Harvard Medical School is doing a different kind of “scrubbing” these days.

The university is removing the portrait collection from one of its lecture halls; the assorted portraits were mostly of white department heads.

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“School officials confirmed [last] Friday afternoon that the portraits of 31 medical school deans — which formerly hung in the school’s Bornstein Family Amphitheater — have been ‘dispersed’ to various lobbies and conference rooms,” Campus Reform reported.

Of the 31 portraits “dispersed,” 30 were of white men and one was of a Chinese man, The Boston Globe noted.

Dr. Betsy Nabel, the first female president of a major Harvard teaching hospital, explained the university’s decision.

“I have watched the faces of individuals as they have come into Bornstein,” Nabel told the Globe. “I have watched them look at the walls. I read on their faces, ‘Interesting. But I am not represented here.’ That got me thinking, maybe it’s time that we think about respecting our past in a different way.”

There are 1,631 residents and fellows currently training at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, the teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School. Forty-five percent are women, 9 percent are black or Hispanic, and 28 percent are Asian.

“We need to make sure that our culture creates a sense of belonging for all,” Nabel told the Globe.

White Coats for Black Lives, a national activist group, recently targeted Harvard Medical School for allegedly promoting racial bias, the Globe also reported.

The group claims there are a “dearth of plaques, statues, portraits, and building names on campuses that acknowledge contributions from physicians of color — and the presence of artwork that celebrates people with racist pasts,” the same publication noted.

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It appears there is a wholesale shift in generational thinking about public works: Younger people tend more often now to believe that public areas should be “safe spaces,” free from controversy or uncomfortable subject matter.

College campuses are at the forefront of several initiatives to redesign public spaces to make them more inclusive and diverse.

The University of Rochester in New York was in the market for an administrator to promote culturally sensitive artwork and to fight “visual microaggressions,” as Campus Reform reported in December. And statues of historic figures, such as Thomas Jefferson, have been the subject of recent campus controversies.

The medical school’s decision comes as Asian-Americans have filed suit against Harvard for the practice of “racial balancing.”

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Harvard claims its diversity initiatives are legal and notes the plaintiffs, the Students for Fair Admissions, are backed by “the same activist who previously challenged the University of Texas’ affirmative action policy,” NPR reported Friday.

The policy was upheld in a 2016 ruling for UT-Austin, noted the Texas Tribune.

LifeZette reached out for comment to Brigham and Women’s Hospital, but did not hear back by publication time.

Kyle Becker is a content writer and producer with LifeZette. Follow him on Twitter.