The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton » (Reprint)

JEROME KARABEL is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a senior fellow of the Longview Institute, a new progressive think tank. An award-winning scholar, Karabel has appeared on Nightline, Today, and All Things Considered. He has written for the New York Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times.

A landmark work of social and cultural history, The Chosen vividly reveals the changing dynamics of power and privilege in America over the past century. Full of colorful characters (including Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, James Bryant Conant, and Kingman Brewster), it shows how the ferocious battles over admissions at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton shaped the American elite and bequeathed to us the peculiar system of college admissions that we have today. From the bitter anti-Semitism of the 1920s to the rise of the “meritocracy” at midcentury to the debate over affirmative action today, Jerome Karabel sheds surprising new light on the main events and social movements of the twentieth century. No one who reads this remarkable book will ever think about college admissions -- or America -- in the same way again.

Newsweek - Evan Thomas

"An eye-opening examination...Karabel writes clearly and well, and he has dug deep."

Contents

Introduction 1

PART I The Origins of Selective Admissions, 1900–1933 1. Elite Education and the Protestant Ethos 13 2. The Big Three Before Selective Admissions 39 3. Harvard and the Battle over Restriction 77 4. The “Jewish Problem” at Yale and Princeton 110 PART II The Struggle over Meritocracy, 1933–1965 5. Harvard’s Conant: The Man and His Ideals 139 6. The Reality of Admissions Under Conant 166 7. Reluctant Reform Comes to Yale 200 8. Princeton: The Club Expands Its Membership 227 9. Wilbur Bender and His Legacy 248 10. Tradition and Change at Old Nassau 294 11. Yale: From Insularity to Inclusion 321

PART III Inclusion and the Persistence of Privilege, 1965–2005 12. Inky Clark, Kingman Brewster, and the Revolution at Yale 349 13. Racial Conflict and the Incorporation of Blacks 378 14. Coeducation and the Struggle for Gender Equality 410 15. The Alumni Revolt at Yale and Princeton 449 16. Diversity, the Bakke Case, and the Defense of Autonomy 483 17. Money, the Market Ethos, and the Struggle for Position 514 18. The Battle over Merit 536

Notes 559 Selected bibliography 676 Acknowledgments 683 Photo credits 688 Index 689