Criticizing Harvard (almost) a Hundred Years Ago

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Doing some archival research today in A. Philiph Randolph and Chandler Owen’s socialist paper The Messenger I came across this gem which I couldn’t resist sharing:

On the application blanks of Harvard University this year are the these questions: (1) What is the Race and Color of applicant? (2) What is his religious preference? (3) What change, if any, has been made since birth, in his own name, or that of his father’s?

It might easily be a Ku Klux questionnaire. The question about race and color being designed to excluded Negroes: the question of religious preference designed to exclude Catholics; and the question of change of name being calculated to find out Jews who have taken on Gentile nomenclature. Has the Imperial Wizard captured fair Harvard? Who knows?

from “Fair Harvard,” The Messenger, November 1922, 518

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