University of Wisconsin’s Reduced Out-of-state Enrollment Hurts Jewish Students

The University of Wisconsin’s three-year-old policy of greatly reducing the enrollment of out-of-state students has resulted in a situation in which “Jewish students are stigmatized and denied opportunities in higher education” according to an article in the “ADL Bulletin,” published by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The writer, Saul Sorrin, director of ADL’s Wisconsin-Upper Midwest office, charges that the Regents’ drive against “outsiders,” designed to reduce the incidence of student protests on campus, has been largely directed against applications for admission from “virtually all the great centers of Jewish population in the United States,” representing the sources of “more than 90 percent of the Jewish students on campus.” This is so, Mr. Sorrin states, even though the university’s policy has been changed from outright exclusion of certain states to a gradual reduction of out-of-staters to 15 percent by 1971.

Last November, Mr. Sorrin reports, the ADL expressed its “deep concern” over the matter to the Regents, which scheduled a policy review by the end of the current school year. While not accusing the Regents of deliberate anti-Semitism, “ADL was, however, concerned with repeated reports in responsible places and in the major dailies of Wisconsin of an attempt to eliminate Jewish students from the university,” and it “pointed out that the banishment of out-of-state students would result in a climate of ‘educational nativism’ which would depress the quality of education at the University of Wisconsin.”