Anti-Semitism in the Executive Suite-Yesterday, Today and Tomrorrow
KLAUSNER, SAMUEL Z.
Anti-Semitism in the Executive Suite Yesterday, Todav and Tomorrow SAMUEL Z. KLAUSNER Do American corporations resist hiring Jewish executives? Are they slow to promote the ones they do employ?...
...He never went back...
...It won't play as a lawyer, either in getting clients or appearing in court" "Minneapolis was a very anti-Semitic town in those days," Shapiro adds "But I just said I wouldn't think of changing my name...
...Everyone assumed he could expect anti-Semitism to limit his advancement He graduated from Cornell University with his engineering degree in 1949...
...Their daughter is unmarried...
...Those who move from one employer to another tend—whether Jewish, Catholic or Protestant—to advance more rapidly than those who work up the ladder in a single corporation...
...In a 1968 University of Michigan study,2 managers of three companies were asked if they agreed with statements such as "I would probably not choose a Jewish person for promotion if an equally qualified non-Jew were available...
...I was going to do those things that were natural for me...
...After a year and a half, he was able to move to the Justice Department He spent eight years there, trying cases and writing briefs...
...only 52 percent of the Catholics and 47 percent of the Protestants have three or more Jewish coworkers...
...I joined on the basis that it served a business need, as distinguished from a social club or golf club which serve only personal needs But then I organized a luncheon club of my own on a nondiscriminatory basis It now has about 1,100 members I'll take you there for lunch...
...It is also possible that recent MBAs will discover a ceiling, excluding them from the higher echelons of corporate America...
...Jews earn more in part because they hold positions of greater responsibility and in part because they work for more profitable firms...
...Jewish respondents said they changed positions, however, out of economic self-interest, not as a result of religious discrimination...
...Ifs because of what knowledge and competence 1 can bnng to them.' Flamm recognizes he lives in two worlds, in Connecticut where he has lived for years, 25 or 30 percent of his friends are Jews Most of his professional friends are not In Palm Beach, where the Flamms spend the winter, his friends are "overwhelmingly Jewish' "We've just joined a Jewish dub,* he says, "and ifs absolutely delightful...
...Studies in the early 1980s hinted that the situation was changing...
...Firms hiring our Catholic respondents grew, by this measure, an average of 27 percent...
...Flamm took a job with Union Carbide—but he was under no illusions...
...Half had graduated five years earlier, Irving Shapiro: "You'll Never Build a Career with a Name Like Shapiro" Irving S. Shapiro, now 72 and practicing law in Wilmington, Delaware, still looks back on his 1973 elevation to chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of E. I. du Pont de Nemours 4 Co as the beginning of a new era for Jews in corporate life, 'Look at what's happened since December 1973 when rny appointment was announced.' he tokJ me...
...He's turned down five or six (he's not sure the sixth was a firm offer...
...Currently the Jews in our study are earning more...
...The results are shown in Table 1. The respondents tended to have mentors of the same religion, as you can see by reading the table diagonally...
...I remember one of the lawyers came to me and said, 'I never realized until today that you could be a rabbi and not have a beard.'" Once at Dupont Shapiro says he experienced no anti-Semitism—at least that he knows of: "I happened to hit when the world was changing" He attributes much of the change to the civil rights movement and the creation of Israel...
...Another factor that may affect Jewish advancement differentially is that Jews change employers more often than Catholics and Protestants...
...Ann Arbor, Michigan: Survey Research Center, The University of Michigan, 1968...
...Although Jews are distributed across the industrial sectors, they are concentrated in growing firms...
...And not infrequently, they establish, or take over, their own firms...
...We had too few respondents in each specific type of business for a quantitative test of this proposition, but perusal of our sample on a case-by-case basis does not indicate any exclusion...
...Contrary to some reports, Shapiro doesn't speak Yiddish, but he understands it As with so many American Jews, his parents used it to tell each other secrets His children don't understand Yiddish at all...
