LOS ANGELES (LifeSiteNews) — A fixation on “diversity” is facilitating a crisis of competence among future doctors produced by the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA’s) prestigious David Geffen School of Medicine, according to whistleblowers who reached out to the Washington Free Beacon.
The Beacon reported that, according to internal UCLA data, more than half of students in various cohorts admitted since 2020 fail standardized tests for basic medical knowledge of subjects ranging from emergency medicine and family medicine to internal medicine and pediatrics, with professors (speaking on condition of anonymity) recalling tales of students unable to identify major arteries, perform basic lab tests, and more.
The culprit, insiders say, is the affirmative-action focus of Jennifer Lucero, Geffen’s Associate Dean for Admissions and Vice Chair for Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion (EDI) for the Department of Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine who joined the school in June 2020. She has reportedly been a force for admitting minority applicants who fall well short of the school’s historically demanding academic requirements while demanding near-perfect scores from White or Asian applicants.
The standards for minority groups deemed “underrepresented” are “as low as you could possibly imagine,” one member of the admissions committee said. “It completely disregards grades and achievements.” A professor warned, “I don’t know how some of these students are going to be junior doctors. Faculty are seeing a shocking decline in knowledge of medical students.”
One admissions staffer went so far as to describe UCLA as a “failed medical school” where “we want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.” Another committee member said, “I have students on their rotation who don’t know anything.”
The whistleblowers recalled an incident from 2021 in which the application of a Black student whose grades and test scores were “far” below average came before the board, one member of which suggested as much, in response to which Lucero “exploded in anger” at critics she deems “privileged” and potentially racist, according to the Beacon.
“Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” she reportedly declared, arguing that test scores should be disregarded when “we need people like this in the medical school.”
Lucero was not alone, however. “We were always outnumbered. Other people would get upset when we brought up GPA,” another admissions officer said.
Under Lucero’s tenure, UCLA has dropped from sixth in research in 2020 to 18th in research today, according to U.S. News & World Report.
The whistleblowers did not take their decision to speak out lightly. “I wouldn’t normally talk to a reporter,” one faculty member told the Beacon. “But there’s no way to stop this without embarrassing the medical school.”
Last month, LifeSite and the Free Beacon covered UCLA subjecting first-year medical students to a “Structural Racism and Health Equity” course featuring prayers to “mama earth,” benedictions to racial minorities, condemnation of free market economics, and more as part of the school’s “anti-racism road map” adopted in 2020.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last year that race-based affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional, and even in California the practice has been illegal since 1996, potentially opening UCLA up to legal jeopardy. Still, obsession with “diversity” persists in much of the academic and corporate world, leading many to express fears about the eventual consequences of producing unqualified professionals in highly demanding fields involved in life or death, such as medicine or the airline industry.