A year-long inquiry by the federal authorities has uncovered “illegal” admissions practices that favor Black and Hispanic applicants
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has accused the Yale School of Medicine of illegally discriminating against White and Asian applicants, following a year-long inquiry into its admissions practices.
The investigation comes as the administration of President Donald Trump has intensified scrutiny of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies at federally funded institutions over the past year. The authorities have argued that universities which receive taxpayer money must comply with federal anti-discrimination laws.
According to the DOJ, US medical schools in particular “use substantial federal financial assistance.”
In a press release on Thursday, the DOJ stated that the leadership of the Yale School of Medicine has “intentionally selected applicants based on their race,” and “studied how to use racial proxies to circumvent” a 2023 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited the use of affirmative action in admission decisions.
The inquiry indicated that “Black and Hispanic students have a much higher chance of admission to Yale than White or Asian students with the same test scores,” the DOJ added.
The press release noted that “illegal race politics” are of particular concern in the medical field, “where quality and excellence are vitally important to public safety.”
“Yale’s use of race resulted in a Black applicant being as much as 29 times higher odds of getting an interview for admission than an equally strong Asian applicant with similar academic credentials,” the letter concludes, citing GPAs and standardized medical exam scores from the 2023, 2024 and 2025 admissions cycles.
Last Wednesday, the DOJ sent a similar letter to the David Geffen School of Medicine at the University of California, Los Angeles, accusing it of unfairly favoring “preferred race classes of Black and Hispanic.”
An analysis of fundraising disclosures published by Yale’s student newspaper in January found conservatives to be overwhelmingly underrepresented among professors at the Ivy League university, with 97.6% of contributions going to Democrats.
Over the past year, the Trump administration has suspended funding to several Ivy League schools, including Harvard University, Columbia University, Princeton University, and Cornell University, over alleged anti-Semitism and refusal to dismantle DEI programs.
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