I would have thought just the opposite of the OP - that lots of Jewish kids at a school would be an indication of high quality.
The difference is that BC, ND, and GTown are Catholic institutions, founded by Catholics and serving, for much of their histories, only/mostly Catholics. Both Brandeis and Emory, while they have large Jewish populations, are nonsectarian and Methodist respectively (although Brandeis has historically been funded by the Jewish community).
How does the history of the institution have anything to do with how students currently feel about the current “vibe” of the students on campus and the visual symbols that may bother non Catholic students?
“OTOH… some schools intentionally market to Jewish students to increase the prestige… http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB102003890421804360”
I was just going to reference that phenomenon! Vanderbilt has achieved the greater Jewish enrollment it wanted circa 2002 and simultaneously went through the roof in academic selectivity. I think Washington & Lee is interested in moving in that direction, too.
Pro-Palestinian does not necessarily mean it is a problem for Jewish people (and if the school has very high Jewish enrollment, the noisy cranks and kooks who tend to try to hijack pro-Palestinian politics into anti-Jewish politics, and those who naively get sucked in, are more likely to be absent or marginalized). But those who support the current ruling parties in the government of Israel may not want to be in the political minority at such a school.
It’s very hard for me to agree with your original premise when essentially all of the most elite schools have Jewish populations far in excess of the 2% of population that is Jewish. And the Ivies are hardly “WASPy” today.
Many of these institutions have Jewish presidents. The Vandy targeting of NE Jews worked precisely because a strong Jewish population is associated with high quality and prestige.
I’ve never seen Judaism stigmatize a school; I don’t doubt you have, though. Schools with a lot of Jews, however, can still remain prestigious. Harvard, for example, is 25% Jewish, and it has the best academic reputation in the world. The Ivies, MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Michigan—etc. etc. and so on and so forth—are very Jewish and very prestigious.
Whatver you’ve heard on the matter—I urge you to reconsider it. Though reputations of schools are out of my control, it’s both inconsiderate to discriminate against Jewish people and foolish not to attend a school due to its predominant Jewish population.
I think there’s an unfortunate “click-bait” aspect to the subject heading, here. I’ve been on CC for a few years now and haven’t observed the phenomenon described by the OP. There could be a lot of dog whistles I’m just not hearing, but, maybe that’s a good thing?
No, I haven’t.
“I am not sure that BC and ND are relevant to the discussion or should be in the same category as Brandeis. They are more comparable to Yeshiva University which is focused on tradtitional Jewish Orthodoxy.”
While ND may fit that description, BC certainly does not as it is Jesuit, thereby far more liberal than the Order of the Holy Cross allows ND to be. ‘traditional Catholic Orthodoxy’ at BC? – not quite.
Nor at Notre Dame.
Wouldn’t “traditional Catholic orthodoxy” refer to schools like Christendom College?
Wall Street Journal Article - “In Effort to Lift Their Rankings, Colleges Recruit Jewish Students”
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB102003890421804360
Inside Higher Ed - “Why More Colleges Want Jewish Students”
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/10/29/jewish
By the way - Yale is 27% Jewish, Harvard 25%, Columbia 20%, Penn 26%, Cornell 21%.
https://issuu.com/hillelintl/docs/hillel_spring_2016_college_guide_ma
Seems this is going off-topic.
Here is my take on why schools like Vandy target Jewish students:
- Vandy’s aspiration schools target these students
- the sudents targeted have high stats
- plus don’t need as much aid as URM
- add to diversity of school
- perhaps can be good donors
It’s simply good business for a school to target these students.
This recruiting and the percentages at top schools contradict a posting here that schools with higher Jewish populations might have lower prestige. The opposite is true.
@rjkofnovi – those who fail to learn history… Older perspectives are critical to understanding how discrimination develops and what programs work or don’t work to address these important societal issues.
Could someone humor me- take (let’s say) the top 20 unis and top 20 LACs, and indicate which ones currently have a Jewish president (or maybe have had one in the last 10 years).
Some here may want to read Jerome Karabel’s “The Chosen: the hidden history of admission and exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton” (2005 Houghton Mifflin)
Does anyone else dislike where @Pizzagirl is going with their comment about how many elite schools have Jewish presidents?
I think that the OP may be inadvertently conflating two separate phenomenons. First, the current presidential campaign seems to be empowering those with racist, sexist, homophobic etc. tendencies to be more outspoken with those feelings. In Europe, there has definitely been a rice of antisemitism and I have no doubt that there are swaths of our population who feel similarly.
With respect to colleges, however, I don’t think that there is any perception that schools with high Jewish populations are less prestigious. I think that students and parents may express concern about the Jewish population at a certain school, say Emory, because they fear that they might not fit in with the school’s culture. I’m Jewish and from New York. Growing up, we used to call a certain subset of Jews who liked to dress up, wear a lot of jewelry, and were very image conscious and a bit spoiled “JAPS” - Jewish American Princess/Prince. My DS is considering Emory and I worry that he might find the culture there too JAPPY, for want of a better term. I don’t think that Harvard, even with its high Jewish population, has that same reputation. It’s not the religion per se, its the culture of the student body. I also don’t think my son would enjoy a school that was too preppy or too conservative.