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... rly Louis Marshall], internal cohesion, well- funded programs, sophisticated lobbying techniques, well- chosen non- Jewish allies, and good timing (Goldstein 1990, p. 333). In this regard, the Jewish success in influencing immigration policy is entirely analogous to their success in influencing the secularization of American culture. As in the case of immigration policy, the secularization of American culture is a Jewish interest because Jews have a perceived interest that America not be a homogeneous Christian culture. Jewish civil rights organizations have had an historic role in the postwar development of American church- state law and policy (Ivers 1995, p. 2). Unlike the effort to influence immigration, the opposition to a homogeneous Christian culture was mainly carried out in the courts.
The Jewish effort in this case was well funded and was the focus of well- organized, highly dedicated Jewish civil service organizations, including the AJ Committee, the Ajcongress, and the Anti- Defamation League (ADL). It involved keen legal expertise both in the actual litigation but also in influencing legal opinion via articles in law journals and other forums of intellectual debate, including the popular media. It also involved a highly charismatic and effective leadership, particularly Leo Pfeffer of the Ajcongress: No other lawyer exercised such complete intellectual dominance over a chosen area of law for so extensive a period an author, scholar, public citizen, and above all, legal advocate who harnessed his multiple and formidable talents into a single force capable of satisfying all that an institution needs for a successful constitutional reform movement... That Pfeffer, through an enviable combination of skill, determination, and persistence, was able in such a short period of time to make church- state reform the foremost cause with which rival organizations associated the Ajcongress illustrates well the impact that individual lawyers endowed with exceptional skills can have on the character and life of the organizations for which they work... As if to confirm the extent to which Pfeffer is associated with post- Everson [i. e. , post- 1946 ] constitutional development, even the major critics of the Courts church- state jurisprudence during this period and the modern doctrine of separation ism rarely fail to make reference to Pfeffer as the central force responsible for what they lament as the lost meaning of the establishment clause. (Ivers 1995, pp. 222 - 224) Similarly, Hollinger (1996, p. 4) notes the transformation of the ethno religious demography of American academic life by Jews in the period from the 1930 s to the 1960 s, as well as the Jewish influence on trends toward the secularization of American society and in advancing an ideal of cosmopolitanism (p. 11).
The pace of this influence was very likely influenced by immigration battles of the 1920 s. Hollinger notes that the the old Protestant establishments influence persisted until the 1960 s in large measure because of the Immigration Act of 1924: had the massive immigration of Catholics and Jews continued at pre- 1924 levels, the course of American history would have been different in many ways, including, one may reasonably speculate, a more rapid diminution of Protestant cultural hegemony. Immigration restriction gave that hegemony a new lease of life (p. 22). It is reasonable to suppose, therefore, that the immigration battles from 1881 to 1965 have been of momentous historical importance in shaping the contours of American culture in the late twentieth century. The ultimate success of Jewish attitudes on immigration was also influenced by intellectual movements that collectively resulted in a decline of evolutionary and biological thinking in the academic world.
Although playing virtually no role in the restrictions position in the Congressional debates on the immigration (which focused mainly on the fairness of maintaining the ethnic status quo; see below), a component of the intellectual zeitgeist of the 1920 s was the prevalence of evolutionary theories of race and ethnicity (Singerman 1986), particularly the theories of Madison Grant. In The Passing of the Great Race, Grant (1921) argued that the American colonial stock was derived from superior Nordic racial elements and that immigration of other races would lower the competence level of the society as a whole as well as threaten democratic and republican institutions. Grants ideas were popularized in the media at the time of the immigration debates (see Divine 1957, pp. 12 ff) and often provoked negative comments in Jewish publications such as The American Hebrew (e. g. , March 21, 1924, pp. 554, 625). 5 The debate over group differences in IQ was also tied to the immigration issue.
C. C. Brigham's study of intelligence among United States army personnel concluded that Nordics were superior to Alpine and Mediterranean Europeans, and Brigham (1923, p. 210) concluded that (i) m migration should not only be restrictive but highly selective. In the Foreword to Brigham's book, Harvard psychologist Robert M. Yerkes stated that The author presents not theories but facts. It behooves us to consider their reliability and meaning, for no one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relation of immigration to national progress and welfare (in Brigham 1923, pp.
vii- viii). Nevertheless, as Samelson (1975) points out, the drive to restrict immigration originated long before IQ testing came into existence and restriction was favored by a variety of groups, including organized labor, for reasons other than those related to race and IQ, including especially the fairness of maintaining the ethnic status quo in the United States. Moreover, although Brigham's IQ testing results did indeed appear in the statement submitted by the Allied Patriotic Societies to the House hearings, 6 the role of IQ testing in the immigration debates has been greatly exaggerated (Snyderman & Herrnstein, 1983). Indeed, IQ testing was never even mentioned in either the House Majority Report or the Minority Report, and there is no mention of intelligence testing in the Act; test results on immigrants appear only briefly in the committee hearings and are then largely ignored or criticized, and they are brought up only once in over 600 pages of congressional floor debate, where they are subjected to further criticism without rejoinder.
