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PaperclipPerfector  2mo ago (text post)   33975 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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in order to discriminate against Jews

What? Is there a source for this. This is the Motte, so I'm not dismissing what you're saying out of hand, I just hand't heard this before.

In 1922, Harvard’s president, A. Lawrence Lowell, noticed a precipitous rise in the number of Jews accepted to the university and proposed accepting a quota of only 15% Jewish students.

But instead implemented admissions changes that allowed them to arbitrarily deny Jews without explanation or official quotas.

Starting on page 5 here.

Or on Harvard’s website.

the committee suggested improved procedures to “accomplish a proper selection of individuals among the available candidates for admission to Harvard College” (Report). Put simply, qualitative factors like personality and background, rather than test scores, would now carry more weight—a democratizing “sifting” process. For the first time, students who had scored poorly, but who had less-tangible strengths to offer the Harvard Community, had a leg up in admissions. Sidestepping Lowell’s brazen condemnation of particular ethnic groups, his committee had ostensibly crafted a policy of inclusion. Despite this meritocratic rhetoric, however, personal correspondence among members of the Harvard community suggests that a primary goal of the changing policies was in fact to curb the admission of minority students, especially Jews.

And many other articles on Google. I read a good one years ago, but can't find it now. These other articles make the same claim that the switch from entrance exam to holistic admissions was a scheme to restrict the number of Jews accepted to Harvard. It took a few years, but they achieved <15% Jewish student body without implementing the proposed quota. With an arbitrary entrance policy they didn't need quotas.

Thanks! Amazing that they though it was enough of a "threat" that they created a gameable system to cover their tracks.

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