...341 made it to the top via the legal department—as a lawyer, a traditional Jewish occupation W. Michael Blumenthal (who was bom Jewish...
...Pockets of anti-Jewish bias may well persist—say, in Nebraska or Wyoming or Oregon where we did not have an adequate sample of MBAs...
...The managers were more willing to discriminate if they believed that third parties, such as clients, would support discrimination...
...We tested seven indicators of discrimination and, in each case, we failed to find evidence of discrimination: (1) We did not find a serious deficit of Jews within particular classes of firms...
...In the end, they must be understood in a wider context...
...Finally, in September 1941, Irving Shapiro hung out his own shingle in the office of another Minneapolis lawyer, who gave him free rent in exchange for research to be performed in Shapiro's ample free time...
...Societies are organic...
...We have not found any objective differences either in hiring or in workplace life...
...promotion is a social process...
...Some of the briefs he wrote didnt bear his name, however...
...To see whether this was the case, we asked the religion of our respondents' mentors...
...I could start my own business or Alec Flamm, retired pteudent of Union Carbide Corporation go with a smaller company...
...The American Jewish Committee, 1984...
...According to these Harvard MBAs, discrimination against Jews in the corporate world had decreased...
...The increases among Jews may be somewhat exaggerated because of a few very high increases, but the direction is clear...
...Jewish MBAs might be misinterpreting their relationships with their purported mentors while, in fact, these purported Christian mentors of Al Flamm: No Roadblock to the Top Unlike Irving Shapiro at Dupont, Alec Flamm spent his entire career at Union Carbide working his way up from the bottom In 1982, Flamm, an engineer, became president of Union Carbide, a Fortune 500 company second only to Dupont in the chemical industry...
...Nearly a quarter of the respondents (23 percent) believed that being Jewish would hinder executive advance (only 2.5 percent believed being Catholic would hinder executive advance...
...Jews began at lower-level positions in the administrative hierarchy, but over the long haul their education (they attended more London department store Marks and Spencer, visited the Dupont offices...
...Finally, the current decline in executive discrimination against Jews does not guarantee that this situation will persist...
...In his engineering class of 183, there were only three or four Jews—and one woman...
...Jews would simply be scarce throughout the executive world...
...Conducting a study without such a comparison is like making an experiment without a control group...
...Although Jews begin at lower entry salaries, their salary increases exceed those of Protestants and Catholics...
...7) The MBAs themselves did not believe that religious discrimination was practiced in their firms...
...Ifs been that way for 125 years They couldn't live with the idea that the CEO of Dupont was not a member of their club...
...5' 1 Powell, Reed M., "Race, Religion and the Promotion of the American Executive," unpublished manuscript...
...American Sociological Review, Volume 47, June 1982, pp...
...Yet it may conceal a time bomb...
...My family had struggled to see me through law school and the first thing I'm going to do after I get admitted to the bar is get rid of the family name...
...But Flamm had received some engineering training in the army and liked it So he decided to get a degree in engineering despite the fact that it was a "non-Jewish' occupation...
...Two thousand bucks more was a fortune in those days [1951] for a guy who didn't have anything A guy named Shapiro has got to be Jewish, they know it and they want ma So if they want me, I'll give it a shot" When he got to Dupont he discovered a number of Jews there who were "living anonymously...
...ifs not very difficult now to come up with a list of 200 to 400 Jews who are in senior corporate executive positions' Before Shapiro's appointment a few Jews had climbed to the top in major corporations, but none who combined Shapiro's obvious Jewish name, his open Jewishness and the top position in a large company long known for having an anti-Semitic personnel policy...
...Jews more often advance up the ladder to top positions by changing firms...
...After graduation...
...New York: Praeger, 1982...
...But this was not the case...
...Flamm is not a particularly Jewish-sounding name...
...8 Silberman, Charles E., A Certain People: American Jews and Their Lives Today...
...I found myself being courted faster than my peers, I didnt want to create a ghost The fact is, I never faced any overt anti-Semitism—that is, I never knew at any— either professionally or socially...