None of the major contemporary figures in testing... were called to testify, nor were their writings inserted into the legislative record (Snyderman & Herrnstein 1983, 994). It is also very easy to over- emphasize the importance of theories of Nordic superiority as an ingredient of popular and Congressional restrictions sentiment. As Singerman (1986, 118 - 119) points out, racial anti- Semitism was employed by only a handful of writers; and the Jewish problem... was a minor preoccupation even among such widely- published authors as Madison Grant or T. Lothrop Stoddard and none of the individuals examined [in Singerman's review] could be regarded as professional Jew- baiter's or full- time propagandists against Jews, domestic or foreign.
As indicated below, arguments related to Nordic superiority, including supposed Nordic intellectual superiority, played remarkably little role in Congressional debates over immigration in the 1920 s, the common argument of the restrictionist's being that immigration policy should reflect equally the interests of all ethnic groups currently in the country. Nevertheless, it is probable that the decline in evolutionary/ biological theories of race and ethnicity facilitated the sea change in immigration policy brought about by the 1965 law. As Higham (1984) notes, by the time of the final victory in 1965 which removed national origins and racial ancestry from immigration policy and opened up immigration to all human groups, the Boasian perspective of cultural determinism and anti- biologist had become standard academic wisdom. The result was that it became intellectually fashionable to discount the very existence of persistent ethnic differences.
The whole reaction deprived popular race feelings of a powerful ideological weapon (Higham 1984, pp. 58 - 59). Jewish intellectuals were prominently involved in the movement to eradicate the racialist ideas of Grant and others (Degler 1991, p. 200). Indeed, even during the earlier debates leading up to the immigration bills of 1921 and 1924, restrictionist's perceived themselves to be under attack from Jewish intellectuals. In 1918, Prescott F. Hall, secretary of the Immigration Restriction League, wrote to Grant that What I wanted... was the names of a few anthropologists of note who have declared in favor of the inequality of the races...
I am up against the Jews all the time in the equality argument and thought perhaps you might be able offhand to name a few (besides Osborn) whom I could quote in support (in Samelson 1975, p. 467). Grant also believed that Jews were engaged in a campaign to discredit racial research. In the Introduction to the 1921 edition of Passing of the Great Race, Grant complained that (i) t is well- nigh impossible to publish in the American newspapers any reflection upon certain religions or races which are hysterically sensitive even when not mentioned by name. The underlying idea seems to be that if publication can be suppressed the facts themselves will ultimately disappear. Abroad, conditions are fully as bad, and we have the authority of one of the most eminent anthropologists in France that the collection of anthropological measurements and data among French recruits at the outbreak of the Great War was prevented by Jewish influence, which aimed to suppress any suggestion of racial differentiation in France. Particularly important was the work of Columbia University anthropologist Franz Boas and his followers.
Boas influence upon American social scientists in matters of race can hardly be exaggerated (Degler 1991, p. 61). He engaged in a life- long assault on the idea that race was a primary source of the differences to be found in the mental or social capabilities of human groups. He accomplished his mission largely through his ceaseless, almost relentless articulation of the concept of culture (p. 61). Boas, almost single- handedly, developed in America the concept of culture, which, like a powerful solvent, would in time expunge race from the literature of social science (p. 71). Throughout this explication of Boas conception of culture and his opposition to a racial interpretation of human behavior, the central point has been that Boas did not arrive at the position from a disinterested, scientific inquiry into a vexed if controversial question. Instead, his idea derived from an ideological commitment that began in his early life and academic experiences in Europe and continued in America to shape his professional outlook...
there is no doubt that he had a deep interest in collecting evidence and designing arguments that would rebut or refute an ideological outlook racism which he considered restrictive upon individuals and undesirable for society... there is a persistent interest in pressing his social values upon the profession and the public. (Degler 1991, pp. 82 - 83) There is evidence that Boas strongly identified as a Jew and viewed his research as having important implications in the political arena and particularly in the area of immigration policy. Boas was born in Prussia to a Jewish- liberal family in which the revolutionary ideals of 1848 remained influential (Stocking 1968, p. 149). Boas developed a left- liberal posture which... is at once scientific and political (Stocking 1968, p. 149) and was intensely concerned with anti- Semitism from an early period in his life (White 1966, p. 16). Moreover, Boas was deeply alienated from and hostile toward gentile culture, particularly the cultural ideal of the Prussian aristocracy (Degler 1991, p. 200; Stocking 1968, p. 150).
