Wed 22 Jun 2005
In an earlier thread, HWC commented:
On “Jew Quotas”: Yes, Williams had a “Jew Quota” in place well into the mid-1960s. In fact, I believe a sometimes reader of the blog was the student who officially exceeded the “Jew Quota” for the first time, being admitted off the waitlist after initially being told that he “wasn’t exactly what the school was looking for”. He was a top, top student at a nationally recognized big-city public magnet school with heavy Jewish enrollment.
Can anyone provide some more details/references to the history of admission restrictions on Jewish applicants to Williams? What were the restrictions? When did they start? When did they end? How many applicants were affected? All I could find on the Web was a brief discussion of the history at Harvard.
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:48 am
David: Given the furor, confusion and lack of focus that occurred in connection with the prior thread, you are courageous to raise this subject. At any rate I demur - an action which, no doubt, some one will find controversial.
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:40 am
Life’s too short not to take a stab at controversial thought.
June 22nd, 2005 at 6:02 pm
Stab away!
June 22nd, 2005 at 7:00 pm
David,
I don’t have the notebook from the class on hand at the moment, but it was a topic we covered fairly extensively in Professor Verter’s Fall 2001 class “History of American Judaism”.
Prof. Verter is now at Bennington having (unfairly, in my opinion) not received a tenure track offer from Williams.
His publicly-listed email is bverter@bennington.edu, and would probably have more information and better retention of it than any one or group of people who took the class.
June 22nd, 2005 at 7:57 pm
Another case of hearing bunk from an admissions person happened to me. I was told during my interview that I might not want to spend the money to apply to Williams. The not-at-all-subtle implication was that I would not be admitted and I couldn’t afford the application fee.
I was admitted early decision.
June 22nd, 2005 at 8:42 pm
Verter would also find a way to be wittier about the subject than I could imagine possible.
Verter’s non-tenure tracking was a real mistake. what a great prof (so great, Lowell and I agree on this!)
:)
June 22nd, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Bunk is the stock-in-trade of admissions people. What do you expect to hear from used car salesmen!
June 30th, 2005 at 1:49 am
Steven Berk, who has been a visiting professor at Williams, very well may know the answer to your question. A brilliant professor of History, he has an endowed chair at Union and has taught there for some 38 years. He teaches a course on American Jewish History and knows seemingly everything on the subject.