...Firms hiring Protestant respondents averaged 2.1 Jewish directors...
...Shapiro recalls that his father loved to go to shiil and lead the prayers "He couldn't stand it just being in the group, but if he could lead the prayers then it was a big day...
...Jews joined the most rapidly expanding firms...
...Jews tend to see it as a freeing of the economy from extra-economic social forces...
...Two-thirds of the Jewish respondents were mentored by a gentile, hardly less than would be expected by a random assignment of mentors...
...This is not to say that Jews and gentiles seek and join firms similar in all respects...
...Will they be directors in America's top industrial and commercial firms...
...Yet, he observes, the Jewish business elite does not climb the ordinary corporate ladder but rather rises through law, government service (Shapiro was well-placed in both law and government) and the academy...
...6) We did not find any refusal by Christian senior executives to act as mentor to Jewish junior executives...
...Would you be willing to come...
...2 Quinn, Robert P., Kahn, Robert L., Tabor, Joyce M., Gordon, Laura K., The Chosen Few: A Study of Discrimination in Executive Selection...
...And so we stopped putting our names on the briefs...
...The invitation did not come to Shapiro until he became CEO: "I had built up enough resentment over the years so that when out of the blue came this invitation—You've now gotta join our Club'—it was easy to say thanks, but no thanks The president of the club at that point was a friend of mine and he was quite incensed with me that I would turn him down...
...These are very small differences...
...became president of Bendix and thereafter chairman of Burroughs only after high-level government service in the Kennedy and Carter administrations...
...Respondents estimated the number of their Jewish, Catholic and Protestant co-workers...
...Using data from the early 1970s, a study by the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University5 found that, while Jews were 8.9 percent of the college-educated population, they constituted only 6.9 percent of the business elite...
...We expect that a study of corporate elites 10 years from now would show, if present trends continue, that Jews are well represented on boards of directors...
...This infuriated my father...
...But this may put them on a collision course with the right and the left, as outlined above, whose interests are different...
...3) We did not find Jews occupying positions of lower authority...
...So I joined...
...If a Jewish applicant is not hired or not helped by a senior executive, does the respondent accept this as a fair judgment of performance, a matter of business interests, or as an expression of prejudice...
...Finally, two young Jewish lawyers sat him down and told it to him straight "Look, the first thing you've got to do is get rid of your name...
...There they are given support, by senior executives who are gentile...
...The higher salaries may also be attributable in part to career strategies among Jews that include longer cultural preparation, attending better colleges, majoring in liberal arts and then pursuing administrative rather than technical positions in a variety of corporate divisions...
...It is sometimes said that women are shunted to personnel, blacks to community relations and Jews to the legal office from which promotion to directorial rank is difficult...
...The average salary (1985) of Catholics is about $82,000, Protestants, $83,000, and Jews, $111,000 per year...
...The present decline in executive suite discrimination is probably a result of the increasing rationalization of the economy...
...Sure," Shapiro replied...
...As it turned out those were some of the considerations that appealed to my predecessor as CEO at Dupont He was impressed with the fact that I was involved in a leadership role in the Jewish community and in the community at large...
...Jews tend to join the most rapidly growing corporations...
...People told me I was out of my mind to be an engineer," Flamm said in an interview with moment...
...One of the regulars worked for BYiai B'rith's Anti-Defamation'League and told Shapiro, "You can't go to Wilmington...
...This is going to sound corny* he told moment, "but it didn't materialize ft was a gradual realization...
...Between graduation and the present, the salaries of Catholics increased annually by about $9,000, Protestants by about 311,000 and Jews by about 820,000...
...a change in one sector often produces change in other sectors...
...If firms in all three major industrial sectors discriminated to the same degree against Jews, we would find no difference among them, but there v^ould still be discrimination...
...It's a world that my children wouldn't believe and couldn't understand...
...Thus Jews were no more concentrated where Jewish MBAs worked than where their non-Jewish classmates worked...
...This is not to say that no firms discriminate against Jews...
...Nobody advances on his or her own...
