Back in the day, Columbia University had a 1% (1.5%?) quota against Jews, so this institutional discrimination pre-dates affirmative action. Affirmative action merely picks up where the old time discrimination left off, and Jews are still discriminated against as a subset of white people, no doubt now viewed as a particularly pernicious subset, since we’re all supposedly either oppressing the piece-loving palis, or at least buying Israeli Bonds and Sabra and Tribe Humus, so as to enable that oppression.
Fine with me. I turned my back on a university education decades ago, and instead opted to learn something. Those who are excluded from the university system are actually lucky. They won’t have to unlearn all the leftist drivel that they’d otherwise be pumped with.
Well, no it didn't. Or, if they did, it wasn't very effective.
One of the groups affected by these policies was Jewish applicants, whose admission to some New England and New York City-area liberal arts universities fell significantly between the late 1910s and the mid-1930s.[5] For instance, the admission ... during that period fell ...in Columbia University from 32.7% to 14.6%. 15% was still 7x or 10x their percentage of the population.
Sounds more like they had a 15% quota, not 1.5% (or 1%). 15% was still 7x or 10x their percentage of the population.
Shouldn't have had any quota at all, of course.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numerus_clausus#Numerus_clausus_in_the_United_States