9 ms·

Jewish problems (2011)

120 points by replicant 11y ago

jasode 11y ago
A similar story[1] was told by the mathematician Edward Frenkel. He was a Jew in Russia and took an exam with "hard" math problems designed to prevent his admission into Moscow State University. It's possible the problems shown in the paper are the ones Frenkel saw since he was a teenager during that time period. (The Cornell paper does not specifically mention Frenkel.) [1]http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465064957 http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465...
vkazanov 11y ago
This is a well-known fact, actually. My math teacher in Lithuania mentioned that back in his days (50-s) it was practically impossible for a non-Jewish student to get into any math- or physics-related faculty: Jewish families had a very strong multi-generational tradition of both in-school and additional education. He also said he was the only non-jewish in his group in Moscow State University that year. So at some point it was decided to, ehm, discriminate jewish - they were supposed to be a minority in all the main universities/institutes, under 10%, I think, although this is not a precise number. Note that I don't advocate anything or anyone, this is just the way it was.
- Udik 11y ago
  Wouldn't that be called "affirmative action" in the US?
  - Cyph0n 11y ago
    Yep, sounds like it to me. The fact that Jews are involved sometimes clouds the issue.
  - fennecfoxen 11y ago
    The differences: In the US, they'd ask everyone the same questions, but have different standards for the results. The practice would not be secret, and so there would not be subterfuge of this scope (the plausible-deniability angle is gone). Finally, the practice would be used to boost the effective scores of the select less-qualified candidates, instead of damaging the scores of select more-qualified candidates. (This is not strictly a difference of terminology: in a competitive assessment affirmative action on a less-successful candidate would consistently crowd out candidates from the bottom end of the 'successful' range, whereas the Jewish questions would sabotage everyone who got them, including those who would otherwise be at the top of the field).
    - Udik 11y ago
      True, it's important, if ever a mechanism like this is applied, that it is made official and mandated by law. I don't agree that the system described works in a substantially different way from affirmative action, though, as you can consider the current admission tests to already include the "Jewish problems", for a number of points equivalent to the "score boosting" applied to the other candidates. Most importantly, if things were like described by the GP, the intended effect is not to discriminate against an ethnic group, but balance its overwhelming predominance in a particular field. Which is precisely the objective of affirmative action.
      - fennecfoxen 11y ago
        If the intended effect was merely to balance its overwhelming predominance, sabotage in the exams is the most problematic way to do so, because of the way that it can efface the best talent in the group; diversity-quotas of some sort would damage the field less. More broadly, though, if you think that this was "merely" about balance and that there was no anti-Semitic sentiment in academia in Soviet Lithuania in the 1950s, shortly after the "Rootless Cosmopolitan" campaign and squarely in the era of the "Doctors' Plot", then I may have a bridge to sell you.
        WildUtah 11y ago
        This is relevant because employment discrimination law in the USA prohibits the use of any tests where certain protected racial categories score worse than the national average by a specific amount. Usually that amount is specifically that each protected race must achieve four fifths of the passing scores of any other group. (Yes, that is a vague and easily gamed standard. It was made up by lawyers in the Department of Justice, not by game theorists in the DoJ.) The result in, for example, fire and police departments has been that all the tests, especially written tests, have been dumbed down so that 80% of everyone passes. That is automatically considered to fulfil the four fifths standard. Then candidates are chosen by political patronage or random selection. The result is much worse average qualifications. If there were just a racial quota like US universities use, you could pick the top X% of people from each protected underperforming racial category but also the top people from each of the high performing categories. In the Jewish Problem and four-fifths scenario, you don't get the top people from the high performing category except by chance and with four-fifths not from the protected categories either. The new, state of the art federal civil service exam written under the Carter administration was abandoned because protected racial groups did badly. the obvious solution of race norming was considered out of bounds because Republicans could demagogue against the practice. The entire civil service exam system was dismantled instead and race based hiring is promoted with no objective standards. The result is the worst of all possible worlds. It's just lucky that federal jobs are still plush enough that good people work hard to game any system to get them.
  - minopret 11y ago
    I wouldn't overlook the distinctions between them. This kind of policy against Jews was a "quota", specifically "numerus clausus". Participation from a specific minority is prohibited once it reaches a specific number.
  - sremani 11y ago
    Not exactly, but not that different from Harvard capping Asians to around 17% for the past 25 years.
  - nailer 11y ago
    Third-party academic research showing that Asian-Americans have to score significantly higher on the SATs than other students to gain admission to Harvard. The reason given was that Harvard uses uses participation in non-academic events as a mechanism to exclude Asian students. You can read about it, and the lawsuit filed, here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/complaint-alleging-discrimination-by-harvard-dismissed-1436305777 http://www.wsj.com/articles/complaint-alleging-discriminatio...
    - hackuser 11y ago
      Hmm ... your citation's headline is: "Harvard Asian-American Bias Complaint Dismissed". The rest is paywalled.
  - hackuser 11y ago
