The End of Affirmative Action in College Admissions?

In the summer of 1977, I stopped in Athens on my way back to the United States from Israel to commence the practice of law. In a park in Athens, I noticed an elderly gentleman (or at least I would have then characterized him as such) wearing a Phi Beta Kappa key. I asked him from what college he had earned entry into the national honor society, and he replied Harvard, class of ’22.

Quickly calculating, I told him that my grandfather graduated from Harvard that same year, after only three years of college, and was also a Phi Beta Kappa. He looked at the Jewish star hanging around my neck and remarked that the Jews at Harvard in his day were not perceived as gentlemen — they studied too hard.

To be sure, my Slonim-born grandfather lacked a gentleman’s upbringing. When he was 15, his father told him he would have to quit school and go to work in a factory to bring in additional income. My grandfather, who had been largely supporting the family since he was eight or nine, organizing paper boys in Chelsea, Massachusetts, and was almost killed when he tried to jump on a moving trolley car laden with papers, refused. He told his father, however, he would pay rent.

When he arrived at Harvard, he weighed less than 80 pounds, after a grueling summer working in a factory, and had to convince the authorities that he was not tubercular prior to be allowed to matriculate. While at Harvard, he worked over forty hours a week, waiting on tables in the dining halls and offering course reviews to less studious Boston Brahmins.