For example, when Margaret Mead was looking for a way to persuade Boas to let her pursue her research in the South Sea islands, she hit upon a sure way of getting him to change his mind. I knew there was one thing that mattered more to Boas than the direction taken by anthropological research. This was that he should behave like a liberal, democratic, modern man, not like a Prussian autocrat. The ploy worked because she had indeed uncovered the heart of his personal values (Degler 1991, p. 73). Boas was greatly motivated by the immigration issue as it occurred early in the century. Carl Degler (1991, p. 74) notes that Boas professional correspondence reveals that an important motive behind his famous head- measuring project in 1910 was his strong personal interest in keeping America diverse in population.
The study, whose conclusions were placed into the Congressional Record by Representative Emanuel Center during the debate on immigration restriction (Cong. Rec. , April 8, 1924, pp. 5915 - 5916), concluded that the environmental differences consequent to immigration caused differences in head shape. (At the time, head shape as determined by the cephalic index was the main measurement used by scientists involved in racial differences research. ) Boas argued that his research showed that all foreign groups living in favorable social circumstances had become assimilated to America in the sense that their physical measurements converged on the American type. Although he was considerably more circumspect regarding his conclusions in the body of his report (see also Stocking 1968, p. 178), Boas (1911, p. 5) stated in his Introduction that all fear of an unfavorable influence of South European immigration upon the body of our people should be dismissed. As a further indication of Boas ideological commitment to the immigration issue, Degler makes the following comment regarding one of Boas environmentalist explanations for mental differences between immigrant and native children: Why Boas chose to advance such an adhoc interpretation is hard to understand until one recognizes his desire to explain in a favorable way the apparent mental backwardness of the immigrant children (p. 75). Boas and his students were intensely concerned with pushing an ideological agenda within the American anthropological profession (Degler 1991; Freeman 1991; Torrey 1992). In this regard it is interesting that Boas and his associates had a much more highly developed sense of group identity, a commitment to a common viewpoint, and an agenda to dominate the institutional structure of anthropology than did their opponents (Stocking 1968, pp. 279 - 280).
The defeat of the Darwinians had not happened without considerable exhortation of every mothers son standing for the Right. Nor had it been accomplished without some rather strong pressure applied both to staunch friends and to the weaker brethren often by the sheer force of Boas personality (Stocking 1968, 286). By 1915 the Boasian's controlled the American Anthropological Association and held a two- thirds majority on the Executive Board (Stocking 1968, 285). By 1926 every major department of anthropology in the United States was headed by a student of Boas, the majority of whom were Jewish. According to White (1966, p. 26), Boas most influential students were Ruth Benedict, Alexander Goldenweiser, Melville Herskovits, Alfred Kroeber, Robert Lowie, Margaret Mead, Paul Radio, Edward Sapir, and Leslie Spier. All of this small, compact group of scholars...
gathered about their leader (White 1966, p. 26) were Jews with the exception of Kroeber, Benedict and Mead. Indeed, Herskovits (1953, p. 91), whose hagiography of Boas qualifies as one of the most worshipful in intellectual history, noted that (t) he four decades of the tenure of [Boas] professorship at Columbia gave a continuity to his teaching that permitted him to develop students who eventually made up the greater part of the significant professional core of American anthropologists, and who came to man and direct most of the major departments of anthropology in the United States. In their turn, they trained the students who... have continued the tradition in which their teachers were trained. By the mid- 1930 s the Boasian view of the cultural determination of human behavior had a strong influence on social scientists generally (Stocking 1968, p. 300). The ideology of racial equality was an important weapon on behalf of opening immigration up to all human groups.
For example, in a 1951 statement to Congress, the Ajcongress stated that The findings of science must force even the most prejudiced among us to accept, as unqualifiedly as we do the law of gravity, that intelligence, morality and character, bear no relationship whatever to geography or place of birth. 7 The statement went on to cite some of Boas popular writings on the subject as well as the writings of Boas protg Ashley Montagu, perhaps the most visible opponent of the concept of race during this period. Montagu, whose original name was Israel Ehrenberg, theorized that humans are innately cooperative (but not innately aggressive) and there is a universal brotherhood among humans (see Shipman 1994, p. 159 ff). And in 1952 another Boas protg, Margaret Mead, testified before the Presidents Commission on Immigration and Naturalization (PCIN) (1953, p. 92) that all human beings from all groups of people have the same potentialities... Our best anthropological evidence today suggests that the people of every group have about the same distribution of potentialities. Another witness stated that the executive board of the American Anthropological Association had unanimously endorsed the proposition that (a) ll scientific evidence indicates that all peoples are inherently capable of acquiring or adapting to our civilization (PCIN 1953, p. 93). By 1965 Senator Jacob Javits (Cong.
Rec. , 111, 1965, p. 24469) confidently announced to the Senate during the debate on the immigration bill that (b) oth the dictates of our consciences as well as the precepts of sociologists tell us that immigration, as it exists in the national origins quota system, is wrong, and without any basis in reason or fact for we know better than to say that one man is better than another because of the color of his skin. The intellectual revolution and its translation into public policy had been completed.
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Research essay sample on Margaret Mead Anti Semitism
