In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

I left off yesterday wondering if the whole elite-school racket, which earlier fraudsters like Madoff, Lay, and Kozlowski avoided, has anything to do with some of the less familiar features of the FTX scandal. I referred to David Brooks's 2000 Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There , which bases his argument on what might be called the bourgeois-optimistic interpretation of elite-school admissions: after World War II, James B Conant reformed the Ivy admissions process by introducing the Scholastic Aptitude Test, which devalued the role of money and social standing in determining who got into Harvard, Yale, Chicago, Stanford, MIT, and the like, and instead stressed merit and ability. At the same time, the Ivies are thought to have dropped Jewish quotas, which allowed Jews to increase their presence on campus and qualified them in greater numbers for careers at upper levels in business and government. One needed to look no farther for confirmation than Brook...