    No. Affirmative action is giving extra support to a minority that suffers widely from discrimination and who lack social and political power. It recognizes that admissions are not a meritocracy for many (and in many ways, for anyone - people with the right social network have a big advantage) who because of discrimination don't have access to the same playing field or equipment as everyone else. Jews in the USSR were the ones suffering widely from discrimination.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
golergka 11y ago
Having graduated math-oriented Moscow high school that, on one hand, had a lot of graduates go to the math department (roughly translated as MechMath) of MSU (usually, most of the math class alumni goes there), and on the other, had untypical amount of jewish students, these rings so close to home. Hell, I think they actually gave us most part of these problems in math lessons. Edit: another curious source > Mikhail Brin decided to study mathematics instead, and was offered a place although the entry exams for Jews were sat separately, in rooms that were notoriously known as "the gas chambers." http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2.209/google-co-founder-my-family-left-russia-because-of-anti-semitism-1.246045 http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2.209/google-co-founder-my-fam...
jkot 11y ago
US had something similar, Isaac Asimov started writing sci-fi, after he was not accepted to medical university.
- Kliment 11y ago
  I thought he was a biochemist and taught at a med school. Wikipedia says he started writing scifi at 11, and I doubt even he was eligible for med school at that age.
  - madcaptenor 11y ago
    Wikipedia says that he applied to med school, was rejected, went to grad school in chemistry at Columbia (partially before and partially after World War II), and then after getting his PhD he taught at the Boston University School of Medicine. So he taught at a med school without attending a med school.
- Amorymeltzer 11y ago
  Stanley Kaplan,[1] who basically founded the test-prep industry in the US, did so because he was rejected from medical school for being Jewish. 1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402105.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08...
gcb0 11y ago
were those offered only to undesired applicants or to everyone and somehow only the desired people knew how to solve?
- replicant 11y ago
  Only to the undesirables students. Quoting the paper, "The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was at that time actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other 'undesirables') from enrolling in the department. One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam."
  - alkonaut 11y ago
    Ah. Then it makes sense. I thought first it was a set of carefully selected problems, created for the purpose of letting one group fail and another pass. Which would have been very interesting (i.e. are there problems which one group solves better than another, or problems that one group must refuse to solve for religious reasons etc). Giving a set of hard problems to an unwanted group and a separate set of problems (or no problems at all) to another is just simple discrimination. They could just as well have had a sign that told the unwanted group not to apply and it would have been no less discriminating.
  - kelukelugames 11y ago
    Which groups are the 'undesirables'?
    - pja 11y ago
      The Jewish students were regarded as the undesirables and given the 'coffin' problems in order to eliminate them - read the links up-thread.
      - kelukelugames 11y ago
        Yes, thank you. I am curious if there were other groups or it's only limited to Jewish students.
bb101 11y ago
Similar events happened in London in the mid-19th century. University College London (UCL), now one of the best colleges in the University of London, was founded to allow students entry through non-religious means. Consequently, it was the first college in the university to allow equal entry to both Jews and women.
- david-given 11y ago
  This is why British fee-paying schools are called 'public schools', by the way --- they're open to any member of the public who can pay, rather than being open to only a certain subset of the population. Plus public schools were under public management (a board of governors). I believe there still are some private schools (UK sense) in the UK, but I can't find any references.
  - jzwinck 11y ago
    Most any home school is a private school using that definition.
- nailer 11y ago
  For those in the US, UCL's one of the crunchier CS universities outside ImpBridge.
jjoe 11y ago
While we're discussing this subject, and hoping to shine a bright light away from all the negativity, the solidarity of the Jewish people is amazing and unequalled! Jews seem to show great compassion and provide unconditional help for their own. There's wisdom to be gleaned from this I'm sure...
- frandroid 11y ago
  Too bad the Zionist subset is so intent on their solidarity with each other that they're conducting a slow ethnic cleansing of all other non-Jews on the lands that they occupy...
  - jaxomlotus 11y ago
    I've lived in Israel and never observed any ethnic cleansing, slow or otherwise. I'm not a zionist. I was just a student studying abroad and have both Israeli and Arab friends (from variety of Middle Eastern countries). I do hear that term thrown around a lot on the Internet by social justice warriors. Honest question: Have you ever been to Israel? What was your experience like when you were there to have contributed to such a strong narrative?
    - frandroid 11y ago
      I have not been there, but I use something called the Internet to learn about more than my physically-accessible world. Anyway have you been to the Occupied Territories while you were there?
  - JIhadishateshim 11y ago
    I never see you social activists care so much about anything that doesn't involve Jews as culprits. It's quite odd really. Tibet, no? Islamic Imperialism across any other land, no? It's really just jews, oh sorry "zionists" that falls under your area? Your modus operandi starts becoming obvious for those outside and eventually have the opposite effect to your "social activism". Just my two cents. Our family have non-jewish friends living and enjoying their culture happily in Israel. Too much Al Jazeera can be hazardous to your health.
hiq 11y ago
