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Jews Target of Disturbance at Wisconsin U.

May 21, 1935
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Anti-Jewish feeling on the campus of the University of Wisconsin was held partially to blame today for the spectacle of husky university athletes seizing and ducking students in Lake Mendota.

The entire State has become aroused over the hooliganism shown by a mob of students and athletes in breaking up a meeting of the League for Industrial Democracy and tossing participants in the lake.

Rabbi Max Kadushin of the Hillel Foundation in Madison, the home of the university, declared that the ducking, though stirred up by propaganda against radicalism, was an evidence of an undercurrent of anti-Semitism. He said the raid leaders were not actual anti-Semites, but he pointed out that during the disturbance there were shouts from the crowd such as “Go back to the Bronx” and “New York Indians.” A number of the students who were ducked live in the Bronx and other sections of New York City.

Recognition that race prejudice exists was made by George C. Sellery, dean of the College of Letters and Science, in an address at an all-university protest meeting held here to denounce the hooliganism. “I understand the ugly head of race prejudice lifted itself on the campus,” he said. “The principle on which these riotous proceedings were based will wreck the university unless we wreck the people who support that principle.”

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