Between Antisemitism and Activism

The Jewish University Experience in Historical Perspective

Front page of the Columbia Spectator, December 13th, 1933. 
Source: Columbia University

Section 2

While German Jews experienced direct persecution, American Jews faced different challenges. Although they confronted fewer barriers to entry at American universities during the 19th century, American Jews encountered increasing restrictions in the 1920s. The rise of nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment at the time of the restrictive Johnson-Reed immigration bill (1924) encouraged many elite universities to introduce quotas for Jewish students in the effort to protect the student body's "Anglo-Saxon" character from Jewish overrepresentation. Through the introduction of legacy admissions and racial profiling in applications, the percentage of Jews on Ivy League campuses plummeted.

At Columbia University under the presidency of Nicholas Murray Butler, the Jewish population dropped from 40% of the total student body around 1914 to less than 15% a decade later. At Harvard University under the leadership of A. Lawrence Lowell, the Jewish population dropped from 27% in 1922 to around 10% by 1933. The lowest quota of all was at Princeton University under President John Grier Hibben, where it was 4%. In 1945, Dartmouth President Ernest M. Hopkins put a positive spin on this policy, explaining that quotas were necessary to protect Jews from antisemitism by making sure their "proportion" on campus, relative to non-Jews, did not increase to the point that it fostered "widespread prejudice." As additional Ivy League schools introduced similar quotas, Jews shifted to other universities, whether land grant schools in the Midwest, such as the University of Illinois, private universities like MIT, and urban schools like CCNY. 

Jewish professors also faced hurdles during this period. In 1930, there were only 100 Jewish professors in the entire United States. At Columbia, there were only 10 Jewish faculty members out of a total numbering more than 700. Jewish students and faculty were also angered by the timid response of American university presidents to the plight of their German Jewish brethren. President Butler at Columbia, well known as an admirer of European fascism, continued student exchange programs between the U.S. and Nazi Germany, despite Jewish demands that Columbia cut its ties with German universities. Partly because of such frustration, Jewish students energetically protested the university's stance on Nazi Germany.

Postcard of the City College of New York (CCNY)

When Nazi Germany's ambassador to the U.S., Hans Luther, spoke at Columbia in  December of 1933, more than 1,000 Jewish and non-Jewish protesters clashed with police on Broadway outside the speaking venue in Horace Mann Hall and heckled the ambassador during his speech, shouting, "Down with Hitler!" Some critics questioned the wisdom of the student protests, with the Jewish journalist Meta Lilienthal writing, "if we believe in free speech, we must ... grant it to all, no matter how obnoxious their views may be." By contrast, the New York Evening Post objected to President Butler giving the Nazi ambassador a platform for spreading propaganda, declaring that a university was "supposed to spread information and not hokum." 

While Jews despaired at the situation on certain campuses, they were grateful that other universities provided sanctuary to German Jewish scholars. Between 1933 and 1945, approximately 2,000 Jewish refugee scholars came to the United States. Yet while famous figures were included among these refugees, such as Albert Einstein (Princeton) and Herbert Marcuse (Columbia), thousands of others were turned away. Of the German Jewish scholars who found positions in the U.S., dozens did so at Historically Black Colleges and Universities. One of them, the sociologist Ernst Manasse, expressed his gratitude for landing a position at North Carolina Central University in 1939 by remarking, "If I had not found a refuge at that time, I would have been arrested, deported to a Nazi concentration camp and eventually killed."

Columbia University President Nicholas Murray Butler in 1916. 
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Dartmouth College President Ernest M. Hopkins. 
Source: Wikimedia Commons

Nazi ambassador Hans Luther. 
Source: Creative Commons

Albert Einstein at Princeton University. 
Source: Wikimedia Commons

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