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The University of Connecticut’s School of Medicine has been hit with a federal civil rights complaint over a program that claims to be a “pipeline for students of color,” allegedly at the expense of white and Asian students.
Do No Harm (DNH), an organization focused on eradicating racialization in the medical field, filed a civil rights complaint against the medical school Wednesday morning with the U.S. Department of Education over its Visiting Externship for Students Underrepresented in Medicine (VESUM) program.
“By marketing the externship as a ‘pipeline for students of color,’ UConn’s School of Medicine isn’t even trying to hide its racially discriminatory behavior. The school has put identity politics above merit, excellence, and skill,” DNH chairman Dr. Stanley Goldfarb told The Federalist. “The program is a clear violation of federal law and strips qualified candidates of opportunities to progress in the medical field. Knowing the Department of Education takes these sorts of violations very seriously, we hope our complaint leads to an investigation of UConn’s discriminatory practices. Do No Harm remains committed to driving out divisive ideology and restoring integrity to America’s healthcare system.”
The DNH complaint says the program is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, the Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (SFFA) which ended racialized admissions schemes, and an executive order signed by President Donald Trump titled “Ending Illegal Discrimination and RestoringMerit-Based Opportunities.”
The program is advertised prominently on the school’s “Embracing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” page — one dedicated to an ideology that the Trump administration has been moving to stop in educational institutions since January.
On the DEI page, the school says it deliberately maintains a “diverse residency program and workforce,” which certainly suggests some kind of official or unofficial racial or gender quota. The page continues to boast about how 24 percent of UConn medical students are from “underrepresented groups in medicine” and how 46.8 percent of medical faculty are women, while 9.2 percent are minorities.
VESUM itself offers a $1,500 stipend for third-year medical students from “groups underrepresented in medicine (URiM)” who attend other eligible universities to be involved with fourth year externships in a variety of medical areas like anesthesiology, pediatrics, surgery, and obstetrics / gynecology. The program says its “immediate objective” is to increase the amount of “URiM” students, suggesting again they are excluding white and Asian students.
The application for the program includes a check-mark in case students heard about the VESUM program through a “DEI office,” and also uses a backhanded way of ascertaining an applicant’s race by asking in an essay prompt “How has your lived experience and background as underrepresented in medicine make you competitive for our residency program?”
Questions like that have been used by schools attempting to bypass the SFFA decision.
The DNH complaint says the VESUM program “discriminates against white and Asian students” and that “UConn does not consider whites and Asians to be underrepresented in medicine” because it has stated that “it considers ‘Native Americans,’ ‘African Americans,’ ‘Hispanics/Latinx,’ ‘the LGBTQ community,’ ‘persons with disabilities,’ and ‘persons living in poverty’ to be underrepresented in medicine.”
“Illegal DEI programs like UConn’s externship program ‘not only violate the text and spirit of our longstanding federal civil-rights laws,’ but ‘they also undermine our national unity, as they deny, discredit, and undermine the traditional American values of hard work, excellence, and individual achievement in favor of an unlawful, corrosive, and pernicious identity-based spoils system,’” the DNH complaint states. “At a minimum, UConn disfavors white and Asian applicants.”
While UConn ostensibly allows for white students, so long as they are considered “LGBTQ,” “disabled,” or “low-income,” DNH says that “does not cure UConn’s race discrimination.”
“A student of color could always apply to the externship without additionally identifying as LGBTQ, disabled, or low-income,” the DNH complaint states. “A white or Asian applicant, however, must additionally identify as LGBTQ, disabled, or low-income to be eligible to apply to the externship program. White and Asian students are thus ‘force[d] … to overcome additional hurdles’ to apply to the externship program because of their race.”
UConn did not respond to a request for comment from The Federalist.
Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.
