Most people don’t want diversity hires responsible for life-and-death matters. But new investigative reporting shows that the anti-meritocratic ideology of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” has even infiltrated some medical schools — to disastrous results.

These revelations come from the Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium, who just published a remarkable exposé on the University of California, Los Angeles, medical school. It alleges that the university has systemically violated laws prohibiting race-based admission and held applicants of different races to wildly different standards, all in an effort to boost diversity, while instead producing incompetent and unqualified doctors. 

Based on conversations with many people inside the admissions office and the medical school, Sibarium recounts how things have gone drastically wrong ever since the appointment of DEI-obsessed Dean of Admissions Jennifer Lucero in June 2020. 

“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,” he reports. 

One former member of the admissions team told the Washington Free Beacon that this approach has turned the institution into a “failed medical school,” concluding, “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

Sibarium recounts several disturbing stories about how Lucero reportedly fought to admit unqualified black candidates and slammed her admissions colleagues for declining to admit an unqualified Native American candidate. According to admissions committee insiders, “The bar for underrepresented minorities is ‘as low as you could possibly imagine,’” while “whites and Asians need near perfect scores to even be considered.”

The results of this race-obsessed approach are glaring.

“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,” Sibarium reports. “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,” he continues. “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 allegations made were so significant that law professor David Bernstein concluded, “If even half the allegations in this article are true, UCLA Medical School should cease to exist, and should be replaced by a new institution that (a) obeys the law; and (b) cares about the competence of the students it graduates.” He further noted that the things UCLA is accused of doing are “explicitly illegal under state law.”

This is all deeply alarming from both a legal standpoint and a safety perspective. 

There is one confounding variable that goes unmentioned in Sibarium’s reporting: the COVID-19 pandemic and the profound disruption many undergraduate and medical school students experienced in their education as a result of failed COVID-19 restrictions. This could explain part of the decline in test performance and the decline in competence that medical educators are noticing.

Still, the allegations made are alarming on a moral and legal level, and, if true, surely play a significant role in the collapsing standards as well. 

This must be a breaking point for the DEI madness. If the progressive obsession with identity politics is so extreme that progressives are putting unqualified people into medical roles, patients will eventually die due to this ideology. It’s also, as Eli Steele noted, deeply insulting and unfair to the many qualified and highly competent minority medical professionals who, as these practices come to light, may unfairly be viewed as unqualified diversity hires. 

CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER

America is approaching a crossroads. Are we going to be a meritocracy, or instead institute some sort of perverse racial hierarchy? 

The public intuitively knows the right answer. Just ask yourself: Would you entrust your life to a doctor who recently graduated from UCLA?

Brad Polumbo (@Brad_Polumbo) is an independent journalist, YouTuber, and co-founder of BASEDPolitics.