Making Michigan Series

Join us for the Bentley Historical Library’s series of talks exploring the history of the University of Michigan.


Making Michigan Talk. Admissions Quotas and President C.C. Little: Jewish Inclusion and Exclusion at U-M in the 1920s

Admissions Quotas and President C.C. Little:
Jewish Inclusion and Exclusion at U-M in the 1920s
November 14, 2024; 7:00 PM EST
Attend in-person at the Detroit Observatory in Ann Arbor
OR online

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

Join us to hear Professor Karla Goldman 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.

Karla Goldman is the Sol Drachler Professor of Social Work and Professor of Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan where she also directs the Jewish Communal Leadership Program.

Her research focuses on the history of American Jewish experience with special attention to history of varied Jewish communities and the evolving roles and identities of American Jewish women.

She previously taught at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati and served as historian in residence at the Jewish Women’s Archive in Boston.

She is the author of Beyond the Synagogue Gallery: Finding a Place for Women in American Judaism (Harvard University Press, 2000).

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Watch previous lectures

Myths and Mysteries of the Little Brown Jug: The History of College Athletics

Secret Histories: Uncovering the Hidden Truths of U-M’s Past 

Making Big History: Adding Billions of Years to Students’ Education

How U-M’s First Hospital Made History – with Joel Howell

Four Years of “Making Michigan” and Four Decades at Michigan: Some Reflections – with Gary Krenz

A Stunning Achievement: The Improbable Collaboration of the Bentley Library and the Vatican Archives

More Than “First Do No Harm”: Modeling Global Engagement with the U-M/Ghana Partnership

A City’s Conscience: The Life and Career of Josephine Gomon

Wolverine Writers II: Stories of Fire, Ice, and Rebirth 

Poets at Michigan: Then and Now

A Library for All: U-M, Google, and the Importance of Having a Copy

Keeping Resistance Alive: Chandler Davis and Academic Freedom at U-M

Fifty Years of Native American Student Activism with Bethany Hughes 

A Difficult Archive: Reckoning with U-M’s Complicity in the U.S. Colonization of the Philippines with Deirdre de la Cruz

To Put Living Force Into the Symbols: The Journeys of Anatol Rapaport

Wolverine Writers: History and Storytelling Across Campus and through the Years

Seeing Anew Symposium 1: The Observatory and 19th-Century Science and Scholarship 

Seeing Anew Symposium 2: The Observatory in the History of Astronomy

Seeing Anew Symposium 3: The Observatory as an Historic Site for Contemporary Education

Seeing Anew Keynote: Astrophysicist Brian Nord in conversation with Gary Krenz

The McCarthy-Era Red Scare in Michigan: Its Meaning, Then and Now with David Maraniss

Sing to the Colors: My Complicated Love Song to the University with James Tobin

Conquering Heroines: How Women Fought Sex Bias at Michigan and Paved the Way for Title IX with Sara Fitzgerald

Michigan Football Game Films, 1930-1986: Digitizing Game-Day History with Brian Williams and Greg Kinney

Undermining Racial Justice at the University of Michigan with Matthew Johnson 

Pathways to Greatness: How the University of Michigan Became a World-Class University…and What it Cost with Terry McDonald

Campus Chords: Devotional Harmonies and the Dissonance of Difference in the University of Michigan’s Songbook with Mark Clague

Constructing Gender: The Origins of the Michigan League and Michigan Union with Nancy Bartlett and Sarah McLusky

Anti-Fascism at U-M: Defending Democracy During the Spanish Civil War with Juli Highfill

Radical Roots, Contested Place: African American and African Studies at U-M with Stephen Ward

The Boundaries of Pluralism: The World of the University of Michigan’s Jewish Students from 1897 – 1945 with Andrei Markovits and Kenneth Garner

Stars Rising: Why U-M’s Detroit Observatory Matters — and Where It’s Going with Gary Krenz

Lilly Stalks, Pounded Murphies and Caramel Ice Cream: Investigating the Food System that Fed U-M Students a Century Ago with Lisa Young

“We must work off our surplus animal spirits”: 19th-Century Origins of Athletic Competition at the University of Michigan with Greg Kinney and Brian Williams

Telling the Truth About the Liberal Arts: Histories and Futures with Terry McDonald

Coeducation for Democracy: The Changing Moral Vision for Educating the Sexes at U-M, 1870-1920 with Andrea Turpin