The dean of the world-famous UCLA medical school has been accused of allowing standards to plummet by systematically discriminating against white and Asian applicants.
The David Geffen School of Medicine in Los Angeles has Nobel Prize winners among its faculty and accepts only 173 students of the 14,000 who apply each year.
But it has fallen from 6th to 18th in the rankings since Jennifer Lucerno’s appointment in June 2020 amid claims that the admissions bar for underrepresented minorities is now “as low as you can imagine.”
“All the normal criteria for getting into medical school only apply to people of certain races,” said an admissions officer at the Washington Free Beacon.
“For other people, those criteria are completely ignored.” Among the disturbing anecdotes shared is that of a student who lashed out in an operating room and accused a surgeon of messing with her after she was asked to locate a major artery, a basic medical request.
UCLA School of Medicine Dean Jennifer Lucerno has been accused of a collapse in standards since her appointment in 2020 amid allegations of affirmative action.
Lucerno, pictured left, is described as someone who is “actively involved in recruiting underrepresented students into the medical profession.”
The number of students failing basic medical knowledge tests has increased tenfold in some subjects since 2020, the Free Beacon reported.
And most students are now failing standardized tests in emergency medicine, family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics among some cohorts.
The collapse of standards has turned the institution into a “failing medical school,” according to a former admissions staff member.
Admission of students based on race has been prohibited in California since 1996 and at the federal level since a Supreme Court ruling last year.
But faculty at the school said Lucerno has ignored affirmative action bans and allegedly told colleagues that he wanted a highly qualified white male candidate moved off the residency list because “we have too many of his kind.”
The business was suspended for one day in 2021 when a Native American applicant was rejected and Lucero, furious, made committee members attend a two-hour lecture on indigenous history given by her own sister.
She is accused of packing the 25-member admissions committee with hand-picked members and terrorizing dissidents into silence by implying they are racist and threatening them with diversity training sessions.
“We were always outnumbered,” an admissions officer told the website.
“Other people would get angry when we mentioned the GPA.”
The freshmen had to attend a lecture by Lisa Gray-Garcia, a homeless activist who supports Hamas, who required the students to kneel and pray to “Mother Earth.”
Gray-Garcia harshly criticized Israel just hours after Hamas killed 1,200 people on October 7 and expressed support for Palestine, but none for the murdered Israelis.
Two members recalled that Lucero became enraged at an admissions meeting in November 2021 when members expressed doubts about a Black candidate with grades well below the usual standard.
“Didn’t you know that African American women are dying at a higher rate than everyone else?” she got angry.
“We need people like that in medical school.”
His arrival in June 2020, shortly after the killing of George Floyd, coincided with a review of the school’s curriculum that reduced preclinical training from two years to one, to free up time for “community service.”
Floyd’s murder at the hands of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin sparked a huge surge in diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and this week Lucerno was held up as an example of an ideaology gone very wrong.
Students now spend seven hours a week on “Foundations of Practice,” which includes modules on “interpersonal communication skills,” which one student described as “telling us how to be a good person.”
They must also spend at least three hours a fortnight in a class on “Structural Racism and Health Equity.”
That included lectures by a homeless activist who supported Hamas, who demanded the students kneel with her on the ground and pray to “Mother Earth.”
Lisa Gray-García led students in chanting ‘Free, Free Palestine’ during her two-hour presentation in March, to the visible discontent of Jewish students.
He later posted an account of the class on his social media pages in which he denounced the “cleansing myth” and what he described as “HELLthcare.”
Another required part of the curriculum is now an essay by self-proclaimed “fat liberationist” Marquisele Mercedes, who claims that “fatphobia is the status quo of medicine” and that weight loss is a “desperate endeavor.”
All first-year medical students at UCLA are required to read an essay by Marquisele Mercedes (pictured), a self-proclaimed “fat liberationist” who claims that “fatphobia is the status quo of medicine” and that fat loss weight is a “desperate effort.”
Mercedes has also led presentations on how “the fight against fat is manifested in the work that is done,” which she says includes the use of “fear language to encourage healthy eating and physical activity.”
Jeffrey Flier, former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world’s leading experts on obesity, said the course amounted to malpractice and promoted “extensive and dangerous misinformation.”
“This is a profoundly misguided view of obesity, a complex medical disorder with significant adverse health consequences for all racial and ethnic groups,” he added.
Lucero’s tenure has coincided with an exodus of Asian students whose numbers fell by almost a third between 2019 and 2022.
And students who remain have increasingly rights over their ignorance, with one professor reporting that he was reprimanded by a student in the operating room who accused him of putting her on the spot when he couldn’t identify a major artery.
Jeffrey Flier (pictured), former dean of Harvard Medical School and one of the world’s leading obesity experts, criticized the course, saying the curriculum “promotes extensive and dangerous misinformation.”
“I don’t know how some of these students are going to become doctors in training,” said a colleague.
‘Teachers are seeing a surprising decline in medical students’ knowledge.
“UCLA still produces very good graduates,” added another.
“But between a third and a half of medical school students are incredibly underqualified.”
Lucero also serves as vice president of Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in the school’s anesthesia department, where she has resisted efforts to hide racial identities from admissions committees by insisting that “we are not required to hide any information”.
The university’s discrimination prevention office received several complaints about his conduct in the past year, but concluded that none warranted an investigation.
The school’s structural racism class is under review and experts warned the Beacon that the university was open to a legal challenge.
Adam Mortara was one of the lead trial attorneys in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case, in which the Supreme Court banned affirmative action last year.
“You can’t have evidence of overt discrimination like this and have no one come forward,” he told the website.
And dissent is beginning to make itself felt, with professors warning that the institution’s own reputation is now at stake.
“This has been a colossal failure,” one professor wrote on a forum last month.
“The new curriculum is not working and students are not prepared for clinical rotations.”
The school fell from sixth place to 18th in the rankings since Lucero’s appointment
“The professors I work with have noticed a dramatic decline in medical students’ knowledge.”
Another noted fear of how patients would fare at the hands of his underqualified students.
“We’ve asked for metrics on how these people are actually doing,” one admissions officer said.
“None of that has ever been revealed to us.”
DailyMail.com has contacted the medical school for comment.
