New lawsuits argue that scholarship programs aimed at diversifying the student bodies at medical school are discriminatory, as the assault on affirmative action continues.
The advocacy group Do No Harm, which says it opposes “woke health care,” filed lawsuits against two scholarship programs aimed at underrepresented minorities — one offered at the University of Colorado and another by the Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons — on the grounds that they discriminate against white men, according to a recent Fox News article.
In these lawsuits, Do No Harm, which has also lobbied against gender-affirming care, is following the lead of the Supreme Court.
After the court effectively banned colleges from using race-conscious admissions policies designed to help diversify their campuses — many of which have histories of overt racism — I wrote about how the ruling opened the door for Republicans to target scholarship programs meant for racial minorities. And around that time, I also covered the push by conservatives in Congress to punish medical schools that support diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
(It’s worth noting that the Supreme Court made an exception for military academies in its 2023 ruling restricting race-conscious admissions practices.)
While the anti-diversity efforts are absurd in general, this particular attack is extremely dumb. Campus diversity programs are primarily about making colleges more interesting, challenging and enriching environments full of students from various races, ethnicities, religions, genders, professions and other socioeconomic groups. This helps every student, especially in a field such as medicine where they will be treating people from all walks of life in the future.
Racists and other chauvinists often argue that diversity isn’t a strength, but the evidence says otherwise. Diversity programs are especially important at educational institutions focused on health and medicine, which study disparate outcomes and are key to maintaining public health in the United States.
Public health problems don’t live inside ideological or demographic bubbles. A virus that gets a foothold in another community can find its way to yours, so it’s just good medicine to make sure that we have people working in the health field who understand these communities, including everyone from nurses and doctors to health researchers.
This was a major focus of my video interview about the public health threats posed by Project 2025, in which I spoke with the public health experts Dr. Chris Pernell and Regina Davis Moss. You can check that out here.
To put it plainly, killing scholarship programs designed to aid historically marginalized people doesn’t make the United States more meritocratic. It makes all of us less healthy and less safe.
Ja’han Jones is an MS NOW opinion blogger. He previously wrote The ReidOut Blog.