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Notes -
It’s more that Unz’ myth of American meritocracy used an extremely flawed method of calculating the actual percentage of Jewish students at elite colleges, so he subsequently became highly defensive. Everyone knows there has been an extreme fall in the number of Jewish students at HYPS over the past thirty years, my own estimate of the real percentage is around 8%, a substantial proportion of whom are themselves half+ gentile (a group that often identifies as at least somewhat Jewish). Columbia is obviously still much higher due to being in NYC, other Ivies vary.
Hillel organizations are far more incentivized to overcount because that literally gets them more funding than to undercount because of some vague fear that the far right might point out overrepresentation (something only extremely online Jews keyed into DR spaces would even be concerned about; the chief warrior in the crusade against affirmative action is himself Jewish).
There isn’t good data in large part because most Americans would consider it strange for a college to ask all incoming students whether they had any recent Jewish ancestors. Nevertheless, given the zenith of Jewish elite college enrollment was around 35% (in most of the most elite colleges; there were outliers) and given the extreme fall reported in and around even secularish Jewish publications and in the wider community, I think 8-10% is a fair estimate for those with a genuine Jewish identity of some kind.
Of course, given assimilation rates of 70%+ among secular American Jews, the population of gentile Americans of Jewish descent will likely continue to rise dramatically.
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