Without the alternative easier exams to compare with and the grading scheme that were used, these problems do not mean much regarding the discrimination that took place. It is quite common to give good grades even when the exercises have not been solved completely, but interesting thoughts and ideas have been exposed, especially in mathematics. Off topic, but regarding problem 2, a math professor once told me of a PhD student who started studying this kind of functions. He spent some time to discover their many interesting properties, until the professor made him understand why these functions were so regular, and that he had actually wasted his time. Funny to see this again.
RivieraKid 11y ago
I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  Research is discouraged, but not impossible. "Natural history of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Harpending and Cochran is a good start. http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi... (Hint: It's all genetic.)
  - golergka 11y ago
    Interesting read, but I have some problems with it. > Another theory suggests that there was selective breeding for Talmudic scholarship. This seems unlikely to have been an important selective factor, since there weren’t very many professional rabbis, certainly less than one percent of the population. Although there are very few rabbis, majority of ultra-orthodox men spend most part of their time in rabbinic studies until they're very deep into adult life, and their level of success in that field is directly converted into their social status. (Which also means that they don't work and depend on their wives (who are also expected to care about the house and have a lot of children) as well as welfare from state and charities to survive).
    - yissachar 11y ago
      This is a relatively recent development and certainly wasn't true for most of Ashkenazi history.
  - Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
    I wonder why it's discouraged? I think it undermines antisemitism rather than otherwise. As it's a benign explanation for jewish overrepresentation in cognitively demanding endeavours.
RivieraKid 11y ago
I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.
qrian 11y ago
I found a site with some more background on this subject http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/coffins.html http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/coffins.html
tacon 11y ago
In the early 1900s, Harvard was on track to be a Jewish dominated university, and they made the (then common) decision to limit Jewish enrollment.[1] In reading that article, I learned that even Richard Feynman was affected by Columbia's quota, and ended up at MIT instead. (Go MIT!) Non-meritocratic quotas exist to this day at all elite US universities, with one exception: Caltech.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota [2] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i/ http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...
- notdonspaulding 11y ago
  Thanks for chiming in with this, I did not know Caltech was an academically-uncompromising institution.
- awl130 11y ago
  it's happening today to Asian students in a less overt fashion
- Chinjut 11y ago
  I was under the impression UC Berkeley was similar to Caltech in this regard?
  - jedberg 11y ago
    It is, but people sometimes don't list it as "elite" because it's a public university.
  - WildUtah 11y ago
    It is supposed to be, but the administration organized a Massive Resistance campaign against the California Civil Rights Initiative. [0] Through mass 'holistic' review of individual applications for racial background, the University of California follows the same racial quota admission system that nearly all elite American universities do. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance
PRJIUS2 11y ago
Posted last two times[1][2] one of these stories came around, comment applicable here: As a preamble there most definitely existed anti-semitism in Soviet Union. I am a Russian living in the US with Jewish family in Russia. This is a throw away account. With that said, stories of anti-semitism told by Russian Jews in US should not be taken at face value. These folks are subject to a very strong selection bias. Most of them came to the US as refugees who were recognized by the US State Department as being discriminated against for being Jewish in USSR/Russia. Secondly they have interest in maintaining the story anti-seminitism because it validates their narrative and could potentially help their relatives immigrate to the US. Additionally many stories of anti-semitism that I heard were something a non-jew would experience as well but attributed to anti-semitism. As a personal example, I was at first denied admission to a specialized school in very late Soviet period. They eventually let me in because my mother found out that I had the highest score on the entrance exam of any one. Their excuse was that they had to let the kids who were in the paid summer program at the school first and now the class was full. A Jewish kid's parents would have been told they already have too many Jews in the advanced program. Both cases are just the admissions persons asking for a bribe. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340553
- gist 11y ago
  "attributed to". Reminds me of when I am in my car at a stop light and a man looks over at me. I always think "wow if I was a woman or if I was black I would think that that is the reason they are looking at me".
  - randycupertino 11y ago
    Instead you just use it to validate your extreme attractiveness, right? :) "I'm looking good today, check out everyone sneaking a peak at me!"
    - gist 11y ago
      Well no because if a person turns their head to look they don't necessarily know in advance that the person is good looking! (It might be the car that I drive though...). Now of course if I was to do that with women it wouldn't be based on the car of course!
guelo 11y ago
Jews, and many other minority groups, form tight communities were they look out for each other help each other out. So Jewish businesses and organizations tend to discriminate in hiring, recommendations, etc. Happens all the time, very overtly. Since at this point Jewish organizations and businesses in the US are long established and powerful in many areas, this anti-gentile discrimination is problematic to society at large. But it's a type of discrimination that is rarely mentioned and complained about.
