Abstract
This paper is concerned with trends over the post-WWII period in the employment of American Jews as college and university teachers and in their receipt of the PhD. The empirical analysis, using multivariate regression analysis, is for PhD production from 1950 to 2004, and Jews are identified by the Distinctive Jewish Name (DJN) technique. Other variables the same, male DJN PhD production increased to about 1967 and then declined, while for DJN females it increased throughout the period. The ratio of DJN to all PhDs started to decline among men in the 1950s and continued thereafter, while among women the DJN share increased until about 1979, and then declined. Central roles are played in the regression analysis by variables for military conscription, the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and US government funding for research and development. These data are consistent with the hypothesis that discrimination against Jews in salaried professional and managerial occupations declined in the post-WWII period earlier in college and university teaching than in other sectors of the economy that do not require a PhD degree for employment.
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Notes
Marshall Sklare also received his PhD from Columbia University, but in 1953.
The economic analysis of discrimination was developed in Becker (1957). This lecture was delivered on the 50th anniversary of the publication of this classic study.
Within the economics profession there are well known stories of discrimination in the 1940s against hiring Paul Samuelson at Harvard (he went on to establish the Economics Department at MIT) and Milton Friedman at UCLA. Both later received the Noble Prize in Economics. Diner (2004, p. 210) writes that: “Through the early 1930s no more than one hundred Jews held professional positions in American universities” and comments on substantial discrimination against Jews in college and university admission, prestigious law firms, banks, public utilities and many other sectors of the economy. Diner (2004, pp. 223–224) relates the difficulties of Lionel Trilling and Robert Merton (born Shkolnik) in academia. These barriers against Jewish men diminished in the early post-war years and largely disappeared by the late 20th century. Freidenreich (2007) writes of the even greater discrimination against Jewish women in academia than against Jewish men until the 1970s. For discussions of the decline in anti-Semitism in academia and in general in the post-war period, see also Lipset (1955), Lipset and Ladd (1971), Shapiro (1992, Chap. 2) and Chanes (1999).
For a discussion of apparent discrimination against Jewish Harvard MBAs in less competitive sectors compared to more competitive sectors of the economy, see Alchian and Kessel (1962).
In their analyses of the changes over time in “Jewish learning” (i.e., courses and research on Judaism and Jews) in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ritterband and Wechsler (1994) discuss the effects of anti-Semitism on the hiring of Jewish faculty.
A consequence of discrimination against Jewish faculty in many of the premier colleges and universities was that non-discriminating institutions could attract outstanding Jewish scholars. This accounts for the extraordinarily high quality of the faculty at City College of New York (and the other public institutions that were later combined as the City University of New York) in the 1930s and early post-WWII years. As discrimination against Jews (and African/Americans) declined in higher education, the competitive edge in recruiting and retaining outstanding Jewish and other minority faculty held by the original non-discriminating institutions declined. Freidenreich (2007) comments on the lesser degree of discrimination against Jewish women in the public colleges in New York City than elsewhere.
There are no estimates at the national level of the extent to which the DJN technique underestimates the number of Jews. Sheskin (1998) reports several estimates based on local studies which indicate that the size of the undercount is greater the greater the proportion of Jews in the population. In communities with very few Jews, but many people of German ancestry, it may even generate an overcount.
For the PhD recipients, 1950–2004, the percent distribution of the top 300 male and the top 300 female given names:
Gender
Surname
DJN
Not DJN
Total
Males
47.2
63.6
63.4
Females
39.1
35.6
35.7
Not among Top 300 names by gender
13.7
0.8
0.9
Total
100.0
100.0
100.0
For an historical account of discrimination against Jewish women in college and university teaching see Freidenreich (2007).
Partial effects of the quadratic time-trend variables, other variables the same, for DJNs receiving the PhD:
All
Male
Female
Time
4.135 (4.71)
0.239 (0.65)
1.434 (2.39)
Time squared
−0.051 (−4.81)
−0.009 (−2.19)
−0.006 (−0.85)
Partial effect of the quadratic time-trend variables, other variables being the same, for the ratio of DJN to all PhDs:
All
Male
Female
Time
0.000067 (0.63)
−0.0000084 (−0.07)
−0.00093 (−1.52)
Time squared
−0.0000035 (−2.72)
−0.0000021 (−1.47)
0.0000036 (0.48)
References
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Acknowledgments
I appreciate the research assistance of Jidong Huang and Benjamin Yarnoff, and the comments received on an earlier draft from Carmel U. Chiswick, Rela Geffen, Paul Pieper, Jonathan Sarna, and Ira Sheskin, as well as participants in the Marshall Sklare Memorial Lecture session, at the annual meeting of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry, Toronto, December 2007.
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Statistical Appendix
Statistical Appendix
Data Source on PhDs
The data on PhDs awarded annually (1950–2004) in the US are from dissertations abstracted in University Microfilms, University of Michigan at Ann Arbor (Web address: http://wwwlib.umi.com/dissertations/). Data are by discipline (education, humanities, social science, physical science, and all).
DJN
Jews are identified as individuals having a surname or a middle name that is on a list of 36 DJNs reported in Sheskin (1998). These names are Berman, Caplan, Cohen, Epstein, Feldman, Freedman, Friedman, Goldberg, Goldman, Goldstein, Goodman, Greenberg, Gross, Grossman, Jacobs, Jaffe, Kahn, Kaplan, Katz, Kohn, Levin, Levine, Levinson, Levy, Lieberman, Rosen, Rosenberg, Rosenthal, Rubin, Schwartz, Shapiro, Siegel, Silverman, Stern, Weinstein, and Weiss.
Gender
Identified from a list of the 300 most frequently used males names and the 300 most frequently used females names for individuals born in the US, 1960–1969, from the Social Security Administration (web address: http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/). The 300 most frequently used males names constitute 88% of all males born in the US in this period and for females it was 78%. If a name appears on the list for both genders all persons with that name were assigned the higher ranked gender (e.g., as Leslie had a higher rank among females, all Leslie’s in the PhD data were assumed to be female.) For individuals with names not on either list, gender is coded as unknown.
Ratio
Dependent variable equal to the ratio of DJN to all PhDs awarded by year, separately by discipline and overall.
Induction
The number of people, in thousands, conscripted into the military 5 years previously. Data taken from the US Selective Service (Web address: http://www.sss.gov/induct.htm).
Vietnam War
A dichotomous variable that equals one if the Vietnam War (1964–1975) was in progress five years previously, and zero if it was not in progress.
Korean War
A dichotomous variable that equals one if the Korean War (1950–1953) was in progress five years previously, and zero if it was not in progress.
Research and Development Funding
All federal funds given 5 years previously to research and development in millions of dollars. Values are deflated by CPI with a base year of 1982, taken from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (web address: ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/cpi/cpiai.txt). Data before 1951 have been assigned the value for 1951. Data on funds are taken from the NSF Survey of Federal Funds for Research and Development (web address: http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/showsrvy.cfm?srvy_CatID=4&srvy_Seri=10).
Time
Starting as 1950 = 1, increases by one for each successive year.
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Chiswick, B.R. The Rise and Fall of the American Jewish PhD. Cont Jewry 29, 67–84 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-008-9000-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12397-008-9000-9