...5 Alba, Richard L., Moore, Gwen, "Ethnicity in the American Elite...
...2) We did not find Jews clustered in a narrow range of positions within firms...
...But strangely enough, Al Flamm strongly wanted a rabbi to perform the ceremony, along with a minister in one case and a priest in the other...
...In short, Christian senior executives do assist Jewish junior executives...
...He wanted no part of that "I was Irving Shapiro and I wasn't going to change for anybody...
...I had the opportunity to demonstrate that a lot of misconceptions should be cast aside" When Shapiro was still a young lawyer at Dupont, Sir Marcus Sief, who ran the differential treatment where the respondents report its existence...
...Some surveys have suggested that in some sectors, like commercial banking, for example, Jews are resisted...
...As these numbers indicate, religion pales next to gender as a factor in office life...
...Then one day his ex-boss came by and told him, "I've got bad news—I can't get it done...
...In the early 1960s, my University of Pennsylvania colleague, Digby Baltzell, painted a picture of a caste society that excluded Jews from campuses, clubs and corporations.4 While Jews dominated New York's Seventh Avenue needle trades, and had organized some key Wall Street investment banking firms such as Kuhn Loeb and Lazard Freres, the situation was toto coelo different in the major corporate elites, such as the Fortune 500, that were a key to political as well as economic influence...
...Dupont was going to start me at $12,000 and it could only go up from there...
...Shapiro's boss at Justice had gone to work for Dupont and later came back to recruit other Justice Department lawyers for the corporation...
...The proportionate increase, or over and over again...
...Thafs just nutty...
...Our results paint a far brighter picture than did research conducted 20 years ago...
...373-383...
...Shortly after Pearl Harbor, however, Shapiro got a chance to go to Washington, D.C, to work with the newly established Office of Price Administration...
...He recalls that before he took the job, the subject came up in his poker group...
...Or Jews might be found to have greater authority, on the average, not because of a lack of discrimination but because discrimination forced them into a few Jewish firms in which they achieved top positions...
...Perhaps someone will suggest that our methodology was too crude or flawed to detect the discrimination that does exist...
...As might be expected, the answers were somewhat higher for Catholics and Protestants (32 percent and 39 percent, respectively)—remember these are denials—but these differences are not statistically significant...
...And he conveyed this to his children...
...We can assert only that we found no climate of discrimination against graduates of our three northeastern schools...
...And 80 percent of the Jewish respondents in that study regarded their Jewish background as a hindrance to promotion...
...So both the right and the left may, for different reasons, be unhappy with the economic rationalization that competition has forced on us...
...Commerce includes retail trade, investment banking and real estate...
...The/re seeking me, a Jew, to be on their board...
...hence a study based on the current composition of boards of directors may not reflect current conditions...
...But I have enough trouble living my own life, let alone living my children's lives"—US...
...2) They are rising more rapidly in corporate hierarchies than their Catholic and Protestant colleagues...
...In their last position, 66 percent of the Jews have three or more Jewish co-workers...
...Shapiro (p...
...There was a round of interviews Time passed, but nothing happened...
...In a climate of discrimination, Jews might be isolated from influential gentile mentors...
...When Irv Shapiro went to Dupont he knew of its anti-Semitic reputation...
...A decade later little had changed...
...3 Ward, Lewis B., "The Ethnics of Executive Selection," Harvard Business Review, March-April 1965...
...And nobody else knew what we were talking about" One thing separated Shapiro from his colleagues as he climbed the ladder at Dupont He was not invited to join the exclusive Wilmington country club that Duponfs top executives all belonged to...
...The Flamms have never been to Israel, but "we are giving it serious consideration.* They might have gone this year 'except for the turmoiL" Neither their son nw daughter married Jews...
...A senior executive—a mentor—often guides and protects a junior executive...
...Uhnstian respondents would find employment in places where there were few Jews...
...In certain respects, this is a valid charge...
...I couldn't as a business proposition, shut myself off...
...Anti-Semitism did not stop at the office door...
