Jewish enrollment at Princeton University is off sharply, and its admissions director is on the hot seat.
The number of Jewish students has dropped by nearly 40 per cent over 15 years, a trend that has a few faculty members blaming the dean of admissions, Fred Hargadon.
The issue was raised in an article last week in The Daily Princetonian, the student newspaper, which cited figures showing that Jewish students make up about 10 per cent of this year’s freshman class, down from 16 per cent of the 1985 freshman class. The 10-per-cent figure is less than half the proportion of Jewish students at some other Ivy League institutions, including Brown, Harvard, and Yale Universities, according to Hillel, a Jewish-student organization.
Princeton has made efforts in the past few years to welcome Jewish students, including the creation of a Center for Jewish Life. But some faculty members believe that the university has, at the least, stopped seeking out Jewish students. “They have ‘de-selected’ Jewish students by setting other kinds of priorities” in recruitment, said Froma I. Zeitlin, a professor of classics and director of the Jewish-studies program that Princeton began three years ago.
A spokesman for the university defended the admissions process as fair, and noted that it does not ask about religious affiliation.
Mr. Hargadon could not be reached for comment, but in an interview with the Princetonian, he cited statistics showing that the number of Jewish applicants as a percentage of students applying to colleges nationally had fallen by half.
http://chronicle.com
Section: Students
Page: A49
