The American Jewish Committee today noted that it has found that discrimination based on religion against technicians and specialists, including engineers, scientists, researchers and economists, in major American industries, has largely disappeared. However, discriminatory barriers on upper management and policy-making levels still persist “to a very strong degree.”
Louis Caplan, president of the Committee, in a report made public today, stressed that the “current technological revolution in the United States had made possible a major and widespread breakthrough against discrimination” in the technical and research branches of American industry.
In this field, he said, “negative stereotypes against Jews are dim memories, and high mobility, in terms of promotion and advancement on the basis of skill and know-how, is the general rule.” Mr. Caplan made this report in connection with the opening tomorrow of the American Jewish Committee’s 55th annual meeting at the Commodore Hotel here.
BARRIERS TO PROMOTION ON THE MANAGEMENT LEVEL STILL EXIST
In sharp contrast, in the top managerial and policy echelons, “artificial barriers and stereotypes still exclude qualified personnel for irrelevant reasons of religion or race,” the report said. It cited, as an example, the fact that Jews comprise less than one-half of one percent of the management executives employed by 500 major American corporations despite the fact that executive personnel are recruited from the ranks of college graduates, and that Jews comprise eight percent of all college graduates in the U.S.
Barriers to promotion on the management level are still “anchored to religious and, certainly, racial factors,” Mr. Caplan emphasized. He predicted, however, that with the speedy advance of America’s technological revolution, the officers in U.S. top management “will have to be chosen without regard to outmoded standards of social stereotypes which are very much the rule in the executive suites today.”
Mr. Caplan said that the breakdown of barriers in the technical branches has taken place within the past decade and “has accelerated considerably during the last two or three years.” Unfortunately, he said, “there has been no comparable change–or, in fact, any substantial change at all–in the management levels.”
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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.
