Stanford Apologizes for Limiting Jewish Admissions in the 1950s

Stanford College apologized on Wednesday for its efforts to suppress Jewish scholar admissions within the Nineteen Fifties and for denying it had achieved so within the years that adopted.

Stanford’s president, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, apologized on behalf of the college for “this appalling antisemitic exercise” in a public letter after the discharge of a 75-page report documenting that exercise.

“These actions have been incorrect,” Dr. Tessier-Lavigne wrote. “They have been damaging. They usually have been unacknowledged for too lengthy.”

A number of faculties and universities, together with Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth, restricted Jewish enrollment within the Nineteen Twenties by means of the Sixties, however Stanford had lengthy denied rumors that it had used comparable practices.

In January, Stanford created a process drive to look at what it known as on the time “assertions” that the college had quotas to restrict what number of Jewish college students it admitted within the Nineteen Fifties, and to suggest methods to enhance life for Jewish college students on campus.

The 13-member process drive included trustees, alumni, college students and members of the college’s college and workers and was led by Ari Y. Kelman, a professor of schooling and Jewish research.

The duty drive mentioned its two key findings have been proof that Stanford had tried to restrict the variety of Jewish college students it admitted within the Nineteen Fifties and that directors “often misled” dad and mom, alumni, exterior investigators and trustees who raised considerations within the Nineteen Fifties and Sixties concerning the chance that the college had engaged in such practices.

The report cited a memo from February 1953 that mentioned that Rixford Snyder, Stanford’s director of admissions on the time, was involved about what number of Jewish college students have been being admitted.

The memo was written by Frederic Glover, who was the assistant to the college president, Wallace Sterling, and mentioned that Mr. Snyder had recognized two Southern California excessive faculties with scholar our bodies that have been “95 to 98 p.c Jewish.” Accepting “a number of Jewish candidates” from these faculties would invite “a flood of Jewish functions,” the memo mentioned.

“Rix feels that this downside is loaded with dynamite and he needed you [Sterling] to find out about it, as he says that the state of affairs forces him to ignore our acknowledged coverage of paying no consideration to the race or faith of candidates,” the memo mentioned. Mr. Glover wrote that he authorized of the choice.

Stanford’s report mentioned that there was a “sharp drop” in enrollment within the fall of 1953 from the 2 excessive faculties cited by title within the memo, Beverly Hills Excessive College and Fairfax Excessive College. “No different faculties skilled such a pointy discount in college students enrolling at Stanford at the moment,” the doc mentioned.

Mr. Glover’s memo was first revealed by Charles Petersen, a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell College, who wrote about it in August 2021 in his Substack publication, Making Historical past. Dr. Petersen had discovered the memo and different paperwork, together with admission recordsdata with the phrase “Jews” written throughout them, within the college’s archives whereas researching a e-book he’s writing concerning the historical past of meritocracy.

“I’m completely satisfied to see Stanford took my Substack so critically,” Dr. Petersen mentioned in an interview after the report was revealed.

He mentioned that the college selected to focus its investigation narrowly on antisemitism in admissions, however that he would have favored for it to additionally study how the apply related extra broadly with racial inequality on the faculty.

“Stanford actually needed to keep up the college as a protected house for white Anglo Saxons,” he mentioned. “If it had been another group, if it had been Black candidates, Latinx candidates, Asian candidates, as soon as the numbers reached a sure level, the college would have achieved the identical factor.”

The duty drive additionally offered suggestions for enhancing campus life for Jewish college students, together with the creation of a standing advisory committee to deal with their present-day wants. Dr. Tessier-Lavigne wrote that the college had accepted the suggestions and that the “historic anti-Jewish bias documented by the duty drive” was not a part of the varsity’s admissions course of as we speak.

Rabbi Jessica Kirschner, govt director of Hillel at Stanford, a Jewish scholar group, mentioned that the college’s apology and the dedication to future motion made the second particularly significant.

“This seems like what we might name teshuvah, or atonement: recognizing a incorrect, apologizing for having achieved it, a dedication to what change sooner or later goes to appear like and following by means of with that,” she mentioned.

Rabbi Kirschner mentioned that since she got here to Stanford six years in the past, she had heard tales from alumni who have been pissed off concerning the quotas and that the existence of those practices had been denied. She mentioned the actions introduced on Wednesday have been validating for the varsity’s Jewish neighborhood.

“I feel this can be a reflection of how they need everybody to really feel at Stanford,” she mentioned. “And I hope that this can be a mannequin for the way different communities who could have comparable tales and considerations can be addressed.”