Are American Jews finally getting fed up with their Ivy League obsessions?
I’m routinely asked why non-conservative/non-orthodox American Jews are so committed to the Democrat party despite mounting evidence for years now that the Democrat party is the party of American antisemitism. I could talk about 19th-century Jews becoming socialists because the socialists opposed the antisemitic Russian Tsar or 20th-century American Jews finding the Democrat party more welcoming than the Republican. But here’s the real reason why American Jews are leftists: It’s their obsession with academic credentials, especially from the fanatically leftwing Ivies. That, however, may finally change.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, American Jews saw that a college degree was a ticket to wealth in America. For upwards of 100 years, if you could rise above a blue-collar job in America, you could get into the middle class.
However, for over half a century, antisemitism was a hallmark of American academia. This wasn’t the murderous antisemitism we’re seeing now, though. Instead, it was simply the “you’re not one of us, stay away” antisemitism that characterized pre-modern America’s response to Jewish immigrants:
Virtually every major part of the selective college application process — the freshman class cap, the interview, an emphasis on outside interests and character, the desire for geographical diversity, the legacy preference — were put into use in an effort to cut down on the Jewish student population. Columbia University in New York City, followed by Harvard, Yale and Princeton universities, found novel ways to cut back on, and then keep down, Jewish enrollment that stemmed from a historic wave of Jewish immigration beginning in the late 19th century, historians say. Hundreds more schools over the decades restricted Jewish enrollment, too, with quotas and other measures, some of which remained in force until the 1960s, historians say.
Nevertheless, according to the same article, Jews got degrees whether the Ivies wanted them to or not, continuing to do so once the colleges finally and fully opened their doors:
By 1920, Jews made up some 30 percent of the city’s population, and the student bodies of local colleges, including the City College of New York, were mostly Jewish. At the elite Columbia University, Jewish enrollment had swelled to 40 percent by 1920, according to a paper by Oliver P. Pollak, who taught at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and co-founded the Nebraska Jewish Historical Society.
[snip]
[By 1967] the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that Ivy League colleges — the very ones that had started Jewish quotas — were enrolling Jews in larger numbers than ever (though counting students by religion is never an exact science). Columbia University’s Jewish population was back up to 40 percent, where it had been when restrictions started earlier in the century.
Because of Jewish loyalty to credentialism, as colleges have moved to the left, so have the Jews. Even as antisemitism became increasingly overt on American campuses (something that goes back at least to the 1960s and the rise of campus Marxism), Jews absorbed those leftist values, passed them on to their children, and kept writing the tuition checks. Rich Jews, once they left, showered their former colleges with money.
However, now that colleges have gone from “anti-Zionism,” a concept with which leftwing Jews could still agree, to “we want you dead,” which is a cattle car too far, Jews are finally figuring out that there’s a problem:
Wealthy Jewish families are not having their college-bound children apply for Ivy League schools following antisemitic incidents and protests against Israel.
Schools in conservative states, like Washington University in Missouri, Vanderbilt University in Tennessee and Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Texas are seeing the influx of applications from Jewish students who are passing on top-tier universities like Harvard and Columbia, the New York Post reported. The parents cited protests in support of Palestinians on college campuses.
“They’re not paying a single dollar more to the schools,” college admissions consultant Christopher Rim said. “They don’t want to be associated with these schools. They are totally out.”
I believe that this report is accurate. On my Facebook feed, I have a lot of leftist Jewish friends, all of whom have traditionally had the utmost reverence for the Ivy League. The other day, all of them posted the same meme:
It’s sad that it takes a mini-Holocaust to wake up American Jews, but I guess what matters is that they are finally aware that they’ve been the ones funding the antisemitic death cults that are dominating once prestigious American campuses.