
Jewish problems - cal2
http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.1556
======
jfruh
This reminds me of an interesting story from _Not In My Neighborhood,_ a
history of residential and institutional segregation in Baltimore. Baltimore
in many ways had three-way segregation -- black, white, and Jewish -- with
Realtors for all three communities refusing to show houses in the "wrong"
neighborhood to anyone. However, the public school system only had two-way
segregation -- black and white, with Jews attending white schools.

Johns Hopkins, then as now an elite institution located in Baltimore,
encouraged local kids to apply, and was integrated long before the public
schools were. Hopkins never had any kind of restriction on the number of black
students, but they _did_ have quotas on the number of Jews. That's because the
black school system was bad enough (and blacks generally financially
disadvantaged enough) that they knew they'd never have more than about 5
percent or so of their student body being black -- enough to show that they
were liberal and enlightened, but not enough to change the character of the
student body. But if they let in all the Jews who qualified, the school would
be half Jewish, which would be unacceptable, as they'd get a reputation as a
"Jewish" school.

This is also one of the reasons for the long-ago heyday of City College in New
York: as a public college, they didn't discriminate, and so a lot of Jewish
kids who would have otherwise qualified to go to the Ivy League ended up
there.

~~~
vbtemp
I grew up near Baltimore. It wasn't until the mid 50's I believe that Jews
were permitted east of Falls Rd. It took my grandmother decades to be able to
comfortably go through that area. In fact, when she and her husband bought
their first house in woodlawn, the entire neighborhood signed a petition that
they did not want any Jews moving in. My grandparents powered through it
anyway.

------
Alex3917
Whereas in the US the reason that colleges use essay questions is because jews
score too highly on the SATs. We can thank Harvard for this, as usual.
Gladwell has an essay about this here:

[http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlar...](http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/10/10/051010crat_atlarge)

I forget what Gladwell is copying from, but I know that there is an earlier
article that goes into even more detail.

~~~
ellyagg
Jews had a hard time getting into some Ivy league schools for a stretch, but
not colleges in the US in general, c.f. elsewhere on this page.

What is it with you anyway? I found your comment earlier today about "the US
does it too!" re the Dalai Lama almost odd enough to comment on but this is
the second comment in a row where you found an angle to bash the US. Do you
think every negative comment about a country is a secret thumbs up to the US?
And you just can't be having that?

~~~
wnight
It was informative. I didn't know the USA put restrictions on what the Dalai
Lama would say. For China. I think the average person would be surprised to
hear it.

It's like not recognizing Taiwan as a country. Offensive.

~~~
philwelch
Taiwan doesn't even technically recognize itself as a country. It's just a
part of China ruled by a rival government.

~~~
dpark
Taiwan doesn't recognize itself as a _separate_ country. It recognizes itself
as the legitimate government of China.

~~~
philwelch
Which, from an objective standpoint, is a rival government.

~~~
dpark
But they do not consider themselves "part" of China. They consider themselves
China.

~~~
philwelch
But they only actually control part of China, namely Taiwan.

~~~
dpark
Sure. But that's a matter they don't agree with. They believe they run all of
China, de jure if not de facto.

In any event, they certainly consider themselves to be a country. A rather
large one.

~~~
philwelch
No one considers Taiwan a country, aside from a minority party in Taiwan that
wants to declare independence from China but doesn't have the balls.

The ROC considers Taiwan part of China. The PRC considers Taiwan part of
China. The ROC and PRC are rival governments of this one China. The ROC
controls Taiwan and a couple other islands, the PRC controls the rest.

The one thing both states agree on is that Taiwan is not a country; Taiwan is
part of China. If you're going to be lazy and sloppy about it, you can call
the ROC "Taiwan", but neither side actually sees it that way.

~~~
xiaoma
This is so far off-base that it's painful to read. I say this as someone who's
spent most his adult life in Taiwan and currently lives in Beijing. Most my
friends are Taiwanese. I ran a business in Taiwan for years. At one point I
even considered applying for citizenship (despite the mandatory military
service).

Millions of Taiwanese people consider Taiwan a country. I have yet to meet
even one in my generation who believes Taiwan to be a part of China. This
really is a case of might vs right.

