Replies

I didn’t read the whole article, but I can say that U of Chicago (not an Ivy, but prestigious) had a very sizable Jewish presence in both student body and faculty when I attended in the early ‘80s. In fact three of my better friends in freshman year were Jewish guys who lived on my floor, and we took a road trip together for New Haven pizza.

Saul Bellow and Alan Bloom were the most famous Jewish faculty members when I attended (Milton Friedman had left for Stanford). I took courses from able teachers with names like Kass (Amy) and Weiss.

But here’s the thing, they were not Orthodox, and those three Jewish friends have maybe three offspring among them, with at least one having mutilated her body in the current fad. They loved their Chinese pork fried rice and shrimp and cheeseburgers. Their outlook was shaped by reform Judaism, and they are intelligent and financially successful, but not much in the way offspring.

Chicago, all the Ivies, and most private Universities have plenty of spots available for legacy students. Maybe the number of Jews enrolling is declining because the number of Jews is declining in the U.S.

Thoughts:

I and my wife are both Jewish Ivy grads, different schools.

Whereas these schools now offer tremendous scholarships and (as we watch our friends’ kids admissions) seem to almost freely admit kids of certain races, (skin colors,) we are assuredly not on that preferential list.

Charitable, involved, and with kids who eclipse us in terms of academic and even athletic performance (and we were good,) we are nevertheless middle-class.

When these big schools are finished with admitting the rich legacies (I went to college with a halfwit who was a SEVENTH GENERATION legacy,) and after they have fulfilled their (often openly stated) will to have incoming classes to be, (in one case,) “50% minority,” we see there really isn’t much room for us.

And the opportunity, after all, is this: to get into massive debt and/or liquidate some or all major assets in order to send your kid to a four-year program largely focused on leftist social indoctrination.

In fine, we hope that certain institutions stay merit-focused. I, for one, hope my physical science-focused kids go MIT, Navy, or USCG... But there are so many great schools.

I will always love my school, though. We’ll see. The important thing, as my pal Herb Cohen famously said, is to “care, but not THAT much.”

The Lord makes ‘em and blesses ‘em. We just do the best we can while we’re on this beautiful Earth.