Jewish Problems (2011)

Previously, at great length:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

The medical school in the city I grew up in had a policy of taking the students with the highest marks in last year school exams. That was it, no other judgement.

One year this would mean that the intake would be solely one ethnicity, and it was not white.

So the policy was abandoned for a more rounded approach.

These days the medical schools try very hard to make the population of graduating doctors look like the population they are going to treat.

This drives the (rich) parents of white students who just miss out getting into medical school extremely irate and litigious. But so far it has withstood attack.

The results are not achieved by different standards for graduation, but by different standards for admission.

Harvard also used to have admission policies specifically designed to exclude Jews. It's a dark chapter in higher education.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/at-trial-harva...

Australia had a notorious "dictation test" that was used to weed out non-white immigrants.

"Under the Immgration Act, migrants who entered Australia between 1901 and 1958 could be asked to take a dictation test.

To pass the test, they needed to write 50 words in any European language, as dictated by an immigration officer. After 1905, the officer could choose any language at all. A Chinese immigrant, for example, could be asked to write out 50 words in French, Italian or another language.

Few migrants could pass the test in these circumstances. This meant that it was easy to fail an applicant if they were from an ‘undesirable’ country, had a criminal record, had medical issues or were thought to be ‘morally unfit’.

If an applicant failed the test, they could be deported by the Australian Government."

https://www.naa.gov.au/explore-collection/immigration-and-ci...

Tanya Khovanova (first author) maintains an archive of these problems on her personal site: http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/Coffins/coffinsmain.html

From TA:

> Among problems that were used by the department to blackball unwanted candidate students, these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is difficult to find.

Could someone explain the mechanism here? I can understand how this would hurt any relatively unprivileged group, by requiring certain "gotchas" that have nothing to do with people's innate ability or level of education.

But is there anything further? I.e. were these problems well-known among students who had already passed through an unfairly discriminatory gauntlet?

Bias & fairness in enrollment is easy to solve, right? Just expand capacity to meet demand.

I get that higher ed has a branding problem. I don't care. If you want society support, you play by society rules.

Further, they're doing a fine job of destroying their own brands without any outside help.

Berkeley created and maintained an elite institution without being a finishing school for trust fund babies. Until they had their funding ganked, of course.

In the Lomonosov Moscow State Uni, in the math departments (Mechmat and VMK) there were 4 entrance exams, at the time of the article three of those graded at 3-5 points and one pass/fail. One could get 9-15 points total and the admission was in the order of the highest points, with the cut off being between 13 and 12 usually (the 12 pointers would compete in the high school's GPA and other extra credits). A failure in any of the exams (2 points) would eliminate one from the admission.

There was a shortcut: anybody with 9+ points for the first two (written and oral math) would be unconditionally admitted without even needing to take the two remaining exams (and risking a failure). There were other shortcuts not relevant here.

The written exam is 6 problems. You get a point for every one solved. Naturally the difficulty is increasing exponentially with the 5th and 6th being very hard (you only need to solve one of these to get the maximum 5 points, they are the same difficulty but one is usually an equation and another is a geometry problem). The first 4 problems are still easy for a good high school student, the 5th/6th requires extra preparation or going to a special math school. (some examples http://kvant.mccme.ru/1991/02/p65.htm )

The oral exam is two questions on a "ticket" and a problem. The list of questions is known beforehand and they are generic topics like "What are the properties of triangles?", the ticket is literally a piece of paper one pulls from a pile, face down. And each question and the problem give a point to add to 2. So you can only fail if you don't answer any question and don't solve the problem. Again, it's an easy 4 points with the two questions (out of total 50 or so) answered.

So what happens when somebody answered correctly the both ticket questions? He or she already has 4 points and the problem will decide between 4 and 5. If he or she has 5 for the written math (the written test is in front of the examiner) it does not matter, this person is already admitted with 9 points so the problem will be a simple one to save time. If the written score is 3, it will be a hard problem that this person is likely not going to solve (harder than the 4th problem in the written exam but not as hard as 5th or 6th) that will make the total math 7 points and limit that person's entrance exam score to 12 points, likely not letting them in because you really should not be in the math department if you could only solve 3 easy problems in the written exam.

