Two Realities
I read with interest the article about professor Sean Westwood’s Polarization Research Lab [“Perception vs. Reality,” November/December]. The findings from the lab indicate that Americans themselves are not very divided and that it’s the politicians, etc., on the fringes of both sides that make them so. A clean and comforting concept, for sure. 

If Westwood and his assistants would open the window, however, and take a look outside at what’s really going on, they would see that Americans are indeed deeply divided, and it’s not because they’ve been led astray but because they choose to live in two different realities. There seems to be no common ground, no shared system of beliefs or mores. One can (and should) pin much of the blame on Donald Trump and Fox News, but, in the end, it’s the people themselves who bear the responsibility for this great and unique American tragedy.

VLADIMIR SVESKO ’69
Dolores, Colorado 

More Legacies
I am always frustrated by the continued debate over legacy admissions [“Family Ties,” September/October], particularly when the assumption is made that legacies don’t deserve to be at the College. I am proud to be a legacy—my father is class of 1981 and my uncle is class of 1979—but I earned my spot at Dartmouth fair and square.

My whole life I knew I wanted to go to Dartmouth because my father instilled in me his love of the College. Starting in middle school, academic excellence was a priority for me, and in high school I planned ahead regarding my AP classes, SATs, extracurricular activities, and sports, because I knew what it took to even be considered for acceptance to Dartmouth. I find it hard to imagine that someone who is not a legacy would plan their life at such a young age specifically to go to Dartmouth. 

That’s the beauty of legacies: We love Dartmouth even before we know what college is. We get to learn all about it, from the frigid winters in the secluded, tiny town of Hanover to the sticky floors and funky smells of fraternity basements. I don’t understand the embarrassment around being a legacy unless you know you don’t deserve to be at Dartmouth. Then shame on you for even applying in the first place. 

KATHRYN E. ARION ’11
Bradenton, Florida

In the article, Matthew Mosk ’92 described an emerging debate over the use of legacy preferences in college admissions. The story stated that Dartmouth devised its legacy preference in 1922 and suggested that it did so as one of several institutions that were in that era creating such a preference to “thin” their Jewish enrollment. 

Historical documentation in Rauner Library establishes that Dartmouth’s legacy preference in admissions had nothing to do with College officials’ antisemitic animus. Although that animus existed in spades, it manifested itself in ways other than the legacy preference. Namely, it induced ad hoc admissions discrimination in the late 1920s and a shocking Jewish quota, begun in 1931-32, that remained in effect for 10 application cycles.

In 2023, I completed a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship at Rauner, poring over thousands of internal memoranda and other documents relating to Dartmouth’s historical discrimination against Jews in admissions. I presented my research at a public forum and composed a 46-page monograph that exposes the full horror of that discrimination.

DAM based its assertions on a 2011 study that’s inaccurate—it relied not on historical research but on sociological analysis. 

Dartmouth did not suddenly create a legacy preference in 1922. Rather, its practice of admitting legacies virtually pro forma ended in the 1921-22 application cycle. Confronted with soaring application numbers, Dartmouth introduced a formalized “selective process for admission,” the first in the nation, by which it sought to admit only the most promising applicants. While legacies were still accorded some measure of preference under this process, they first had to meet the new standards of excellence in academics, character, and leadership. Many legacies did not do so. Thus, in 1922 the College began denying admission to legacy applicants who would almost certainly have been admitted in years prior but who were deficient under the new standards.

Internal documents establish that no antisemitic animus played a role in the adoption of the selective process. The sole motivating factor was Dartmouth’s receipt of five times the number of applicants it could accept. The percentage of Jewish students in the College’s entering class did not change during the next four years, remaining at the 2 to 3 percent it had been previously. Starting with the 1925-26 application cycle, the percentage of Jewish students actually began to increase every year into the high single digits.

Antisemitism first appears in the documentary record of Dartmouth’s admissions process in the late 1920s. Seeking to limit the annual growth in Jewish enrollment, the dean of admissions started turning away numerous well-qualified Jewish applicants each year on the ostensible basis of their younger age in relation to the broader applicant pool. But the percentage of Jewish enrollment continued to grow, and the figure reached double digits when the 1930-31 application cycle yielded 10.6 percent Jewish students in the entering class. In light of what they had begun to describe as the “Jewish problem,” Dartmouth officials then made their infamous decision to join the ranks of other Ivy League schools by imposing a Jewish quota of 5 to 6 percent on each entering class.

Dartmouth’s Jewish quota was roughly hewn during the 1931-32 application cycle, but by 1932-33 it had become hideously institutionalized. To identify Jews, all applicants were for the first time asked to describe their “racial inheritance” and “religious background.” Applicants were also required to provide photographs of themselves, which the admissions office used, appallingly, to weed out “Jewish faces.” To that same end, alumni interviewers were asked to describe applicants’ “racial and physical type.”

Dartmouth enforced its Jewish quota of 5 to 6 percent per class until the 1941-42 application cycle, when the United States entered World War II. In 1946, new President John Sloan Dickey, class of 1929, repudiated the quota at the behest of intrepid faculty members who brought its previous use to his attention. The loaded admissions questions promptly disappeared. 

MATTHEW SKROD ’24
Mahwah, New Jersey