11 ms·

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

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.
  - irixusr 11y ago
    The differences are mostly aesthetic then.
- 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]

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.
- irixusr 11y ago
  The differences are mostly aesthetic then.
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]