In 1920, the Hungarian parliament introduced a Jewish quota for university admissions, making Hungary the first country in Europe to pass antisemitic legislation following World War I. The recent book, “Quotas: The “Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945,” edited by Michael L. Miller and Judith Szapor, explores the ideologies and practices of quota regimes and the ways quotas have been justified, implemented, challenged, and remembered from the late nineteenth century until the middle of the twentieth century. Miller’s talk will examine the origins of quotas, the moral, legal, and political arguments developed by their supporters and opponents, and the social and personal impact of these attempts to limit access to higher education.

Michael L. Miller is Associate Professor in the Nationalism Studies program at Central European University in Vienna, and Academic Director of its Jewish Studies program. Michael completed his PhD in Jewish History at Columbia University.  His research focuses on the impact of nationality conflicts on the religious, cultural, and political development of Central European Jewry in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.  Miller is the author of “Rabbis and Revolution: The Jews of Moravia in the Age of Emancipation” (Stanford, 2011), co-editor (with Scott Ury) of “Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism and the Jews of East Central Europe” (Routledge, 2015), and co-editor (with Judith Szapor) of “Quotas: The “Jewish Question” and Higher Education in Central Europe, 1880-1945” (Berghahn, 2024). He has contributed to “Prague and Beyond: Jews in the Bohemian Lands” (University of Pennsylvania, 2021), and he is currently working on a history of Hungarian Jewry, titled “Manovill: A Tale of Two Hungarys.”