An alumni committee investigating charges of anti-Semitism on the part of a City College professor has issued a report, after a two-year study, which neither clears nor condemns the professor, William E. Knickerbocker, former head of the institution’s Romance Languages Department.
Student demands for a public trial of Prof. Knickerbocker, and William C. Davis, an instructor accused of segregating Negro students in a college dormitory, led to a five-day strike on the C.C.N.Y. campus in April, 1949. The alumni committee, which examined 2,000 pages of testimony, said that in view of the conflicting evidence “it cannot be said with any degree of certainty that Professor Knickerbocker was anti-Semitic. By the same token, it cannot be said that he was not.”
JTA has documented Jewish history in real-time for over a century. Keep our journalism strong by joining us in supporting independent, award-winning reporting.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
