The "Jewish Problem"

I’ve seen a number of posters on CC that seem to believe that a significant Jewish population at a school detracts from that school’s overall desirability. I saw it most recently in a post about Emory, where it was suggested that because there were a lot of “rich Long Island Jewish kids” at the school it was less prestigious than other schools with comparable admissions statistics. I’ve seen this phenomenon a fair amount on CC and in life. In fact, the WASPier the school, the more “prestigious” it tends to be. The larger the Jewish population, the less prestigious. Emory is not the only casualty of this attitude. I’ve seen it displayed toward Penn, Cornell, Michigan, Tufts, and, of course, Brandeis. In fact, I’ve read some pretty negative things about Brandeis on CC (and similar sites) that seem to have nothing to do with the reality of the institution and everything to do with a perception that the school isn’t as good as others with similar admissions stats. For the life of me, I can’t understand the degree of disdain I’ve seen for Brandeis except to view it through an anti-Jewish lens. Now, I don’t mean Nazi-level antisemitism here. I just mean that Jewishness is not seen as contributing to the desirability of a college. Of course, there were the good old days of explicit Jewish quotas at top schools, but even though those quotas don’t exist anymore the attitude that fostered them still seems to remain. Am I alone in this? Has anyone else noticed this attitude?

Probably not unique to Jewish students. There seems to be an unstated bias against some schools with high populations of other minorities as well.

Some complain that there are too many Catholics at Notre Dame and Georgetown!

Too many rich kids also is viewed as a bad thing.

Or too many preppy kids or jocks or partiers or frat boys/girls or cigarette smokers or hipsters or hippies or males or females…

ETA: not to discount any concerns about anti-semitic issues because I have no doubt they exist in some quarters but I also know that in general folks complain about too much of any “insert a group here”. Personally, my kids were hoping to maximize diversity of all types. One of my kid’s only complaints about the school currently being attended is wishing for more diversity in general - racial, socioeconomic, religious, etc.

You also commonly see some schools bashed for being “too white.” Every school is going to have more of some groups than the general population has. It’s. up to each person to decide if that is a problem.

… or too Asian.

All the Ivies have lots of Jews. Yale even has Hebrew in their crest. Doesn’t seem to hurt those schools desirability.

Folks,
Finding too many “rich kids” or “preppy kids” or “jocks” or “too white” as a negative, is NOT the same as finding “too many Jewish kids” a negative. Those are a false comparison. And “there seems to be an unstated bias against some schools with high populations of other minorities as well” is also NOT comparable because we’re talking about a STATED bias against a minority group.

To the OP, I haven’t yet gone into the details of each school yet, as the oldest is a HS junior, but I’m not surprised. Still doesn’t mean it’s not disappointing to learn that this is what you’re finding,

I think that anti-Semitism is on the rise and has become acceptable, even among those who perceive themselves as liberal, under the thin guise of opposition to current Israeli policies. Again and again, the discussion has turned from arguments against specific Israeli policies (to argue against which is a purely political and not necessarily anti-Semitic stance) to more disturbing arguments that Israel as a Jewish homeland should not exist, and even to swastiskas and anti-Semitic cartoons popping up on campuses.
It is truly terrifying.
There are some scary threads on CC, which deal with how Jews are beginning to experience hostility on campus. There also have been recent articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal addressing this as well.

I don’t doubt that expressions of anti-Semitism exist nor that it is increasing. We seem to see a lot more intolerance and hatred being voiced lately in general. I do think there are instances as well, however, where comments against Israeli policy are taken and misconstrued as anti-Semitic expressions. The two should be separate - political vs. religious/cultural.

How do you think the whole “holistic admissions” thing came about? The Ivy League schools introduced standardized testing to make admissions more meritocratic, but found the undesirable effect was that a transparent academic meritocratic process admitted too many of the “wrong kind of students”.

They rectified this by making the process opaque and introducing arbitrary social & cultural criteria that favored the “right kind of students”.

http://www.businessinsider.my/the-ivy-leagues-history-of-discriminating-against-jews-2014-12/?r=US&IR=T

There are anti-Jewish expressions that have nothing to do with Israeli politics. For example, a political candidate with substantial support recently retweeted a tweet that originated on an alt-right feed that contained other anti-Jewish (and anti-lots-of-others) tweets; the tweet in question featured a picture of his opponent with a pile of money and “most corrupt candidate ever” on a red star of David. I.e. it is moving into the “mainstream”, as opposed to being the realm of a few fringe kooks and cranks.

There is the phenomenon where anti-Jewish people start with criticism of Israeli policies as the “hook” to try to draw others into their politics. But also, there are many who appear to have the (mistaken) assumption that one’s ethnicity or religion automatically connotes support for a particular government or its policies (and some political organizations that support such governments or policies like to imply that and reinforce such stereotypes).

Yeah, @ucbalumnus, I had that guy in mind when typing my comment about the increased expression of hatred. It made me realize that more of it existed than I thought but just wasn’t being expressed until recently. The worms are unfortunately coming out of the woodwork. Too bad he wasn’t checked 14 months ago when comments first started.

Adcoms at non-religious universes don’t ask for religions affiliation so I am at a bit of a loss about how an excess of any particular religion is determined.

I also have read about some kids not wanting BC, ND, or Georgetown (for example) because there are too many Catholic kids there. A Jewish kid may not like the Catholic symbolism and the vibe they get from so many students who come from Catholic schools and have similar backgrounds… Makes others feel like outcasts. I can see that turning off non-Catholic kids.
I think this is the same as what you read about Brandeis. I am not familiar with Emory.

@chopsmo has a point - saying too many “rich kids” or “preppy kids” or “jocks” or “too white” is different because Jews can be all of those, so why focus on the religion/culture of the student unless you have a problem with their Jewishness? There are rich Jews, preppy Jews, jock Jews; if your problem is that they are preppy (etc), that’s the signifier you’d use, unless you’re an anti-Semite.

@TooOld4School – 1) Students can be recognized as Jewish by having common Jewish last names or other signals on their resumes, and 2) Jewishness is an ethnicity as well as a religion. A lot of ethnic Jews are atheistic or otherwise nonreligious-- but anti-Semitism is directed against them as well.

OTOH… some schools intentionally market to Jewish students to increase the prestige… http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB102003890421804360

^^^^^^Newspaper articles that are almost fifteen years old are not really relevant anymore.