Rude Awakenings: An American Historian's Encounter With Nazism, Communism and McCarthyism. Carol Jr. Sicherman
belonged to the “chosen race.”55 That “particular race and religion,” Hanford informed Conant, also dominated the predominantly Jewish Harvard Commuters’ Association. The commuters, those offensive sons of immigrants, had just been allotted Dudley Hall as a place to congregate, and “the others”–for once, Christians were Others–felt that they must “stay away” from Dudley Hall, when all they “want is a place to eat their lunch.”56 That was all the commuters wanted; unlike residential students, they brought brown-bag lunches from home. The WASPs and the Jewish commuters were different. Whereas the commuters debated current events over lunch, their gentlemanly colleagues were apolitical and sports-minded, sometimes to the point of violence, displaying their “high spirits” in riots usually connected with sports.57
In 1909, Eliot’s last year as president and the year of Harry’s birth, Harvard’s enrollment was 9.8% Jewish; nine years later, as a consequence of Eliot’s policies, it was 20% and rising.58 The increase was alarming–to WASPs. Would Harvard go the way of Columbia, where Jews had constituted 40% of the student body in the late nineteenth century? By 1921, even though Jews had fallen to 22% of the Columbia student body, some people feared the damage was irreparable; one observer assumed that all grubbily unattractive students were Jews, who “lower[ed] the communal easy handsomeness.”59 Unlike the concerned Columbia alumnus, a Harvard faculty committee found photographs useless in identifying Jews. Agreeing that a “Jewish invasion” such as had occurred at Columbia would discourage boys of good family from applying, the leaders of the Big Three searched for ways to repel the assault. Under the guidance of its anti-Semitic president, Nicholas Murray Butler (in office 1902-45), Columbia instituted “mental alertness tests” suitable to the social experience of “the average native American boy,” who was WASP by definition.60
Determined to avert a Columbia-style catastrophe, Lowell claimed to “revere the democratic ideal while never relaxing his faith in the destiny of his own kind.”61 When Harvard alumni protested in 1922 that too many Jews were enrolled, an abashed Lowell recommended to the Committee on Admission that “Hebrew” transfer applicants be “investigated with the nicest care”; he also proposed that “Hebrews” be awarded scholarships strictly according to their proportion in the student body, even though academic merit and need were the official criteria.62 Public controversy erupted when Harvard made public the necessity for a “limitation of enrollment” to relieve a purported strain on the capacity of dormitories and classrooms. It was “natural,” read the Harvard statement, to solve overcrowding by reducing “the proportion of Jews at the college.”63 The idea, Lowell explained in a commencement address, was to “sift” students so as to preserve the “homogeneous American type” threatened by “huge numbers of strangers.” In a breathtaking confession of its intent, the Committee on Admission proclaimed that it did not wish to “practice discrimination without the knowledge and consent of the Faculty.” Hence it called for an ad-hoc committee to be appointed, the purpose of which (in Lowell’s words) was to avoid clashes among undergraduates caused by “particular temperaments.”64 The nature of this peacemaking effort would be plain to anyone who knew about the particular temperament that WASPs attributed to Jews. At its first meeting, the committee chair stated that the “proportion of Jewish students at the university is greater than that of any other race”; the only other “races” he mentioned were Chinese and Japanese, as if the default Caucasian “race” did not exist.65 He said it was “astounding” that “a number of Jews, coming from poor districts,…enter Harvard and become remarkable students.” “Sifting” students could not fully solve “this problem of the Jew,” but it could reduce its severity, even at the cost of fewer “astounding” students.