...A lot of companies were probably moving in that direction, perhaps subconsciously But it tcott Dupont to say, let's go...
...We may not be able to extrapolate to Jews who are not MBAs or who are in music, medicine, academics or law...
...Nearly 20 percent of the managers were in at least slight agreement with this statement...
...Sometime later, however, Shapiro's ex-boss again came back and told him, "I think now I can hire you, too...
...It was a way of life I had grown up with and I wasn't going to change...
...This is because Jews are less likely to return to a previous job or slip into a position in a family-owned business...
...Overall, we have concluded that today there is no significant climate of corporate discrimination against Jewish executives...
...These were considerations that he thought important He didn't care which religion it was, but it was important that you had a religion and were willing to identify with it" "I did what came naturally to me...
...Jewish executives were found in senior posts at corporations neither founded nor owned by Jews...
...I don't feel I have to participate in organized religion to be a good Jew,' he added...
...Nevertheless, the study concluded that anti-Semitic attitudes' 'continue to impede the opportunities of some qualified men and women in the business world...
...The percentage of Catholics, Protestants and Jews who estimated they had three or more Jewish co-workers was just about the same (63 percent, 63 percent, and 60 percent, respectively...
...A quarter of the Jews denied observing any differential treatment—on any ground—in their places of employment...
...None of the studies I have cited draws a complete picture...
...Shapiro later learned that one man in top management didn't want a Jew with a Jewish-sounding name, so he opposed the appointment When that man retired, Shapiro's name was again presented, and this time he was hired...
...I knew there were problems that came with this identity, but you had to manage the problems as best you could...
...But what about the subjective sense of discrimination...
...In fact, Jews seem to be drawn to administrative positions more than to technical ones...
...It was nurtured in corporate board rooms and nourished in club dining rooms...
...A 1982 study6 of Jews on corporate boards and Jews listed in Who's Who found no evidence of gross anti-Semitism, but the researchers did learn that there were fewer Jews in elite clubs than on corporate boards, suggesting social, if not business, exclusion...
...Shapiro thought it through: "I always had the alternative of leaving if it didn't pan out I can remember clearly my analysis: I was making $10,000 a year as one of the top lawyers in the Department of Justice...
...Those hiring Protestants increased their employees by 25 percent...
...That was back in the 1940s, shortly after World War II...
...Those hiring Catholics had 3.3 Jewish directors on their boards and those hiring Jewish respondents had 2.8 Jewish directors...
...In nearly half the cases, mentor and mentee were of the same religion...
...More likely, our Jewish MBAs sought out these growing firms as matter of career strategy...
...3) they are achieving higher salaries than their Catholic and Protestant colleagues...
...No lateral-entry promotions smoothed his ride This is not how ifs supposed to be for Jews...
...None of these factors alone is, in itself, conclusive...
...That didn't make any sense to me, I was prepared to ¦fight it out on my own turf...
...We would be foolhardy to relinquish our "paranoia" completely...
...In our own study, we tried to learn from the shortcomings of our predecessors...
...Indeed, Jews, more than others, believe that performance counts over family and personal ties...
...Moreover, our study was limited to MBAs...
...True, if it hadn't been Dupont and Shapiro, it would have been another company and another talented Jew...
...Surprisingly few studies have compared Jewish representation in the executive suite with non-Jews of similar backgrounds...
...The comparatively higher percentage of Jews is due in part, however, to a greater tendency among Jews to branch off into businesses of their own...
...In 1969, Reed Powell1, a professor at Ohio State's business college, analyzed questionnaire responses from upper-level executives in 40 different firms...
...Things never remain constant...
...You're just never going to build a legal career with a name like Shapiro...
...Surveys are narrowly located in space and time...
...7 Zweigenhaft, Richard L., "Who Gets to the Top?: Executive Suite Discrimination in the Eighties...
...As their careers proceed, Jews seem to move toward places where there are more Jews...
...Or Jews could have higher salaries because, once forced out of traditional fields, they had no choice but to enter innovative, more profitable fields...
