by Sharelle Burt
Could 1, 2025
The scholarship was created in 2013 in efforts to supply medical faculty tuition for Black college students who maintained a 3.0 GPA and confirmed a necessity for monetary help
The Herschell Lee Hamilton, M.D., Endowed Scholarship in Medicine, designed for Black medical college students on the College of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), was canceled after the Trump administration opened an investigation accusing it of being a “race-based scholarship” in February 2025, 1819 Information studies.
On April 11, donors have been alerted by the Workplace of Development and Strategic Initiatives that “UAB has made the choice to discontinue awarding the scholarship(s) and to return the scholarship funds to you.”
This adopted a lawsuit from a conservative group, supported by the Trump administration, that accused the scholarship, which targets African-American college students, of being discriminatory.
The college obtained a letter from the U.S. Division of Training’s Workplace of Civil Rights (OCR) stating UAB and 5 different schools have been being investigated for “alleged impermissible race-based scholarships and race-based segregation.” The litigation was filed with the U.S. Division of Training’s Workplace for Civil Rights in late April 2025 by the Equal Safety Venture.
This nationwide group opposes affirmative motion efforts based mostly on race. The identical group, based on WDHN, additionally accused the College of Alabama’s Norton-Textra Endowed Scholarship for minority college students in English of being discriminatory.
U.S. Secretary of Training Linda McMahon mentioned the division “won’t yield on this dedication” to “guarantee universities usually are not discriminating towards their college students based mostly on race and race stereotypes.”
Added the previous WWE govt, “College students should be assessed based on benefit and accomplishment, not prejudged by the colour of their pores and skin.”
The Hamilton scholarship was established in 2013 to supply tuition assist for Black college students attending medical faculty who maintained a 3.0 GPA and demonstrated a monetary want. It began with donations from the Hamilton household and others. UAB selected the recipients yearly.
“So for years, I’ve seen UAB as a frontrunner, a number one establishment within the state that had some stage of integrity and ethical standing,” mentioned Herschell Lanier Hamilton, son of the scholarship’s namesake, based on AL.com. “Because it seems, they’ve none.”
“They’re simply one other parrot parroting the identical misguided racial nonsense and tropes and insurance policies on the expense of deserving Black medical college students, on this occasion,” he added. “It actually is ridiculous and it’s unconscionable that you just require an establishment to divorce itself from a pupil scholarship that honors the work of any person like my father, who wasn’t a controversial determine.”
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