whose goal is to silence dissent. After an apology will come demands that university employees be disciplined or fired for doing their jobs: pursuing truth, fostering inquiry, and facilitating dialogue.
I am writing to you to say that it is possible to get through this and to make something good come out of it. The way forward is simple: tell the truth, refuse to live by lies, and courageously uphold the principles WSU has already committed itself to. Our duty to truth is deontological; it does not depend on whether it is convenient or safe. Everyone knows what our principles are—we advertise them on our website. Now we have the opportunity to act on them with clarity and transparency. Courage is contagious; cowardice is repelling.
I have family members who died for freedom of speech and the ability to tell the truth. That is why we came to America. Our young patients need us to tell the truth and to stand by our principles, even when it is costly.
It is the only way through.
Thank you very much for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Erica Li Assistant Professor of Pediatrics erica.li@wsu.edu
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Wow! Thank you for sharing Dr. Li's letter to WSU. What a situation we are in when telling the truth takes a supreme amount of courage and the cost is potentially so high! May WSU meet Dr. Li's courage and integrity in kind!
Dr. Li is painfully accurate on how this will proceed if WSU wavers. After watching Guyatt debase and discredit himself, I’m dreading witnessing another slow-motion self-immolation.