‘Too Much Science in the Curriculum’

Minority representation in med schools—which had dipped in California and even ebbed nationally after California’s landmark Prop 209 (banning affirmative action)—roared back to peak-AA levels and beyond. “Schools decided it was more important to have a racially diverse corps caring for patients than to identify the most capable individuals,” recalls Stanley Goldfarb, MD, former associate dean with the prestigious Perelman School of Medicine at Penn. “Achieving this involved a growing movement to eliminate traditional academic qualifications for entry.” In 2022, convinced that antiracism was becoming anti-medicine at Penn and pretty much everywhere else, Goldfarb established a nonprofit organisation called Do No Harm, the charter mission of which was “keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice.” Today, it claims 50,000 members in fourteen countries.

Read the full article in Quillette.