A nonprofit released a report Tuesday concluding that the University of Texas system continues to discriminate based on race in defiance of a recent Supreme Court ruling.
Do No Harm conducted an admissions analysis of seven medical schools in the university system and called on the system to stop hiding data regarding racial preferences, according to its new report. A previous report by the organization had found that the schools’ acceptance rates barely changed across racial groups after the Court’s landmark 2023 ruling on affirmative action — and that testing data continued to show racial discrepancies.
David Puelz, a statistician and professor at the University of Texas, authored Do No Harm’s Tuesday report titled, “Racial Preferences At Texas Medical Schools.” Puelz analyzed data from three schools prior to the court’s ruling which showed that applicants in the University of Texas System schools were penalized or rewarded on the basis of race, according to the report.
At UT Southwestern, Puelz observed that black applicants had “21 times the odds of acceptance compared to white applicants with similar academic credentials,” his report found.
The study contains statistical analysis of admission data from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center Medical School during the 2021 and 2022 admission cycles.
In the Court’s 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, a six-justice majority ruled that race-based college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Do No Harm’s report stated that its findings “document the kind of race-based preferences that [the ruling] was meant to address and establish a baseline for assessing whether admissions practice changed after the decision.”
“The silence from the University of Texas System is deafening. Dr. Puelz’s in-depth analysis shows that before the Students for Fair Admissions decision, Texas medical schools were heavily discriminating against white and Asian applicants, raising questions about whether race-conscious practices have continued or were rebranded to allow racial favoritism to persist,” Ian Kingsbury, Sr. Director of Do Not Harm’s Center for Accountability in Medicine, said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“If they’re in compliance with federal law, why are UT medical schools stonewalling our public-records requests and refusing to provide post-SFFA admissions data? We will pursue every legal, legislative, and public-advocacy recourse until full compliance with the Supreme Court’s ruling is achieved nationwide,” Kingsbury added.
The report found that black and Hispanic applicants were admitted more those who were white or Asian and had similar academic achievements. Three levels of academic ability were accessed, and black and Hispanic applicants were favored over Asians and white applicants.
“If admission selection is entirely based on academic ability, the admission rates should be the same regardless of race up to statistical fluctuation,” the report stated.
“Our research reveals that a number of medical schools continue to pursue identity politics and employ discriminatory, racially conscious admissions policy,” Stanley Goldfarb, MD, Chairman of Do Not Harm said, according to the organization’s website.
“These policies were deemed unlawful by the Supreme Court, and these schools are shirking their duty to train the most qualified group of future healthcare professionals. Do No Harm will continue to file complaints and lawsuits in order to restore merit and excellence to medical education,” Goldfarb added.
Seven schools in the University of Texas system have declined to provide admission data. The schools include UT Southwestern Medical School, UT Medical Branch at Galveston, UT Health Science Center at Houston, UT Health Science Center at San Antonio, UT Austin Dell Medical School, UT Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, and UT Tyler School of Medicine.
Do No Harm is an organization that has strove to protect healthcare from ideological threats, according to its website. It opposes identity politics in medical research and clinical practices. The group has previously released reports about medical associations backing off diversity, equity and inclusion requirements as well as revealing the lasting impacts of racial issues in the medical field.
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