Yeah, it was absolutely true. Many colleges, Ivy League and not, had quotas for Jewish attendance. This mostly became an issue in the interwar period.* While Jews had been emigrating to the US for several hundred years, since the first settlement of what is now New York, a massive wave of Eastern European Jewish emigration began in 1881 and continued in full force until (and to an extent through) World War I. In the 1920s, this ended due to racist, eugenicist influences on Congress- draconian immigration laws were enacted in 1924 to drastically limit immigration particularly of poor and “less white” people, like Jews, Italians, and Greeks, by basing the permitted immigration on numbers from 1890, when relatively few had emigrated. However, by the 1920s, colleges felt like they were facing a different problem- second-generation advancement. Jews who had arrived since 1881 had come with little to no English and relatively little education in general, but especially given the emphasis on assimilation and the “melting pot” which their children received in schools and settlement houses, the children of immigrants were far more Americanized, and their parents pushed them toward academic success. By 1915, for example, about 40% of students at Columbia were Jewish (either immigrants or first generation Americans)- ironically due to the fact that Columbia had made it easier for them to get in as public school students by basing admissions on standardized tests.
College administrators were not happy about this, so they decided to do something about it.
Examples:
In 1922, Harvard implemented a 10% quota for Jews in order to prevent a “Jewish problem,” in the words of its president, A. Lawrence Lowell. He rationalized this by saying that he wanted to decrease potential antisemitism on campus.
Harvard also changed its admission system from an entrance exam (which favored studious Jews from the well-performing NYC public school system, who generally succeeded) to a system in which they accepted students from the top seventh of their class regardless of their score on the exam. This favored students in other parts of the country who had received lower quality education, and had the additional “benefit” of reducing the number of Jewish accepted students.
In the 1920s, Columbia basically invented the modern college application form. Why? So that they could weed out Jewish (and potentially other undesirable) applicants. Knowing that many Jews changed their names to hide their Jewishness, these forms required that past names be listed and also asked for country of origin, mother’s maiden name, and social organizations. And you know those questions about extracurriculars? Those were also invented for this purpose, as a measure of “character”- with character meaning “not Jewish.” Jews were known for being studious and “greasy,” not participating in all of the typically WASPy social concerns, and so by making “character” a requirement they were able to eliminate Jews from the pool. Nicholas Murray Butler, when discussing the more limited admission of Jews, stated that there had been no conscious effort to eliminate Jews- after evaluating the application forms, Jews were simply among “the lowest grade of applicant,” this despite the fact that so many had previously been accepted on the basis of grades.Harvard soon followed suit in using an application form, and many other colleges adopted it in the coming years.
While universities like Princeton had been interested in making a quota, it took Harvard and Columbia making the first move for them to implement one, along with colleges like Barnard, Yale, Duke, Rutgers, Adelphi, Cornell, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Penn State, Ohio State, Washington and Lee, the Universities of Cincinnati, Illinois, Kansas, Texas, Minnesota, Virginia, and Washington, and the Bronx campus of NYU.
Colgate University kept six Jews enrolled specifically in order to counter charges of antisemitic admissions.
Syracuse University housed Jews separately from other students and had a KKK branch on campus.
Sarah Lawrence College had a question on its application about whether applicants had been raised with “strict Sunday observance.”
-Even as late as 1945, Dartmouth retained a quota for its Jews, citing its status as a Christian college for Christian men.
If a Jew WAS accepted to an elite university, he (they were generally not coeducational yet) could expect not to be accepted into university culture. The social clubs and fraternities which made these colleges one big boys’ club did not let Jews among their number. They were often considered to lack college spirit, be physically repulsive, not drink enough, be brown-nosers, and not participate in sports enough, as well as to raise the academic standard too high. They were also considered to be below the appropriate level of social class and standing.
-At Brown University, Jewish students were barred from fraternities, but also barred from creating their own fraternity, purportedly to prevent antisemitism.
At the US Naval Academy at Annapolis, the page with the number two ranking cadet, who happened to be Jewish, was perforated so that those who desired could remove it without defacing the volume.
Even at universities which accepted small numbers of Jews, almost no Jews would be accepted as college professors. Fewer than 100 Jews were hired as faculty throughout the country, and nearly all under protest or some kind of special circumstance, with the caveat that they didn’t usually hire Jews.
Graduate programs admitted few Jews, using as the pretext the fact that they would never be hired as university faculty.
Despite all this, Jews continued in their quests for education, becoming 9% of college students despite being 4% of the general population. They were also nearly half of the total number of college students in New York City. They generally matriculated at City College of New York (called by some the “cheder [religious school] on the hill”) or NYU’s downtown campus (nicknamed “New York Jew”). In 1920, CCNY and Hunter College (the women’s college) had 80-90% Jewish student bodies. CCNY had been the first college to create a Jewish fraternity, ZBT, which stood for Zion Bemishpat Tipadeh, or Zion Shall Be Redeemed With Judgement. Even there, there were few Jewish faculty members- for example, there were only four at CCNY. By the 1930s, there were still only 5, and CCNY was faced with charges of antisemitism in their hiring.
