Number of Jewish Students at Harvard Increased 650% in Twenty-seven Years

(Jewish Daily Bulletin)

The proportion of Jewish students at Harvard University has increased 650 per cent during the twenty-seven years from 1895 to 1922, according to statistics compiled by Julian L. Coolidge, professor of mathematics at Harvard, published in this week’s issue of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin.

Of the class of 1895, 2 per cent were of Jewish faith, while in 1922 13 per cent of the graduating class professed it. Prof. Coolidge adds that one-fifth or 20 per cent of that class were classed on graduation as Jews “in a broad sense.”

In an article on the religious statistics of Harvard, Prof. Coolidge, in addition to showing the enormous gain on the part of the Jews, also shows that during the same period the number of Congregationalists, Presbyterians, Baptists and Methodists decreased from 28 per cent to 19 per cent, that the number of Unitarians was cut in two, that the number of Episcopalians remained constant and that the proportion of Roman Catholics rose from only 4 per cent in 1895 to 11 per cent in 1915, the days of Brickley and Mahan at Cambridge, and then showed a sharp decrease to 7 per cent in 1922.

In his table Prof. Coolidge includes under the title “Evangelical” the members of the Congregational, Methodist, Baptist and Presbyterian Churches. The table follows:

Per Cent

Clzurch 1895 1905 1915 1922

Episcopalian 20 23 22 21

Evangelistic 28 23 20 19

Unitarian 20 19 17 10

Roman Catholic 4 6 11 7

Jewish 2 4 8 13

Scattering 5 5 4 3

Nor interested 21 20 18 27

“The increase of the Jews is even more striking than the Unitarian decline. This is the only body that does not show a drop after the war; the rate of gain is pretty much the same throughout.

“It might seem at first sight that the proportion of men who are religiously indifferent is greater among the Jews than among Christians. About one-fifth of the class of 1922 were broadly classed as Jews. Why should they show but 13 per cent of believers? A more careful analysis reveals that there is nothing very striking here. The 13 per cent of Jews among the believers represents about 10 per cent of the total class, and the Jews, ethically speaking, come to perhaps 20 per cent of the class. It appears that about one-half of the Jews were religiously inclined. On the other hand, of the non-Jews about 54 per cent, profess and call themselves Christians.”