Florida Medical College Quietly Scrubs ‘Discriminatory’ Program From Website During Biden Admin Investigation
Reagan Reese on July 15, 2023
A Florida medical college quietly deleted information regarding its elective scholar’s program from its website amid a federal investigation by the Department of Education Office of Civil Rights (OCR).
The OCR opened an investigation in April into the University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville’s Visiting Elective Scholars Program in the Department of Pediatrics, which listed that it was limited to “Black/African-American, Hispanic/Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiian, and LGBTQ+” applicants, according to an archived version of the site. Since the OCR opened the investigation into the program, the website appears to have been scrubbed of all information regarding the program, according to its current version.”
The website’s link currently reads that the page “doesn’t appear to exist” and that it “may have moved.” The website was last archived in April, and a search on the school’s website for the program does not result in any information about the initiative.
The OCR opened an investigation into the program after Mark Perry, a senior fellow at the medical watchdog group Do Not Harm, alleged that the program is a violation of Title VI and Title IX because it discriminates on the basis of race and sex, respectively, according to a Do No Harm press release.
Mark Perry has filed close to 850 complaints with the Office for Civil Rights and his campaign against programs and policies that seek to lift up women and people of color has inspired others to file hundreds of complaints of their own. https://t.co/ch5s4QustN
— The Chronicle of Higher Education (@chronicle) July 12, 2023
“We believe in the importance of diversity and inclusion in medicine and medical education,” the archived version of the department’s website read. “We created this scholarship to encourage and promote fourth year medical students from underrepresented backgrounds to rotate at the department of pediatrics in the UF College of Medicine – Jacksonville located in Jacksonville, Florida.”
The number of civil rights complaints filed to the OCR alleging discrimination in K-12 schools and universities doubled from the previous year, and nearly 19,000 were filed from October 2021 to September 2022, according to The New York Times. A majority of the complaints filed alleged of race and sex-based discrimination.
University of Florida College of Medicine – Jacksonville did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
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