DEI Is Destroying UCLA Medical School

Long considered among the best medical schools in the world, UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine accepted only 1.3% of applicants in 2023. Unfortunately, under dean of admissions Jennifer Lucero, the selectivity is based less on merit than on moonbattery:

In interviews with the Free Beacon and complaints to UCLA officials, including investigators in the university’s Discrimination Prevention Office, faculty members with firsthand knowledge of the admissions process say it has prioritized diversity over merit, resulting in progressively less qualified classes that are now struggling to succeed.

Discrimination Prevention Office. The inspiration for the name must have been the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love. Progressives really are using 1984 as an instruction manual.

Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff.

Per California law and a Supreme Court ruling, it is illegal to consider race in admissions. But under liberal anarchotyranny, laws are enforced selectively. Consequently,

Within three years of Lucero’s hiring in 2020, UCLA dropped from 6th to 18th place in U.S. News & World Report’s rankings for medical research. And in some of the cohorts she admitted, more than 50 percent of students failed standardized tests on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics.

Those tests, known as shelf exams, which are typically taken at the end of each clinical rotation, measure basic medical knowledge and play a pivotal role in residency applications. Though only 5 percent of students fail each test nationally, the rates are much higher at UCLA, having increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, according to internal data obtained by the Free Beacon.

The ultimate test is in the operating room:

One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot.

What else would you expect in a world where you get ahead not by working hard or knowing what you are doing but by belligerently whimpering that you are a victim?

“All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races,” an admissions officer said. “For other people, those criteria are completely disregarded.”

The effect is that the candidates most likely to succeed are weeded out in favor of those least likely.

Led by Lucero, who also serves as the vice chair for equity, diversity, and inclusion of UCLA’s anesthesiology department, the admissions committee routinely gives black and Latino applicants a pass for subpar metrics, four people who served on it said, while whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.

The bar for underrepresented minorities is “as low as you could possibly imagine,” one committee member told the Free Beacon. “It completely disregards grades and achievements.”

Surely if Kamala Harris is qualified to be vice president, any Woman of Color is qualified to be a doctor. Those who feel differently are treated harshly:

Lucero hasn’t been kind to dissenters. … She has lashed out at officials who question the qualifications of minority candidates, five sources said, suggesting naysayers are “privileged,” implying that they are racist, and subjecting them to diversity training sessions.

This is how admissions committees spend their time with leftists in charge:

After a Native American applicant was rejected in 2021, for example, Lucero chewed out the committee and made members sit through a two-hour lecture on Native history delivered by her own sister, according to three people familiar with the incident.

Meanwhile, instruction increasingly emphasizes kooky woke crapola at the expense of physiology and anatomy. No sane person would let a social worker or sociology professor come at them with a scalpel. Yet the education UCLA provides doctors is becoming similar, featuring mandatory classes like “Structural Racism and Health Equity.”

The price of moonbattery is high. When you come to rely on the expertise of medical professionals, it could cost you your life.

On tips from Mr. Freemarket and Ed McAninch.

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