Emory University Acknowledges History of Discrimination

October 10th, 2012

Tonight Emory University makes an official statement of acknowledgement and regret about a shameful period in its history. For more than a decade, Emory’s dental school systematically discriminated against its Jewish students.

One of those students helped bring the story to light. Perry Brickman is now 80 years old. But 60 years ago, after his first year at Emory’s dental school, he got a letter saying he had flunked out. Brickman reflected on the incident by saying, “You were really humiliated. You went back home. Your parents even said, ‘Why didn’t you work harder?’ You said, ‘How did you feel?’ Like somebody kicked you in the stomach.”

In his own words, Brickman “pulled [him]self off the mat.” He graduated fourth in his class from the University of Tennessee dental school. He practiced dentistry in Atlanta for 44 years, retiring in 2004.

In 2006, he attended an exhibit at Emory about its Judaic studies program. He was shocked by one of the exhibits, saying, “I came upon a panel, a series of panels, and it really took my breath away.”

The panel featured a bar graph from a book that had been published in the 1960s. The graph showed that, between 1948 and 1961, 65% of Jewish students at Emory’s dental school had flunked out or had been required to repeat courses. Those years coincided with the tenure of one man, James Buhler, as the dental school’s dean.

After seeing the exhibit, Brickman got in touch with some former classmates, but they didn’t want to talk about what had happened to them. Brickman says, “Most of the guys had never even told their wives, their children, their friends, their associates, their business partners…nobody!”

Then Brickman got a phone call from a former classmate who had been asked to leave Emory the same year as Brickman. Though the classmate had gone on to graduate first in his class from Temple University’s dental school, he had never gotten over what happened to him at Emory.

So Brickman started digging again, interviewing other former students and tracking down records on James Buhler. After leaving Emory, Buhler had gotten a job at the Medical University South Carolina, and South Carolina is where Brickman found the former dean’s personal papers.

“Buhler, well, he was his own worst enemy,” said Brickman. “He kept everything: all the incriminating evidence. We have letters where his buddies up there who got him in, they write him, telling him how pleased they are with what he’s done, that they’re so sick and tired of the Jews up here trying to run things.”

The product of Brickman’s years of research is a documentary, From Silence to Recognition.

According to Gary Hauk, Emory University Vice President and Deputy to the President, “The institution simply needed to acknowledge and offer a statement of regret. And we agreed that it would be fitting and appropriate to try to take those stories that Perry had captured so well and fit them into the context of a larger narrative.”

Tonight many of the former dental students, including Brickman, will see their own story on the screen.

Said Brickman, “The truth is not powerful until the perpetrator acknowledges it, and then it’s full: it’s a complete truth.”

The documentary airs at 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 10, in Cox Hall on the Emory campus. The event is free and open to the public.