~~~
philwelch
I'm talking about the stated policies of both PRC and ROC governments. The
last time there were noises from the ROC side about changing this policy, PRC
announced missile tests and military exercises, the US deployed a few aircraft
carriers, and everyone decided to live with the status quo after all.

Maybe most Taiwanese people think Taiwan should be an independent country
(despite electing the Chinese Nationalist Party to a majority). But by matter
of policy and law, it simply isn't. And no one seems willing to change the
status quo.

~~~
xiaoma
I don't mean this to be offensive, but I'm getting the distinct impression
that you don't have any familiarity with Taiwanese politics past what you've
read in (usually poor) English media coverage.

The 國民黨 (which you call the "Chinese" nationalist party) has been losing
support in each election cycle since 2000. Also, I don't think it's an
accident that Ma's impressive results in the last presidential election
coincided with his abandonment of the 國民黨's usual platform of unification with
China. He campaigned almost purely on economic issues. Similarly the
legislative victories came on an economic platform.

The guomingdang's victories have put the brakes on a few localization
initiatives such as name changes of formerly state-owned businesses (e.g.
中華電信). However, the bulk of pan-green efforts have remained intact. Taiwanese
is now taught at elementary school and children are no longer forbidden to
speak it. History classes now focus on Taiwanese rather than Chinese history.
Identity polls published by the politically-neutral Apple Daily now find a
smaller than ever ratio of people consider themselves to be Chinese and a
majority consider themselves to be Taiwanese only. This flies directly in the
face of your claim that _"No one considers Taiwan a country, aside from a
minority party in Taiwan"_.

~~~
philwelch
You're probably right. De facto, Taiwan is a separate country right now. But
they at least have to maintain the diplomatic fiction of being Chinese.

You're right that I don't read Chinese or Taiwanese, and that I've never been
to either country, and the only second-hand knowledge I have of the situation
is decades old.

I do know that the pan-blue coalition has abandoned the idea of unification
for now. I also understand (if I'm not mistaken) that the pan-green coalition
has also abandoned the idea of formally declaring Taiwanese independence. So
despite whatever side either party is notionally supposed to be, both sides
have accepted the status quo and campaign on how they are to govern Taiwan.

In any case, this is a matter of some interest to me, and I appreciate you
sharing all of this. I wonder, is there still an ethnic division between
Taiwanese and the descendants of the Chinese that escaped from the mainland?

~~~
xiaoma
The pan-greens have been pushing ever closer towards independence for as long
as I can remember. Obviously, they don't want a war, though. I think that's
one of the major reasons why the name changes, proposals for changing the flag
and the referendum issue carry such weight.

The referendum is an especially key piece of the strategy. They've been
pushing for at least the past 7 years for public referendum on topics that are
politically benign, at least on the surface. However, once there is a
precedent of a referendum, the possibility exists for private citizens to
start collecting the necessary signatures to put independence (or far more
likely, baby steps towards independence) to a national vote. This sort of
action would be very difficult politically for the PRC to punish.

Thus far, the Guomindang (aka KMT) has defeated referendum attempts by
campaigning for a boycott of the referendum. Chen put two issues forward for
referendum in 2004 (coinciding with the presidential election he narrowly won
against a united Soong-KMT ticket after surviving a gunshot on the eve of the
election). Voters agreed with both referendum questions by margins of over
90%, but the result was invalidated due to the final turnout being less than
50%.

To answer your question, I'd say that ethnic divisions between the Min and the
mainlanders have died down. The issue is politics more than ethnicity.
Traditionally, Hakkas have voted pan-blue, but that's much less consistent
than it was before. At this point it's more of a division between the business
people, those with ties to China or HK and the more local people.

------
cheez
Can someone please explain to me what the hell is the problem people have with
Jews? The only thing I can tell is maybe they're disproportionately
financially successful? I guess that's a problem...

~~~
mdasen
Answering as someone Jewish. . .

Jews don't assimilate (fully). In the Passover story, one of the things we
note is that even living in Egypt for a long time, they didn't assimilate and
they were disliked for it. Heck, how often do you hear people talking about
other immigrants "not assimilating these days". For centuries, Jews even spoke
a language other than the vernacular. We're a much more tolerant world today
and yet there are plenty in this country (the US) that wish everyone "would
just speak English". I have plenty of friends whose parents grew up speaking
Yiddish in this country.

