As some radicals at Harvard and Columbia Universities chant anti-Semitic slogans, maybe they should be reclassified as reactionaries in the tradition of A. Lawrence Lowell, Harvard’s president from 1909 to 1933. Lowell expressed concern that Harvard not become like Columbia, as observed in this ditty of the era: “Harvard’s run by millionaires, and Yale is run by booze. Cornell is run by farmers’ sons, Columbia’s run by Jews.”
Lowell pushed for a limitation on the number of Jews admitted to Harvard, suggesting that a Jewish presence of more than 10% would lower the college’s prestige and send its WASP core scurrying to Yale or Princeton. He paralleled colleges of his time to fashionable resort hotels: No problem if a few Jews, the right kind, come— but if more come, WASPs will leave. Then Jews, social-climbing as they often were in Lowell’s stereotyped anecdotes, would leave as well: Bankrupt hotel, dying Harvard.
Such bigotry was too blatant for the Harvard faculty, which turned down Lowell’s proposal for an official quota. Harvard’s admissions committee, though, quietly made sure the percentage of Jewish students in the freshman class dropped to 10% in 1930. The committee regretted that some applicants’ last names were not definitive, so it divided all “potentially Jewish” students into categories J1, J2, and J3, depending on the level of certainty about Jewish-ness.Â
Lowell said he was not personally prejudiced, but he once complained that 50 percent of students caught stealing books from Harvard’s Widener Library were Jewish. Then, asked how many students were caught, he confessed: two.
Lowell approved in 1915 the appointment of Harry Wolfson as instructor in Jewish philosophy and literature, but only if Wolfson could (unlike other instructors) come up with outside funding for his Harvard salary—and he did, year by year. Wolfson didn’t let the slight get him off his game. One biographer, Isadore Twersky, portrayed him “studying day and night, resisting presumptive attractions and distractions, honors and chores.”
Nevertheless, ten years later Harvard stated it would terminate Wolfson’s position unless he could obtain permanent outside funding. Jewish businessman Lucius Littauer, who in 1881 had been Harvard’s first head football coach, endowed for Wolfson a permanent chair in Hebrew Literature and Philosophy. Wolfson remained a Harvard presence until his retirement in 1958. Another biographer, Leo Schwarz, wrote that when Wolfson left the classroom, he was “the first person to enter Widener Library in the morning and the last to leave it at night.” ###
Marvin Olasky, the author of Lament for a Father, Pivot Points, and 28 other books, chairs the Zenger House foundation.