Commentary

UCSF Demands Scholarship Winners Pledge Allegiance to DEI

  • By Do No Harm Staff
  • May 9, 2025
  • University of California San Francisco

The University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) is offering a $2,000 stipend, networking opportunities, and hands-on experience to visiting fourth-year medical students through its Visiting Elective Scholarship program (VESP).

The program is open to applicants for the departments of Emergency Medicine, Orthopedics, Radiology, Surgery, and Urology.

But there’s a catch.

The program’s application criteria states that it is open to “[f]ourth-year U.S. medical students who are either disadvantaged, have demonstrated a commitment to working with traditionally marginalized and disenfranchised populations, OR have demonstrated a commitment to UCSF’s PRIDE values.”

In fact, per the Orthopedic Surgery VESP application, applicants must submit a personal statement expressing their “commitment to working with diverse communities” and their involvement in DEI initiatives to proceed to the next phase of the application process.

It’s worth noting that the UC system just recently ended its practice of requiring diversity statements for faculty applicants. Students, apparently, are not so lucky.

Figure 1. An excerpt of the UCSF VESP application.

Additionally, applicants are prompted with questions asking them whether they consider themselves to be “disadvantaged” and asking them their racial and ethnic background.

Figure 2. An excerpt of the UCSF VESP application.
Figure 3. An excerpt of the UCSF VESP application.

It’s not clear why one’s racial or ethnic background would be germane to their ability to practice medicine.

But, at least as it pertains to the Department of Orthopedic Surgery, race appears to be a major concern for UCSF.

According to a quote on the UCSF website from C. Benjamin Ma, MD, the chair of the UCSF Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, DEI is essential to the department.

“Diversity, equity, and inclusion are top strategic priorities for this department with the explicit goals of expanding access, increasing diversity, and actively promoting inclusion in our professional community and among the populations we serve,” the quote reads. “To achieve these goals, we have employed a strategy of educating, incorporating change into processes, and infusing this thinking into all parts of the academic, clinical, and outreach mission.” 

A video advertising the department’s DEI philosophy likewise stressed the importance of having physicians be of a common ethnic background as their patients, echoing the debunked notion that racial concordance improves health outcomes.

Unfortunately, this behavior is par for the course for UCSF.

UCSF’s Fresno campus previously maintained a racially discriminatory scholarship for visiting obstetrics students, only changing the discriminatory criteria following a civil rights complaint from Do No Harm.

At UCSF, DEI is truly baked into the institutional DNA.