Skip to Content
Ask an Archivist
U-M President Clarence Cook Little and Henry Ford in commencement robes.

Quotas and the President: Jewish Inclusion and Exclusion at U-M in the 1920s

Event Details

date and Time

Thursday, November 14, 2024, 7:00pm – 9:00pm

Event Type

In-person

Location

Judy & Stanley Frankel Detroit Observatory 1398 E. Ann Street Ann Arbor, MI 48109

When new University of Michigan president C.C. Little arrived in Ann Arbor in 1925, American universities were in the midst of a great transition, revamping their admission systems to limit the number of Jewish students on their campuses.

Professor Karla Goldman will discuss the status of Jewish students at Michigan during this period and how President Little, well known as a eugenicist, actually resisted some of the racist and antisemitic assumptions of his time. His tenure illustrates the long and complicated history of inclusion and exclusion at U-M and in American higher education.