CNN
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Stanford College apologized Wednesday for limiting Jewish scholar admissions throughout the Fifties after which denying such a apply existed within the years that adopted.
The apology comes after a job pressure appointed by the college’s president in January accomplished an archive-based report that discovered that Stanford took actions to suppress its admission of Jewish college students.
“On behalf of Stanford College I want to apologize to the Jewish group, and to our whole college group, each for the actions documented on this report back to suppress the admission of Jewish college students within the Fifties and for the college’s denials of these actions within the interval that adopted,” Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne wrote in a letter to the group. “These actions had been flawed. They had been damaging. They usually had been unacknowledged for too lengthy.”
The report is a part of an effort by Stanford to confront its institutional historical past that has additionally included renaming some campus buildings and streets in recent times, in response to Tessier-Lavigne.
The college mentioned it is going to “acknowledge and apologize” in addition to “discover, educate, and implement” suggestions made by the job pressure to deal with the matter.
The report focuses on a 1953 college memo by college directors who expressed concern in regards to the variety of Jewish college students being admitted to Stanford, in addition to a drop in enrollment from two Southern California excessive colleges identified to have massive Jewish populations: Beverly Hills Excessive College and Fairfax Excessive College.
As phrase unfold amongst California Jews that Stanford could also be limiting the variety of Jewish college students it admits, college management denied the claims and “took benefit of the literal definition of ‘quota,’” authors of the report wrote.
“In letters and in public, campus management asserted that Stanford didn’t have a ‘quota,’ whereas prime members of the administration had full information of the insurance policies in place that had been designed to permit the Director of Admissions to behave to suppress the variety of Jewish college students admitted,” the report says.
College officers are unclear how lengthy the “appalling antisemitic exercise” lasted or whether or not it prolonged to different colleges or college students, Tessier-Lavigne mentioned. “Nevertheless, the report articulates how this effort to suppress Jewish enrollments had long-lasting results and dissuaded some Jewish college students from making use of to Stanford in later years,” he mentioned.
“This ugly part of Stanford’s historical past, confirmed by this new report, is saddening and deeply troubling,” Tessier-Lavigne mentioned. “As a college, we should acknowledge it and confront it as part of our historical past, as repellent as it’s, and search to do higher.”
Along with its investigation, the duty pressure made a variety of suggestions for enhancing Jewish life on campus. They embrace offering anti-bias schooling on antisemitism, and putting larger consideration to Jewish non secular observances in college scheduling, housing and eating.
The report says that whereas it might have been a “pretty restricted motion” within the ’50s, it had far-reaching results on the scale of Stanford’s Jewish inhabitants and on the varsity’s status amongst California Jews.
The affect on Beverly Hills Excessive College and Fairfax Excessive College was “fast and placing.” The variety of college students the 2 colleges despatched to Stanford dropped precipitously within the years that adopted the 1953 memo, the duty pressure discovered.
“How lengthy this apply remained in place can be unknown. If it was ever dedicated to writing, these memos didn’t survive. However the affect lasted for many years, largely refracted by means of the understanding, fashionable amongst Jews in Southern California, that Stanford restricted the variety of Jewish college students it might admit,” the report says.
Tessier-Lavigne in his letter mentioned it might be pure to ask whether or not anti-Jewish bias nonetheless exists in Stanford’s admission course of as we speak, and that “We’re assured it doesn’t.”
After the president’s apology, Rabbi Jessica Kirschner despatched a letter to Hillel, a Jewish scholar group, praising Stanford for commissioning the report, apologizing after its findings and committing to enact the duty pressure’s suggestions.
“On behalf of Hillel at Stanford, I wish to carry up President Tessier Lavigne’s apology as a notable instance of institutional teshuvah – an acknowledgment of previous wrongdoing and clear and particular dedication to make sure a supportive and bias-free expertise at Stanford. That is what we wish for all members of the Stanford group,” Kirschner mentioned.