31–40 of 101 posts
I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.
"Natural history of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Harpending and Cochran is a good start. http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi...
(Hint: It's all genetic.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_quota
[2] http://www.mindingthecampus.org/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Only to the undesirables students. Quoting the paper, "The Mathematics Department of Moscow State University, the most prestigious mathematics school in Russia, was at that time actively trying to keep Jewish students (and other 'undesirables') from enrolling in the department. One of the methods they used for doing this was to give the unwanted students a different set of problems on their oral exam."
Which groups are the 'undesirables'?
This is a well-known fact, actually. My math teacher in Lithuania mentioned that back in his days (50-s) it was practically impossible for a non-Jewish student to get into any math- or physics-related faculty: Jewish families had a very strong multi-generational tradition of both in-school and additional education. He also said he was the only non-jewish in his group in Moscow State University that year. So at some p…
Wouldn't that be called "affirmative action" in the US?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the intended effect was merely to balance its overwhelming predominance, sabotage in the exams is the most problematic way to do so, because of the way that it can efface the best talent in the group; diversity-quotas of some sort would damage the field less. More broadly, though, if you think that this was "merely" about balance and that there was no anti-Semitic sentiment in academia in Soviet Lithuania in the 1…
This is relevant because employment discrimination law in the USA prohibits the use of any tests where certain protected racial categories score worse than the national average by a specific amount. Usually that amount is specifically that each protected race must achieve four fifths of the passing scores of any other group. (Yes, that is a vague and easily gamed standard. It was made up by lawyers in the Department…
With respect to the rest of your points: given the number of Jews who emigrated from Russia for fear of being shipped off to Siberia to die, what you describe as the "worst of all possible worlds" is remarkably civilized by comparison.
I wonder why are Askhenazi Jews apparently more intelligent on average... seems that genetics is the main factor, not culture, but I can imagine research in this area is discouraged and controversial.
Research is discouraged, but not impossible. "Natural history of Ashkenazi Intelligence" by Harpending and Cochran is a good start. http://web.mit.edu/fustflum/documents/papers/AshkenaziIQ.jbi... (Hint: It's all genetic.)
> Another theory suggests that there was selective breeding for Talmudic scholarship. This seems unlikely to have been an important selective factor, since there weren’t very many professional rabbis, certainly less than one percent of the population.
Although there are very few rabbis, majority of ultra-orthodox men spend most part of their time in rabbinic studies until they're very deep into adult life, and their level of success in that field is directly converted into their social status. (Which also means that they don't work and depend on their wives (who are also expected to care about the house and have a lot of children) as well as welfare from state and charities to survive).
This is a well-known fact, actually. My math teacher in Lithuania mentioned that back in his days (50-s) it was practically impossible for a non-Jewish student to get into any math- or physics-related faculty: Jewish families had a very strong multi-generational tradition of both in-school and additional education. He also said he was the only non-jewish in his group in Moscow State University that year. So at some p…
Wouldn't that be called "affirmative action" in the US?
As a preamble there most definitely existed anti-semitism in Soviet Union. I am a Russian living in the US with Jewish family in Russia. This is a throw away account.
With that said, stories of anti-semitism told by Russian Jews in US should not be taken at face value. These folks are subject to a very strong selection bias. Most of them came to the US as refugees who were recognized by the US State Department as being discriminated against for being Jewish in USSR/Russia. Secondly they have interest in maintaining the story anti-seminitism because it validates their narrative and could potentially help their relatives immigrate to the US.
Additionally many stories of anti-semitism that I heard were something a non-jew would experience as well but attributed to anti-semitism. As a personal example, I was at first denied admission to a specialized school in very late Soviet period. They eventually let me in because my mother found out that I had the highest score on the entrance exam of any one. Their excuse was that they had to let the kids who were in the paid summer program at the school first and now the class was full. A Jewish kid's parents would have been told they already have too many Jews in the advanced program. Both cases are just the admissions persons asking for a bribe.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4752047 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5340553
Similar events happened in London in the mid-19th century. University College London (UCL), now one of the best colleges in the University of London, was founded to allow students entry through non-religious means. Consequently, it was the first college in the university to allow equal entry to both Jews and women.
This is why British fee-paying schools are called 'public schools', by the way --- they're open to any member of the public who can pay, rather than being open to only a certain subset of the population. Plus public schools were under public management (a board of governors). I believe there still are some private schools (UK sense) in the UK, but I can't find any references.