Likewise, Jews were seen as people with divided loyalties. But this, again,
isn't specific to Jews. Kennedy took plenty of hits as people questioned if
he'd "just do what the pope told him to do." Were Jews really going to be
loyal to the state they lived in? In an era when wars were often fought with
what makes today's reasons seem air-tight, would Jews decide to sit on the
sidelines (since they weren't really X nationality)? I mean, imagine if the US
and Canada got into a war over who could call they're syrup "maple syrup".
Would you fight in that? People have fought for some stupid things. Also,
during a decent period of time, mercantilism became a big factor in economic
thinking. If Jews didn't see a problem with cross-border trade, that was doing
economic harm.

For Christians, "you've heard the good news and yet you still reject
Christ?!?" This is one of the more simplistic ones. People have killed (and
continue to do so) for religious reasons. Jews were especially problematic for
Christianity. Here you have the predecessor religion co-existing. If they
thrive more than the Christians, does G-d like them better than the
Christians? And there's plenty of "they killed Christ" to go around.

Jews are, in some ways, refugees. I mean, there was an ancient state that
existed and then diaspora as the Jews had to leave their homeland. First,
people often don't like immigrants. How much scapegoating happens even today
around immigrants and crime, jobs, culture, etc.? Heck, even things like
sexuality come into play. In a lot of anti-Semitic literature, Jews were
portrayed as ultra-sexual in the same "hide your daughters" way that can
happen with African Americans today. Second, people really don't like
refugees. I mean, these are people coming with nothing. These aren't
university trained computer programmers coming over like H1-B visa getters.
These are people who have it really hard.

Beyond that, someone like Dawkins might point out that we try to propel our
genes and like genes forward. A decent amount of history looks like people
trying to force their culture, their nationality, and their genes forward
through history. Jews were a different group. If you're under the impression
that wealth cannot be created, then any wealth that Jews get is wealth that
people like you don't have. So, it becomes competitive in that sense and
people try to propel people like them forward through history.

I guess I'll also touch on the fact that diaspora Judaism somewhat flies in
the face of nationalism. I mean, if you're big into patriotism and
nationalism, then the state should be the citizen's first priority, right? I
think a lot of us now see the state as a tool meant to make our lives more
stable and just. We don't live for the glory of our country. Our country is
meant to help us have better lives. When we serve our country, it's to enhance
the lives of the people and increase justice, not to enhance the country
(although they sometimes go hand in hand). This is a big shift in modern
thought (at least to me). But diaspora Judaism can fly in the face of
"commitment to your country should take precedence over commitment to
something else". I mean, to us it might sound ridiculous to say that your
country should matter more than your morality - and I mean secular morality
here. But in a Europe coming out of feudalism where they were trying to define
national loyalties and borders, worried about losing territory to the
neighboring country, worried about all sorts of things that look foolish from
a modern perspective, well, if Jews weren't going to care if they were Polish
or Russian, that was a huge problem. Frankly, this is one of the reasons that
Jews came to America. While America has its nationalism, it's pluralistic, and
it's often based off good governance and democratic principles more than the
history of most places.

Jews could also be insular. Kosher dietary laws meant that they didn't eat
with non-Jews and that they bought their food from within the community.
Again, it's easy to see how something like "those assholes won't buy meat from
me saying my meat isn't clean!" turns into anti-semitism in the way rumors
spread. Before cars, towns were organized for churches or shuls to be within
walking distance which means segregation.

Heck, even looking at the Harvard example, you see a private club that had a
certain culture that was losing that culture. No longer would Harvard be
almost all Wasp. I mean, they and their forefathers had put their money and
effort into it. Shouldn't their progeny and the progeny of their religion and
culture get the benefits of it? I'm not saying you should agree with that
logic, but it is logic that is often used. I mean, there are people who don't
want this country to become Spanish speaking or bi-lingual. Whether someone is
the first person someplace or not, people and culture become entrenched and
people don't want to see that culture change away from them. Heck, how much
complaining do some people do that a lot of advertisements don't say "Merry
Christmas"? Harvard was created by Wasps and now it was benefitting Jews and
turning more Jewish. The identity of the institution was changing.