...4 Baltzell, E. Digby, The Protestant Establishment...
...Only about 2 percent of the cadets at West Point Military Academy are Jewish, a matter surely not to be blamed on the anti-Semitism of the congressmen proposing cadets...
...The younger Jewish executives sense no significant religious discrimination...
...From the Justice Department Shapiro went to the legal department of Dupont but not without a few missed steps: During the war, a shortage of lawyers led to Shapiro's being asked to interview at Washington, D.C's most prominent and prestigious law firm, Covington and Burling, a firm that even had a Jewish partner, H. Thomas Austern...
...Administrative positions were held by 53 percent of the Catholics and 69 percent of the Protestants, but by 83 percent of the Jews...
...My predecessor as CEO got a hold of me and told me, We've got your name up in other places If you're really going to turn everything down, we're going to be embarrassed.'" "So I capitulated to the extent of joining a local luncheon club that until that time had never let in Jews To this day, it doesn't take any women in, although we managed to break the color barrier...
...But it didn't do a great deal for us or our children.' Now they usually go to high holiday services with relatives or friends They usually have a seder, but not always...
...He was entertained at the Wilmington Club for lunch and Shapiro was invited "so there would be someone who was a lanfz-man" Shapiro was even seated next to Sir Marcus A fine French wine was served and Shapiro poured a glass for Sir Marcus Then the young lawyer announced before the Dupont executives, "Sir Marcus, I want to offer a toast—a toast that has never before been heard in this club: L'chaim" Shapiro laughed as he recalled the incident "Sief nearly fell out of his chair...
...What about today...
...5) We did not find a positive correlation between the presence or absence of Jewish corporate officers and the level of Jewish hiring...
...We identified the religious composition of management by judging the names of board members listed in standard business directories as Jewish or non-Jewish...
...In five and ten years after graduation, Catholics had worked for an average of 2.3 employers, Protestants 2.4 and Jews 3.0...
...4) We did not find Jews earning lower salaries...
...Cohen and Shapiro weren't even invited to interview...
...I figured that if the anticipated limitations materialized, there would be other avenues...
...The engine of discrimination is anti-Semitism...
...Another example: A low proportion of Jews in a particular business sector does not, by itself, imply discrimination...
...It would not be wasted time...
...Internal organizational dynamics, more than discriminatory hiring, may segregate Jewish executives...
...Jewish hiring is hardly increased by a Jewish management or decreased by a non-Jewish one...
...The Shapiros have two children, a son and a daughter...
...At the same time, liberal humanists berate economic rationalization as a depersonalizing force...
...But ifs just a staid old place...
...Despite the fact that he graduated fourth in the 1941 law school class at the University of Minnesota Law School and was editor of the law review, Shapiro had difficulty finding a job in Minneapolis, where his Lithuanian-born father ran a dry-cleaning shop...
...He doesn't know why he felt so strongly...
...I just told him that you didn't want me before I was CEO and I don't need you now...
...other corporations of the same caliber...
...it turned him off...
...Moreover, the composition of boards of directors is a precipitate of choices made several decades ago...
...The rabbi refused to have a yizkor Ikaddishl service for my mother unbl a finite amount of money was collected tor the synagogue...
...Shapiro again adds: "That was a*different world...
...Somebody would have surfaced in another company and it would have happened...
...It is sometimes argued that minorities find openings in expanding firms because of the severe personnel needs of such firms...
...As Shapiro described it, "Obviously he wasn't recruiting me, so I suggested a name to him and he hired the man...
...Let's do it" When it did happen, it encouraged others to take the step Shapiro recalls a man who came up to him years later at a cocktail party to tell Shapiro how he had been responsible for the mans being appointed to the board of directors of a Toronto bank Although the man had had a long close and important relationship with the bank, he had never been invited to join the board After Shapiro's appointment the president of the bank called the man and told him, "If Shapiro's good enough for Dupont ifs about time we put you on our board" It was an experience that repeated itself many times, Shapiro says with obvious satisfaction For Irv Shapiro, his elevation to the top position at Dupont represented not only a career achievement but a personal triumph over anti-Semitism It was a different world when he started out he says in 1979, and half ten years earlier, in 1974, so we could look at them at different phases of their careers...
