In 1865, tired and traumatized by five long years of Civil War, the Presidents of America's most prestigious universities, Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Penn and Brown, collectively announce that after the conclusion of the war, they will no longer admit any student from any state that constituted the Confederacy. They're followed, tepidly but eventually, by several other northern schools. What changes after this? How long does the prohibition on southern students last? Who's life is permanently altered?
WI: Ivy League bans southern students?
- Thread starter JMT
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^ This
There was an attempt in reality to build a 'Magnolia League' to challenge the Ivy's, thought obviously it didn't really succeed. I doubt in this world they'd be on the same level, but they'd likely be notably more prestigious just given pure necessity
Yes, Ivy League prestige come from the student not from the schools, keeping regional or minorities elites out of the Ivy League, simply means those regional or minority elites establish their own universities, which then become the prestigious universities for those groups. In practice it mean that if you have a Ivy League education, you can just forget getting a job in Southern state or Southern owned company, Southern politician will object to judges or civil servants from Ivy League universities and vice versa.
Probably more distinct Southern culture, since the aforementioned Magnolia League schools were at one point major centers of Southern intellectuals. Maybe less "carpetbagger" types because having an education from the North would be less valuable in the South?
These are private colleges which can admit whoever they choose to. While today it would very likely be forbidden, pre-WW2 with the weaker federal government it might pass a Supreme Court challenge.
Philip
Donor
Skipping over the fact that they are private schools, many state schools today restrict the number of out of state students. There is no legal reason why they couldn't restrict it to no out of state students. There are also some states that enter into reciprocal agreements about each other's citizens. See the WWAMI agreement for example.
We saw that with Notre Dame, Georgetown, etc when Ivies discriminated against Catholics.
Sure it would. "Separate but Equal"-right?
This would create a double irony of southerners experiencing the inequalities of separate "equality" and northerners applying a soft discrimination against both white southerners and blacks equally.
You’d need to avoid the broader national reconciliation and “reforging of the white republic” that occurred after the 1870s in order to have this stance make sense, which is sort of its own can of worms but not impossible. A lot of commentary is focusing on how the south would react, but such a move would also entail a much stronger Yankee identity and civil war memory that started to fade away in the late 19th century OTL. An interesting thing to explore I think.
This would be an own goal.
The civil rights movement had significant quiet elite cooperation in the South partly because these elites had been educated at relatively progressive prestigious Ivy League institutions and had hobnobbed with northern elites with whom they were ashamed to appear backwards.
This POD probably butterflies or alters the New South in a way that looks worse from our perspective.
The civil rights movement had significant quiet elite cooperation in the South partly because these elites had been educated at relatively progressive prestigious Ivy League institutions and had hobnobbed with northern elites with whom they were ashamed to appear backwards.
This POD probably butterflies or alters the New South in a way that looks worse from our perspective.
Honestly I think you need a broader context for this. Why are Northern elites ITTL so keen to keep stoking Civil War animosity, when their OTL equivalents made a halfhearted attempt at reconstruction and then moved on?
Off the top of my head...lets say Abraham Lincoln appoints a radical Republican VP instead of Andrew Johnson. Thus when Lincoln gets shot, this VP becomes president and allies with radical Republicans in Congress to force through a series of draconian measures against any former supporter of the Confederacy-they are barred from voting, serving on juries, or holding political office, and anyone who gave "material aid" (defined extremely broadly) to the Confederacy has their land confiscated (or confiscated from their descendants if they're already dead). Because of this, Southern resistance towards Reconstruction is much more intense and prolonged than OTL, effectively a low-level guerilla war. Inflamatory tales of the atrocities of Southern outlaws spread throughout the Northern press, and one consequence of this is that the Ivy League universities ban any former supporters of the Confederacy (ie most of the Southern elite) and any of their children who do not publicly denounce the Confederacy and their family's support of it.
Eventually the Northern population tires of the war and in the late 1870's, the US government signs peace treaties with most of the Southern insurgents. But-in addition to the events of the OTL Civil War-the South has now gone through a decade of occupation and guerilla warfare, leaving deep scars on both the (white) Southern population and the Northern occupation troops who had to wage an at-times brutal counterinsurgency. Most elite Northern colleges still refuse to admit any Southerner who doesn't publicly denounce the Southern rebellion-and most Southerners regard anyone who would do so as a traitor. The US goes into the 20th century with the wounds of the Civil War still unhealed.
Off the top of my head...lets say Abraham Lincoln appoints a radical Republican VP instead of Andrew Johnson. Thus when Lincoln gets shot, this VP becomes president and allies with radical Republicans in Congress to force through a series of draconian measures against any former supporter of the Confederacy-they are barred from voting, serving on juries, or holding political office, and anyone who gave "material aid" (defined extremely broadly) to the Confederacy has their land confiscated (or confiscated from their descendants if they're already dead). Because of this, Southern resistance towards Reconstruction is much more intense and prolonged than OTL, effectively a low-level guerilla war. Inflamatory tales of the atrocities of Southern outlaws spread throughout the Northern press, and one consequence of this is that the Ivy League universities ban any former supporters of the Confederacy (ie most of the Southern elite) and any of their children who do not publicly denounce the Confederacy and their family's support of it.
Eventually the Northern population tires of the war and in the late 1870's, the US government signs peace treaties with most of the Southern insurgents. But-in addition to the events of the OTL Civil War-the South has now gone through a decade of occupation and guerilla warfare, leaving deep scars on both the (white) Southern population and the Northern occupation troops who had to wage an at-times brutal counterinsurgency. Most elite Northern colleges still refuse to admit any Southerner who doesn't publicly denounce the Southern rebellion-and most Southerners regard anyone who would do so as a traitor. The US goes into the 20th century with the wounds of the Civil War still unhealed.
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This could mean a non-migration to the republican party and probably a division in the democratic party between the northern wing and the southern wing that could lead to a third southern party, It would be very interesting to see what the dominant ideology would be in a southern political class segregated from northern universities.
Princeton took almost half their students from the South, they would never take such a stance. I can see the other schools doing this as a temporary reaction but it wouldn't last more than, say, ten years.
One might imagine that this would result in an American version of the Troubles. White Southerners are not going to be loyal to a country that practices such exclusion against them.
This could keep the Confederate cause alive intellectually, it could probably lead to the creation of a separatist party, Many butterflies mainly due to what type of ideology will permeate southern universities in this timeline.
This exclusion will likely lead to another situation that could inflame Southern separatism, if Northern companies begin to exclude people with degrees from Southern universities and vice versa.
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