It isn't that the hatred is that different from a lot of other ethnic hatred.
A lot of it can be seen in a lot of the other ethno-religious hatred that has
existed in the world. It's that the Jews hit a lot of different sore points in
human history. There was religion, there was national identity, there was
immigrant status, there was language, there was hope of another homeland,
their was separateness/insular-ness, etc.

I come from the point of view that nationalism is a bit outdated. People
deserve to be justly governed in ways that make their lives better and that
they should be allowed to choose how to live their lives in a way that makes
them happy (clearly with restrictions on things that cannot be abided like
murder). But providing good, just governance isn't why Europe has so many
countries. Good governance and happy lives for citizens isn't why England
subjugated Wales. Justice isn't what drove the Reconquista of Spain. Power,
control, and the perpetuation of one's genes, culture, language, and religion
have been a driving force in human history.

I, for one, am happy that we at least see such injustice and hatred as a bad
thing these days. I'm not sure if you were looking for an answer like this. I
didn't mean for it to be long like this. Hatred can be a bit hard to wrap
one's head around (at least for me) and yet it's defined a lot of human
history. I can't imagine someone hating me without knowing me. I don't
understand it. I'm nice (honest)! Yet, even without understanding it, I know
there are people who wish I didn't exist who don't even know me. It's actually
quite an odd feeling.

~~~
johnyzee
Great comment and the length of it just goes to show how complex the issue is.

If we were to add contemporary issues things would get even more complicated:
Zionism and Israeli policies has created a lot of anger against 'Jews'. This
has much less to do with ethnicity than historical anti-semitism, but the two
get conflated which leaves everybody confused and talking past eachother. Add
to the mix the fact that Jews dominate banking and media (I assume this is
accepted as fact and not conspiracy theory), industries that get little love
these days.

~~~
netcan
Again this is more complicated than just that. The great bulk of responses and
opposition to Zionist and Israeli policies comes from the Arab and Muslim
world.

Since this opposition is shared by many westerners, I think a lot of
westerners assume that it is shared based on similar reasoning. Human rights,
international law, national freedoms. But the reality is that a substantial
portions is nationalist/religious/xenophobic/nationalistic/scapegoating.

Belief in arab countries that Israel was behind 9-11 or some other local event
(eg shark attacks in egypt)* is very common. Lots of easily verifiable made up
stories are common knowledge. A lot of the old anti-semetic propoganda is
distributed in the greater Muslim world via mainstream local media (I saw an
article about the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' a Czarist propoganda
document that has a special place in most Jews consciousness, discussed in an
Indonesian magazine. It's also in the Hamas charter document* _.

A lot of the complaints that are interpreted as objections to human rights
violations or similar are (when seen in context) really objections to non
Muslim rule in 'Muslim Lands' (as opposed to lands where muslims live) or
various conspiracy delusions.

I'm not trying to justify Israeli policy. I think it's immoral and stupid. But
the type of objection to it do not make me think that changing policy will
result in substantial changes in attitude, though they might provide an
incremental improvement.

_
[http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-...](http://blogs.news.sky.com/middleeastblog/Post:2c6bf5da-e006-4bab-84ee-c72a5845f2a8)
* *<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamas_Charter>

~~~
kamaal
Extreme forms of Antisemitism existed long before even Muhammad was born. You
are probably referring to the outcome of a half a century long conflict. Yes
there is a lot of anti-Jew factor in the Muslim world(I am a Muslim my self).

But there is also a lot of anti-Muslim factor widely prevalent in the west
too! Every bit of people on this earth have suffered with that problem. The
Muslim world looks at these problems from their own view. Think of it this
way, there was no signs of Israel in the Arab world around a century back, the
settlements start. There are splinter groups. Slowly albeit steadily a vast
majority of the native population was displaced to settle new set of people. A
new nation is declared, backed by most powerful nations on earth. What was
your country yesterday is not today and you are mercilessly kicked out. Now
what sins did the natives do to deserve that? On top of loosing their lands,
there is huge under development and humiliation since decades. How do you
expect them to react?

To quote Ben Gurion himself:

 _I don't understand your optimism. Why should the Arabs make peace? If I were
an Arab leader I would never make terms with Israel. That is natural: we have
taken their country. Sure, God promised it to us, but what does that matter to
them? Our God is not theirs. We come from Israel, it's true, but two thousand
years ago, and what is that to them? There has been antisemitism, the Nazis,
Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They only see one thing: we have
come here and stolen their country. Why should they accept that? They may
perhaps forget in one or two generations' time, but for the moment there is no
chance. So, it's simple: we have to stay strong and maintain a powerful army.
Our whole policy is there. Otherwise the Arabs will wipe us out._

\- <http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/David_Ben-Gurion>

Tomorrow if some state like California is invaded by some one, existing
citizens of the state thrown out. How will those people react. Will they
laughingly walk out of their homes, stay in tents and welcome the invaders
with Garlands? And business goes around normal?

There isn't a community on earth today which is different than any other
community. People everywhere are just the same. When these sort of things
happen friction is but natural but to take place.

All nations and their people on earth or same, Jews, Muslims and Christians.
No one is different. Now there is also a clash of cultures. Others like their
culture as much as you like yours. To assume everybody must follow your way of
life is unacceptable to any community on earth.

I come from a nation(India) which hasn't attacked/invaded any country in
thousands of years. We even got our freedom through complete non-violence. For
thousands of years we absorbed other religions, cultures and languages and
their people with open arms. Tolerance is not everybody's cup of tea.

Friction will remain, the way out is tolerance and respect for others.

