Ummm — See some of Marcia Synnott’s work — e.g. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40292482

Harvard, like the rest of the Ivy League, did restrict Jewish enrollment. She gets into some of the reasons why as well. This was the topic of her dissertation and then she went into it further with other publications.

I will just say again that the Jewish students of today don’t seem to me have the same old Jewish energy. I’m thinking of people like Richard Feynman, Murray Gell-Mann, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland. Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz come to mind. I will even throw in the very Irish Pat Moynihan!

As for the rest — for a variety of reasons, I don’t accept the comparison of the Klan to contemporary antisemitism on campus during the war of Hamas.

Would you say the same thing about a decline in the number of Black students at institutions that had active Klan chapters on campus?

Better, let’s take two sport where Blacks have been disproportionately represented for generations: football and basketball. Imagine, for the sake of argument, that basketball and/or football “powerhouses” suddenly started having almost all-White teams.

And then, for the sake of argument, also imagine that the same schools also suddenly had active Klan chapters. I don’t mean a couple dozen losers hanging out in the woods somewhere but hundreds of them hanging out on the Quad every day/night, being their ever-loveable selves — and the Black students having to walk thorough a gauntlet of them to get on or off campus.

Would you say that “[t]he question of discrimination against [Black] students among [powerhouse] schools is worthy of serious investigation, with open minds”? Or would you concede that hostile environment discrimination exists?

Now I agree that research would be needed to see why there was such a decline in Black athletes — and you will note that I am asking if the Jewish students aren’t being accepted or if they (like Baron Trump) aren’t even applying for admission — but at least your null hypothesis would be a relationship between the increase in Klan activism and the decline in Black participation.

Beyond that, Jonathan, I have to ask if you have ever heard of something called “Qualitative Research’? That literally *is* “stories from various deans and administrators …” Done right, it includes showing why these particular “deans and administrators” are (a) reflective of the larger population of “deans and administrators” and (b) are relevant to your research question — but it is exactly how you do Qualitative Research.

Furthermore, I must call you on your ignorance. Most Jewish immigration to the US was in the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, and those fleeing the wreckage of post-war Europe after having survived the Holocaust arrived here 70-80 years ago, i.e. 1945-55.
Most Gen Z Jews are at least fourth or fifth generation Americans — your thesis of “assimilation into the American society” can not be explained this way.

In other words, even if there were a change attributable to assimilation, it would (a) be progressive and (b) something that we would have seen starting in the 1970s if not earlier. There is no way to say that it caused a change that has suddenly appeared over the past decade.

But I ask again — how can you ignore the equivalent of highly-active Klan chapters at the very same IHEs? I’m not even Jewish and *I* wouldn’t go to any of those once-great schools, I wouldn’t go there if they paid me to.

And that leads to another question that no one has asked — how many Jewish businessmen have come to the same conclusion that businessmen in general rapidly are — that college ain’t worth it and the best thing they can do for Junior is get him into some formal or informal management training program at an actual business…

Hence I go back to the questions of (a) what is the Jewish acceptance rate and (b) what is the Jewish yield? (Yield being the percentage of those accepted who actually enroll.)

This is pretty tame stuff. “stories from various deans and administrators …” Weak analytical wine, especially from a professor politics.

For what it’s worth — maybe nothing — it seems to me that that the old Jewish energy has just dissipated among the students. Maybe it is a result of the immigrant generations assimilation into the American society.

The question of discrimination against Jewish students among elite schools is worthy of serious investigation, with open minds.