- blisterpeanuts 11y ago
  Evidence? Citations? (other than stormfront or other nazi or islamist websites)
  - kurthr 11y ago
    I shouldn't even respond to this, because it can only cause problems, but really... Hollywood? NY Diamond trade? I don't really have a problem with them (not being in those industries), but that someone in the US could be unaware is bizarre.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
      So, the Jews control Hollywood? That canard's been around for a while. What's bizarre is that you didn't include money lending.
  - throwaway999993 11y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Ramapo_Central_School_District https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Ramapo_Central_School_D... Read the history section. Vigilante street patrols with vehicles made to look like marked and unmarked police vehicles, often under the guise of being affiliated with a volunteer ambulance service: http://privateinvesigations.blogspot.com/2011/07/williamsburg-praise-and-scorn-for.html?m=1 http://privateinvesigations.blogspot.com/2011/07/williamsbur... http://gothamist.com/2010/06/05/pedestrian_struck_by_volunteer_ambu.php#photo-1 http://gothamist.com/2010/06/05/pedestrian_struck_by_volunte...
hackuser 11y ago
A bit preachy, sorry: Everyone frowns on discrimination by others, people in different times and/or places, but much more important than criticizing others is to do the right thing ourselves. We need to look in the mirror (myself included!). To choose a prominent example, open discrimination against people who believe in Islam is socially acceptable in much of Western society. How stupid can we be? We're blatently repeating the exact same mistakes as before, the exact thing we frown upon. Some will say, 'but this time is different; we have a valid reason' - which of course is exactly what people said all those previous times, it's just a justification for acting out on fear (and it's just dumb reasoning). The old fears and rationalizations look absurd to us now but seemed just as real at the time as our current fears. Ours will look just as absurd in the future. Why can't we just apply the simple, blanket rule? Don't discriminate; prejudice is cruel, unjust and unfair, and it results in very bad things. It provides no real benefits. It always ends up on the wrong side of history; the accomplishments and heroes we honor are never hate and the hateful, but those that stood up against them. When our descendents look back at us, which side will we be on?
- wobbleblob 11y ago
  > We're blatently repeating the exact same mistakes as before, the exact thing we frown upon. I find it enlightening. Why did people let the nazis take the jews away? Why did people support slavery, even turn escaped slaves in, for money? Why did they allow lynchings to happen? Well, now we know. Now we understand. Maybe we can view our ancestors in a different light now.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  I've been reading US immigration history for various groups. Each group suffered, assimilated, and then promptly shat on the next group. History repeats. Things are better now because of civil rights. Discrimination is less violent. But things could be better.
drostie 11y ago
Some answers: 1. Solve for positive x: x (8 sqrt(1 - x) + sqrt(1 + x)) <= 11 sqrt(1 + x) - 16 sqrt(1 - x) The upper bound is clearly x=1 because the square roots cease to exist for x > 1 and and substituting in x = 1 - epsilon^2 gives to first order (8 e + 1) <= (11 - 16 e) which works because 8 <= 11. Does this thing have a root in [0, 1]? The inverse of y = sqrt(1 + x)/sqrt(1 - x) is with some work x = (y^2 - 1)/(y^2 + 1) so when we divide through by sqrt(1-x) which we know now to be positive, and replace the above, we find: (y^2 - 1)/(y^2 + 1) * (8 + y) = 11 y - 16 Expanding out we're looking for a root of -10 y^3 + 24*y^2 - 12 y + 8 = 0 Dividing by -2 to normalize somewhat: 5 y^3 - 12 y^2 + 6 y - 4 = 0 At this point I almost gave up (since it's a cubic and I had no guarantee that x was rational) but got lucky, I started trying positive integers to see where this transitions from negative (y=0) to positive (5y^3) and accidentally found that y=2 solves the equation. Sending it back through I find 3/5, so assuming that it doesn't double back somewhere in the interval [3/5, 1] that's the interval that we're looking for. Phew! 2. Find all functions F(x) : R -> R having the propery that for any x1 and x2, F(x1) - F(x2) <= (x1 - x2)^2. Yeah, if you're just entering a university you're probably not going to get this one. Rewriting x1 as x + dx, x2 as x, then this says F(x + dx) - F(x) <= dx^2. With some limits and the Squeeze theorem, this restricts the functions to be differentiable with derivative zero, so they are constant functions. By inspection that is not just necessary but also sufficient. 3. Given a triangle ABC construct with a straightedge and compass a point K on AB and a point M on BC such that AK = KM = MC. This seems in general impossible except for some very specific triangles -- is that true? For example if |AB| = 2 and |BC| = 1, it seems that the only point on AB which could possibly be a candidate for K is the midpoint, with M being B. But the only way that the distance from K to M is the same is if BCK is an equilateral triangle, which requires furthermore that the angle BAC is 60 degrees, no? 4. Solve 2 cubert(2y - 1) = y^3 + 1 for real y. So y = 1 is an obvious solution. Cubing both sides we get y^9 + 3y^6 + 3y^3 - 16 y + 9 = 0 Then doing polynomial division by y-1 I get y^8 + y^7 + y^6 + 4 y^5 + 4 y^4 + 4 y^3 + 7 y^2 + 7 y - 9. At this point I got stuck and turned to automated tools, which say that this is factorizable as: (y^2 + y - 1)(y^6 + 2 y^4 + 2 y^3 + 4 y^2 + 2 y + 9) Graphing the right hand side it seems to be consistently positive, so that just leaves the left hand side, which is -1/2 +/- sqrt(5)/2. That's pretty difficult.
misiti3780 11y ago
If you read the book Perfect Rigor, about Grigori Perelman (solved the Poincare Conjecture - won the fields metal, but would not accept the 1MM dollar prize on principle) they tell multiple tails of anti-semitism in the Russian math departments at the time. According to the book, Perelman was basically really lucky to be born when he was and where he was, and that is really the only reason he was given a chance to get the education he got. The world is obviously a better place for guys like this.

