Harmeet Dhillon exposes UC school for discriminating against whites, Asians

Today I’d like to salute Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, who just caught an elite liberal university red-handed: It seems the University of California San Francisco has been engaged in racial discrimination against white and Asian applicants to the school.

Dhillon writes on X that: “UCSF Med School is 4.6x more likely to admit Hispanic applicants & 12.6x more likely to admit black applicants, than white applicants w/ the SAME academic & socioeconomic backgrounds. Race has no place in admissions & @CivilRights Division will end these illegal practices!”

Now you may remember that race-based admissions were finally ended by the Supreme Court two years ago, in the decision Students for Fair Admissions vs. Harvard . In that case, the plaintiffs presented evidence that Harvard had engaged in blatant racism against Asians; admissions officials chose not to admit Asians who had higher scores than other applicants. In reality, Harvard simply wanted to boost the admittance rate for non-Asians.

This is racial discrimination, and it’s wrong, and should be considered illegal under federal civil rights law. The same laws that make it illegal to, for instance, not hire someone because they are Black should also make it illegal to not admit someone to school because they are Asian. Or because they are white. Or because of any other racial reason.

Finally, we have a Supreme Court that agrees, which is why the decision in 2023 finally recognized that race-based admissions were illegal. But despite that decision, UC San Francisco has continued to ask applicants their race and admit them based on their answer. The proof is the result, according to Dhillon. In her press release announcing the finding, she writes:

“UCSF Medical School’s application process has three stages: the Primary Application, the Secondary Application, and the interview. The Department’s investigation found that race is used to determine which students will advance from one stage to the next, and ultimately be admitted. The Primary and Secondary Applications prompt applicants to identify and discuss their race. And while less than 10% of Secondary Applications advance to the interview stage, black and Hispanic applicants were invited to interview at far higher rates than white and Asian applicants, despite having lower MCAT scores and undergraduate GPAs. From 2023-2025, UCSF Medical School admitted black and Hispanic applicants who academically underperformed the average rejected white and Asian student.”

This is plainly illegal. Higher education admissions officers desperately want to cherrypick the student population based on skin color, but they are no longer allowed to do so, in the same way that they are no longer allowed to discriminate against Jewish applicants, another shameful legacy of the American higher education system. Here was Dhillon recognizing this appalling history the other day.

She’s right. The same thing that applies to Jewish students applies to whites, and Asians, and, by the way, would apply as well to Black students and Hispanic students and Native Americans if, for whatever reason, some racist admissions officers were trying to depress the number of accepted students from any of those groups.

Dhillon says that if the school does not bring its policies into compliance, the civil rights department will file suit. I hope she watches UC San Francisco very, very closely.

Robby Soave is co-host of The Hill’s commentary show “Rising” and a senior editor for Reason Magazine. This column is an edited transcription of his daily commentary.