ODU Med School Discriminates by Race, Goldfarb Contends
by James A. Bacon
Stanley Goldfarb, a former associate dean at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, served a half year on the Old Dominion University Board of Visitors before his nomination by Governor Glenn Youngkin was torpedoed earlier this year by General Assembly Democrats.
He had made a national name for himself as founder of Do No Harm, a nonprofit that opposes the takeover of the nation’s medical schools and medical profession by social-justice advocates. He quickly made himself unpopular at ODU by asking questions about the university’s implementation of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion that no one wanted to answer.
ODU’s friends in the General Assembly struck Goldfarb from the board, but he hasn’t gone away. In an article just published in National Review, he detailed the scope of racial preferences in admissions to ODU’s medical school, the Eastern Virginia Medical School.
Despite the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court ruling severely restricting the consideration of race in college admissions, ODU “made no meaningful attempt to stop discriminating,” Goldfarb writes.
The MCAT scores prove it. Overall, accepted black students had average scores in the 77th percentile, while Hispanics were in the 83rd percentile. The average white student had to score in the 88th percentile, while Asians had to clear 90 percent. In fact, the average MCAT score of Asian students who weren’t admitted is higher than the average score of accepted black students — an unmistakable sign of discrimination.
Despite having lower scores overall, Black applicants were accepted at a higher rate — 11% — than those of other races, Goldfarb says. “That’s more than twice as high as the rate of acceptance for white applicants, and over four times higher than the 2.5 percent acceptance rate for Asian applicants. … Only racial discrimination can account for this blatantly unequal treatment.”
Notably, the disparity in MCAT scores did not meaningfully change between 2023, the year of the Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admission vs. Harvard, and the following year. “In other words,” Goldfarb writes, “the school effectively acted like the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action instead of ruling it unconstitutional.”
Bacon’s bottom line: While MCAT scores may not be a perfect predictor of how well students perform in med school and, ultimately, how they perform as physicians, but it is a good one. To be sure, standardized test scores are not destiny. Admissions policies should take into consideration a student’s special circumstances that conventional merit-based metrics don’t capture. But when such “holistic” considerations allow admissions officials to override merit metrics so consistently and overwhelmingly in favor of particular racial/ethnic groups, it constitutes a form discrimination.
Social-justice advocates routinely cite statistical disparities between racial/ethnic groups as evidence of bias. The bias at ODU couldn’t be clearer. ODU’s admissions constitute racial discrimination, and they violate the law. The practices need to end, and the officials responsible for them need to be held accountable.
Most Americans would like to see a world in which members of historically oppressed minorities have a shot at getting ahead. But it’s too late by post-graduate school to rectify a lifetime of disadvantage. The job needs to start with raising children from infancy. That requires stable families with preferably two parents, it requires decent schools, and it requires setting high standards for everyone. Start there, and there is a chance of creating equal opportunity for all within a generation. Sadly, there are no shortcuts.
There are so many tragedies associated with reverse discrimination. One of the worst is that many minority students do meet the merit criteria for admittance into medical school. Yet racial preferences for some cast a pall on all.
Another, as Goldfarb points out, is that conferring medical degrees upon less qualified doctors bodes ill for patient outcomes. The irony is that social-justice advocates contend that Black patients would be better served by having Black physicians. Will that hold true if many of the Black physicians coming out of medical schools are less qualified? Is that what the social-justice movement has come to?
Wokeism is twisted in knots. Let’s just strive for a merit-based, color-blind society that strives to create opportunity for all.
