UPenn medical school professor says new 'anti-racism' policies are 'lowering standards and corrupting medicine' because they focus on 'skin color' and not the 'best and brightest'

A University of Pennsylvania professor has condemned recent movements for racial equity in health care, saying they prevent white and Asian students from being accepted to medical school.

Dr. Stanley Goldfarb, 78, professor emeritus at the university's medical school, told the New York Post that a 'focus on diversity' has become detrimental to medical education.

'I understand we need to give people more opportunities,' Goldfarb said. 'But there are some things you can't sacrifice.

'This focus on diversity means we're going to take someone with a certain skin color because we think they're OK, that they can do the work, but we're not going to look for the best and the brightest.

'We're going to look for people who are just OK to make sure we have the right mixture of ethnic groups in our medical schools.'

A spokesperson for the medical school said Goldfarb's statements do not reflect 'core values' representative of the school.

To complement his public statements, Goldfarb is also chairman of Do No Harm, an organization that says it wants to remove 'the same radical movement behind critical race theory in the classroom and Defund the Police in health care.

The organization's website says it works toward protecting doctors, patients and health care in its entirety from 'discriminatory, divisive ideologies.'

He most recently wrote a new book, released in March, titled 'Take Two Aspirin and Call Me by My Pronouns: Why Turning Doctors into Social Justice Warriors Is Destroying American Medicine.'

In response to Goldfarb's public comments, the school's chairman, Dr. Michael Parmacek, has called Goldfarb 'racist' in communication with school staff, according to The Post.

Goldfarb said he blames the 2018 arrival of Senior Vice Dean Dr. Suzanne Rose for the school's push toward diversity.

'We'd had a very stable leadership for quite a while and resisted going the way some other medical schools were going but she brought in this new ideology,' Goldfarb said.

'She wanted to link up to what the American Medical Association was doing in education, which was promoting woke ideas, and there was a phrase that she told me that always stuck with me.

'She said we have too much science in the curriculum - which meant physicians should be more akin to social workers in their activities, particularly primary care physicians, rather than learning hard science that relates to patient care.'

In 2020, the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) said systemic racism was to blame for the disparities between white and black patients.

They then announced a three-year plan in 2021 to 'aggressively push forward' policy to encourage people of color to enter the medical profession.

Because of this, other students do not have access to medical school, Goldfarb said.

'It's manyfold harder for a white medical student who has average grades to get accepted into medical school, maybe 30 or 40 times harder than a minority student with the same grades,' he continued.

Dr. Ashley Denmark, founder of Project Diversify Medicine, started a petition in early 2022 demanding Goldfarb's removal from the school.

Denmark, 38, started Project Diversify Medicine to help minorities get into medical school.

'Goldfarb represents the privilege that a lot of white male doctors enjoy, which is the ability to express themselves freely without recourse,' Denmark said.

'Doctors like me don't get the support a white doctor like Goldfarb does. Racism ends in a funeral for a lot of black and brown patients. All we want is more doctors who look like our community.' [Looks matter in a doctor??]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11267659/UPenn-professor-says-new-anti-racism-policies-lowering-standards-corrupting-medicine.html

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Berkeley is slammed for allowing NINE student groups to create 'Jew-free zones' that prevent speakers who support Israel or Zionism from being allowed on campus

Several student groups at the University of California, Berkeley, law school have adopted a bylaw prohibiting pro-Israel speakers at events.

Written by Berkeley Law Students for Justice in Palestine (LSJP), the bylaw is meant to ensure 'the safety and welfare of Palestinian students on campus.' It added that the organization will hold 'Palestine 101' training courses.

At least nine groups have adopted the rule so far, including the Berkeley Law Muslim Student Association, Middle Eastern and North African Law Students Association, Womxn of Color Collective, Asian Pacific American Law Students Association, Queer Caucus, Community Defense Project, Women of Berkeley Law and Law Students of African Descent.

Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school's dean since 2017, identifies as Jewish and recognizes that under this new bylaw he would not be able to speak.

'It is troubling to broadly exclude a particular viewpoint from being expressed,' he told The Jewish News of Northern California. 'Indeed, taken literally, this would mean that I could not be invited to speak because I support the existence of Israel, though I condemn many of its policies.'

Some Jewish organizations have criticized Chemerinsky's response, indicating he has allowed for an anti-Semitic environment at the school.

Head of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Berkeley law alumnus Kenneth L. Marcus said that students involved 'are taking a step down a very ugly road.'

'Berkeley Law wouldn't be Berkeley Law if students didn't engage in a certain amount of wrongheaded political nonsense,' he said.

'This is different, because it's not just a political stunt. It is tinged with antisemitism and anti-Israel national origin discrimination.'

The Jewish Students Association at Berkeley Law wrote in response to the byline that they were 'saddened' and 'concerned' that groups will 'silence Jewish voices on campus' while alienating 'many Jewish students from certain groups on campus.'

'Students can advocate for Palestinians and criticize Israeli policies without denying Israel the right to exist or attacking the identity of other students,' the statement, co-written by five members, says. 'We are troubled that this bylaw creates an environment in which only one viewpoint is acceptable.'

