Discriminatory quotas in admissions to universities and graduate schools (and some black humor from my father's generation)

 History doesn't exactly repeat itself, but it rhymes. (Mark Twain apparently missed the opportunity often attributed to him of saying that.) Here's a story about the history of ethnic quotas for Jews, as it played out in medicine in the 20th Century. (And at the bottom, some old jokes about coping with it...)

The History of Discriminatory Jewish Quotas in American Medical Education and Orthopaedic Training, by Solasz, Sara J. BA1; Zuckerman, Joseph D. MD1; Egol, Kenneth A. MD1,a, The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery 105(4):p 325-329, February 15, 2023. | DOI: 10.2106/JBJS.22.00466

"By the early 1920s, formal quota systems were put in place to limit the number of Jewish applicants admitted to many American medical schools. This quota was partly a result of the second wave of Jewish immigration and the subsequent rise in antisemitism in the country. As a sign of the growing antisemitism in America, in 1920, Henry Ford published a weekly series called “The International Jew: The World’s Problem” on the front page of his newspaper, The Dearborn Independent. In this series, which continued for years, Ford fueled antisemitism both at home and abroad. The effect at the time was enormous: the feeling was that if an American icon as rich and powerful as Ford could hold this conviction so strongly, then it must be credible5,6. In addition to the effect on medical school admissions, measures were taken to deny Jewish people access to social institutions, neighborhoods, swimming pools and beaches, and employment.

...

"Harvard was known to have quotas restricting the number of Jewish students admitted to the college under the leadership of Lowell. In a letter to a philosophy professor, Lowell wrote that admitting Jewish students would ruin Harvard, “not because Jews of bad character have come; but the result follows from the coming in large numbers of Jews of any kind, save those few who mingle readily with the rest of the undergraduate body.”8

"It is within this social and political climate that the Jewish quota system appeared in medical schools throughout the U.S. Although medical school officials have always denied the existence of Jewish quotas, records from schools across the country reveal a systematic and intentional anti-Jewish prejudice. The medical historian Henry Sigerist wrote that Jewish students were subject to a “tacit, but nevertheless highly effective, quota system and in most schools the number of Jewish students rarely exceeds 10 per cent.”9 Many mainstream thinkers in higher education argued for further reductions in the acceptance rate for Jewish students, advocating for discrimination against Jews under the guise of keeping the “national ratio correct,” which would bring down the number of accepted students to represent only 3% to 4% of the total class.

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"The most significant decrease in the number of admitted students occurred at Columbia University, which asked for the applicant’s religion, parents’ birthplaces, racial origin, and mother’s maiden name11. At the Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons, the rate of enrollment of Jewish students between 1920 and 1940 dropped from 47% to 6%; during the same period, the rate dropped from 40% to 5% at Cornell University Medical College3. Throughout the Northeast, where the concentration of Jewish applicants was the highest, quotas appeared at schools such as Harvard Medical School, Yale School of Medicine, and the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania3.

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Facing this widespread sentiment, Jewish students hoping to gain admission to medical school were forced to take action—with some even changing their last names to avoid discrimination. Medical schools identified “Jewish names” on applications, especially when the applicants were from areas with large Jewish populations, to indirectly discriminate against Jewish students. Soon, schools expanded applications to require completion of a “change of name” section. *

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"Prior to the establishment of the current U.S. residency “match” system, each residency position was sought individually with an application and interview and was typically followed by a near-immediate offer of a position. This system certainly provided a biased and unfair method for filling training programs.

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"In New York State, the Education Practices Act (1948) set a precedent for other states to pass legislation to eliminate discriminatory admissions practices. As the wave of antisemitism began to fade and the need for physicians grew, medical schools and graduate medical education programs started to remove the quota systems, which came to a complete end in the 1970s."

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*Black humor was common in my dad's generation, including jokes about name changing (sometimes told in Yiddish). Here are two, approximately remembered.

1. Shmuel and Moshe, friends from Odessa, meet in New York after both have immigrated to America.  Moshe spots him from a distance and rushes over, calling out "Shmuel!"  They embrace, and Shmuel says, "I'm called Sam now, in America.  How about you?"

Moshe says "my American name is Sean Ferguson."  Sam is astonished, and asks "how come?"  "Well," says Moshe/Sean, I had picked out a good American name, but I was so nervous when I got to Ellis Island that I couldn't remember it. So when the immigration officer asked me my name, all I could think of to say was "I've already forgotten/ ikh hab shoyn fargesn, which is what he wrote down."  (איך האב שוין פארגעסן)

2. A few years later, Sean Ferguson goes to court to change his name again, to John McMillan. The judge asks him why he wants to do that.  He says "When I apply for positions, people ask what my name used to be..."