...Some concentration of Jews in investment banking may account for part of this religious clustering...
...Shapiro had remained in Washington after he flunked the Army's physical exam because of his history of asthma...
...Suspecting that the past may be different from the present, the American Jewish Committee asked me and my colleagues for a mid-1980s assessment of executive suite discrimination...
...This tilt has been good for the Jewish executive and for the American economy...
...Some of our Jewish MBAs are working in such firms but it is still too early to determine whether they will hit a career ceiling...
...Richard Gelb, CEO ot Bristol-Meyers, started as vice-president when his own company was acquired by Bristol-Meyers, These men entered at the top They did not move up through the ranks in these companies through years of service in substantive management...
...Flamm retired in 1986 after 37 years with Union Carbide He sits on the boards of two Fortune 500 companies...
...But it wasn't only Minneapolis...
...Since discrimination does not occur at a single moment in time, we also decided to examine these Jewish and non-Jewish executives at several stages in their careers...
...New York: Random House, 1964...
...New York: Summit Books, 1985...
...Jews obviously benefit from this economic rationalization...
...Jews, too, make choices...
...ifs just a question of when...
...We also tried to find out whether a gentile management would tend to hire fewer Jews and whether a Jewish management would be biased in favor of Jews...
...For this reason, I advise as much contemplation as rejoicing...
...But I did...
...In only four cases did Jews report that religion influenced, positively or negatively, a decision in the executive suite...
...But that was yesterday...
...Increasing independence of economic activities from family, religious and local community ties, threatens the American right wing— chauvinists and populists, fundamentalist Protestants and some elements in the Roman Catholic church...
...Take, for example, the studies of prejudiced attitudes—whether attitudinal anti-Semitism leads to a discriminatory act depends upon the social context, what people do about what they think and feel...
...But the fact that our study did detect substantial discrimination against blacks and women suggests otherwise...
...Flamm and his wife (who is Jewish) belonged to a Reform synagogue in the 1960s...
...I can't believe I'm so unique that if it wasn't me it never would have been anybody else...
...Of course,' he replied "I took off for the Jewish holidays, And it came up naturally in discussions.* Flamm has never 'particularly participated in Jewish activities.* About the time of his bar mitzvah in a Conservative synagogue, his mother died...
...In short, does anti-Semitism still operate in the executive suite...
...After more than a year's research, we found that the situation has indeed changed: (1) Jewish MBAs are winning positions in the same industries as their Catholic and Protestant classmates...
...Their son married a non-Jew...
...And I was not indefinitely bound to it' Once on the job—his first post was in a small town m upstate New York named Tonawanda—he waited for antt-Semittsm to rear its head...
...It is unlikely, however, that none of the seven indices of discrimination would fail to show up if discrimination were widespread...
...In the past, the personal experience of Jews in the corporate world, bolstered by some research, led observers to respond with a resounding "yes...
...In a follow-up study,7 Jewish and non-Jewish graduates of Harvard Business School were interviewed...
...They all came We filled the sanctuary and had a big party and it was a revelation for everybody...
...competitive undergraduate colleges and were more likely to major in liberal arts) and, presumably, their performance stood them in good stead...
...Among other old coldecrease, in number of employees between 1979 and 1984 is one measure of growth...
...A 1965 article in the Harvard Business Review3 reported what most Jewish business leaders already knew: Jews were nearly absent from top positions in banks, public utilities, insurance companies and heavy industry, especially in the Midwest...
...However, the burden of proof must now fall on those who perceive a climate of executive employment discrimination...
...Table 2 shows the bases— race, sex or religion—for the perceived leagues from whom he sought recommendations was Irv Shapiro...
...Yet, cross-religious mentoring is widespread...