120 points by replicant 11y ago

A similar story[1] was told by the mathematician Edward Frenkel. He was a Jew in Russia and took an exam with "hard" math problems designed to prevent his admission into Moscow State University. It's possible the problems shown in the paper are the ones Frenkel saw since he was a teenager during that time period. (The Cornell paper does not specifically mention Frenkel.) [1]http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465064957 http://www.amazon.com/Love-Math-Heart-Hidden-Reality/dp/0465...

vkazanov 11y ago

This is a well-known fact, actually. My math teacher in Lithuania mentioned that back in his days (50-s) it was practically impossible for a non-Jewish student to get into any math- or physics-related faculty: Jewish families had a very strong multi-generational tradition of both in-school and additional education. He also said he was the only non-jewish in his group in Moscow State University that year. So at some point it was decided to, ehm, discriminate jewish - they were supposed to be a minority in all the main universities/institutes, under 10%, I think, although this is not a precise number. Note that I don't advocate anything or anyone, this is just the way it was.

Udik 11y ago
Wouldn't that be called "affirmative action" in the US?
- Cyph0n 11y ago
  Yep, sounds like it to me. The fact that Jews are involved sometimes clouds the issue.
- fennecfoxen 11y ago
  The differences: In the US, they'd ask everyone the same questions, but have different standards for the results. The practice would not be secret, and so there would not be subterfuge of this scope (the plausible-deniability angle is gone). Finally, the practice would be used to boost the effective scores of the select less-qualified candidates, instead of damaging the scores of select more-qualified candidates. (This is not strictly a difference of terminology: in a competitive assessment affirmative action on a less-successful candidate would consistently crowd out candidates from the bottom end of the 'successful' range, whereas the Jewish questions would sabotage everyone who got them, including those who would otherwise be at the top of the field).
  - Udik 11y ago
    True, it's important, if ever a mechanism like this is applied, that it is made official and mandated by law. I don't agree that the system described works in a substantially different way from affirmative action, though, as you can consider the current admission tests to already include the "Jewish problems", for a number of points equivalent to the "score boosting" applied to the other candidates. Most importantly, if things were like described by the GP, the intended effect is not to discriminate against an ethnic group, but balance its overwhelming predominance in a particular field. Which is precisely the objective of affirmative action.
    - fennecfoxen 11y ago
      If the intended effect was merely to balance its overwhelming predominance, sabotage in the exams is the most problematic way to do so, because of the way that it can efface the best talent in the group; diversity-quotas of some sort would damage the field less. More broadly, though, if you think that this was "merely" about balance and that there was no anti-Semitic sentiment in academia in Soviet Lithuania in the 1950s, shortly after the "Rootless Cosmopolitan" campaign and squarely in the era of the "Doctors' Plot", then I may have a bridge to sell you.
      - WildUtah 11y ago
        This is relevant because employment discrimination law in the USA prohibits the use of any tests where certain protected racial categories score worse than the national average by a specific amount. Usually that amount is specifically that each protected race must achieve four fifths of the passing scores of any other group. (Yes, that is a vague and easily gamed standard. It was made up by lawyers in the Department of Justice, not by game theorists in the DoJ.) The result in, for example, fire and police departments has been that all the tests, especially written tests, have been dumbed down so that 80% of everyone passes. That is automatically considered to fulfil the four fifths standard. Then candidates are chosen by political patronage or random selection. The result is much worse average qualifications. If there were just a racial quota like US universities use, you could pick the top X% of people from each protected underperforming racial category but also the top people from each of the high performing categories. In the Jewish Problem and four-fifths scenario, you don't get the top people from the high performing category except by chance and with four-fifths not from the protected categories either. The new, state of the art federal civil service exam written under the Carter administration was abandoned because protected racial groups did badly. the obvious solution of race norming was considered out of bounds because Republicans could demagogue against the practice. The entire civil service exam system was dismantled instead and race based hiring is promoted with no objective standards. The result is the worst of all possible worlds. It's just lucky that federal jobs are still plush enough that good people work hard to game any system to get them.
- minopret 11y ago
  I wouldn't overlook the distinctions between them. This kind of policy against Jews was a "quota", specifically "numerus clausus". Participation from a specific minority is prohibited once it reaches a specific number.
- sremani 11y ago
  Not exactly, but not that different from Harvard capping Asians to around 17% for the past 25 years.
- nailer 11y ago
  Third-party academic research showing that Asian-Americans have to score significantly higher on the SATs than other students to gain admission to Harvard. The reason given was that Harvard uses uses participation in non-academic events as a mechanism to exclude Asian students. You can read about it, and the lawsuit filed, here: http://www.wsj.com/articles/complaint-alleging-discrimination-by-harvard-dismissed-1436305777 http://www.wsj.com/articles/complaint-alleging-discriminatio...
  - hackuser 11y ago
    Hmm ... your citation's headline is: "Harvard Asian-American Bias Complaint Dismissed". The rest is paywalled.
- hackuser 11y ago
  No. Affirmative action is giving extra support to a minority that suffers widely from discrimination and who lack social and political power. It recognizes that admissions are not a meritocracy for many (and in many ways, for anyone - people with the right social network have a big advantage) who because of discrimination don't have access to the same playing field or equipment as everyone else. Jews in the USSR were the ones suffering widely from discrimination.
deleted 11y ago
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golergka 11y ago