Lowell initially advocated an explicit Jewish quota of 12% but settled for 15%, under a cloak of secrecy so as not to disturb the facade of egalitarianism.66 As the controversy developed, five members of a Jewish student group, the Menorah Society, met with five Gentile counterparts for a constructive discussion of the attitudes of Gentile students concerned about “too many Jews,…the ‘City College’ fear.”67 What a Jewish alumnus called the “latent prejudices which wake to life at the lightest touch” were now on full display, and Jewish students and alumni weighed in on both sides: some thought it unseemly that any Jew would make a public protest, while others felt that anti-Semitism must be brought to public attention.68 The illustrious journalist Walter Lippmann (Harvard
’10), who had himself suffered anti-Semitism at Harvard, advised Lowell’s committee against “too great a concentration” of Jews or any other “minority that brings with it some striking cultural peculiarity”; anything more than 15% would “produce a segregation of cultures rather than a fusion.”69 Thus kept in check, Jews and Catholics with suitable “character” might absorb WASP virtues.70 “Character” was a code word for qualities thought to be exclusively WASP: “‘fair play,’ ‘public spirit,’ ‘interest in fellows,’ and ‘leadership.’”71 Interviews could yield “a personal estimate of character” and, as Lowell privately admitted, “prevent a dangerous increase in the proportion of Jews.”72 When a highly qualified Jewish applicant was rejected, a Harvard official said that “no personal discrimination against him was involved.”73 He wasn’t personally to blame for being Jewish, after all.
Lowell’s ad-hoc committee fashioned various strategies to cope with the “Jewish problem.” Beginning in 1923, the admissions form asked questions designed to identify Jewish applicants who lacked obviously “Jewish” names: “For the first time in Harvard’s history an applicant was asked about his race and color. Other questions were ‘Maiden Name of Mother,’ ‘Birth Place of Father,’ and ‘What change, if any, has been made since birth in your own name or that of your father? (Explain fully.)’”74 If a candidate named Brown had a father originally named Brownstein or a mother born Cohen, the inference was obvious. The committee commissioned a statistical analysis that showed rising Jewish enrollment, as expected, but inconveniently proved that Jewish students achieved academic success at far higher rates than Gentiles.75 Jews weren’t really smart, though; as a student explained in 1922, they were like parrots: “They memorize their books!”76
The committee advised “discretion” in making a wise “discrimination” to ensure that students would benefit the college and the “community”–a code word signifying the WASP establishment.77 Another device, greater geographical distribution, had dramatically lowered Jewish enrollment at Columbia and, the planners thought, would work at Harvard as long as students were recruited from regions with small Jewish populations.78 Another new tactic was to admit students in the top seventh of their high school class without examination.79 These plans backfired badly. In 1925, a shocking 27.1% of the student body was Jewish.80 The next year, when five of the eight juniors elected to Phi Beta Kappa were Jewish, the student magazine the Lampoon published an article entitled “No Religious Discrimination at Harvard–Three Gentiles Elected to Phi Beta Kappa.”81 Harvard’s Dean of Admission, in a brilliant stroke, proposed reducing the “25% Hebrew total to 15% or less by simply rejecting without detailed explanation.”82 That approach was effective. In the 1930s, during Harry’s years as a graduate student, the percentage of Jewish students sank to between 12% and 14%.83
When Conant took over as president, he asked for statistics, some of which could be tortured to serve his purpose. Jewish students, the statistics showed, were “more prone to dishonesty and sexual offenses,” although less likely to be drunkards or “to ‘do something for Harvard’” in athletics; they were shamefully unrepresented–surprise!–in the most exclusive Harvard clubs.84 The reduction of Jewish enrollment, while helping to sustain the primacy of WASP-dominated social and athletic activities, had one unexpected and unwelcome corollary: an increased number of WASPs were content to earn a “gentleman’s C.” An analysis of freshman academic achievement in 1933-42 showed an inverse relationship between social prestige and academic standing. Jewish freshmen garnered 31.9% of the top academic ranks despite a total enrollment of 19.3% while only 7.3% were “unsatisfactory”; the prestigious WASP private schools Andover and Exeter produced 13.9% of the top-ranked freshmen but 18.2% of those labeled “unsatisfactory.”85 Conant endorsed Lowell’s plan for geographical distribution, explicitly seeking students from regions with relatively few Jews. He hired a Dean of Admissions who admired Harvard’s wise and intelligent management