...Sent cash in advance She offered to convert, but I said, 'Don't convert for ma Convert if you want to be Jewish but what your religion is is your business, not mina' You'd hope sometimes that it would turn out differently...
...Charles Silberman8 sees Irving Shapiro's 1973 election as Dupont's chief executive officer (CEO) as a dramatic symbol of the change in the position of Jews in American business life...
...And the data are subject to varying interpretations...
...we know too well, after the pain of surviving over the centuries, that there are peaks and troughs...
...Thafs the way the world was" Soon after he arrived, Shapiro's son Stuart observed his barmitzvah in a local Reform synagogue: "I decided to show these people what it was like, so I invited everybody i worked with to come to the synagogue for the ceremony...
...With these MBAs now five years (for the 1979 class) and ten years (for the 1974 class) out of school, we would expect them to be doing well financially—and they are...
...Upon business school graduation, 73 percent of the Jews entered the job market but only 65 percent of the Protestants and 56 percent of the Catholics did so...
...The dean sent a list of three Cohen (number one in the class), Shapiro and another man who was hired after being called in for an interview...
...Nearly 75 percent of all mentors were either Catholic or Protestant...
...The three religious groups did not differ significantly, however, in their initial placement with regard to manufacturing, commerce and service...
...The anti-trust division of the Department of Justice was recruiting lawyers and wrote to the dean of his law school requesting the names of suitable candidates...
...Just that simple...
...In the command category—president or CEO—we found 5 percent of the Catholics, 14 percent of the Protestants and 36 percent of the Jews five or ten years after graduation from business school...
...Each places a stone in the mosaic...
...As one might expect, managers were less willing to discriminate against Jews if the company had a known equal opportunity policy...
...We decided to measure objective discrimination by comparing Jewish with non-Jewish executives who began their careers at the same business schools...
...This was in sharp contrast to the civil service (where Jews constituted 15 percent), the leadership of voluntary organizations (where they constituted 17 percent), and the mass media elite (where they constituted 26 percent...
...It never presented any sort ot roadblock to any position that might be made available to me...
...Ifs Hungarian and has never been changedJ Did they know he was Jewish...
...6 Zweigenhaft, Richard L., Domhoff, G. William, Jews in the Protestant Establishment...
...I got the royal treatment Dn the interview process], but after a while one of the partners came around and said, 'I'm just not prepared to hire a guy named Shapiro at this point in time.' I think that was probably the most painful professional experience I have ever had— to go through all that to be sought out, and then after the interview to be told you're a great guy but they don't want a guy named Shapiro...
...Jews would cluster in nondiscriminating tirms...
...Jews might even fail to report discrimination because they expected it and therefore didn't notice it...
...Columbus, Ohio: College of Administrative Science, Ohio State University, 1969...
...In 1985-1986, we questioned 444 MBAs from Harvard, Columbia and Drexel Universities...
...It was difficult for him to find a rabbi anywhere who would do this But in each case, he was successful and a rabbi was included as an officiating partner...
...Anti-Semitism in the Executive Suite continuedfrom page 39 Jewish junior executives do not see the relationships that way...
...The couple were married in Shapiro's home: "I had to import a rabbi from Philadelphia...
...this was also true of other Jewish lawyers: "Tom Clark, who was then assistant attorney general in charge of the criminal division of the Justice Department and was later appointed to the Supreme Court, decided there were too many Jewish-sounding names appearing on government briefs...
...Increased domestic and, especially, international competitiveness has forced a tilt toward organizational efficiency, toward valuing executive performance at the expense of club connections and other indices of social compatibility...
...Those hiring Jews increased their personnel by 54 percent during this period...
...For Al Flamm, it was different When Al Flamm chose engineering as a career, he knew it was not a 'Jewish* occupation...
...If religious discrimination were a factor in hiring practices, we could expect some degree of segregation among^ Jewish executives...
...That created some consternation...
...He didj The country club has since lowered the barriers against Jews, but Shapirtfstill hasn't joined...
Vol. 13 • September 1988 • No. 6
