{"id":81620,"date":"2020-10-16T17:05:22","date_gmt":"2020-10-16T15:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=81620"},"modified":"2020-10-16T14:19:24","modified_gmt":"2020-10-16T12:19:24","slug":"24-05-55","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=81620","title":{"rendered":"Five Nobels in 2020 \u2014 A Last Gasp for Declining Jewish Genius?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>Five Nobels in 2020 \u2014 A Last Gasp for Declining Jewish Genius?<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

Ira Stoll<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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A Nobel Peace Prize medal. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid \/ Wikimedia Commons \/ CC-BY-SA 4.0.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

A poet, an economist, and three scientists with Jewish backgrounds were among the winners of this year\u2019s Nobel Prizes.<\/span><\/p>\n

The substantial 2020 haul adds to a remarkable string of achievement that, by\u00a0a count maintained by the Jewish Virtual Library<\/a>, has at least 208 Jewish Nobel winners of more than 900 total recipients in the overall history of the awards.<\/span><\/p>\n

Roughly 20 percent representation among Nobel winners is far disproportionate to the distribution of Jews in the world population, which is closer to 0.2 percent. If the prizes were randomly distributed throughout the population, in other words, there would be only one or two Jewish winners over the about 120 years the prizes have been given.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Jewish Nobel presence was physically symbolized this year by a viral video distributed by Stanford University. Captured by a doorbell porch camera, it featured one Nobel winner in economics trying to wake up the other in the middle of the night to share the good news.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe best part of this fantastic video is the mezuzah on the doorpost,\u201d\u00a0tweeted<\/a>\u00a0Avi Mayer, the global communications director of the American Jewish Committee (AJC).<\/span><\/p>\n

While the Nobel may have been discredited in some circles by the peace prize to Yasser Arafat, it remains something about which Jews feel a certain group pride.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another tweeter\u00a0commented<\/a>, \u201cNormal people: \u2018This video is so cute!\u2019 Jews: \u2018MEZUUUUUUZAH!!!\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cCongratulations to the 2020 Jewish Nobel Laureates!\u201d exulted an email from National Museum of American Jewish History, asserting, \u201cThe stories of these brilliant individuals are the kind of \u2018Only in America\u2019 stories our Museum uniquely exists to tell \u2014 the stories of the Dreamers and Doers who, through imagination, aspiration, and hard work, make the world a better place for all.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to the economist with the mezuzah,\u00a0Paul Milgrom<\/a>, this year\u2019s group of laureates included poet\u00a0Louise Gl\u00fcck<\/a>, who won the literature prize.\u00a0Harvey Alter<\/a>\u00a0was among the winners in the medicine category for his work on Hepatitis C. \u00a0Andrea Ghez and Sir Roger Penrose<\/a>, two scientists with Jewish heritage, were among the three winners of the physics prize for work on black holes.<\/span><\/p>\n

Explaining what some have called \u201cJewish genius\u201d can be perilous. When\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0columnist Bret Stephens tackled the topic last year, his editors hung him out to dry by publishing\u00a0an \u201ceditors\u2019 note\u201d falsely accusing him of committing a mistake<\/a>\u00a0that he had not actually made. Charles Murray, a scholar of intelligence, wrote about the topic in the April 2007 issue of\u00a0Commentary<\/em>\u00a0under the headline \u201cJewish Genius<\/a>,\u201d with the subheadline \u201cJews are extravagantly overrepresented in every field of intellectual accomplishment. Why?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Murray, a gentile, concluded, \u201cThe Jews are God\u2019s chosen people.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Almost as characteristic as Jewish achievement and intelligence \u2014 and perhaps related to it \u2014 is Jewish anxiety. That worry has wandered in recent years to the possibility that Jewish domination of the Nobels might be headed for a decline, along with their presence in Ivy League freshman classes. The fear is that Jews will be eclipsed, particularly in the hard sciences, by more newly-arrived immigrant groups such as Asian Americans, whose \u201cTiger Mom\u201d parents have them doing extra math homework while the dissolute Jewish children are playing video games.<\/span><\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Nobel haul, in that regard, might be reassuring \u2014 until you remember that the Nobel, often awarded at the end of a career, is a lagging indicator. It could be the last gasp of a community that was flourishing a generation or two ago but is now headed toward diminution.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whether American Jews will still be winning lots of Nobels in 40 or 50 years is a question to which I do not know the answer. If I had to predict, though, based on overall demographic trends, I would guess that the next 120 years see more Israeli Jewish winners and, proportionally, fewer American Jewish ones. And that, increasingly the American Jewish winners will be those with a Jewish grandparent or \u201cJewish heritage\u201d rather than those that identify unambiguously as American Jews. That could be a consequence of an American Jewish culture that has put a higher priority on Nobel prizes in secular fields than it has on Torah study or on Jewish religious practice, mezuzahs notwithstanding.<\/span><\/p>\n

But you never know. The US has some of the world\u2019s greatest universities and, at least in the hard sciences, an impressive amount of academic freedom. The free enterprise system rewards excellence and innovation. And the Jews have a way \u2014 not always, but often \u2014 of defying predictions of decline.<\/span><\/p>\n

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Ira Stoll<\/strong> was managing editor of\u00a0The Forward\u00a0and North American editor of\u00a0The Jerusalem Post. His media critique, a regular\u00a0Algemeiner\u00a0feature, can be found\u00a0<\/em>here<\/a>.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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Five Nobels in 2020 \u2014 A Last Gasp for Declining Jewish Genius? Ira Stoll A Nobel Peace Prize medal. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid \/ Wikimedia Commons \/ CC-BY-SA 4.0. A poet, an economist, and three scientists with Jewish backgrounds were among the winners of this year\u2019s Nobel Prizes. The substantial 2020 haul adds to a remarkable string […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81620"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81620"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81620\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81627,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81620\/revisions\/81627"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81620"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81620"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81620"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}