The 4 points for the written math is the most peculiar, especially if one had good work done on the 5th problem even without solving it ultimately. If this person solves the problem in the oral math, it's the automatic admission. So a tricky problem comes out. You cannot give the same problem you give to the one with 3 points because it will be too easy. You cannot really give another 5th or 6th problem from the written math because it takes an hour to solve so they give a problem that is as hard as the 5th/6th but can be solved in minutes, giving a fair chance for an automatic admission. If the candidate fails it it's not the end, they continue with 8 points and still a fair chance for admission.

This is not related to Jews, as far as I know, I know people who were not Jewish and got these problems after getting 4 points for the written math. This is to set the uniform standard for the accelerated admission: five written exam problems and two theoretical questions.

US universities also had a history of trying to exclude Jewish people [1]. I say history, because the practice has by all accounts stopped, and the current situation in the Ivy League [2] is as follows (looking only at non-international students):

                          Ivy League   US      Ratio
  Jewish                  17.2%         2.4%    7.16
  Asian                   19.6%         5.3%    3.71
  White (incl. Jewish)    50.3%        61.5%    0.82
  Hispanic                11.4%        17.6%    0.65
  Black                    7.8%        12.7%    0.61
  White (non-Jewish)      33.1%        59.1%    0.56

The numbers don't sum to 100% because I did not include multi-ethnic students, a few minor ethnicities (American-Indian, Pacific Islander..), and students categorized as "unknown" or "other" by the universities. Data on university undergraduate demographics was taken from the universities own diversity reports. Jewish representation was was gathered from http://hillel.org/college-guide/list/, https://forward.com/jewish-college-guide/, and https://ejewishphilanthropy.com/how-many-jewish-undergraduat..., taking the lowest estimate when sources conflicted. ejewishphilanthropy.com (eJP) points out flaws in Hillel's data gathering (e.g. showing Harvard as 30% Jewish, when eJP found it only 16%) Hillel seems to have since fixed these flaws, as the estimates they now give are in-line with those of eJP.

No correction has been made to look at only the college-age population of the US, or only at the Northeastern US where all the Ivy League universities are located, so that may be a source of some bias.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota#United_States

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivy_League

There is a great personal account of facing these problems in the New Criterion:

https://newcriterion.com/issues/2012/10/the-fifth-problem-ma...

Unfortunately the current paywall looks pretty insurmountable, any mirrors would be appreciated.

"The Triguboffs were refused visas for Canada and the United States, which had strict quotas on Jewish immigrants. But they had obtained landing permits for Australia back in 1946 when the country had an open-door policy to Jewish refugees.

By early 1948, however, Australian policy had changed and a family of rich Jews ... were not the migrants Australia was looking for.

In postwar Australia, Jews were tarred with a mix of old-fashioned anti-Semitism and suspicion they were either communists or Zionists attacking British forces in Palestine. Things came to a crisis in January 1947 when an old ferry called the Hwa Lien docked in Sydney carrying 300 stateless Jews from Shanghai. Sydney's The Sun newspaper claimed that criminal syndicates run by communists had backed the Jewish immigrants and hinted that Jewish refugees had collaborated with the Japanese. The Sun editorialised: "The danger of infiltration by professional trouble makers, whether Jewish terrorists or Communist agents, will arouse the natural suspicion of all who wish to see Australia kept Australian."

Arthur Calwell, Australia's immigration minister following World War II, was a champion of mass migration (although famously within the confines of the White Australia Policy) and had initially been sympathetic to the plight of Jewish refugees. He let the Hwa Lien unload its passengers. But in the heated aftermath he quietly imposed a secret quota on the number of Jews who would be given entry on any future migrant ships."

https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/harry-triguboffs-dark-se...