City College, from Irvings Howe and Kristol to Jewish studies

I would consider myself a traitor to my own blog if I didn't discuss this article about the surge in interest in Jewish studies among gentiles, which apparently, as I suspected, extends beyond a certain blonde Irishwoman:

"[One non-Jewish student's] exploration typifies a striking trend at City College and in Jewish studies nationally - its appeal to gentiles. Of the 250 students enrolled in Jewish studies classes at City College, 26 of them majoring and 160 minoring in the field, some 95 percent are not Jewish."

The article attributes the sudden interest in Jewish studies among gentiles in part to a desire to know how Jews "made it," which is a little unsettling, but not that unsettling, I don't know. Interest also apparently arises from curiousity about the roots of Christianity, as well as from a desire to gain a perspective on Jews other than one gained through hearing anti-Semitic slurs. How nice. Well, hope it works.

"The recent fascination of gentiles with Jewish studies, then, arrived as a pleasant, and wholly unexpected, shock. Nowhere does this phenomenon carry greater historical resonance than at City College, an institution deeply intertwined with the history of American Jewry. In the decades before World War II, when many elite universities held quotas on Jewish students, City became known as "the poor man's Harvard," the launching pad for intellectuals like Irving Howe and Irving Kristol. By the 1980's, with Jews now flocking to the colleges that formerly had barred them and City College a predominantly nonwhite school, it suffered national notoriety for the anti-Semitic diatribes of Leonard Jeffries, a tenured professor of black studies. The success of Professor Mittelman's program represents a third wave, part of the overall resurgence of City College. While the Jewish studies courses do attract a few Jews, most of them immigrants from the former Soviet Union, they overwhelmingly draw those self-described explorers like Shivani Subryan."

I'd have to say that part of what first interested me about Irving Howe and Irving Kristol is that my own grandfather went to City College about the same time that they did. (No, for the record, my grandfather was not responsible for neoconservatism, nor, for that matter, for democratic socialism.) My interest only increased after seeing "Arguing the World" and interning at Dissent magazine, which was co-founded by Howe. City College must have been a pretty intense place, sort of like what Stuyvesant would be if people weren't flipping out all the time about having enough extracurriculars to get into a top college.

I wonder if City College, aside from teaching its diverse student body about the history of the Jews in general, teaches much about the history of the school itself. Such a course could be taught under Jewish studies, I suppose, but also under American or NYC history.