The Massachusetts Spy Volume CCXXXV, Number 63    January 27, 2005 

From our archives

Editor's Note:  Once you start perusing our archives, it's hard to stop. Here's another tidbit, from a long-ago era when supposedly sophisticated academics would use eugenics or other discredited forms of racist pseudo-science to justify discrimination. Thank God we live in the 21st Century!

Banks Closed Indefinitely due to Blizzard 

Volume CLVIII January 24, 1933 Worcester, Massachusetts 1/2 cent

HARVARD PRESIDENT ASKS     WHETHER JEWS, COLORED,      GIRLS ARE FIT FOR COLLEGE
     
Recommends "A Rigorous Scientific Study"


President Lowell has called upon science to ascertain why followers of Moses are genetically ill-equipped to contribute to the fortunes of collegiate football and other athletic teams. "Perhaps they bruise easily," Lowell mused.


Hacky Sez:
Finally, Someone Who Dares to Speak Truth

Finally, someone has the guts to ask the questions that need to be examined, even if some Felix Frankfurter liberals on Brattle Street don't like the answers.

After all, the colored – excuse me, Negroes – were freed almost a century ago and they're still porters and maids. At some point, we have to stop blaming ourselves and ask why they haven't been able to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. I admire President Lowell for asking science to help us solve the puzzle.

And what of the fairer sex?  No real woman would choose to leave home and hearth for a drafty and dangerous laboratory, hospital or courtroom. That's man's work! There's a name for women who seek to push their way into these noble professions, but it dare not appear in a family newspaper like the Spy.

And speaking of pushy, what is it with these Asiatic Christ-killers? If they can't accommodate themselves to white Christian America, then they can go back to their Russian pigstys. [Probably not that likely that Jews operated pigstys – Copy Ed.][Do you know how many copies of this newspaper Mr. Carp sells every Sunday? – Ed.]

BOSTON, Mass. Jan. 26 – Continuing his tradition of speaking out candidly on the important academic and social issues of the day, Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell today questioned whether Jews, girls and colored were "genetically equipped" for the rigors of collegiate study, whether at Harvard or at other elite colleges.

Speaking before the Harvard Class of 1908 25th Reunion Planning Committee at the Somerset Club, Lowell said that he was "only asking a question. It is up to genetic and eugenic scientists both here and in Northern Europe to answer this vital question."

To warm applause from the assembled clubmen, Lowell said that the genetic challenges that confront Jews, ladies and Negroes seeking a "program of study on the Harvard level" differed among the various types of fringe groups.

Women, according to Lowell, are handicapped by their hysterical hormonal systems, dependent as they are on a monthly cycle "below the waterline," as Lowell drolly noted.

By contrast, Lowell continued, the colored must overcome their inferior genetic pool as well as centuries of breeding for strength, rather than the intellectual talent required for study at the college level, Lowell said.  

"This brings me to the question of the Jew," Lowell began.  The President admitted that many of the Hebrew tribe superficially appear to be able to master their academic coursework. "However, generations of inbreeding in the swamps of Eastern Europe have sapped the physical and spiritual vitality of the Jews."

As a result, Lowell concluded, the Jew is unable to participate in such central collegiate activities as football. "In addition, their Oriental studiousness, inability to tolerate alcohol and clannish nature render them inherently 'unclubbable,'" Lowell concluded to manly applause and huzzahs.


ADV'T. Bankz klosd? Yur kredit is gud at the hom of Unkel Eph, Raymond's, Wash. St., Boston and Main St., Worcester.

OR ANYTHING ELSE

Stephen Friedman, who heads the National Economic Council, is resigning, White House aides say . . . While Bush had not named a replacement by the time BusinessWeek went to press, the inside track belongs to Tim Adams, a former top Treasury aide who served as policy director of the President's re-election campaign.

Adams, a low-key policy expert, would fit the recent Bush patten: choosing long-time loyalists to fill sensitive posts. Adams is unlikely to bring his own agenda to the job.

–  BusinessWeek, Dec. 6, 2004 at 55.