Opinion | Stanford Apologizes to Jews

It’s a little late—70 years or so—but Stanford University formally apologized this week for discriminating against Jewish applicants in the mid-20th century. Like all such apologies for things done by people long since dead, it is a cost-free gesture. That points to a missed opportunity, because even a little self-reflection would reveal much in 21st-century academe that will one day look as repellent as the earlier bias against Jews.

The report from the advisory task force on the history of Jewish admissions and experience at Stanford makes for interesting reading. It states that—after extensive investigation—it found evidence “of actions taken to suppress the number of Jewish students admitted to Stanford during the early 1950s.” It also found that “members of the Stanford administration regularly misled parents” and others who “raised concerns about those actions.”