The Review: Does Harvard have 'too many' Jewish administrators?

A recent op-ed comes right up to the edge of calling for quotas. ADVERTISEMENT [The Review Logo]( You can also [read this newsletter on the web](. Or, if you no longer want to receive this newsletter, [unsubscribe](. I was a bit surprised to read an [op-ed]( last week in The Boston Globe that seemed to argue — that came right up to the line of arguing — that there are too many Jews among Harvard’s administrators. You wouldn’t at first realize that the column, by Shirley Leung, was about Jews at all. Its title doesn’t say so: “With Claudine Gay Gone, Harvard Leadership is So White.” But “white” turns out to mean, in large part, Jewish — and not by implication or omission but explicitly. After lamenting the fact that “six of the seven major leadership appointments at the university since January have gone to white people,” Leung offers this bit of demographic specificity: “Four of these new appointments are Jewish.” Leung thinks this last fact might have something to do with the Israel-Hamas war and with concerns over campus antisemitism; she observes that “Jewish students, alumni, and donors ... have been upset” about those topics. And “some faculty,” she writes (she doesn’t quote or name them), “have suggested that the elevation of Jewish leaders is a way to appease vocal donors and alumni — many who have been upset and stopped writing checks over what they consider the administration’s tepid response to campus antisemitism.” Leung agrees that that “might have been a significant factor.” On X, Steven Pinker [heard]( this as bigotry: “Harvard has too many Jewish leaders, partly because of the influence of rich Jews. Sound familiar?” I doubt Leung intended anything so classically antisemitic, exactly. But that she could devote a portion of a column about diversity among Harvard’s top leaders to Jew-counting without any discussion of the history of Ivy League discrimination against Jews suggests either a culpable incuriosity or a theory of social justice inadequate to the facts. It is true that, as Leung writes, “Jewish leadership is not uncommon at Harvard’s highest levels” — but it was not always true. One might expect the history of Jewish [exclusion]( to be part of any story about “diversity” in elite universities. A simpler explanation than pandering or donor pressure for the current high rate of Jews among Harvard’s leadership: As formal discrimination against them weakened in the post-war decades, Jews achieved enormous success in the American academy. In 1945, there were very few Jewish professors; by 1971, [according]( to Seymour Martin Lipset, Jews made up fully a quarter of Ivy League faculty members. More recent data is hard to come by, but some [sources]( suggest that, among baby boomers, 21 percent of elite-college faculty members are Jewish. The disproportionate Jewish presence in academe represents one of the great victories over discrimination in the history of American life. The prejudice against Jews was deep-rooted and intense, so much so that for many years letters of recommendation for Jewish graduate students needed to confront the Jewish question head-on, at least if the student had a recognizably Jewish surname. Consider this excerpt from a 1937 [letter]( on behalf of the great literary critic Earl Wasserman, written by the chair of the English department at Johns Hopkins, where Wasserman received his Ph.D.: Having arrived at this point in my description of Wasserman’s qualifications, I am wondering whether they will be obliterated in the mind of your department by the fact that he is a Jew. If you could see and talk with him I have little doubt that this consideration would not weigh heavily with you. He is a fine, alert, clean-cut lad, not swarthy — in fact, almost blonde and neither the brassy nor the over-obsequious kind. He is a valued member of the Tudor and Stuart Club, and I can assure you that unless Jews as such are taboo in your department, it is inconceivable to us that the racial question should prove troublesome in Wasserman’s case. … I hope you will give him very serious consideration. Leung concludes her Boston Globe column by enjoining Harvard to “get back on the right side of history.” Her concern over Harvard’s many Jews raises some worrying questions about which side she imagines to be history’s right one. Limited-Time Offer for New Subscribers Enjoying the newsletter? [Subscribe today]( and save 50% on a year of unlimited access. As a bonus, you'll receive a digital copy of our new article collection, Decision 2024: The Presidential Election and Higher Ed. Salman Rushdie and blasphemy For The Yale Review, I wrote about Salman Rushdie’s new memoir. Although not about higher ed per se, the essay touches on many of this newsletter’s familiar themes: speech and harm; competing theories of diversity; the role of religion in public life; the politics of offense. I hope you’ll [check it out](. 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