Leaving USC

Dean Morton Owen Schapiro of USC has been named president of Williams College in Massachusetts, one of the country’s top liberal arts colleges.

During his nine years at USC, Schapiro played a key role in turning the private university, once considered a WASP bastion, into an academic center eager to attract Jewish students, faculty and scholarship.

When he assumes the Williams presidency on July 1, Schapiro will continue to be actively involved in the Jewish community and studies, “as a vital part of my life,” he said.

Schapiro’s new appointment illustrates the changing attitudes of over half a century of America’s top private academic institutions, from a barely veiled anti-Semitism to something akin to philo-Semitism.

Up to the late 1940s, most top private universities maintained a numerus clausus, or quota system, that limited the admission of Jewish students and the hiring and advancement of Jewish professors.

By contrast, and in the prestigious Ivy League alone, Yale and Princeton are now headed by Jewish scholars, and Harvard by a half-Jewish president.

When the 46-year-old Schapiro, universally addressed as “Morty,” was appointed dean of USC’s College of Letters, Arts and Sciences six years ago, “We got together a group of faculty and Hillel rabbis to see what we could do to bring the Jewish community into USC, and USC into the Jewish community,” he recalled.

That effort was crowned 16 months ago with the establishment of the USC Institute for the Study of Jews in American Life.

Its focus is “on issues of contemporary Jewish life and identity in the Western United States, the relationship to other ethnic and religious groups, and the Jewish role in the general community,” according to Prof. Barry Glassner, the institute’s director.

Schapiro is a nationally recognized expert on the economics of higher education. Before coming to USC, he was for 11 years on the faculty of Williams College, which is generally ranked with such elite liberal arts colleges as Swarthmore, Amherst and Wellesley.

Among its benefactors is the well-known Bronfman family, headed by Edgar and Charles, which has endowed a professorship of Jewish studies and a Jewish lecture series.

Among those regretting Schapiro’s departure from Los Angeles is the neighboring Hebrew Union College (HUC), which conducts joint academic and professional programs with USC.

HUC Dean Lewis Barth commented that “Morty has been a wonderful partner to HUC and an extraordinary asset to the Jewish community. We will miss him greatly.”

Glassner described Schapiro as “a monumental force for Jewish scholarship and life at USC. We will now need to redouble our efforts until he returns.”

Joining Schapiro in the move from west to east will be his wife Mimi and their three children, including two-month-old Rachel.