Knickerbocker Case
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The Knickerbocker Case at the City College of New York (CCNY) between 1945 and 1950 involved accusations of antisemitism against a department chairman, investigations by university, city, and state authorities, as well as by the American Jewish Congress, and the first widespread student strike in the United States.
William E. Knickerbocker had graduated from City College in 1904 and joined the faculty in 1907, teaching Spanish and French. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1911. He had been Chairman of the Department of Romance Languages, an elected position, since 1938.[1] By one account, antisemitism was endemic in certain academic areas in the 1930s to the extent that a Jewish professor, Bernard Levy, could not find a publisher without enlisting his non-Jewish colleague, Knickerbocker, as co-author of his Modern Spanish Prose Readings, 1830–1930.[2]
On April 9, 1945, four members of the Department of Romance Languages—Elliott H. Pollinger, Ephraim Cross, Otto Müller, and Pedro Bach-y-Rita—sent a letter to the president of the college accusing William E. Knickerbocker of antisemitism.[3] They contended that Knickerbocker had made antisemitic remarks and denied the Ward Medal for proficiency in French to a Jewish student, Morton Gurewitch, because he was Jewish.
In April 1947, CCNY administrators issued a report finding that a clerical error had led to the denial of the Ward Medal to Gurewitch.[4] Gurewitch was later issued a duplicate medal.[5]
Investigations
On December 16, 1946, New York City's Board of Higher Education unanimously adopted the report of a special committee that found the accusations against Knickerbocker "totally unsubstantiated." In response, the New York City Council's special committee on discrimination conducted its own investigation and determined that Knickerbocker had made antisemitic jokes and treated Jewish students contemptuously.[5] In June 1948, it recommended that CCNY remove Knickerbocker and restore Bach-y-Rita and Pollinger to the list of recommendations for promotion, from which both professors had been removed in retaliation for their charges against Knickerbocker.
The City Council voted to accept the committee's report. Administrators at CCNY delayed Knickerbocker's dismissal.[6] A faculty committee produced a report that exonerated Knickerbocker and the faculty adopted it by a 46–9 vote.[7]
The American Jewish Congress conducted an investigation and concluded that Knickerbocker demonstrated a "philosophy and program of anti-semitism." In September 1948, twenty students walked out of Knickerbocker's class. Rabbi Arthur Zuckerman, director of the campus chapter of Hillel, attempted to negotiate with the school to allow students to transfer into other classes.[8]
Dormitory segregation
In 1948, a faculty committee found that the professor in charge of the Army Hall dormitory, William E. Davis, had segregated the dormitory during World War II.[9] Davis was removed from his post as director of the dormitory, but retained his position as a tenured professor in the economics department.[7]