Having graduated math-oriented Moscow high school that, on one hand, had a lot of graduates go to the math department (roughly translated as MechMath) of MSU (usually, most of the math class alumni goes there), and on the other, had untypical amount of jewish students, these rings so close to home. Hell, I think they actually gave us most part of these problems in math lessons. Edit: another curious source > Mikhail Brin decided to study mathematics instead, and was offered a place although the entry exams for Jews were sat separately, in rooms that were notoriously known as "the gas chambers." http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2.209/google-co-founder-my-family-left-russia-because-of-anti-semitism-1.246045 http://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2.209/google-co-founder-my-fam...

jkot 11y ago

US had something similar, Isaac Asimov started writing sci-fi, after he was not accepted to medical university.

Kliment 11y ago
I thought he was a biochemist and taught at a med school. Wikipedia says he started writing scifi at 11, and I doubt even he was eligible for med school at that age.
- madcaptenor 11y ago
  Wikipedia says that he applied to med school, was rejected, went to grad school in chemistry at Columbia (partially before and partially after World War II), and then after getting his PhD he taught at the Boston University School of Medicine. So he taught at a med school without attending a med school.
Amorymeltzer 11y ago
Stanley Kaplan,[1] who basically founded the test-prep industry in the US, did so because he was rejected from medical school for being Jewish. 1: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/24/AR2009082402105.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08...

gcb0 11y ago

were those offered only to undesired applicants or to everyone and somehow only the desired people knew how to solve?

replicant 11y ago
Only to the undesirables students. Quoting the paper, "The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was at that time actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other 'undesirables') from enrolling in the department. One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam."
- alkonaut 11y ago
  Ah. Then it makes sense. I thought first it was a set of carefully selected problems, created for the purpose of letting one group fail and another pass. Which would have been very interesting (i.e. are there problems which one group solves better than another, or problems that one group must refuse to solve for religious reasons etc). Giving a set of hard problems to an unwanted group and a separate set of problems (or no problems at all) to another is just simple discrimination. They could just as well have had a sign that told the unwanted group not to apply and it would have been no less discriminating.
- kelukelugames 11y ago
  Which groups are the 'undesirables'?
  - pja 11y ago
    The Jewish students were regarded as the undesirables and given the 'coffin' problems in order to eliminate them - read the links up-thread.
    - kelukelugames 11y ago
      Yes, thank you. I am curious if there were other groups or it's only limited to Jewish students.

bb101 11y ago

Similar events happened in London in the mid-19th century. University College London (UCL), now one of the best colleges in the University of London, was founded to allow students entry through non-religious means. Consequently, it was the first college in the university to allow equal entry to both Jews and women.

david-given 11y ago
This is why British fee-paying schools are called 'public schools', by the way --- they're open to any member of the public who can pay, rather than being open to only a certain subset of the population. Plus public schools were under public management (a board of governors). I believe there still are some private schools (UK sense) in the UK, but I can't find any references.
- jzwinck 11y ago
  Most any home school is a private school using that definition.
nailer 11y ago
For those in the US, UCL's one of the crunchier CS universities outside ImpBridge.

jjoe 11y ago

While we're discussing this subject, and hoping to shine a bright light away from all the negativity, the solidarity of the Jewish people is amazing and unequalled! Jews seem to show great compassion and provide unconditional help for their own. There's wisdom to be gleaned from this I'm sure...

frandroid 11y ago
Too bad the Zionist subset is so intent on their solidarity with each other that they're conducting a slow ethnic cleansing of all other non-Jews on the lands that they occupy...
- jaxomlotus 11y ago
  I've lived in Israel and never observed any ethnic cleansing, slow or otherwise. I'm not a zionist. I was just a student studying abroad and have both Israeli and Arab friends (from variety of Middle Eastern countries). I do hear that term thrown around a lot on the Internet by social justice warriors. Honest question: Have you ever been to Israel? What was your experience like when you were there to have contributed to such a strong narrative?
  - frandroid 11y ago
    I have not been there, but I use something called the Internet to learn about more than my physically-accessible world. Anyway have you been to the Occupied Territories while you were there?
- JIhadishateshim 11y ago
  I never see you social activists care so much about anything that doesn't involve Jews as culprits. It's quite odd really. Tibet, no? Islamic Imperialism across any other land, no? It's really just jews, oh sorry "zionists" that falls under your area? Your modus operandi starts becoming obvious for those outside and eventually have the opposite effect to your "social activism". Just my two cents. Our family have non-jewish friends living and enjoying their culture happily in Israel. Too much Al Jazeera can be hazardous to your health.

hiq 11y ago

Without the alternative easier exams to compare with and the grading scheme that were used, these problems do not mean much regarding the discrimination that took place. It is quite common to give good grades even when the exercises have not been solved completely, but interesting thoughts and ideas have been exposed, especially in mathematics. Off topic, but regarding problem 2, a math professor once told me of a PhD student who started studying this kind of functions. He spent some time to discover their many interesting properties, until the professor made him understand why these functions were so regular, and that he had actually wasted his time. Funny to see this again.

