National Review Online
Monday, May 11, 2026
Conservatives have long suspected that university
admissions policies were violating civil rights in the name of promoting
diversity, but the Trump administration is actually doing something to expose
and punish the practice.
The Department of Justice concluded its yearlong compliance
review of the admissions practices at the UCLA medical school and
determined that it is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by granting
and denying acceptance on the basis of race, particularly to the benefit of
less qualified black and Hispanic applicants. According to a recent document
from the DOJ, the medical school’s “internal policies, publicly distributed
literature, and email correspondence of its leadership” demonstrate an intent
to use race in admissions — and the commitment to DEI was so unwavering that
Jennifer Lucero, the associate dean of admissions, employed “intimidation and
shaming tactics to pressure the admissions committee to unlawfully consider
race in their decisions.”
The medical school purported to practice the “holistic”
assessment of applicants by considering data aside from objective metrics like
MCAT scores and GPAs, but the Justice Department insists that this approach
“does not explain the major disparities it has produced in objective academic
metrics between racial groups.” In particular, black and Hispanic students with
“significantly lower median” MCAT and GPAs are admitted. Data from the 2023
incoming class showed that black and Hispanic students had a median MCAT score
in the 68th percentile of test takers, compared with the 88th percentile for
both white and Asian students. In fact, the medical school had announced
that its MCAT cutoff score would be 512 beginning in the 2019 admissions cycle
— yet the median score for black and Hispanic students in the incoming 2024
class was 508 and 506, respectively. Rather revealingly, the students enrolled
in that cohort who “declined” to disclose their race had the highest median
score and percentile ranking, suggesting that overly qualified students of
disfavored racial groups knew that they would be discriminated against and
therefore deliberately hid their identity.
It appears that, as an effort to circumvent the Supreme
Court’s unambiguous Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ruling that
racial discrimination in admissions is illegal, the medical school devised a
series of creative techniques to reveal the race of an applicant. For example,
the medical school asked applicants in 2024 and 2025 whether they identify as a
member of a marginalized group and further asked about the impact of such a
trait, which seemingly attempts to solicit demographic data. Additionally,
admissions staff were supplied training materials that discussed “implicit
bias,” “race,” and the aim to promote diversity. In fact, guidance for staff
included a graphic that featured “race” and “national origin” — alongside
“citizenship,” “distance travelled,” “relationship status,” “cultural events,”
and “sexual orientation” — as attributes to be considered in “holistic”
reviews. A supposed justification internally circulated for increased racial
diversity was the dubious claim that black and Hispanic doctors would improve
the outcomes of black and Hispanic patients; in other words, minority patients
would die at higher rates in the absence of affirmative action, despite the
fact that affirmative action necessarily produces less competent medical
practitioners.
We agree with the DOJ: “Discrimination on the basis of
racial proxies is offensive to our nation’s Constitution and laws, just as
direct racial discrimination is.” Unfortunately, once-respectable institutions
believe they can violate antidiscrimination laws with impunity, while the
victims — rather than the perpetrators — are branded as reprehensible “racists”
for acknowledging such practices. Thankfully, the Trump administration is
taking forceful action to expose and punish this egregious violation of our
laws and principles.
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