The allegations triggered an email message from the dean of the medical school, Steven Dubinett, who denied the claims and said that students and faculty "are held to the highest standards of academic excellence." He subsequently told an obscure Los Angeles Times opinion columnist that the allegations, published in the Washington Free Beacon, are "fact-free."

Hiring and admissions decisions, he wrote in his message last week, are "based on merit," not race, "in a process consistent with state and federal law."

But Dubinett himself directs a center within the medical school, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, that houses a race-based fellowship experts say is illegal.

Participants in the "iDIVERSE" program "must be" black, Hispanic, Native American, Pacific Islander, LGBT, or a woman, according to screenshots of a now-deleted webpage obtained by the Free Beacon. Fellows research ways to increase diversity in clinical trials as part of a study funded by Pfizer, the American Heart Association, and Gates Ventures, the personal LLC of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.