A Jewish quota was a discriminatory racial quota designed to limit or deny Jew access to non-Jew institutions. Such quotas were widespread in the 19th and 20th centuries in developed countries and frequently present in higher education, often at prestigious universities.
Numerus clausus ("closed number" in Latin) is one of many methods used to limit the number of students who may study at a university.
Between 1918 and the 1950s, most universities and medical schools in the United States introduced numerus clausus policies limiting admissions of students based on their religion or race to certain percentages within the college population.
At Yale University, Dean Milton Winternitz's instructions to the admissions office regarding ethnic quotas were very specific: "Never admit more than five Jews, take only two Italian Catholics, and take no blacks at all."
During this period, a notable exception among U.S. medical schools was the medical school of Middlesex University, which had no racial quotas and many Jewish faculty members and students; this school failed to receive American Medical Association (AMA) accreditation.
U.S. university and medical school racial quotas against Jews were gradually discarded during the 1960s.
