DOJ Concludes UCLA Med School Racially Discriminated In Admissions Process
“Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning.”
An investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) has found that certain admissions practices at the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) constituted racial discrimination. The DOJ announced the findings of the year-long investigation via a press release on Wednesday.
Among the specific ways the medical school discriminated, the DOJ said that leadership adhered to the “dubious contention that patients receive the best care when treated by a doctor of the same race, rather than by the most qualified.”
Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon accused the school of focusing on “racial politics” rather than training excellent doctors.
“UCLA’s admissions process has been focused on racial demographics at the expense of merit and excellence — allowing racial politics to distract the school from the vital work of training great doctors,” stated Dhillon.
“Racism in admissions is both illegal and anti-American, and this Department will not allow it to continue.”
The investigation found that minority students, particularly black and Hispanic applicants, had lower academic qualifications than their white and Asian peers. This finding supports the DOJ’s claim that UCLA granted preferential admission to some minority applicants on the basis of race rather than academic merit.
First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli referenced recent Supreme Court precedent to reprimand the medical school’s leadership.
“Federal law and the Supreme Court precedent are clear: Race discrimination has no place in our nation’s institutions of higher learning,” stated Essayli.
In January, the Trump administration joined a Students for Fair Admissions and Do No Harm lawsuit against the UCLA School of Medicine after newly released data revealed the extent of its race-based discrimination.
Former Attorney General Pam Bondi noted that the median MCAT score for Hispanic students at the UCLA School of Medicine was in the 66th percentile, while the median score for Asian students was in the 90th percentile. Similar findings were also reported for black students, who, on average, scored significantly lower than their white classmates.
“As the Supreme Court has made clear, admission into our nation’s educational institutions cannot be based on discriminatory racial policies,” stated Bondi.
The DOJ press release concluded that schools such as UCLA, which receive significant federal funding, could face increased scrutiny from the Trump administration if found to maintain discriminatory programs.
“Medical schools use substantial federal financial assistance to train the next generation of doctors,” read the press release.
“The Department is continuing its focus on eradicating illegal race politics from admissions at medical schools, where quality and excellence are vitally important.”
Donations tax deductible
to the full extent allowed by law.
Comments
It is long past time for criminal penalties including massive fines and long jail terms be imposed for any racial discrimination anywhere in this country. There also must be no immunity from it. That is the only way for stopping these garbage policies from being reintroduced again and again,
A reprimand has been issued.
It’s something but insufficient and I’m sure it’s regarded as a badge of honor, Probably framed and hung. Consequences have to personal and massive or they are meaningless.
Agreed, large loss of institutional funding, then costly personal fines, and jail if repeated.
Agree. Accountability has been overplayed at the cost of consequences. There need to be consequences, beyond the results of incompetent professionals. See the consequences of the Bakke discrimination case for an example.
Correct. I’ve been singing from this hymnal for years: criminal consequences for these administrators who commit these egregious and repeated violations of Title XYZ laws which result in the deprivation of rights against others, or it’s still just **clown world** where they will do it again and again because no consequences.
Whoever is surprised by this hasn’t been paying attention. And not just UCLA, everywhere. And for quite some time.
And once one of their DEI wonders gets into medical school, they WILL graduate, as the school will not let them fail.
You may want to take that into account with your selection of a physician.
Hi, everybody!
Uh, this is not new. Back in the 80’s we had students on the full year plan, where they were in turored classes all summer to bring them hopefully up to speed to start the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th years. The problem here is that medicne often doesn’t allow extra time in the real world. You might be given hrs to complete a 90 minute exam while in school, but on the table, every extra minute under anesthesia reduces the success of the outcome. Every minute that artery is clamped off affects the downstream tissue. I can vet my providers, and I am happy with all of them, but a regular Joe might end up with someone who really shouldn’t be practicing.
Similarly, a woke board at my last institution decided to apply DEI to faculty hiring to “even things out” and now they are saddled with individuals who are neither able to attract funding, nor are they able to collarorate with other researchers within the institution. The strength of Hopkins was the presence of an expert in everything in one location. We just had the director of research step down because he said that there was no longer a base of expertise to attract or support top people, regardless of how much they were paid to come here.
>> Dr. Brian Druker, CEO of the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University and developer of a drug that revolutionized cancer treatment, said he was stepping down in part because OHSU had “forgotten our mission” and is no longer a place to do cutting-edge research. <<
If they had asked me 20 years ago, I could have told them where their decisions would lead. And he stepped down well after a lot of people had already moved to greener pastures. They put a buttload of money into buildings and seemed to miss the point that those buildings need to be filled with quality people, not box checkers.
My medical school did try to bring in a more “diverse” group of students. Even holding them back as they failed the courses but keeping them in … one student had been there 7 years and still couldn’t make the grade. Let go and he claimed bias/racism. lowering the threshold doesn’t elevate the practice. Right now…. I am only seeing physicians my age or no more than 15 years younger…. sorry…. no confidence in DEI.
Throughout my life, I made a point of patronizing physicians, dentists, etc. who were in the same age bracket as I was. It worked out extremely well, and I would recommend it in general except for the perturbation of DEI.
On the other hand, if you are a DEI aficionado, I would recommend it unreservedly.
When I was applying to medical school, I was told by an admission officers that not a single Black student would have made it into Harvard Medical School without affirmative action. In fact, you would have to go back to the 1980s before a Black applicant made it into Harvard on the merits. I was also told that the very best students were going to get rejected no matter what because most of the positions were going to minorities and nepo babies. I got rejected at all the very good schools but eventually enrolled in a pretty decent state school in Illinois. I dropped out after about two weeks to go to a very, very good law school. Anyways, affirmative action is still around and it’s still pretty disgusting.
I wish your “very, very good law school” had explained to you that “anyways” is not proper English.
Do you also offer lectures on pronouns and “dead-naming”?
How about American English? whatever…
Take a look at UCLA Geffen’s standing and their graduating students’ USMLE average scores: they have plummeted off a cliff! The residency/fellowship programs where I teach won’t even consider UCLA Geffen students because they are so badly prepared. This can be all can be laid at the door of their one (former?) Associate Dean who pushed her DEI agenda through their faculty governance system, insisting White and Asian students were the bane of modern medicine because they skewed the curve for black students, mostly.
Part of that was the argument that the form of tests placed black students at a disadvantage…. such as multiple choice questions. As if posing questions in a certain format was racist.
We ran some mock clinicals for our interns before PGY-2 in the internal medicine residency as per standard. The ones who really were challenged were in the DEI admissions pools, because they couldn’t integrate the rote learning with actual clinical presentation of a case. They couldn’t get that medicine isn’t straightforward cookbook like they thought. And of course, they were all chasing advanced fellowships in hem/onc, ID, endo, cardio, etc., but after seeing the scores come back-=they could kiss those opportunities goodbye. Spending each weekend partying on an tube on the Colorado with a Margarita in one hand and an iPhone taking selfies in the other wasn’t helping either.
When does Amy Wax get her reputation back?
I find it somewhat ironic that as medical science and technology advance at amazing rates the quality of medical providers (i.e., physicians) declines at similar rates. Remember, every hospital has its worst doctor.
Leave a Comment