Credit: L.A. Cicero
After Stanford University released a report in which it admits to having limited enrollment for Jewish students in the 1950s, university president Marc Tessier-Lavigne publicly apologized.
“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,” said Tessier-Lavigne. “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.”
The university also stated its intention to address the needs of the Jewish community, including fighting anti-Semitism, avoiding events on Jewish holidays and offering kosher meals to students.
The report is the result of a panel convened by the university to investigate accusations published in August 2021 by Cornell University postdoc Charles Petersen that the university had already implemented quotas for Jewish students. The data showed a representative decrease in the number of Jewish students in the 1950s in regions with a large Jewish presence.
Many colleges and universities - such as Harvard, Yale and Dartmouth - limited access to Jews between the 1920s and 1960s, but Stanford denied for years that it had used such practices.
