sakky

Hey, it's not me that's saying that prestige is the most important thing. Like it or not, [/i] the market [/i] is saying it. Ben, you're basically an economist. (Yeah, Ok, you're strictly speaking a math major, but we both know that you're effectively an economist). Let's be honest. Prestige is basically a form of market signal of quality. It doesn't really matter if you're a strong employment candidate if people don't know you're a strong candidate.

Besides, you talk about 'staying true to your principles' and not 'doing the demographically convenient thing'. Well, let's not romanticize what's been going on at Caltech. Consider the following rather interesting history of Caltech's relationships with Jews.


"Reading from a prepared statement, [Caltech physics professor Leverett] Davis said, "the senior members of the committee felt that our policy should be to admit some Jewish students but not to admit enough of them so that it made a substantial contribution to the student population." As Davis recalled, "They just did not want the place to get a reputation as having significantly more Jewish students than other corresponding universities," adding: "In the general climate of things at that time, that would discourage some substantial fraction of non-Jewish parents from sending their children here." In practice, if the committee had two applicants who were more or less equal, the older members of the committee chose the non-Jewish applicant."


"T.H. Morgan's goal was to put together a good diversified staff for the Caltech Biology Dept. Good Jewish biologists were plentiful, but good Gentiles were in short supply.""

"An eyewitness later reported that Morgan made it his business to tell everyone that he wanted to find a physiologist "who is not Jewish, if possible.""

"Morgan's assistant was Albert Tyler who was also my teacher in a couple of courses. Once when Morgan and I were alone he made an entirely gratuitous rather snide remark to the effect that you could always tell a Jew by the way he walked. That was stimulated by hearing Albert Tyler approach down the hall"

http://oregonstate.edu/dept/Special_.../goodstei.html

So you did bring up the issue of Caltech staying true to its principles, and after reading the above, I now wonder - what principles would those be exactly? Do those principles include discriminating against Jews? Or about the notion of not wanting Caltech to be seen as having too many Jews relative to other schools - wouldn't that be a case of Caltech doing the 'demographically convenient thing'?

Look, Ben, I've always respected you as a poster. But let's face it. No school - not even Caltech - has been perfectly meritocratic all the time. We should stop pretending that anybody is pure in this regard.