Emory U. Apologizes for Decades of Anti-Semitism; Jewish Dental Students Expelled for "Poor Grades"

Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia has apologized for years of anti-Semitism at its dental school going back decades, the BBC website reports today (October 11, 2012).

Emory invited former Jewish students to meet with University President James Wagner. More than 400 people attended the premiere of a documentary on October 10 about the discrimination. "I'm sorry. We are sorry," Mr. Wagner said at the documentary screening.

From 1948 to 1961, it is estimated that about 65 percent of Jewish students were kicked out of Emory's dental school after being told their grades were not good enough, or made to repeat courses. The rate of failure or repeats was dramatically lower before that period, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

The documentary relies on video interviews collected by one of the forced-out students, Dr. Perry Brickman, who went on to graduate with honors from the University of Tennessee's dental school. "We knew individually and collectively what the truth was,"" Dr. Brickman said. "But the truth in a situation like this is never really validated until the perpetrator says sorry."

In one interview, former dental student Ronald Goldstein recalls the dean of the dental school, John Buhler, asking him: "Why do you Jews want to go into dentistry? You don't have it in the hands." Another former student, George Marholin, recalls a professor coming into a room cursing at him and calling him a "damn Jew."