Valery Sentorov, Righteous of the World

Try to guess in which country the head of one of the leading universities recently made the following speech: “... Universities can make mistakes just like their employees and students. And just like people, universities should often remind themselves of the principles that they want to follow ... Discrimination in Jewish students undermined the basics of academic ethics ... of the faculty and, ultimately, the entire university. I apologize for this. We ask for forgiveness. "

At the end of October, a message appeared that Valery Anatolyevich Sentorov [1.2] was seriously ill - a mathematician, human rights activist and teacher, a deeply believing Christian, known for his disinterested help to many people. Valery Anatolyevich served in the 80s five years in camps for "anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda." One of the directions of the “anti-Soviet” activity of Sentorov was the struggle against anti-Semitism flourishing during the Brezhnev years in a number of largest universities in the country, in particular, at the Mechanical and Mathematics faculty of Moscow State University [3]. He was among the organizers of the “Jewish People’s University” [4], in which famous mathematicians read on a voluntary basis of a lecture to the children who entered the Mehmat because of the fifth point. Many articles and books are written about the discrimination of Jews on the reception exams and the fight against it [3-11]-alas, for the most part in English.

So who belongs to the words given in the first paragraph? Do not be surprised: a few weeks ago, the President of the American University of Emory in Atlanta expanded to students who suffered from anti-Semitism at the Faculty of Dentistry in 1948-1961 [12]. They were failed in exams and forced to take the same courses several times. Many could not stand it and threw their studies. Those who nevertheless finished remained injured by humiliation and injustice for life. You won’t turn the former, but official apologies brought relief to the victims and heal the atmosphere at the university, which got rid of the “skeleton in the closet”.

The University of Emory was no exception - in the first half of the twentieth century, many American educational institutions were infected with anti -Semitism. In 1922, the President of Harvard University even proposed introducing an official quota for Jews-15%, “for their own good, so as not to incite the discord” [13]. Like, too many Jewish students have divorced, they help each other and do not allow the others to break through. Familiar logic, right? The proposal after a long discussion was rejected, but the very fact of a serious consideration of such an idea says a lot.

Some stages of development of Russia and America are surprisingly similar, only pass at different times. Of course, the stories of the Faculty of Dentistry of the University of Emory and the Mehmat MSU have their own differences: those few who managed to overcome discriminatory obstacles and enter the Mehmat in the 70-80s did not repay obstacles. Their problems were resumed at the end of the university - when distributing and entering graduate school, but this is another story. It is also worth noting that most Mehmat teachers did not participate in unseemly actions, and some did not hide the disgust for the shameful practice used in the reception exams with the silent approval of party officials.

I hope that an analogy with American universities will not be limited only to negative experience. And twenty years later, the new rector of Moscow University will ask for forgiveness from those who, due to “wrong” origin, were not allowed to get the profession they dreamed about. But I would like society today to note the merits of Valery Anatolyevich Sentorov, one of the “righteous of the world” of Russian mathematics. Twenty years later, this may not become so relevant.

Notes

[1] https://www.facebook.com/helpvalerySenderov

[2] P. Protsenko, Valery Sentorov needs help: help the modern “Prince Myshkin”!

[3] B.I. KANEVSKY, V.A. NEDEROV. Intellectual genocide (exams for Jews: Moscow State University, MIPHI, MIFI) , Moscow, Samizdat, 1980

[4] G. Szpiro, Bella Abramovna Subbotovskaya and the "Jewish Pekle's University",

Notices of the American Mathematical Society, v. 54, no. 10 (2007), 1326-1330.

[5] A. Shen, Entrance Examinations to the Mekhmat , Mathematical Intelligencer v. 16, no. 4 (1994), 6-10.

[6] A. Vershik, Admission to the Mathematics Departments in Russia in the 1970s and 1980s , Mathematical Intelligencer, v. 16, no. 4 (1994), 4-5.

[7] I. Vardi, Mekh-Mat Entrance Examinations Problems , Preprint Ihes/M/00/06 (2000)

[8] T. KHOVANOVA, A. Radul, Jewish Problems , http : // Arxiv . Org / ABS /1110.1556

[9] "Black 20th anniversary" of the Mehmat MSU. Interview with the rector of independent Moscow University Yuli Ilyashenko .

[10] L. Kostyukov, Witness of the Black years .

[11] M. Shifman (Editor), You Failed Your Math Test, Comrade Einstein: Adventures and Misadventures of You Mathematicians or Test Yourstest Recreation RED Mathematics , World Scientific, 2005.

[12] J. Ravitz, Shining Light on Emory School's Past Anti-Semitesm Prompts Healing, and For One Man- Questions

[13] Harvard's Jewish Problem. http : // www . Jewishvirtoallibry . Org / JSource / Anti - Semitism / Harvard . HTML