~~~
netcan
Like I said, I have no wish to justify Israeli policies and there are many
genuine reasons to object to them. History I don't even think it's possible to
justify.

I was commenting though on different types of objection though. Objections
based on delusions, nationalism and religion. Jews absolutely do not have a
monopoly over these. Anti-muslim sentiment in the Europe is largely xenophobia
and in the US its mostly nationalism. These (as I'm pretty sure you agree by
reading what you wrote).

But the scale and flavour of some of the delusions directed at Israel from
what are in the Muslim world, non marginal sources are uncommonly fantastic. I
participated in a Syrian-Israeli dialogue once where we answer each others'
objections to peace. We found that the majority of Syrians believe that the
stripes on Israel's flag represent the sea and the euphrates, Israel's
ambition to conquer all of modern Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Jordan and
Syria. They referenced a nonexistent map in the Israeli Parliament,
nonexistent speeches by early leaders, etc. These were not hawks by any means.
They doctors and engineers and teachers that wanted peace and were actively
pursuing it. They basically wanted a guarantee that Israel will give up these
ambitions. All fantasy.

There are some insane surveys from various countries (Egypt, most commonly)
about what the average person believes.

Americans can be delusionaly racist and nationalistic to. But, you can't sell
the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from Iran or anything like
that.

~~~
kamaal
_But, you can't sell the idea that shark attacks were orchestrated by from
Iran or anything like that._

You can't sell that kind of an Idea to any people in any part of the world.
But you see you can always tell there are Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq
and go and invade them. Virtually tear their national infrastructure to
shreds. Scare away investors and prospective companies from investing and
forbid any sane economic growth in the foreseeable future. _And Americans did
buy that idea_. Although no WMD's were found in Iraq. Do you still expect Iraq
and their neighbors not to have sane opinions about America.

Now come to think of it. Iran has been repeatedly harping that they have no
intentions of producing nuclear weapons. What guarantees do we have from the
US that they are right and Iran is wrong. After all there wasn't a shred of
truth Iraq WMD thing. Why should they even trust you?

I am not blaming Americans for this. But if you repeatedly demonize a set of
people no matter who they are, after a some time no matter how absurd the
argument vast majority of people will begin to believe in those lies. That's
how Hitler managed to commit and get support to committing worst genocides in
human history.

People in the arab world, heck every in the world are just like Americans.
They have families, every day lives to live and businesses to run. Just like
you.

~~~
netcan
I absolutely didn't mean to make this personal. But the reality is that you
can sell stories like this in Egypt.

 _“What is being said about the Mossad throwing the deadly shark (in the sea)
to hit tourism in Egypt is not out of the question, but it needs time to
confirm,” South Sinai Governor Mohamed Abdel Fadil Shousha was quoted as
saying by state news site egynews.net…._
[http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/uk-egypt-shark-
idUK...](http://uk.reuters.com/article/2010/12/06/uk-egypt-shark-
idUKTRE6B52OE20101206)

This is a single example and a relatively lighthearted one. The protocols
(because of their history) is less funny but more mainstream.

