Report: Medical Schools Secretly Defying Supreme Court’s Ruling on Affirmative Action By Eric Lendrum
A coalition of medical professionals revealed the methods by which medical schools across the country are circumventing the Supreme Court’s ruling outlawing the practice of affirmative action, and employing such race-based policies anyway.
According to Fox News, the group Do No Harm released new research this week revealing that “many in the healthcare establishment nevertheless remain ideologically committed to the principle of racial favoritism and reject the virtue of race blindness.” This comes despite the Supreme Court’s landmark decision last year in the case Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which determined that affirmative action, the practice of admitting students or hiring staff based solely on their race, was unconstitutional.
The study, titled “Skirting SCOTUS: How medical schools will continue to practice racially conscious admissions,” states that “efforts to game admissions with an eye toward bolstering racial diversity commonly occur under the moniker of ‘holistic admissions.’”
“In theory, holistic admissions should mean de-emphasizing the metrics that primarily determine admission to medical school (e.g., GPA and MCAT scores) and placing greater focus on other academic qualifications, personality traits, or professional accolades,” the report continues. But “in practice, ‘holistic’ admissions often represent a rebranding or workaround of affirmative action.”
Do No Harm also pointed to the official statements of numerous medical organizations and groups which condemned the Court’s ruling, including the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). Following the ruling, AAMC issued a statement saying that “the AAMC believes that a diverse and inclusive biomedical research workforce with individuals from historically excluded and underrepresented groups in biomedical research is critical to gathering the range of perspectives needed to identify and solve the complex scientific problems of today and tomorrow.”
The AAMC even explicitly vowed to defy the court, admitting that “we will work together to adapt following today’s court decision without compromising these goals.”
“They feel that diversity is such an important value in health care that they need to ignore the Supreme Court and go their own way,” said Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, chairman of the board of Do No Harm. “There’s really no justification of this. Their responsibility is to the patients, to create the most qualified workforce that they can possibly create.”
The Supreme Court’s 6-2 ruling in Harvard, alongside the parallel case Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, ended 45 years of affirmative action being legal nationwide, as originally determined in the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
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