Malcolm Writes about How Ivy League Kept Jews Out

Blink guru Malcolm Gladwell writing in New Yorker , writes about the smarmi history of Ivy League School admissions policies for the better part of the last century, established because of the problem that selections on pure academic basis allowed in too many Jews, over gentiles whose lineage was richer in endowments. Over time, these policies became increasingly sophisticated and ensured that the right elements got in while Jews, homosexuals and others considered "unmanly," were reduced accordingly.

I could never have been subject to this form of discrimination because my marks in high school were pure C-level.  I did well in my English College Boards, but not well enough to offset my mediocre math performance. What I didn't know is that I would have been excluded anyway, because my parents were foreign born, my football performance was downright embarrassing and if I knew any of "the right people" in the city where I was raised, it was because I had delivered their newspapers or watered their lawns in summer, while they vacationed at resorts that would not allow my sort of people in even to have lunch.

Comments

[Richard Dudley]

The immediate follow-up is how many other schools used this "admissions model" as well. Malcolm really lays it on the Ivy Leagues, but what about the other private (i.e., big endowment needing) schools as well?

On that same note, I think the largest endowment for a private school is Emory, largely due to its holdings in Coca Cola, and massive donations from Robert Gouizetta, who possibly wouldn't have been admitted under the "admissions plan".

It's lunchtime, but I've lost my appetite.

[shel]

Richard,

Here's why the Ivies and other elite schools matter more when it comes to discrimination: They are the feeders into the social networks which become the ruling class we are not supposed to have in America. I went to Northeastern University in Boston, Mass. It was a good school and I learned a lot. But it taught me to be an employee. It taught me to be a news reporter not a media company president, which is what they were teaching over at Harvard. I turned starting my own business, where I consulted other start up companies. They would have equipped me for that at Stanforsd. I would have made the firends that would have provided me with the financing and infrastructure to make startups flourish. That isn't what they teach you at Northeastern and the people I met at Northeastern were really wonderful--but we were not expected to take over senior government positions, finance, industry, global enterprise stewardships and so on. The Ivies give graduates the tickets to ride. If you exclude minorities from their flora-covered gates, then you perpetuate a very devious and subliminal caste system.

[Rich Dudley]

I only meant that Malcom perhaps didn't go far enough. You can make excellent contacts at schools other than the Ivies who would benefit you in the same way. The more schools that use the Harvard admissions model, the greater the contribution to the same casting of society. These schools also deserved to be called out as well.

[Richard Dudley]

On the flip side, let's say you or I got in. There's no guarantee we'd make the contacts of which you spoke in your reply. We may not have passed the second admissions test--the unoffical one to get into 'the group'. Simply being at the school isn't enough. I'd like to think I'm the kind of guy who'd be welcomed by all, but would I really have been 'one of them'? Tough to say, since I have precious little patience for unnecessary BS. And to me, almost all BS is unnecessary.

[Jeremy Pepper]

You missed an interesting part of the story, where the first African American member of Skulls & Bones notes that if he was Jewish, he wouldn't been asked to join.