Researching Admissions Discrimination at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton1
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American Archivist/Vol. 45, No. 2/Spring 1982 175 Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/45/2/175/2746861/aarc_45_2_x2031p26n83j8683.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 The Half-Opened Door: Researching Admissions Discrimination at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton1 MARCIA G. SYNNOTT TRADITIONAL HISTORIES OF HIGHER should also be examined, especially in education have presented either a times of change, crisis, or progress. For centennial-pictorial overview of a par- a complete picture, a wide range of ticular institution's glorious achieve- university records must be consulted, ments (often the author's alma mater) or together with such external sources of a narrative account of its presidential opinion on the institution's activities as administrations. There have, of course, magazine and newspaper reports. It is to been notable exceptions that transcend be hoped that in time every college and even the latter format, but most institu- university will have a written history that tional histories suffer from the same shows the interaction of different in- defects.2 They portray the college or dividuals and groups in the formation university in a generally complimentary and implementation of policy. light and interpret its history from the In researching The Half-Opened perspective of the president, whose Door, I endeavored to find out and then papers were generally among the first to explain in a historical narrative how be collected and organized for research universities operated behind the scenes by college archives. But a president's in selecting their clientele, a number of papers do not indicate fully the attitudes whom would become tomorrow's lead- of those who disagreed with his leader- ers. While admissions policy is only one ship. Although the president has usually area of a university's history, the selec- been the central figure, the roles of tion of students is crucial to its overall faculty, students, trustees, and alumni purpose. 'For a list and a discussion of my sources, see Marcia Graham Synnott, The Half-Opened Door: Discrimination and Admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, 1900-1970 (Westport, Conn.: Green- wood Press, 1979), pp. 233-34, 289-90. 'A superior institutional history and one that helped guide my own research is George W. Pierson, Yale: College and University, 1871-1937, 2 vols. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1952, 1955). The author is associate professor in the Department of History, University of South Carolina. 176 American Archivist/Spring 1982 Selection of Research Topic terms of educational innovations (undergraduate tutorials) and social In 1970, when I was choosing a disser- policies (residential house systems). My tation topic, the time seemed opportune task would be to determine how their ad- Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/45/2/175/2746861/aarc_45_2_x2031p26n83j8683.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 to explore the "underside" of Ivy missions policies operated. Did a certain League college history. Admissions class and type of student choose these in- policy was a neglected area of research stitutions? Or did Harvard, Yale, and in higher education that merited scholar- Princeton consciously seek to recruit ly examination. It had always been more students with particular intellectual and difficult to get into prestigious private 3 socio-economic qualifications? colleges and universities than into most state colleges and universities. The academic standards of the private in- Research Methodology stitutions were usually higher; and Ivy Before going to a university archives, League colleges were also known to give the researcher should send to the curator some weight to whether an applicant had a letter describing his or her project. Not alumni connections, athletic ability, and only did the curators consider this to be the financial resources to pay his own a courtesy, but an advance letter gave way. Some discrimination in admissions them the time to identify the collections seemed to be inevitable. The question or record groups that might contain per- was, how much? After World War II, tinent correspondence and other public opinion had more or less disap- documents. My initial plan was to find proved of restrictive quotas against out what kinds of records were open and specific racial, religious, or ethnic whether they contained sufficient infor- groups, and by the 1970s there was a mation to justify a dissertation on ad- growing debate on whether there should missions policies. At Yale, which I be "benign quotas," "goals," or visited first, the chief research archivist "target numbers" for the admission of suggested I look at the records of the blacks and other racial minorities. Thus college dean, Frederick S. Jones, which the use of quotas in college admissions contained a good deal of information on promised to be a fruitful field for the "Jewish Question" during the historical research. 