Oppie tried repeatedly to get Serber appointed to a tenure-track position as an assistant professor. But Birge stubbornly refused, writing another colleague that “one Jew in the department was enough.” Oppenheimer was unaware of this remark at the time, but he was not unfamiliar with the sentiment. If anything, anti-Semitism in polite society was on the rise in America during the 1920s and ’30s. Many universities had followed Harvard’s lead in the early twenties and imposed restrictive quotas on the number of Jewish students. Elite law firms and social clubs in major cities like New York,
...more
