Cracking and Quotas: The 1948 New York Fair Educational Practices Act and the Jewish Quest for Color-Blindness

This article explores how vigorously Jews pushed to enact the 1948 New York Fair Educational Practices Act to fight anti-Jewish quotas in higher education. The Act was the first state-level legislation to prohibit higher educational institutions from excluding, limiting or otherwise discriminating against persons seeking admission as students because of race, religion, creed, color, or national origin. Seeking a way to overcome discrimination in university admissions, Jews sought to combat it by promoting racially and religiously neutral admission procedures within the broad context of the expansion of opportunities in higher education after World War II instead of directly attacking antisemitism. The Jewish ideal of color-blindness, as realized in the enactment of states' fair educational practices laws helped not only Jews but also other minorities.