Anti-defamation League Fights Recommendation to Reduce Number of Jewish Dental Students

Supreme Court Justice Meier Steinbrink, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Eastern Region of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Birith, today charged that Dr. Harlan H. Horner, secretary of the Council on Dental Education of the American Dental Association, submitted a confidential report to chancellor Harry W. Chase, or New York University, urging a reduction in the number of Jewish students to be admitted to the College of Dentistry of that institution.

Justice Steinbrink made public an affidavit by Dr. Harry M. Seldin, president of the Alumni Association of the New York University College of Dentistry, quoting the language of the report. At the same time he called upon Columbia University, New York University and the American Dental Association to repudiate the reports made by Dr. Horner.

It was learned by the League that Dr. Allan T. Newman, for fifteen years Dean of the New York University Dental College, had resigned immediately after the Horner report was submitted. Further, so far as the League was able to ascertain, New York University did not reject the Horner recommendation. A special report issued to Columbia University by the Council on Dental Education urged similar discriminatory policy in regard to admissions at that institution.

Justice Steinbrink further charged that these recommendations, prepared by Dr. Horner, are part of a national policy of discrimination. Recently, in a report submitted by Dr. Horner to the Committee on Education of the United States House of Representatives, the following appeared, “The Council believes that determined effort should be made on a national scale to counteract the trend toward marked racial and geographical imbalance in the entire group of dental students and to elevate the broad common level of the intellectual capacity and fitness of the applicants for admission to dental study.”