RivieraKid 11y ago

I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.

WildUtah 11y ago
Research is discouraged, but not impossible. "Natural history of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Harpending and Cochran is a good start. http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbiosocsci.pdf http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi... (Hint: It's all genetic.)
- golergka 11y ago
  Interesting read, but I have some problems with it. > Another theory suggests that there was selective breeding for Talmudic scholarship. This seems unlikely to have been an important selective factor, since there weren’t very many professional rabbis, certainly less than one percent of the population. Although there are very few rabbis, majority of ultra-orthodox men spend most part of their time in rabbinic studies until they're very deep into adult life, and their level of success in that field is directly converted into their social status. (Which also means that they don't work and depend on their wives (who are also expected to care about the house and have a lot of children) as well as welfare from state and charities to survive).
  - yissachar 11y ago
    This is a relatively recent development and certainly wasn't true for most of Ashkenazi history.
- Moshe_Silnorin 11y ago
  I wonder why it's discouraged? I think it undermines antisemitism rather than otherwise. As it's a benign explanation for jewish overrepresentation in cognitively demanding endeavours.

RivieraKid 11y ago

qrian 11y ago

I found a site with some more background on this subject http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/coffins.html http://www.tanyakhovanova.com/coffins.html

tacon 11y ago

In the early 1900s, Harvard was on track to be a Jewish dominated university, and they made the (then common) decision to limit Jewish enrollment.[1] In reading that article, I learned that even Richard Feynman was affected by Columbia's quota, and ended up at MIT instead. (Go MIT!) Non-meritocratic quotas exist to this day at all elite US universities, with one exception: Caltech.[2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota [2] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i/ http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...

notdonspaulding 11y ago
Thanks for chiming in with this, I did not know Caltech was an academically-uncompromising institution.
awl130 11y ago
it's happening today to Asian students in a less overt fashion
Chinjut 11y ago
I was under the impression UC Berkeley was similar to Caltech in this regard?
- jedberg 11y ago
  It is, but people sometimes don't list it as "elite" because it's a public university.
- WildUtah 11y ago
  It is supposed to be, but the administration organized a Massive Resistance campaign against the California Civil Rights Initiative. [0] Through mass 'holistic' review of individual applications for racial background, the University of California follows the same racial quota admission system that nearly all elite American universities do. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_resistance

PRJIUS2 11y ago

Posted last two times[1][2] one of these stories came around, comment applicable here: As a preamble there most definitely existed anti-semitism in Soviet Union. I am a Russian living in the US with Jewish family in Russia. This is a throw away account. With that said, stories of anti-semitism told by Russian Jews in US should not be taken at face value. These folks are subject to a very strong selection bias. Most of them came to the US as refugees who were recognized by the US State Department as being discriminated against for being Jewish in USSR/Russia. Secondly they have interest in maintaining the story anti-seminitism because it validates their narrative and could potentially help their relatives immigrate to the US. Additionally many stories of anti-semitism that I heard were something a non-jew would experience as well but attributed to anti-semitism. As a personal example, I was at first denied admission to a specialized school in very late Soviet period. They eventually let me in because my mother found out that I had the highest score on the entrance exam of any one. Their excuse was that they had to let the kids who were in the paid summer program at the school first and now the class was full. A Jewish kid's parents would have been told they already have too many Jews in the advanced program. Both cases are just the admissions persons asking for a bribe. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340553 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340553

gist 11y ago
"attributed to". Reminds me of when I am in my car at a stop light and a man looks over at me. I always think "wow if I was a woman or if I was black I would think that that is the reason they are looking at me".
- randycupertino 11y ago
  Instead you just use it to validate your extreme attractiveness, right? :) "I'm looking good today, check out everyone sneaking a peak at me!"
  - gist 11y ago
    Well no because if a person turns their head to look they don't necessarily know in advance that the person is good looking! (It might be the car that I drive though...). Now of course if I was to do that with women it wouldn't be based on the car of course!

guelo 11y ago

Jews, and many other minority groups, form tight communities were they look out for each other help each other out. So Jewish businesses and organizations tend to discriminate in hiring, recommendations, etc. Happens all the time, very overtly. Since at this point Jewish organizations and businesses in the US are long established and powerful in many areas, this anti-gentile discrimination is problematic to society at large. But it's a type of discrimination that is rarely mentioned and complained about.

blisterpeanuts 11y ago
Evidence? Citations? (other than stormfront or other nazi or islamist websites)
- kurthr 11y ago
  I shouldn't even respond to this, because it can only cause problems, but really... Hollywood? NY Diamond trade? I don't really have a problem with them (not being in those industries), but that someone in the US could be unaware is bizarre.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - blisterpeanuts 11y ago
    So, the Jews control Hollywood? That canard's been around for a while. What's bizarre is that you didn't include money lending.
- throwaway999993 11y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Ramapo_Central_School_District https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_Ramapo_Central_School_D... Read the history section. Vigilante street patrols with vehicles made to look like marked and unmarked police vehicles, often under the guise of being affiliated with a volunteer ambulance service: http://privateinvesigations.blogspot.com/2011/07/williamsburg-praise-and-scorn-for.html?m=1 http://privateinvesigations.blogspot.com/2011/07/williamsbur... http://gothamist.com/2010/06/05/pedestrian_struck_by_volunteer_ambu.php#photo-1 http://gothamist.com/2010/06/05/pedestrian_struck_by_volunte...

