| It's not just Stanford, Harvard and Yale did the same. Schools like NYU and MIT stood out for not doing this sort of thing, and it goes back for hundreds of years to Europe. I have worked in finance for years, people don't know that the largest banking giants like JP Morgan also refused to hire Jewish people. I'm a faithful Christian, and discrimination is discrimination. You can be Christian, Muslim, Jewish, you can be any race or religion, and this should not impede your opportunity to succeed in America. It's not only hateful, it's just dumb. You are limiting yourself. This good ol boys club can hold a monopoly on say liberal arts or business, but MIT is the leading research institution on the planet. You know, hard science that has the most immediate and effective impact. It's like a process of natural selection where prejudiced people build structures not on merit, but on the exclusive privilege of prejudice, meaning they naturally fall behind unless they force themselves to adapt like in this case. The future belongs to people who understand that a bright mind is a bright mind, no matter what prejudices people have. Asian students are now being treated in this way by the same institutions, but it's not helping anyone. Maybe if the exclusive club of ultra-wealthy elite WASPs can't compete with the changing world, then it doesn't deserve to cling onto power. I see nothing threatening about succeeding alongside people of all walks of life, because I choose to succeed on my merit and not on the circumstances of my birth. I respect success, and I don't need a special privilege to reach it myself. In my eyes and in the eyes of the people who dream of a better world, the future looks bright. In the eyes of the wealthy elite and their racist imperial structure, we are a threat to their treasured status quo. I see no issue with this, and I am excited to see what the future holds. |
> “We're saving money as best we can, and we're trying to send him to Columbia or MIT.”
And a page later, Feynman says:
> After that summer, I went away to college at MIT. (I couldn't go to Columbia because of the Jewish quota.)