OPINION:
The current antisemitism at colleges is totally unsurprising if one looks back at the admissions policies from 100 years ago (“ADL: Antisemitic incidents hit record high in U.S. as post-Oct. 7 climate fuels harassment,” Web, April 22).
Many universities (most notably Harvard and Yale) placed a quota on the number of Jews they admitted. In fact, many of the faculty members were Nazi sympathizers.
Abbott Lowell, the president of Harvard University from 1909 to 1933, raised the alarm about a “Jewish problem” when the number of Jewish students grew from 6% to 22% percent between 1908 and 1922. Soon thereafter, Harvard placed a limit on the number of Jews it would allow in.
A Jewish quota was not unique to Harvard. After Harvard’s 1926 announcement installing a new admissions policy placing great emphasis on character and personality, Yale adopted like policies. The medical schools at Cornell, Columbia, Pennsylvania and Yale all had rigid quotas in place for the number of Jewish students.
In 1935, Yale’s medical school accepted 76 applicants from a pool of 501. About 200 of those were Jewish and only five got in. The Yale policy was to never admit more than five Jews, to take only two Italian Catholics and to accept no Black students at all. Yale’s informal admissions policy to restrict the school’s Jewish student body to around 10% did not end until the 1960s.
Cmdr. WAYNE L. JOHNSON
Judge Advocate General’s Corps, U.S. Navy (retired)
Alexandria, Virginia
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