could not be controlled. But he made use of his wealth and contacts to
combat its manifestations. Similar prejudice in Germany called forth a
similar response. When he promised to endow a chair in Semitic studies at
a university in Frankfurt, he stipulated that religion not be a consideration
in the appointment of faculty.^93 Only in the Harvard matter, probably ap-
prehensive lest it jeopardize his friendship with Eliot, was he reluctant to
take a strong position.
On the question of whether separatism by Jewish students on campus
was the correct answer to “polite anti-Semitism,” the banker differen-
tiated between social and cultural student societies. Opposed to the organ-
ization of Jewish fraternities at Harvard and Cornell, he said that separa-
tism merely strengthened the stereotype of the clannish Jew who shunned
Gentile company. On the other hand, he approved the creation of the
intercollegiate Menorah Society, which offered a serious type of Jewish
program. He was confident that the society would “raise the respect for
the Jewish College man... and preserve his own dignity in a better way
than if he seeks admission, which is so often denied him, into the Greek
letter societies.”^94
Schiff pressed long and hard for securing a Jewish seat on the board of
trustees of Columbia University, a prestigious body in which no Jew had
participated since 1816. (Gershom M. Seixas, rabbi of New York’s oldest
synagogue, Shearith Israel, had served until his death in 1816. His appoint-
ment was in accordance with the early charter of the university, which
called for clerical representatives of the various denominations.) In that
episode, Schiff learned firsthand that philanthropy even in the grand man-
ner could not topple ingrained prejudice. Despite generous gifts and finan-
cial advice to Columbia and despite a close relationship with President
Seth Low, who himself was an opponent of anti-Jewish discrimination at
the university, the banker’s wish was ignored. When he raised the matter in
conversation with Low, the latter brushed it aside. Nor was a follow-up let-
ter from Schiff, warning that exclusion alienated “wealthy Hebrews,” any
more successful.^95 Low and his successor, Nicholas Murray Butler, who
was less favorably disposed to Jews, put him off with the vague promise
that, when the opportunity arose, a Jewish graduate of Columbia would be
considered. Schiff thus understood early on that he was out of the running,
and his own suggestion for the seat was Isaac N. Seligman. Indeed, Schiff
the individual was not the issue. As E. Digby Baltzell has written, the caste-
like behavior of the upper-class WASPs kept the control of cultural institu-
tions beyond the reach of all others.^96
On principle, Schiff kept the matter alive. Increasingly impatient, he
turned to Butler more aggressively in 1907. For over fifteen years, he
wrote, he had argued for a Jewish appointee, claiming that “a class, com-
prising probably twenty-five percent of the population of the Borough of
Leadership and Philanthropy 73