Stanford College apologized Wednesday for limiting Jewish pupil admissions in the course of the Nineteen Fifties — a follow that the varsity lengthy denied had taken place.
Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne issued the apology after a activity power he appointed in January submitted a report discovering the distinguished Northern California college had taken actions to suppress admissions of Jewish college students simply years after World Battle II got here to an finish.
“On behalf of Stanford College I want to apologize to the Jewish group, and to our total college group, each for the actions documented on this report back to suppress the admission of Jewish college students within the Nineteen Fifties and for the college’s denials of these actions within the interval that adopted,” Tessier-Lavigne mentioned in a letter despatched out to the varsity’s group. “These actions had been flawed. They had been damaging. And so they had been unacknowledged for too lengthy.”
The report discovered that within the early Nineteen Fifties Stanford “acted to limit the variety of Jewish college students” enrolling on the college underneath the management of Rixford Snyder, then Stanford’s director of admissions, and “with the notice of many in Stanford’s administration.”
Stanford had focused particular excessive faculties identified to have important populations of Jewish college students, permitting the varsity to nonetheless “declare that the college didn’t impose a quota on Jewish college students,” the report mentioned.
It mentioned that regardless of “a long time of denials,” a 1953 memo, dubbed the “Glover Memo,” clearly reported Snyder’s “intentions to behave in opposition to Jewish college students.”
Within the memo, Frederic Glover, then the assistant to Wallace Sterling, Stanford’s president on the time, conveyed Snyder’s “need to ‘disregard our acknowledged coverage of paying no consideration to the race or faith of candidates’,” the report mentioned.
Glover specified that Snyder was particularly involved about two Southern California excessive faculties that he knew had important numbers of Jewish college students: Beverly Hills Excessive College and Fairfax Excessive College.
“We have no idea whether or not Snyder additionally took motion in opposition to some other faculties or college students who recognized themselves as Jewish on their functions, no matter their highschool,” the report mentioned. “However we discovered a pointy drop in enrollments from these two faculties within the class that began Stanford within the fall of 1953. No different faculties skilled such a pointy discount in college students enrolling at Stanford at the moment.”
“It’s unclear how lengthy this appalling antisemitic exercise lasted or whether or not it prolonged to different faculties or college students,” Tessier-Lavigne mentioned in his letter. “Nonetheless, the report articulates how this effort to suppress Jewish enrollments had long-lasting results and dissuaded some Jewish college students from making use of to Stanford in later years. And, the report reveals that when questioned about its practices in later years, the college denied any anti-Jewish bias in admissions.”
“This ugly element of Stanford’s historical past, confirmed by this new report, is saddening and deeply troubling,” he mentioned. “As a college, we should acknowledge it and confront it as part of our historical past, as repellent as it’s, and search to do higher.”
Tessier-Lavigne mentioned he believed it will be “pure to ask whether or not any of the historic anti-Jewish bias documented by the duty power exists in our admission course of in the present day.”
“We’re assured it doesn’t,” he mentioned.
In an announcement on behalf of Hillel at Stanford, a Jewish pupil group, Government Director Rabbi Jessica Kirschner mentioned: “I wish to elevate up President Tessier Lavigne’s apology as a notable instance of institutional teshuvah — an acknowledgment of previous wrongdoing and clear and particular dedication to make sure a supportive and bias-free expertise at Stanford,” in accordance The Mercury Information, which relies in San Jose, California.
“That is what we wish for all members of the Stanford group,” she mentioned, in keeping with the outlet. NBC Information has contacted Hillel at Stanford for remark.
Tessier-Lavigne’s apology comes as Stanford seems to deal with historic wrongs and because the college faces scrutiny over different points, together with mounting security considerations after two rapes had been reported on the Northern California campus in as many months.
In 2016, Stanford’s campus was additionally rocked by the trial and lenient sentence within the case of swim crew member Brock Turner, who was convicted of three felonies after sexually assaulting an unconscious girl behind a dumpster.
