Stanford president apologizes for 1950s policy restricting Jewish admissions

STANFORD — Owning up to the school’s history of discrimination, Stanford President Marc Tessier-Lavigne on Wednesday apologized to the Jewish community after a task force report found the university had intentionally denied admission to Jews in the 1950s.

The 75-page report probed a 1953 university memo — which was reported in a blog last year — that expressed concern by university administrators about the number of Jewish students being admitted to Stanford. The report documents a sharp drop in enrollments of students from two Southern California high schools known to have substantial populations of Jewish students — “evidence that the university took action to suppress admission of Jewish students.”

Though it’s unclear how long the antisemitic policy lasted — or whether it extended to other schools or students — the report shows “how this effort to suppress Jewish enrollments had long-lasting effects and dissuaded some Jewish students from applying to Stanford in later years.”  The report shows that when questioned about its practices in later years, the university denied any anti-Jewish bias in admissions.

“On behalf of Stanford University I wish to apologize to the Jewish community, and to our entire university community, both for the actions documented in this report to suppress the admission of Jewish students in the 1950s and for the university’s denials of those actions in the period that followed,” Tessier-Lavigne said. “These actions were wrong. They were damaging. And they were unacknowledged for too long.”

“Today, we must work to do better, not only to atone for the wrongs of the past, but to ensure the supportive and bias-free experience for members of our Jewish community that we seek for all members of our Stanford community.”

On behalf of Hillel at Stanford, Executive Director Rabbi Jessica Kirschner said ” I want to lift up President Tessier Lavigne’s apology as a notable example of institutional teshuvah—an acknowledgment of past wrongdoing and clear and specific commitment to ensure a supportive and bias-free experience at Stanford.”

“This is what we want for all members of the Stanford community,” she said.

In addition to the institutional apology, the task force is recommending “enhanced education and training to address biases” and wants to put “greater attention to Jewish religious observances in university scheduling, housing and dining.” The task force also wants the university to enforce an Undergraduate Senate resolution on antisemitism and clarify its relationship with Stanford Hillel.

Along with going against stereotypical anti-Semitic speech, the Undergraduate Senate resolution also lists “demonization of Israel” as examples of anti-Semitism, a deeply divisive issue among Americans who support Palestinian liberation and don’t want to see restrictions on student activism and academia.

The university is set to offer a webinar Thursday at noon wherein Professor Ari Y. Kelman, a social scientist and leading expert on Jewish life in America who chaired the task force, will present the report.

Tessier-Lavigne appointed the Advisory Task Force on the History of Jewish Admissions and Experience at Stanford University in January. The charge called on task force members to address lingering assertions, including a report in an online newsletter last year, about admissions quotas aimed at limiting Jewish applicants.

“Admittedly, this is a difficult undertaking because the efforts to suppress the number of Jewish students at Stanford in the 1950s do not map easily onto contemporary expressions of antisemitism,” the task force wrote. “There are, however, continuities, and they provide an opportunity for the university to learn from its history and to inaugurate new directions for addressing some of the core concerns shared by both the past and the present.”

The task force uncovered a group of administrators who participated in efforts to limit admissions of Jewish students, including Rixford K. Snyder, who was admissions director for two decades.

“Snyder played a central role in efforts to limit the number of Jewish students at Stanford,” the report states.

But the crucial piece of the review was the 1953 university memo written to then-President Wallace Sterling from his assistant, Fred Glover, which criticized the number of Jewish students being admitted to Stanford.

Glover listed two high schools in Los Angeles — Beverly Hills and Fairfax — whose student populations were “from 95 to 98% Jewish,” and said that accepting “a few” from those schools would be followed by “a flood of Jewish applications” the next year.” He also cited Snyder’s concern “that more than one quarter of the applications from men are from Jewish boys” during that admissions cycle.

After the memo, the report says, Snyder ended recruitment efforts at those schools and ‘appears to have taken other steps that had more direct and measurable effects, visible only in a close analysis of the annual reports of the Registrar’s office.” As a result, the school had a “sharp drop” in Jewish students: 87 enrolled during 1949-1952, but only 14 in 1952-1955. That trend was not seen at any other public schools during the 1950s and 60s.

“The impact was immediate and striking,” the report states.