The campus's larger group, the Jewish Students Association, complemented this opinion. 'When an affinity group adopts this by-law or conditions speaking privileges on denouncing Israel, many Jewish people are put in a position all too familiar: deny or denigrate a part of their identity or be excluded from community groups,' the group wrote.

The bylaw starts by saying the group, which adopts it will 'include a Palestine-centered and de-colonial approach to holding club activities,' according to a LSJP Instagram post.

'The (insert organization name) is committed to providing a supportive community space for all indigenous peoples globally, including movements for Palestinian liberation,' it reads.

A caption on the post says LSJP is openly promoting the bylaw to other student groups: 'LSJP is calling ALL student organizations at Berkeley law to take an anti-racist and anti-settler colonial stand and adopt the bylaw into their constitutions ASAP!'

In response to backlash from the bylaw, LSJP said they believed 'Israel is an apartheid state,' which requires them to 'have an obligation to act.'

'Supporting Palestinian liberation does not mean opposition to Jewish people or the Jewish religion; in fact, Jewish liberation and Palestinian liberation are intertwined, and we are committed to each other's safety,' it said.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11266921/Law-student-groups-Berkeley-amend-bylaws-develop-Jewish-free-zones.html

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Appeals Court judge says he will REFUSE to take on law clerks from Yale because the 'intolerant' Ivy League school 'not only tolerates the cancellation of views - it actively practices it'

A federal appeals court judge appointed by former President Donald Trump has said he will no longer hire clerks from Yale Law School, which he says is plagued by 'cancel culture' and students disrupting conservative speakers.

'Yale presents itself as the best, most elite institution of legal education,' US Circuit Judge James Ho said in remarks given to the Federalist Society on Thursday. 'Yet it's the worst when it comes to legal cancellation.'

Ho said Yale 'sets the tone for other law schools, and for the legal profession at large,' but it has set a poor example in recent years due to its 'closed and intolerant environment.'

The judge then added, Yale: 'not only tolerates the cancellation of views - it actively practices it.'

'I want nothing to do with it,' Ho concluded.

He has urged his fellow judges to likewise boycott the Ivy League institution which has been the scene for several controversies over an allegedly 'woke' culture among students and faculty leading to several flashpoints in this year alone.

Yale Law School is one of the most prestigious law schools in the country, having produced some of the nation's most prominent leaders, including Presidents Bill Clinton and Gerald Ford, at least five current US senators and four current Supreme Court Justices.

Among the incidents he cited was a free speech talk in March by Kristen Waggoner - who defended a Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a gay wedding in a case before the Supreme Court - that was disrupted by nearly 120 students supporting the LGBTQ community.

Waggoner, who is now the president of the conservative religious rights group Alliance Defending Freedom, has supported Ho's remarks.

'Yale still hasn't condemned the behavior of its law students last semester, so no one should be surprised when a federal judge notices,' she said in a statement after the judge's comments.

The havoc caused by the student demonstrators appeared to violate the university's free speech policy and when they were reminded by moderator Kate Stith, she was met with chants and raised middle fingers, to which she replied: 'Grow up.'

The students hit back, arguing that their disturbance was execution of 'free speech' and continued to scream at the panelists.

Police were forced to escort the guest speakers from Yale Law School's free speech debate after the students intimidated the conservative panelist by yelling obscenities, including one person who shouted 'I will literally fight you, b***h.'

Heather Gerken, Dean Yale Law School, insisted that the students hadn't violated the college's rules.

Judge Ho has previously railed against the woke culture at Yale, having defended Ilya Shapiro - former director of the Cato Institute's Robert A. Levy Center - after students at Georgetown University's law school urged that he be ousted from a new faculty position.

Shapiro caused outrage when he wrote tweets questioning President Joe Biden's pledge to nominate a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court.

A prominent conservative legal scholar, Shapiro was suspended but later cleared to become the executive director of Georgetown Law's Center for the Constitution.

He eventually quit, however, saying the school's handling of the matter made working there 'untenable.'

Ho said, 'At Yale, 'cancellations and disruptions seem to occur with special frequency.'

Senior US Circuit Judge Laurence Silberman of the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, an appointee of former Republican President Ronald Reagan, had in March called on judges to think twice about bringing on Yale students who disrupted Waggoner's event.

He wrote in an email, 'All federal judges – and all federal judges are presumably committed to free speech – should carefully consider whether any such student so identified should be disqualified for potential clerkships.'

Silberman said students at the event had 'attempted to shout down speakers participating in a panel discussion on free speech.'

The incident 'prompts me to suggest that students who are identified as those willing to disrupt any such panel discussion should be noted,' he wrote.

Ho said that event was just one example. U.S. Circuit Judge William Pryor of the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals was also 'disrupted by loud angry law students in the classroom' at Yale a few years ago.

That incident, Ho said, was because as Alabama's Republican attorney general, Pryor backed Texas' defense of the anti-sodomy law struck down in 2003 in the landmark Supreme Court gay rights case Lawrence v. Texas.

Ho, according to NPR, is an outspoken opponent of abortion rights and a staunch advocate for gun rights, causing the public broadcaster to refer to him as potentially 'President Trump's most enduring legacy.'

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11268739/Judge-says-REFUSE-clerks-Yale-intolerant-school-fuels-cancel-culture.html

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