Ep. 8: Harvard and the End of the Jewish Ivy League
Declining Jewish student numbers, the changing face of the American university, and what happens in the generations after the gates are crashed
In the 1990s, Harvard’s student body was said to be nearly a quarter Jewish. According to the Harvard Crimson’s 2020 survey of the freshman class, 6.7% of respondents identified as Jewish. On the final episode of this series, we explore the declining numbers of Jewish students across the Ivy League, and try to understand why, at places like Harvard, there may be fewer Jewish students today than when discriminatory policies kept them out a century ago.
We also look at how the same playbook that was developed to keep Jews out of elite universities—from the application, to the interview, to legacy preferences, to the hunt for geographical diversity—is now being used against a different minority group: Asian Americans.
Episode 8 of Gatecrashers features Rabbi Jonah Steinberg, researcher and author of The Half Opened Door Marcia Graham Synnott, Harvard Law School professor Jeannie Suk Gersen, and various former and current Harvard students.
Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Check out the full series at tabletmag.com/gatecrashers. Email us at [email protected] or leave us a voicemail at (917) 310-0456.
GatecrashersIntroducing GatecrashersA podcast about the hidden history of Jews and the Ivy League, from Unorthodox co-host Mark OppenheimerSeptember 6, 2022- GatecrashersEp. 1: Columbia and Its Forgotten Jewish CampusWhat was Seth Low Junior College, and why did the brilliant Jewish writer Isaac Asimov get sent there?September 13, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 2: Princeton and the Dirty Bicker of 1958The curious social scandal that left Jews out of—and nearly upended—the school’s exclusive eating clubsSeptember 13, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 3: Dartmouth and the Jews Who Loved ItHow a laid-back college in the mountains became an unlikely oasis for midcentury JewsSeptember 20, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 4: Yale and the Slow Death of QuotasThe truth about historical caps on Jewish enrollment in the Ivy LeagueSeptember 23, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 5: Brown University and Mrs. Smith’s Kosher KitchenThe Providence, Rhode Island, family that fed observant Jewish students and the 1960s push for on-campus kosher dining optionsOctober 4, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 6: Cornell and Its Off-Campus, Off-Kilter Jewish CommuneThe Cornell Havurah, a countercultural ‘anti-establishment establishment’ that brought Jewish students togetherOctober 11, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 7: Penn and the Great Sorority Coup of 1987Jewish Greek life, stereotypes, and what it means to represent Jewish womanhoodOctober 18, 2022
- GatecrashersEp. 8: Harvard and the End of the Jewish Ivy LeagueDeclining Jewish student numbers, the changing face of the American university, and what happens in the generations after the gates are crashedOctober 25, 2022