The admission by City College President Robert Marshak– after repeated denials by him that racial and ethnic criteria were used to select students for enrollment in the accelerated program of the college’s Center for Biomedical Education, confirmed what the B’nai B’rith’s Anti-Defamation League “has already learned in its continuing probe of this scandalous situation.” the ADL’s associate director and general counsel, Arnold Forster, declared today.
Terming the matter one that “cannot be permitted to end here,” Forster added: “If finally, the ADL decides that the situation can be resolved only by litigation, we will proceed in that direction.” Forster made that statement after Marshak conceded yesterday at a meeting of editors and reporters from City College’s five student newspapers that the selection of students for the Sept. 1974 class was made from a list of four ethnic groups–white. Black, Asian and Hispanic. Marshak pledged that “it will not happen again.”
When the list was reported last summer by City University Chancellor Robert Kibbee, Marshak flatly denied it. Dr. Kibbee issued his report after several Jewish and other groups charged that the accelerated medical training program was giving preference to Black and Hispanic applicants regardless of academic standings.
ADL MADE CHARGE LAST JULY
The ADL made that charge last July 12, after Forster demanded in a letter to Alfred A. Giardino, chairman of the Board of Higher Education, that the Center for Biomedical Education admit “highly qualified” applicants who were excluded from its Sept. 1974 class because they are white.
Forster referred at the time to Dr. Kibbee’s report and to “information obtained through our own investigation of the program” which, he said, established that “all too frequently considerations of race dominated the admissions procedure.” He pointed out that the selection procedures had resulted in the Sept. 1974 class consisting of 27 whites and 41 “minority” students. He said that replacement for those who declined to accept places in the program was made along strictly racial lines– “Black for Black and white for white.”
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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.
