Duke Health Hit With Civil-Rights Complaint

Duke University Health System (DUHS) is the subject of a federal civil-rights complaint filed by Virginia-based medical nonprofit Do No Harm. The complaint, filed on March 19 with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, highlights Duke Health’s numerous and blatant uses of race-based preferences in hiring, medical-school admissions, and other initiatives. Also described is an apparent culture of clear and deliberate racial stereotyping, evidenced by the systemic proliferation of views that are extraordinarily controversial at best and outright bigoted at worst. Do No Harm’s filing describes Duke’s actions as “both morally wrong and legally impermissible.” Yet they are not particularly surprising. The North Carolina-based institution has come under fire in recent years for a number of racially charged controversies.

In addition to the unwelcome spotlight shone by Do No Harm’s civil-rights complaint, Duke risks the loss of federal funding. Legally problematic for Duke is the fact that it receives extensive federal funding. The institution was the beneficiary of more than $1 billion of such funds in fiscal year 2023 alone. In addition to the unwelcome spotlight shone by Do No Harm’s civil-rights complaint, Duke risks the loss of federal funding after President Donald Trump’s January 21 executive order demanding university compliance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Following the order, universities and colleges receiving federal funding were briefed on their possible forfeiture of such monies for noncompliance with civil-rights law. Title VI of the 1964 act specifically obligates Duke to operate programs free from discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin. Yet Do No Harm and others have produced many examples of the institution doing just that.

In 2024, for example, Duke physician Dr. Vignesh Raman came under fire after admitting to juking the institution’s residency standards for the sake of “diversity”:

The most important thing we’ve done is, really, systemic changes to our recruitment, to try to recruit diverse residents to our program and then to retain and support those diverse residents. […] So part of this has involved transitioning to [the] completely holistic review process that we spoke about earlier today—you know, abandoning all sorts of metrics and screens, looking at people’s life story and what brought them into surgery. And the other part of it is increasing the diversity of the people who read the application, because that’s an important component of ensuring that we get diverse residents into our program. (emphasis added)

Raman’s admission aligns with Do No Harm’s complaint, which states that “racial preferences pervade DUHS’s student recruitment and admissions, resulting in a student body composed of individuals who reflect preferred skin colors, rather than individual merit.” The complaint goes on: “Indeed, internal DUHS documents proudly document … deliberate admissions decisions to boost enrollment of certain racial groups.”

Duke also terminated the employment of emergency-room physician Dr. Kendall Conger in 2024 after tiring of his repeated attempts to get his employer to explain its ominous claim that racism was a “public-health crisis,” a statement inconsistent with Conger’s professional experience and one that Duke admitted it could not prove with clinical evidence—one of the benchmarks of medicine.

Duke also, without context, displayed a bizarre graphic to Conger and his colleagues, depicting white males as “agents of oppression” while ominously labeling other demographics as their “targets.”

In 2023, Duke Health began reviewing HR policies around background checks, drug screening, and attendance to “ensure equitable and accessible hiring and retention strategies.” Such language appears to imply ugly racial stereotypes.

Color Us United, formed to advocate for a race-blind and merit-based society, started a petition against Duke’s racial practices that has gathered nearly 14,000 signatures. Meanwhile, the current presidential administration appears to be deathly serious about upholding civil rights at institutions that use federal funds. Against the fitting backdrop of “March Madness,” the ball is now in Duke’s court regarding compliance with federal law.

Mike Markham is a current writer and researcher with the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and a former program coordinator with Color Us United, a nonprofit organization that advocates for a race-blind and merit-based society.