09/10/2025
Anti-Semitism at Harvard: An Historical Precedent. (From AI inflected Wikipedia)
This made me wonder: Is it truly the case that there is nothing new under the sun?
Here goes the Wikipedia article:
"Harvard University, under the leadership of President Abbott Lawrence Lowell, implemented and concealed discriminatory policies during the 1920s with the intention of limiting the number of Jewish students. As the proportion of Jewish students within the student body grew, Lowell and other administrators sought to maintain Harvard's traditional "Anglo-Saxon" and Protestant character. Rise of Anti-Semitism and Quotas Lowell publicly argued that a rising Jewish population on campus led to increased anti-Semitism among non-Jewish students. In 1922, when Jewish enrollment reached 21.5% of the student body, he proposed capping it at 15% to "protect" Jewish students from prejudice. Faculty Rejection A faculty committee rejected Lowell's formal quota proposal in 1923, stating that Harvard should maintain its "traditional policy of freedom from discrimination on grounds of race or religion." Covert Changes to Admissions After his initial plan failed, Lowell introduced a new admissions system designed to achieve the same result indirectly. "Holistic Review" In 1926, Harvard moved away from selecting students primarily based on academic merit. Instead, it began emphasizing subjective criteria such as "character," "fitness," and "personality," which allowed the admissions committee to screen out qualified Jewish applicants. New Criteria As part of the changes, Harvard began requesting applicant photos and religious preferences. A new committee secretly classified students based on the likelihood they were Jewish. Legacy Preferences The university also began giving admissions preference to the children of alumni. This favored established Protestant families, as Jewish immigrants and their children were newer to the institution. Geographic Diversity Another tactic was to recruit students from less-populated rural states. This decreased the percentage of students admitted from urban areas with large Jewish populations. Consequences of the Discrimination The new admissions criteria were highly effective at limiting Jewish enrollment. Declining Enrollment The percentage of Jewish students fell from a peak of 27% in 1925 to 15% the following year. When Lowell left office in 1933, Jewish students made up only 10% of the undergraduate population. Parallel Policies The anti-Jewish policies were part of a broader pattern of exclusion under Lowell. During his tenure (1909–1933), he also tried to bar Black students from freshman dorms and convened a "Secret Court" to purge gay students.
Lasting Impact The policies of the 1920s had a ripple effect across other elite American universities, which adopted similar tactics to limit Jewish enrollment. It was not until the 1960s that quotas were phased out at Harvard and other Ivy League schools."
Personal comment: As a Catholic-raised West Coast kid with one secularly-raised Jewish Grandpa (who married a Catholic farm girl) I was unaware of this history.
Quite a few of my college friends were from traditional Ashkenazi Jewish families where the grandparents - and some of the parents - spoke Yiddish at home.
I wonder if in 50 years Harvard freshmen from Muslim-tradition families will find it hard to believe that once people of their ethnicity were vilified because of their family history?
