NIH Is Funding Race-Based Hires

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is spending millions of taxpayer dollars to hire people based on their skin color. That’s the reality of what appears to be a new grant program that’s already active at Northwestern University. It’s one more example of the discriminatory, race-based decision-making that’s corrupting healthcare and jeopardizing its quality.

Northwestern just announced that NIH gave it $16 million to “disrupt systemic barriers that impede the full participation of underrepresented groups… in the areas of cancer, cardiovascular, and brain and behavioral sciences.” With this substantial sum, the university will “hire 15 new tenure-track faculty, and will deploy innovative strategies to ensure the success of faculty members from historically underrepresented populations.”

Is race really the most important factor in hiring faculty for key medical fields? Of course not. What really matters is the quality of hires, regardless of skin color, since the best candidates can conduct the best research that leads to medical progress and treatments. By putting race first with these grants, NIH is both abetting discrimination and potentially undermining medical teaching, research, and innovation.

The leadership of the National Institutes of Health should be ashamed, and better yet, investigated by Congress. Why is the federal government using taxpayer money to hire people based on their race? The name for that is discrimination – and taxpayers should never be complicit in it.

Do you know of a government policy that brings discrimination into healthcare? Please let us know – securely and anonymously.