As commencement season draws to a close, I turned the Jewdar on to see how MOTs fared in this year’s roster of commencement speakers. The result: rather well.
The most complete list I could find included 47 speech-makers adressing graduates at over 50 universities nationwide, so there’s a lot of data missing. The sample I found, though, included eleven Jews–comprising over 20% of the list. Some highlights included Elie Wiesel, Michael Bloomberg, Tom Friedman and the recently embattled Tony Kushner.
Of course, as we know all too well, Jews make up only two percent of the total US population, meaning that just like in the Senate, the Supreme Court and the executive echelons of the entertainment and finance industries, Jews are disproportionately represented. So should we be surprised by this? Yes, the percentage of Jewish commencement speakers in this very incomplete list is about ten times the percentage of Jews in America. But given that Jews have been so successful in such a broad range of professions in this country, shouldn’t we expect this kind of representation at the graduation dais?
Here’s the complete list of Jews, as far as I could tell, from this partial list of commencement speakers:
- Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Speaking at Washington University and Lehigh University
- Gerald Edelman, biologist. Speaking at School of Visual Arts.
- Jeffrey Sachs, economist. Speaking at Grinnell College.
- Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York City. Speaking at New York University and Johns Hopkins University.
- Naomi Wolff, author. Speaking at State University of New York- Oswego.
- Peter Orszag, economist. Speaking at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
- Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO. Speaking at Barnard College.
- Sol Gittleman, German and Yiddish professor. Speaking at Tufts University
- Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft. Speaking at University of Southern California.
- Tom Friedman, New York Times columnist. Speaking at Tulane University.
- Tony Kushner, playwright. Speaking at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
If I missed someone or included someone erroneously, or if there’s a more complete list that I don’t know about, please notify me.
