By the turn of the twentieth century, academic nativism had taken root in elite American colleges—specifically, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. White, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant hegemony was endangered by new kinds of student, many of them Catholic and Jewish immigrants. The newcomers threatened to displace native-born Americans by raising academic standards and winning a disproportionate share of the scholarships. The Half-Opened Door analyzes the role of these institutions, casting light on their place in class structure and values in the United States. It details the origins, history, and demise of discriminatory admissions processes and depicts how the entrenched position of the upper class was successfully challenged. The educational, and hence economic, mobility of Catholics and Jews has shown other groups—for example, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Spanish-speaking Americans—not only the difficulties that these earlier aspirants had in overcoming class and ethnic barriers, but the fact that it can be done. One of the ironies of the history of higher education in the United States is the use of quotas by admissions committees. Restrictive measures were imposed on Jews because they were so successful, whereas benign quotas are currently used to encourage underrepresented minorities to enter colleges and professional schools. The competing claims of both the older and the newer minorities continue to be the subject of controversy, editorial comments, and court cases—and will be for years to come.

In the late 1800s an increasingly dominant fixture of student life on college campuses was the fraternity, groups of like-minded individuals who banded together based on "Greek" intellectual and social ideals. One such society was Zeta Beta Tau, founded by Dr. Richard James Horatio Gottheil and fourteen charter members at Columbia University in 1898 as a forum where young Jewish men could discuss their faith, enhance pride in their heritage, and embrace the ideals of the Zionist movement. In this study, Marianne Sanua follows the evolution of the fraternity from its rabbinic roots to its contemporary non-sectarianism and shows how ZBT's social opportunities, hitherto denied its members in the non-Jewish world, were a means of proving "first on the college campus and later to all the world that young Jewish men could be the equal of their best Gentile counterparts in achievement, behavior, and gentlemanly bearing". In chronicling ZBT, however, Sanua also examines broader issues like anti-Semitism, Zionism, assimilation, the presence of Jews in academe, and the changing goals and expectations of generations of the fraternity's members.

A history of Jewish fraternities and sororities in the early twentieth-century United States. Going Greek offers an unprecedented look at the relationship between American Jewish students and fraternity life during its heyday in the first half of the twentieth century. More than secret social clubs, fraternities and sororities profoundly shaped the lives of members long after they left college—often dictating choices in marriage as well as business alliances. Widely viewed as a key to success, membership in these self-governing, sectarian organizations was desirable but not easily accessible, especially to non-Protestants and nonwhites. In Going Greek Marianne Sanua examines the founding of Jewish fraternities in light of such topics as antisemitism, the unique challenges faced by Jewish students on campuses across the United States, responses to World War II, and questions pertaining to assimilation and/or identity reinforcement.