UCLA, repeat offender on discrimination

UCLA has been under scrutiny for allowing antisemitism to run rampant on campus.

Now the university’s medical school is being sued for racial discrimination in admissions.

The U.S. Department of Justice joined the lawsuit in federal court this week, arguing that UCLA is collecting and using data on the race of applicants, in violation of the Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

But state law has already banned the use of race in admissions for 30 years — and UCLA allegedly ignored it.

Voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996, and defeated a repeal effort by voting down Proposition 16 in 2020.

That’s right: the same voters who chose Joe Biden overwhelmingly against Donald Trump also kept the state’s ban on affirmative action in place.

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But universities evidently think they know better.

And the allegations against UCLA go back a long way.

Nearly 20 years ago, then-UCLA professor Tom Groseclose accused UCLA of sneaking in racial criteria, especially by encouraging students to discuss race on admissions essay.

He wrote in a report that he released in 2008:

“A growing body of evidence strongly suggests that UCLA is cheating on admissions. Specifically, applicants often reveal their own race on the essay part of their application. This allows admissions staff members to learn the race of applicants; then, in violation of Proposition 209, readers use such information to evaluate applicants. To the extent that this happens-an extent which can only be assessed with systematic data on admissions-such practices are de facto implementations of racial preferences.”

Groseclose, a statistics expert, asked UCLA for data on a random sample of 1,000 applicants so that he could see for himself whether the university was violating Proposition 209.

The university refused to give him the data. He resigned from an admissions oversight committee in protest.

If the complaint against UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine is taken at face value, nothing has changed. 

If anything, the university administration had become even more committed to DEI since the Black Lives Matter movement. 

Until Trump.

Now, UCLA’s pattern of discrimination — in favor of DEI candidates, and against Jewish students — is under scrutiny.

Gavin Newsom has defended UCLA in the antisemitism cases. The governor has angrily claimed that the Trump administration is trying to destroy “academic freedom” — a freedom that only applies to the left.

Will he say the same now?

The plaintiffs include Students for Fair Admissions, which prevailed against Harvard.

That’s a sign that this is not a frivolous case, or some kind of political power grab.

Newsom has toyed with proposals for “reparations” for slavery, and signed an official apology by the state for past racism.

The irony is that racism may persist in California — on campus, among the governor’s political allies in the academic world.

There is no excuse for racial discrimination — especially at a medical school, whose graduates will go on to make life-and-death decisions.

The governor should urge UCLA to settle the case — and to reform its admissions policies.