Prof. Judith Szapor receives SSHRC Insight Development Grant to study Antisemitism, Gender, and Exile in the context of the Numerus Clausus Law in Hungary in 1920

Prof. Szapor will use the grant to study the impact of the first antisemitic law of the post-WWI era in Europe. Introduced in Hungary in 1920, the so-called numerus clausus law designated Hungarian Jews as one of the “races and nationalities” and restricted the enrollment of Jewish students to 6%, the ratio of Jews in the general population. The law reduced the previously much higher representation of Jews at universities and led to the flight of thousands of Hungarian Jewish students to universities abroad, depriving the country of many future leading lights of Western academia. The law’s breach of the principle of equal citizenship paved the way for the openly anti-Jewish laws enacted in the late 1930s and, ultimately, the Holocaust in Hungary. The study will pay special attention to Jewish reactions to the law and its impact on women and the assimilated Jewish family.