There were absolutely protests of this practice. There was an outcry, for example, when Columbia implemented its application form. However, for the most part, Jews preferred not to attend colleges where they would be social outcasts and often (especially those who already lived in NY) actively chose schools like CCNY/Hunter College and NYU (and initially Columbia) as they were close to home and would provide a more Jewish-friendly environment. In general, especially in the 1930s and 40s, the US was a pretty antisemitic place (I touch on this here). For example, in a poll in the 1940s, 45% of college students said they would not want to be roommates with a Jew. The end of the practice of Jewish quotas wasn’t so much due to outcry as due to an internal examination of antisemitism in the US and the decline of the phenomenon in the postwar years. (The Civil Rights Act didn’t exist til 1964, so the practice wasn’t illegal.)
*That’s not to say there was no discrimination against Jews in colleges before this- many prominent Jews of the early 20th century, such as Oscar Straus and Bernard Baruch, later noted the difficulties they faced as Jews in university.
Sheryll Cashin was interviewed on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” about the Supreme Court’s recent decision upholding Michigan’s ban on using race as a factor in public university admissions. Watch the segment online now.
1. At the screening I attended, the movie was preceded with a montage from various movie premieres Cruise and his cast attended. Cruise with his toothy-grin repeatedly thanked the sailors and military in the crowds. His co-stars genuflecting about how lucky they were to be cast and work with Cruise. The only thing missing was Pope Francis announcing that Cruise had been canonized as Saint Thomas of Hollywood.
2. Val Kilmer reveal to the press in 2017 that he was under going treatment for throat cancer. He underwent chemo therapy and 2 tracheotomies. He has extreme difficulty speaking. This was written into the backstory of his character Tom ‘Iceman’ Kazansky to explain his appearance and limited screen time.
3. Cruise’s Maverick is assigned to train 12 new Top Guns. He must then pick 6 to undertake a top secret mission. Six of the trainees are virtually unnamed and I’m not sure if anyone them have dialogue or a close-up. This pretty much eliminates any suspense as to which of the trainees Cruise will pick.
4. The remaining six main trainees were cast right out of the Affirmative Action handbook - one woman, one Black actor, one Latino, one guy who might be gay, and two macho white guys (guess which have the larger roles).
5. Miles Teller plays the only trainee that Cruise interacts with. He’s the son of Maverick’s friend who died in original film - so of course he blames Maverick for his dad’s death. Teller is an actor who I have difficulty watching. He always comes across as angry and smarmy - the two main traits of his character here.
6. Although the original Top Gun was released 36 years ago, one of the sequel’s key plot points borrows (swipes? copies? steals?) an element from “Star Wars” (1977). The secret mission involves flying their jets down a long, narrow, and hazardous canyon. Then shoot a missle into an impossibly small air vent to destroy the Death Star uranium enrichment facility below! Perhaps Cruise’s call sign should have been Skywalker!
7. Cruise feels the need to perform his own stunts - no matter how dangerous. But as a viewer, do I really care he’s putting his life on the line for my entertainment? NO! Otherwise it would be like the Roman gladiators getting horribly killed to satisfy the audiences blood lust.
8. There’s no action scene in this movie that could not be done with stunt doubles, green screen or CGI. I don’t need to know Cruise’s junior co-stars vomited while being recorded on real jets. They are called actors for a reason - act like you are suffering from extreme G-force!
9. But I suspect Cruise needlessly risks his own life on a day-to-day basic. Early in the film he rides off on a motorcycle - prominently displayed is a “No-55” bumper sticker in reference to the California highway speed limit. Later in the movie Cruise and co-star Jennifer Connelly are shown tooling around on a motor cycle in San Diego - neither wearing a helmet (required by California law). Cruise is enormously popular but he sets the wrong example to his fans.
10.The film itself is entertaining and fans will love it (critics already do with its 97% score at Rotten Tomatoes). But there’s nothing new here. You’ve seen all the action tropes before; even the last minute heroics by pilots Miles “Smarmy” Teller and Glenn “Cock-of-the-Walk” Powell are predictable. (You’ll notice it’s the white guys who save the day at the end, not any of the rest of the affirmative action pilots.)
NOTE: Kelly McGillis was 5 years older than Cruise when she played his love interest in the original Top Gun. She does not appear in the sequel. Hollywood historically has been unkind to older actresses. To link Cruise to McGillis again would highlight that Cruise has barely aged (and must have a magic portrait hidden in his attic). Instead a younger Jennifer Connelly was cast as his new paramour.
Check out my Ten Comments About the movies opening scene:
“But you guys get affirmative action” - white people. Affirmative action still ain’t better than your white privilege.
white people want to talk about affirmative action? let’s talk about it then.
so please…
You just think it’s a coincidence that POC all across the nation just happen to live in under funded and ignored communities? White people are just naturally what, better at making money? Lol bye. Educate yourself. Re blogging for all those dope ass sources.
Saying “we don’t need affirmative action anymore because racism isn’t as bad as it used to be” is like saying “I’m going to stop taking my depression meds because they’re working.”
