Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals, and Reformers: A History of Jews at the University of Michigan

Project Origins

Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals, and Reformers: A History of Jews at the University of Michigan explores the trajectory of Jews at U-M from outsiders to insiders (and sometimes back again). When most elite private colleges and universities in the Northeast imposed quotas on the percentage of Jewish students on campus during the 1920s, Michigan became an attractive destination for children of east coast immigrant families, establishing a long tradition of a strong national Jewish student presence at the university. Despite the historic and contemporary significance of a Jewish presence at and contributions to the University of Michigan, very little has been written about the Michigan Jewish experience.

Nevertheless, the exclusion of Jews by elite Northeast colleges and universities provides the context for a strong informal public narrative celebrating the University of Michigan for its role as a safe haven for east coast Jews excluded from desirable private colleges closer to home. This narrative speaks to Michigan’s intrinsic sense of itself as a standard-setting and pioneering public university: representative of the best in American education, while offering a more democratic and creative counterweight to the stodgy east coast elitism of the Ivy League.

The major problem with this appealing narrative is the lack of systematic historical inquiry backing it up. As scholars like Jerome Karabel, Dan Oren, Harold Wechsler, and Marcia Graham Synott have shown, almost everything about today’s college admissions process emerged in a dedicated search for effective ways to exclude Jewish students. When we consider how, even in the face of exclusion efforts and stringent quota restrictions, so many American Jews still used universities as a path to professional identities and social acceptance, it seems particularly important to track this issue at the nation’s most prominent public universities. In their own way, schools like Michigan defined the university experience for their hundreds of thousands of alumni. Recovering U-M’s Jewish history thus has the potential to reframe our understanding of both Jewish experiences in the U.S. and the history of American universities

Alumni File of Daniel Cohen with Photograph

Moritz Levi, Professor of French, 1890-1923

Moritz Levi, photograph c. 1890-1900, one of the first known Jewish faculty members at U-M (along with Max Winkler, below), who served as an instructor of French from 1890 to 1896 and as an assistant professor beginning in 1896
University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

Max Winkler, Professor of German, 1902-1930

Max Winkler, photograph c. 1896-1900, one of the first known Jewish faculty members at U-M (along with Moritz Levi, above), who served as an instructor of German beginning in 1890 and as an assistant professor beginning in 1895 Randall Studio, University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

Michigan Daily headline "Four Students Asked Not To Re-enter This Fall By University Administration"

Four Students Asked Not To Re-enter This Fall By University Administration, 1935. The Michigan Daily Digital Archives | University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library.

Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals, and Reformers: A History of Jews at the University of Michigan Summer 2024 - Present

The Road to Inclusion

Moritz Levi, photograph c. 1890-1900, one of the first known Jewish faculty members at U-M (along with Max Winkler, below), who served as an instructor of French from 1890 to 1896 and as an assistant professor beginning in 1896
University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals and Reformers is crafting a history of Jews at the University of Michigan that also speaks more broadly to the significance of the presence of groups perceived as outsiders at American public universities. This study explores the significance of the alignment of U-M’s rise to prominence as a nationally significant research university with the increasing presence of Jews, first as students, both men and women, and then as faculty members, and finally as leaders in administration.

The early chronology of Jewish experience at the University of Michigan is one of emerging inclusion within contexts of exclusion (in housing, in professional schools, on the faculty and administration), antisemitism (of deans, donors, students), and anti-radicalism (especially in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960s). Jews may have not been as visible on campus as other relatively small minority groups, such as African American, Chinese, and Japanese students, but they acquired a kind of visibility through their political activism and sometimes even just their distinctive presence in social spaces, such as student union buildings.

This project builds on studies by U-M professors Andrei S. Markovits and Karla Goldman as well as on the work of Riv-Ellen Prell, who has traced antisemitism and the surveillance of Jewish students at the University of Minnesota in the 1930s and 1940s, and David Hollinger, who has written with insight about complexities of Jewishness among the faculty at Michigan in the mid-twentieth century. Outsiders, Insiders, Radicals and Reformers deepens research on the complicated history of Jewish students, faculty, staff, and leaders at the University of Michigan, particularly in the interwar and postwar decades.

Evolving Activism

This project is also focused on more recent history. Jewish student political activism, first in the 1930s, then in the 1960s-70s, and now in the 21st century, has spilled out of the university’s halls into the streets. Although many of the political radicals on the left did not think of themselves as particularly Jewish, especially in the 20th century, in the 21st century politics around Israel has produced sharp divisions among American Jewish students and tensions for many Jewish students, faculty, and staff within the university. “Insiders, Outsiders, Radicals and Reformers” is studying these issues as well.

Max Winkler, photograph c. 1896-1900, one of the first known Jewish faculty members at U-M (along with Moritz Levi, above), who served as an instructor of German beginning in 1890 and as an assistant professor beginning in 1895 Randall Studio, University of Michigan Bentley Historical Library

Researchers

Karla Goldman

Co-Principal Investigator, Sol Drachler Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work, and Professor of Judaic Studies, College of Literature, Science, and the Arts