There is a difference between that and false (or falsified) intelligence about
the nuclear capabilities of Iraq or Iran (which is trying hard to convince the
world it is trying to build them), two countries that are/were constantly on
the brink of war with very dangerous powers. One is similar to 'She's a witch'
and the other is like 'She's a criminal.' Both may be false but they are not
the same.

I have no personal dislike for Arabs or Muslims. I know many and have had
great friendships. I also do not really consider myself Jewish, or that my
Judaism isn't very important to me.

~~~
kamaal
There is no reason for me to take it personal. _I am Indian, not an arab_. By
ethnic origins I might have Hindu ancestors.

My point was people are every where the same. Jews or other wise. The problem
exists because of massive trust deficit due to a long chain of history of
events. We need tolerance from both the parties if they want to leave in
peace. And lets hope they are sensible enough to realize that.

I am great admirer of all cultures. I would love to visit Israel some day
learn and experience Jewish culture to the fullest

~~~
netcan
I guess personal is the wrong word. It's just that what I said amounts to a
criticism of elements in certain cultures, that's something people take
personally.

We are, of course, the same. Nationality, ethnicity and the rest are made up.
But.. so is money. Imaginary things still have an effect as long as people
believe in them.

------
staunch
> _...these problems are distinguished by having a simple solution that is
> difficult to find._

Like the place to view the problems, for me at least: PDF
<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1110.1556v1>

~~~
mdda
... also available as the link titled 'PDF' under 'Download' on the right hand
side of the page.

~~~
kevinpet
I visit arXiv maybe five times a year, and every time I do the same "where the
hell is the link" search. The problem is that the box with downloads appears
to be part of the page chrome, not part of this particular entry.

------
graupel
As a Jewish American, the biggest question I have is "How does any
college/institution know that I (or my children) are Jewish?"

We don't have a particularly Jewish last name, have some Irish mixed in with
an Eastern European background, etc - without putting "Fluent in Yiddish" and
"President of Temple Beth Sholom" on a resume, I don't see how anyone would
ever pick us out from the crowd as being Jewish.

I can see how it would be easier to discriminate based on race, country of
origin, or gender, than religion, that's all.

~~~
sethg
In the USSR, everyone had their ethnic identity listed on their government-
issued identification.

~~~
dimitar
This is true, its the infamous "Fifth point" on many different IDs (they had a
system internal passports to keep people in check). It was really easy for any
official to discriminate if he wanted to and hard not to when its the policy.

The USSR wasn't "politically correct" in the modern Western view of the word.
The party line and the state policies were fact in fact sometimes wildly
discriminatory.

Those ethnic issues are a big reason USSR broke up.

------
natasham25
Yep, that is why my family moved to the US from Russia. My mom wanted to be a
doctor, but wasn't accepted to medical school even though she got straight As
and was completely qualified. They just said they can't accept her because
she's Jewish, and there is nothing she could do about it. I'm really glad I
got to grow up here in America.

~~~
mturmon
Here's a nice article about Grigori Perelman, Fields medal winner, solver of
the Poincare conjecture, and mathematical genius/recluse.

Perelman came up in the Soviet system in the 1980s, when the discriminatory
practice you mention was in force:

[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he-
conq...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/apr/29/he-conquered-
the-conjecture/)

Relevant quote:

"For a Jewish boy [sic] gifted in mathematics to be admitted to a university,
there were three possibilities: hope you were one of the two Jews accepted at
Leningrad University every year; go somewhere with less draconian admission
policies; or make it onto the Soviet team for the International Mathematical
Olympiad, which guaranteed admission to Leningrad University. Perelman decided
to try out for the team."

~~~
toyg
Moral questions aside, I wonder if forcing entire ethnic groups to "perform
for the country" in order to earn social status is really that bad. A lot of
countries have done it across the centuries (Rome, France, UK, Arabs... and
more recently US and USSR); they were usually successful in "extracting value"
from those groups in the short term, while in the long term fostering a sense
of belonging to a non-discriminatory ideal of citizenship.

Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews,
but then they produced a Perelman.

~~~
ceejayoz
> Even in this case, the Soviets might have discriminated generations of Jews,
> but then they produced a Perelman.

It may well have been less "produced a Perelman" than "one Perelman out of
hundreds snuck through".

------
eps
FWIW the Jew discrimination in Moscow State University was non-existent by
early 90s, and likely even earlier than that. I had a well over a dozen Jew
friends join Math dept - basically every one who applied - around that time,
with no fuss whatsoever. This was an attribute of earlier times, 50s through
70s.

Secondly, to those asking who did they know who was a Jew and who wasn't.
First of all, the nationality was in a passport - the primary ID issued to
everyone over 16 years of age. Secondly, they looked at the last name.
Thirdly, to those trying to evade this sort of filtering through changing the
last name, they asked for _mother's maiden name_ \- which is as conniving as
it is clever. Fourthly, they just looked at the person. It was an oral exam
after all.

~~~
maratd
> FWIW the Jew discrimination in Moscow State University was non-existent by
> early 90s, and likely even earlier than that.

Quite possibly because all the Jews left by that point? That was around the
collapse of the USSR, when the borders opened up. My family and quite a few
others just left.

------
andreiursan
Just want to say something about the math problems: I'm living in Romania,
somehow closer to Rusia. Anyway, in Highschool I took private math lessons
from an over 70 years old math teacher - man, he was so good at finding
solutions to similar problems with those in the url. Sometimes the quickest
solution is to construct your own function. I do enjoy the time when I had to
solve problems like those, it is quite a creative process.

------
ryanhunt
sounds like a similar (although at least a little bit more achievable) to the
"White Australia Policy" that was once one in place, where a language exam was
given to 'undesirables' in a language that it was clear the person wishing to
emigrate to Australia could not speak.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Australia_policy>

------
zmitri
I once had a question on a first year calculus exam that broke down to problem
17. It took a while to figure it out, but the exam got bell curved up by
almost 50% in the end.

------
zalthor
When they say 'oral exams', are the applicants expected to shoot out an answer
without actually looking at the problem or writing a solution? And if that's
the case, how much time would they get to solve these problems mentally? I
can't imagine being able to solve any of these without a pen and paper. I
would assume that unless you already know the answer, there isn't a way for an
'unwanted' applicant to be able to do so either.

~~~
eliben
No - an oral exam in this context is more like a programming interview. You
get a board and chalk, and you solve the problem on the board in front of the
teacher, explaining what you're doing along the way. This is opposed to a
"normal" exam where you have your pen and paper and a pre-set amount of time
to struggle with the problem on your own.

~~~
pixcavator
It's actualy the latter, followed by the former -- on paper.

------
3pt14159
Were these questions for entrance from high school or a bachelors program?

If the latter, many (say half) of them are acceptable, but if the former then
none of them are.

~~~
saucerful
These were for university. This sort of addresses your point:

 _Now, after thirty years, these problems seem easier. Mostly, this is because
the ideas of how to solve these problems have spread and are now a part of the
standard set of ideas. Thirty years ago these problems were harder to solve
and, in addition, the students were given these problems one after another
until they failed one of them, at which point they were given a failing mark._

~~~
adgar
I agree that the problems have gotten much simpler - several of these remind
me a lot of the difficulty I saw on the AIME back in 10th-12th grade. I mean,
that's still pretty advanced relatively speaking, but certainly doable by tens
of thousands of high school aged students each year.

And then there's two levels of competition past that I never made it to...
just 1... damn... question... short...

~~~
cperciva
_And then there's two levels of competition past that I never made it to...
just 1... damn... question... short..._

I got a perfect score on the AIME in 1998, but they didn't let Canadians write
the USAMO back then. :-(

------
01PH
Makes an interesting read.

Does anybody know what kind of repository Cornell is there running? The paper
seems a bit odd structured and I don't really see that as an open-access
publication(lack of DOIs). Or is this just a working paper repository?

~~~
_delirium
It's the arXiv, a fairly well-known open-access repository. It contains a mix
of unpublished drafts / working papers, preprints of papers at various stages
in the submission/review process, and manuscript versions of published journal
articles.

More: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArXiv>

------
gsivil
I've just browsed the pdf and problem 2 is my favorite.

~~~
killedbydeath
At least when I was studying there (late 90-s), all entrance exam problems
were supposed to be solved without any calculus. The motivation given was that
algebra and geometry give enough variety of material for hard and beautiful
problems and high school calculus is a joke so they would have to teach it
again from scratch.

