BIRMINGHAM, Alabama - When Perry Brickman got kicked out of the Emory University Dental School in 1952 after his freshman year, he didn't realize that it was because he was Jewish. Or that the same thing was happening to dozens of Jewish students who enrolled at the school.
"We didn't realize what hit us," said Brickman, a retired oral maxillofacial surgeon in Atlanta.
The students were told they flunked out. Brickman went to the University of Tennessee and graduated fourth in his class. Another student in his class at Emory who was kicked out the same year went to Temple University, where he graduated first in his class.
Years later, it was discovered that Emory instituted a quota system that limited the number of Jewish dental students accepted each year to four, and then flunked most of those out. Brickman made a documentary that so shocked Emory University that the administration funded its own documentary about the issue and issued a public apology last year.
Temple Beth-El will host a showing of Emory's 31-minute documentary on the dental school's anti-Semitism on Sunday, Oct. 6, at 7 p.m. "It's an eye-opening, jaw-dropping expose of what went on from 1948 to 1961 at Emory University School of Dentistry," said Brickman, who will introduce the documentary and explain the history of quotas and discrimination against Jews in American colleges.
"Some people know it; most people don't," Brickman said. "There were quotas all over the United States in medical and dental schools."
In 1943, during World War II, the American Dental Association did presentations at dental schools across the country expressing alarm at the large number of Jewish students in dental schools, and asking schools to enact quotas limiting Jewish students, Brickman said.
Emory University in 1944 bought the Atlanta Southern Dental College, which began restricting the number of Jewish students admitted.
Before that, it was common for small towns in Alabama to have Jewish dentists who were trained at the school, Brickman said. "After 1944, you never saw another one from Alabama," Brickman said. "It affected Alabama."
While some Jews looking for admission to medical and dental schools changed their names to hide their ethnicity, that didn't always work.
"You had to put your religion," Brickman said. "You could put atheist, but that was a red flag. So many Jewish people changed their name to Robins or Robinson, like the actor Edward G. Robinson (born Emanuel Goldenberg). He was Jewish."
Emory even added an admission question on race that forced students to identify as Caucasian, Jew or other, Brickman said.
The dean of the dental school from 1948-61, John E. Buhler, resigned after that became public. "He believed in the eugenics that the Germans did," Brickman said. "This went on a long time."
The documentary funded by Emory, "From Silence to Recognition: Confronting Discrimination in Emory’s Dental School History," will be screened at Temple Beth-El, 2179 Highland Ave. South in Birmingham after a 6:30 p.m. reception. Admission is free and open to the public. Brickman will be available to answer questions after the film.