When patients lie on the operating table, they don’t care what their doctors look like or which political parties they support. They just want a safe and successful operation.

Many medical schools, however, apparently believe that patients have the wrong priority. These universities place diversity, equity, and inclusion above all else, even if it means worse outcomes for patients. This obsession with racial quotas is destroying some of America’s best medical schools. 

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At UCLA, for example, more than half of the medical school’s students failed their standardized exams on emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics, a failure rate 10 times the national average. 

The school has plummeted in the rankings since adopting an “anti-racism roadmap” in 2020 that aimed to increase the number of minority students by lowering admission standards. According to whistleblowers, the chief admissions officer turned away talented applicants because of their skin color. She reportedly rejected one student because UCLA had “too many of his kind.” 

UCLA isn’t alone. Leaked documents from Harvard Medical School revealed that the university set exact percentages for minority and female faculty to hire — 89% for women and 34% for minority groups that Harvard deemed worthy.

Race or gender should not be used to harm or help a person. Racial and gender quotas are immoral. They’re also illegal. 

The Supreme Court held in 1978, and again in 2023, that universities cannot use racial quotas in their admissions decisions, yet many universities elect to ignore the law. Students have had to continue to file lawsuit after lawsuit, including new litigation against UCLA, to hold universities accountable.

Congress doesn’t need to sit on the sidelines while a generation of medical students fights this issue in the courts. Taxpayers provide more than $28 billion to medical schools, and they expect these universities to follow the law. 

We’re introducing the EDUCATE Act to ensure that tax dollars aren’t used to poison the next generation of doctors with the false notion that a doctor’s skin color or gender matters more than their ability.  

Our bill would strip federal funding from any university that denies qualified students admission because of their race or sex. The promise of America is equal opportunity, not a guaranteed equal outcome. Medical degrees aren’t participation prizes, and fair-minded people don’t want to fund universities that treat them as such.  

It would also prevent universities from forcing students to take an oath to support a university’s definition of diversity. The University of Connecticut, for example, made students pledge to “actively support policies that promote social justice.” Guess whose idea of “social justice” prevailed? Following pressure from the Trump administration, UConn abandoned this pledge. Every university should follow suit, and if they don’t, our bill will hold them responsible. 

Professors also need protection from the deluge of DEI policies. One study found that 44% of medical schools adopted tenure promotion policies that reward faculty for including DEI in their research. Congress can ensure universities reward professors for their contributions to science and teaching, not for paying lip service to a college’s DEI dogma.

Our bill would also prohibit universities from compelling their students to complete DEI coursework that is wholly unrelated to the study of medicine. An analysis of America’s top medical schools found that medical school course catalogues offer more classes on diversity than on chemistry or obesity. No patient wants a doctor who spent more time debating whether a mother should be called a “birthing person” than they did in a science lab. 

Finally, we must eliminate DEI offices that are fueling the obsession with race and gender in America’s medical schools. The sole purpose of DEI departments is to find new ways to skirt our laws on racial and gender quotas, and taxpayers are done paying for it. 

The U.S. is home to the most gifted and innovative doctors on Earth, and it’s not by happenstance. We sought them out by making medical school one of the most impressive, merit-based institutions in our country. 

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION MEMBERS REACH PANDEMIC AGREEMENT

It’s wrong for universities, which are supported by taxpayers, to prioritize the DEI agenda over merit in any academic program, but it’s lethal to do this in medical schools. It needs to stop. There is no reward for being stupid. 

Congress should not stand by as this dangerous foolishness drives more medical schools into the ground. 

John Kennedy is a United States senator from Louisiana. 

Greg Murphy represents North Carolina’s Third Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives.