University eliminates language favoring racial minorities from scholarship
The University of Colorado Boulder has revised a scholarship for “underrepresented” minorities following a federal lawsuit from Do No Harm.
The medical reform group sued the public university for its med school scholarship focused on radiation oncology. The scholarship now says it is “open to all applicants.”
“[T]he Underrepresented Minority Visiting Elective Scholarship was available only to students from groups that are historically underrepresented in medicine,’ excluding white and Asian American students,” according to Do No Harm’s news release.
The $2,000 scholarship was open to “African American/Black, Native American, Hispanic/Latino, Pacific Islander, LGBTQ+ [applicants], or those from a disadvantaged socioeconomic background,” according to the settlement.
“Do No Harm has at least one member who is ready and able to apply for the scholarship, but cannot without judicial relief from the medical school’s unlawful racial preferences,” according to the lawsuit.
The chairman of Do No Harm praised the settlement.
“We are pleased that University of Colorado eliminated the racial requirement for this scholarship,” Dr. Stanley Goldfarb stated in a news release. He is a former associate dean of the University of Pennsylvania’s medical school.
“Racial discrimination is immoral and has no place in medical education,” Goldfarb stated. “Medical scholarships should go to the most qualified candidate based on merit, not race.”
The university will also open up another program called “Graduate Experiences for Multicultural Students” to all races, according to CPR News.
A 2021 information page for the program stated applicants would be “selected on the basis of interest in biomedical science research careers, academic achievement and inclusion in an underrepresented group or category” which included “first generation college attendee, low income, financial need, or ethnic identity as African American, Hispanic, American Indian, Alaska Native, or Southeast Asian, Pacific Islander.”
“We encourage all interested individuals to apply including individuals from groups that historically have lacked access to biomedical sciences,” the university states on the current information page for the summer 2025 session.
President Donald Trump has recently taken aim at programs that discriminate on the basis of race, as previously reported by The College Fix.
The Department of Education released a “Dear Colleague” guidance letter last Friday telling colleges that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits DEI programs that discriminate on the basis of race.
The letter also said the 2023 Supreme Court decision Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which banned affirmative action in admissions decisions, also applies to other programs that exclude due to race.
“If an educational institution treats a person of one race differently than it treats another person because of that person’s race, the educational institution violates the law,” assistant secretary for civil rights Craig Trainor wrote.
Colleges can lose their federal funding if they violate civil rights protections, the Dept. of Ed. warned.
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