1920s. An examination of the dean's Because it would have been too for- records convinced me that I had seen the midable a project to try to research ad- "tip of the iceberg." Indeed, my subse- missions policies at all eight Ivy League quent research in other official papers at schools, I decided to limit my analysis to Yale, as well as those at Harvard and Harvard, Yale, and Princeton, called the Princeton, proved that during the 1920s "Big Three" since the years when they and 1930s the "Big Three" and such dominated the first ail-American foot- other private institutions as Columbia ball teams. Not only were they among University, Dartmouth College, and the nation's oldest colleges, but they New York University discriminated against applicants on the basis of their have also ranked, respectively, first, se- nativity and religion. These institutions cond, and third in producing propor- were reacting against what they saw to tionately more leaders than any of the be an invasion of their campuses by the others. Morever, Harvard, Yale, and sons of immigrants. Too many Irish Princeton have been the trendsetters in 'George W. Pierson, The Education of American Leaders: Comparative Contributions of U.S. Colleges and Universities (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1969), pp. xix-xxi, 240-51. The Half-Opened Door 177 Catholic and Jewish students threatened during the years in which I did most of to change the tone of campus life from my research (1970-75). A significant the relaxed, gentlemanly acquisition of part of my time was spent in winnowing learning, in conjunction with the data on discriminatory admissions Downloaded from http://meridian.allenpress.com/american-archivist/article-pdf/45/2/175/2746861/aarc_45_2_x2031p26n83j8683.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 strenuous pursuit of extracurricular ac- policies from the abundant chaff of tivities, to a relentless competitive routine correspondence. My goal was to scramble for academic honors and incorporate this evidence, which for cer- prizes. As for blacks and other racial tain years was fragmentary, into a minorities, a handful were tolerated as descriptive history of the adoption and long as they remained inconspicuous; implementation of restrictive admissions too many blacks, it was feared, might policies, especially the Jewish quota, at change the "complexion" of the cam- Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. pus. To protect their traditional In the early months of my research, I clientele—socially acceptable white also attempted a statistical analysis of Anglo-Saxon Protestants—Harvard, the educational achievements and oc- Yale, and Princeton imposed quotas on cupational successes of Catholic, Jews and perhaps on Catholics, while Jewish, and Protestant students at Yale, discouraging the application of blacks. drawing upon the histories of selected (Harvard and Yale admitted a small classes from their senior year albums number of blacks most years, but not through their twenty-fifth reunion until June 1947 did a black student, hav- books. In the period from the 1910s to ing entered under the Naval V-12 pro- the 1930s, Yale class histories, more fre- gram, receive an A.B. degree from 4 quently than those of Harvard or Princeton. ) Princeton, recorded their members' When I began my research, my under- religion, place of birth, and sometimes standing of the way a university actually even parents' birthplaces. Although I functioned was limited, so it took me collected a significant amount of data some time to determine which records, and then ran a cross-tabulation on in addition to those of the president and Catholic, Jewish, and foreign-born deans, would be most valuable. Al- students in the Yale College class of though curators, associate curators, and 1912, I did not pursue this study, research archivists were helpful in point- because I realized that, for it to be suc- ing out possible sources, some of the cessful, I would have to collect larger records either had been destroyed or quantities of data and acquire advanced were still in the offices in which they skills in comparative statistical analysis. originated and hence unavailable for re- However, historians of student achieve- search. I realized that I would have to ment at Ivy League universities may well read as extensively as possible in every find it rewarding to cull the biographical major group of university records that sketches of students in the class books, was open or might possibly be opened in conjunction with an examination of 'Records of the Dean of the College, Frederick Scheetz Jones, Yale University Archives (YUA), 6 boxes. Subject file Students—Nationalities, Negro, clipping, Princeton Alumni Weekly 48, no. 5 (October 24, 1947), p. 4, Princeton University Archives (PUA). See also Heywood Broun and George Britt, Christians Only: A Study in Prejudice (New York: Vanguard Press, 1931), which showed that quotas had been im- posed at many universities in the late 1920s. The authors' evidence consisted largely of letters from Jewish students and of three surveys, one conducted by a Jewish intercollegiate student organization in 1927 and two undertaken in the spring of 1930, the first by the Jewish Daily Bulletin and the second by A.