Back to Front PageVOLUME 6, NUMBER 4
 

 

Lee C. Bollinger President University of Michigan

In the year 2000, 11.5 percent of medical school students in the United States were members of underrepresented minority groups. As recently as the mid-1960s, that number was a meager 1 percent among all American medical schools, except at Howard University and Meharry Medical College, traditionally black schools. The major variable accounting for this profound change is the use of affirmative action in admissions decisions, a practice now under heavy attack throughout all of higher education.

According to AAMC data, 1996 medical school enrollments of underrepresented minorities would have fallen 80 percent without affirmative action. In more recent studies, the AAMC and the American Council on Education observed the concrete benefits of ethnic and racial diversity in medical education and practice. These studies complement our own findings at the University of Michigan (U-M): A more diverse student body leads to measurable changes in active thinking, intellectual engagement, and key skills of citizenship such as the ability to understand others' perspectives.

Diversity among practicing physicians and medical administrators increases the availability and efficacyof health care within underrepresented minority communities, and a more diverse medical research community expands the search for advances in knowledge and treatment.

Although the increase in the number of minority M.D.s is gratifying, there is clearly more to do. To further diversity in higher education, U-M is defending itself against two lawsuits that challenge the university's use of race in admissions policies. The cases are Gratz v. Bollinger, pertaining to undergraduate admissions in our College of Literature, Science, and the Arts (LS&A), and Grutter v. Bollinger, regarding our law school admissions process. The Center for Individual Rights (CIR), a special-interest legal organization that is waging a nationwide campaign to dismantle affirmative action, represents the applicants suing the university in both cases.

In its 1978 Bakke decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that race could be considered as one of many factors in a competitive admissions process. The court reasoned that the educational benefit of diversity was a compelling governmental interest. Justice Powell said it best: "It is not too much to say that the nation's future depends upon leaders trained through wide exposure to the ideas and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples." Bakke, which arose from an admissions decision at the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, is the controlling law for the challenges to U-M's admissions programs.

In accordance with Bakke, Michigan's admissions officers consider race and ethnicity as one of many factors in selecting a diverse student body from among the pool of highly qualified applicants. The U-M School of Medicine, for instance, considers all applicants by the same set of criteria, on a file-by-file basis. There is no numerical target or quota, no separate calculation or list. There is, however, a deep and abiding institutional will to compose a student body that can reap the benefits of diversity and make a substantive contribution to the diverse needs of our nation.

In his Dec. 13, 2000, ruling in the Gratz case, U.S. District Court Judge Patrick Duggan agreed that diversity is a compelling governmental interest, and found that the current LS&A admissions policy is fully constitutional. CIR has filed an appeal with the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the university has cross-appealed. The trial on the law school admissions policy was completed in February, and we are awaiting a decision from U.S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman.

The effect of these decisions will be felt well beyond the University of Michigan. Affirmative action programs at all levels of higher education are the most effective, proven means of achieving diversity, especially at our nation's public and private flagship schools.

Current alternatives proposed for undergraduate admissions, such as the "X-percent" option, are flawed and cannot be applied to post-graduate and professional education, including medicine. And the ultimate solution, remediation of K-12 public education in under-resourced school systems, will take many years, during which we will lose several generations of students.

Three of America's most highly esteemed neurologists - Keith Black, M.D., Alexa Canady, M.D., and Ben Carson, M.D. - are among the underrepresented minority students who graduated from the U-M Medical School in the 1970s and 1980s. Each of these distinguished individuals went on to establish new benchmarks in their specialties. Their contributions illustrate the compelling need to tap all the talent that exists within our society, to open the doors to every single person whose achievements and aspirations bespeak the potential to contribute to the greater good. We owe it to our institutions, our students, our professions, and to our increasingly diverse nation.

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