~~~
Sniffnoy
This problem can be done without any derivatives, actually. First observe that
since (x-y)^2=(y-x)^2, we have |F(x)-F(y)|<=(x-y)^2. Given x and y with y>x,
divide up the interval between them into x_0=x, x_1, x_2, ..., x_n=y evenly
spaced. Then applying the observation above and the triangle inequality, since
F(y)-F(x) is the sum of the F(x_(i+1))-F(x_i), we have
|F(y)-F(x)|<=n*((x-y)/n)^2=(x-y)^2/n. Since n can be arbitrarily large,
|F(y)-F(x)| is smaller than any positive number and hence 0, so F(y)=F(x).

Note that 2 here can be replaced with any number greater than 1; this is
actually a well-known fact, that any Hölder-continuous function on the reals
with exponent greater than 1 is constant. But I suppose it would not be well-
known to high-school students! To be honest, I mostly only know it because of
the old legend about the student who... well, here's a link:
[http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53122/mathematical-
urban-l...](http://mathoverflow.net/questions/53122/mathematical-urban-
legends/53127#53127)

------
pixcavator
Here’s a “Russian” problem: find the largest projection on the plane of a box
with sides a, b, c.

~~~
btmorex
Well, I don't care about my math rep so... I don't get it.

You've listed 3 sides of a box. Does that mean that the "fourth" side is part
of one of those 3 sides so a = b = c? Or are you asking for the orientation
and relative length of the 3 sides such that the fourth side would maximize
the area of the box?

~~~
losvedir
I think the question is asking something akin to "You have a box with width a,
height b, and length c. What's the biggest shadow you can make?"

For example, if you think of the sun straight overhead, then the shadow will
have area a*b. But if the sun moves over, then the shadow will grow by
inclusion of some of the height of the box.

------
Hitchhiker
Truly remarkable.. and chilling.

------
suivix
I don't understand how these problems would be harder for Jews than anyone
else. It's controversial in my opinion to claim that educated Jews are worse
at these based on their ethnicity.

edit: wow people responded too quickly, sorry if it was to something I edited
out

~~~
andrewpi
This was a set of problems only given to Jewish candidates.

~~~
ralmeida
I had the very same doubt the author of the comment you replied to seems to
have had. What confused me is that I thought that the 'directioning' these
problems to Jewish people was an implicit scheme.

After all, simply directing the questions to Jewish candidates is
discrimination too start with. They took so much care in finding a set of
problems they could justify as not discriminative that I though they had
developed a clever scheme to implicitly direct the questions.

I mean, the university prepared itself to answer "But the problems aren't
hard, check out the solution!" when asked "Why did you give hard problems to
Jews?". I would simply ask "Why didn't you give everybody the same set of
problems?". What I don't get from having skimmed over the paper and comments
is how they prepared to the latter question.

------
known
<http://www.jewfaq.org/origins.htm>

------
adrianwaj
I'd pack my bags and go so quickly, so whose loss would be it be? Then as a
non-Jew, I think I'd do the same.

~~~
pavpanchekha
Haha, you think it was that easy to emigrate from the USSR, especially for
Jewish men and women? There's a reason people didn't, and it isn't because
everyone thought they were better off staying.

~~~
mannicken
Actually, it was easier to emigrate from the USSR for Jewish men and women
than for the rest of the nation due to refugee programs that US offers for
minorities suffering persecution. I think other countries offer those two.

I am one of the people whose parents emigrated in 2004 as Christian refugees,
btw. They had to prove they suffered from religious persecution (bible raids,
not getting into colleges, etc).

The whole 'give me your poor and hungry' thing never really went away ;-)

~~~
ceejayoz
> Actually, it was easier to emigrate from the USSR for Jewish men and women
> than for the rest of the nation due to refugee programs that US offers for
> minorities suffering persecution.

I don't think that made it any easier getting _out_.

------
nivertech
This thread prove only one thing: you can be sound and logical Hacker News
reader, but once the topic is Jews and/or Israel - you become irrational and
brain-washed.

Mdasen's comment is the only smart reply on this thread.

------
known
There are ~50 mutually exclusive religions in this world. It is prudent to
create 50 independent states for these people.
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Religious_wri...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Religious_writings)

~~~
rbanffy
And have ~50² religious wars in the process? No, thanks.

