Stanford Medical School proudly announced its new crop of surgical interns.

I can say confidently that they are all among the best candidates in the country because Stanford by its stature could have its pick of the litter. The class of institutions with which they compete would include the Mayo Clinic, Harvard, and similarly prestigious systems.

Still, you have to admit that the new class is a bit…odd. There was something rather striking about the photograph, and it took me a while to notice exactly what.

Can you guess?

I bet you can! I am certain that the people who made the selections would explain to you how “diverse” this group is, but it seems to be the opposite to me. And it certainly doesn’t look like the choices were made simply on the basis of merit.

Out of Stanford’s crop of candidates only 1 out of 13 was male and only 30% are white, and they are all females.

It strikes me as implausible that that is the result of a race and sex-blind admissions process, and it certainly wasn’t based upon an attempt to create a racially balanced mix.

No. The intent was clearly the opposite: to create a racially and gender-imbalanced group of people, which strikes me as of questionable legality. Clearly, there was conscious discrimination involved. You don’t get a racial and gender distribution like that without trying very hard to get it.

Here is the gender breakdown by race:

I am not obsessed with the racial balance of doctors, residents, or medical students. As long as they are the best at their job then I haven’t got a problem. None of us is supposed to be obsessed with it, right?

Further, with regard to these particular residents, I have no doubt that each and every one is qualified not just to be a doctor, but a resident at Stanford. While they are clearly chosen based on their race and gender, I am quite sure that since Stanford could have any resident they wanted they were all excellent. Having seen candidate pools at elite educational institutions I can tell you that the pool of excellent candidates far exceeds the supply of slots, so no worries about quality.

That, though, is not the point. They clearly WERE chosen based not solely or even mainly based on their qualifications, and that fact is obvious. Look at the photo. If you pooled all the qualifying candidates the makeup of the pool considered looked NOTHING like the final choices.

For all the talk of using affirmative action or whatever name you want to call racial preferences, the intent is clearly not to ensure that the group “looks like America.” America is over 60% white, and about 50% female. This group is 93% female and 70% non-White.

Stanford is using discriminatory practices based upon race and sex in order to make their choices, plain and simple. This is both wrong and illegal, not that anybody is going to do anything about it I can assure you.

There is nothing benign about this. It is the result of bias–two biases, actually, that we prohibited by law because using them is unjust.

Stanford used to be a great institution, but these days every time I see anything about the place it is highlighting some awful, usually woke story.