Condemning Jewish journalists

Northeastern University journalism professor Laurel Leff has discovered something that’s both remarkable and disturbing. In the late 1930s, when American colleges and universities were admitting Jewish doctors and lawyers from Nazi Germany in order to save them from persecution and worse, journalism schools were asked to do the same. And not a single one did.

In today’s New York Times, Katharine Seelye reports on a petition drive inspired by Leff’s research “asking the Newspaper Association of America to acknowledge publicly that its predecessor organization in the 1930’s ‘was wrong to turn its back on Jewish refugee journalists fleeing Hitler.'” Leff tells Seelye, “There is no question that anti-Semitism influenced those decisions. It was not the only factor, but it was an important factor.”

Last week, Leff discussed her findings on NPR’s “All Things Considered.” You can listen to the story here.

Leff is the author of “Buried by The Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most Important Newspaper,” the definitive examination of the New York Times’ failure to cover the Holocaust with the prominence and sense of urgency that it deserved.