hackuser 11y ago

A bit preachy, sorry: Everyone frowns on discrimination by others, people in different times and/or places, but much more important than criticizing others is to do the right thing ourselves. We need to look in the mirror (myself included!). To choose a prominent example, open discrimination against people who believe in Islam is socially acceptable in much of Western society. How stupid can we be? We're blatently repeating the exact same mistakes as before, the exact thing we frown upon. Some will say, 'but this time is different; we have a valid reason' - which of course is exactly what people said all those previous times, it's just a justification for acting out on fear (and it's just dumb reasoning). The old fears and rationalizations look absurd to us now but seemed just as real at the time as our current fears. Ours will look just as absurd in the future. Why can't we just apply the simple, blanket rule? Don't discriminate; prejudice is cruel, unjust and unfair, and it results in very bad things. It provides no real benefits. It always ends up on the wrong side of history; the accomplishments and heroes we honor are never hate and the hateful, but those that stood up against them. When our descendents look back at us, which side will we be on?

wobbleblob 11y ago
> We're blatently repeating the exact same mistakes as before, the exact thing we frown upon. I find it enlightening. Why did people let the nazis take the jews away? Why did people support slavery, even turn escaped slaves in, for money? Why did they allow lynchings to happen? Well, now we know. Now we understand. Maybe we can view our ancestors in a different light now.
kelukelugames 11y ago
I've been reading US immigration history for various groups. Each group suffered, assimilated, and then promptly shat on the next group. History repeats. Things are better now because of civil rights. Discrimination is less violent. But things could be better.

drostie 11y ago

Some answers: 1. Solve for positive x: x (8 sqrt(1 - x) + sqrt(1 + x)) <= 11 sqrt(1 + x) - 16 sqrt(1 - x) The upper bound is clearly x=1 because the square roots cease to exist for x > 1 and and substituting in x = 1 - epsilon^2 gives to first order (8 e + 1) <= (11 - 16 e) which works because 8 <= 11. Does this thing have a root in [0, 1]? The inverse of y = sqrt(1 + x)/sqrt(1 - x) is with some work x = (y^2 - 1)/(y^2 + 1) so when we divide through by sqrt(1-x) which we know now to be positive, and replace the above, we find: (y^2 - 1)/(y^2 + 1) * (8 + y) = 11 y - 16 Expanding out we're looking for a root of -10 y^3 + 24*y^2 - 12 y + 8 = 0 Dividing by -2 to normalize somewhat: 5 y^3 - 12 y^2 + 6 y - 4 = 0 At this point I almost gave up (since it's a cubic and I had no guarantee that x was rational) but got lucky, I started trying positive integers to see where this transitions from negative (y=0) to positive (5y^3) and accidentally found that y=2 solves the equation. Sending it back through I find 3/5, so assuming that it doesn't double back somewhere in the interval [3/5, 1] that's the interval that we're looking for. Phew! 2. Find all functions F(x) : R -> R having the propery that for any x1 and x2, F(x1) - F(x2) <= (x1 - x2)^2. Yeah, if you're just entering a university you're probably not going to get this one. Rewriting x1 as x + dx, x2 as x, then this says F(x + dx) - F(x) <= dx^2. With some limits and the Squeeze theorem, this restricts the functions to be differentiable with derivative zero, so they are constant functions. By inspection that is not just necessary but also sufficient. 3. Given a triangle ABC construct with a straightedge and compass a point K on AB and a point M on BC such that AK = KM = MC. This seems in general impossible except for some very specific triangles -- is that true? For example if |AB| = 2 and |BC| = 1, it seems that the only point on AB which could possibly be a candidate for K is the midpoint, with M being B. But the only way that the distance from K to M is the same is if BCK is an equilateral triangle, which requires furthermore that the angle BAC is 60 degrees, no? 4. Solve 2 cubert(2y - 1) = y^3 + 1 for real y. So y = 1 is an obvious solution. Cubing both sides we get y^9 + 3y^6 + 3y^3 - 16 y + 9 = 0 Then doing polynomial division by y-1 I get y^8 + y^7 + y^6 + 4 y^5 + 4 y^4 + 4 y^3 + 7 y^2 + 7 y - 9. At this point I got stuck and turned to automated tools, which say that this is factorizable as: (y^2 + y - 1)(y^6 + 2 y^4 + 2 y^3 + 4 y^2 + 2 y + 9) Graphing the right hand side it seems to be consistently positive, so that just leaves the left hand side, which is -1/2 +/- sqrt(5)/2. That's pretty difficult.

misiti3780 11y ago

If you read the book Perfect Rigor, about Grigori Perelman (solved the Poincare Conjecture - won the fields metal, but would not accept the 1MM dollar prize on principle) they tell multiple tails of anti-semitism in the Russian math departments at the time. According to the book, Perelman was basically really lucky to be born when he was and where he was, and that is really the only reason he was given a chance to get the education he got. The world is obviously a better place for guys like this.