Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative: Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.–Editor.]

The claim made for an American educational institute abroad, the American University of Beirut, that it is free of racial prejudices among the students and faculty, is of particular interest at this time when charges are being made that American colleges, especially Harvard, are trying to set up bars for Jewish students.

The “American Hebrew” of April 16, referring to the recent statement of President Bayard Dodge of the American University of Beirut, observes:

“The American University of Beirut has a capacity of about 1,200 students. Dr. Dodge tells us that among these, twenty-nine nationalities are represented, including every Christian sect in the Near East; and among the non-Christian are Moslems, Jews, Druses, and Bahais. In the faculty, fifteen nationalities are represented among the professors, and instructors, and eleven religious sects; forty-seven incidentally are Americans. Here is as polyglot a group as can be found anywhere, but they are living together, working and studying together. On the word of President Dodge, in his institution, under these conditions and circumstances ‘racial prejudices are forgotten and a real basis for international understanding is laid.'”

The revision of Harvard’s admission regulations, intended to keep down the number of Jewish entrants, is denounced by the “Chicago Tribune.”

“There has been a surmise,” the paper writes, “that Harvard was interested in preserving the Nordic type and would allow only a 20 per cent variation from it in the freshman class. We are not sure that the intellectual antics of the Nordics in this land deserve such consideration, and among important personages at Harvard who are not Nordic are Mr. Horween himself (Harvard’s new football coach) and Isador Zarakor, who now has four major H’s. The 20 per cent variation from the Nordic may be designed to provide Harvard football.”

THE JAPANESE EDITION OF THE KU KLUX KLAN

Japan has its own edition of the Ku Klux Klan, we read in the “American Israelite” of April 15, which writes:

“In Japan there has been formed an organization calling itself the ‘Roddin,’ which is practically in that country what the Ku Klux Klan is in America. The Japanese press has from time to time reported many instances in which the “Roddin” has threatened some of the leading government officials trying to coerce them to obey its commands. The Japanese government has now declared the ‘Roddin’ to be an illegal organization and it will suppress it with an iron hand. Our own government, state and national might with profit follow the Japanese example.”