American Association for Public Opinion Research

Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites

Author(s): Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai and Stanley Rothman
Source: The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Autumn, 1989), pp. 330-352
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Association for Public
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 MARGINALITY AND LIBERALISM
AMONG JEWISH ELITES

ROBERT LERNER
ALTHEA K. NAGAI AND
STANLEY ROTHMAN

Abstract Although much has been written about the Jewish

proclivity toward liberalism, little has been written about elites
who are Jewish. This article extensively compares American
elites, both Jewish and non-Jewish, on a wide variety of social,
economic, and political attitudes. Jewish elites are found to be
consistently more liberal than their non-Jewish counterparts on
four different measures of liberalism. We find small differences
between religiously liberal and religiously conservative Jews. The
differences between Jewish and non-Jewish elites persisted after
controlling for a number of background variables including cur-
rent occupation. These results are explained as a result of Jewish
socialization into a tradition of marginality which has persisted
despite changing conditions. This conclusion is supported by
showing that parental ideology can partially predict respondents'
ideological views.

High socioeconomic status remains one of the best predictors of Re-

publican party support and conservative attitudes in the United States,
although the relationship has weakened somewhat since the 1950s
(e.g., Jensen, 1981; Ladd with Hadley, 1978; Nie, Verba, and Petrocik,
1976). Republicans are wealthier, more educated, and have higher-
status jobs than Democrats and independents. Jewish liberalism has
long confounded this general relationship. Jews are generally wealth-
ier, better educated, and hold higher-status jobs than the average
American (Cohen, 1983), but they remain the most liberal white ethnic

ROBERT LERNER is Assistant Director of the Center for the Study of Social and Political
Change at Smith College. ALTHEA K. NAGAI iS Senior Research Associate at the Center
for the Study of Social and Political Change at Smith College. STANLEY ROTHMAN iS
Mary Huggins Gamble Professor of Government and Director of the Center for the Study
of Social and Political Change at Smith College. This article is part of a larger study of
Leadership and Social Change in the United States of which Stanley Rothman is the
Director. It is sponsored by the Center for the Study of Social and Political Change at
Smith College. It is not to be cited or quoted without the permission of the authors.

Public Opinion Quarterly Volume 53:330-352 ? 1989 by the American Association for Public Opinion Research
Published by The University of Chicago Press / 0033-362X/89/0053-03/$2.50

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Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 331

group in the United States (Fisher, 1979; Lipset, 1981; Cohen, 1983;
Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976).
While Jewish Americans as a whole have been extensively studied
by sociologists and political scientists (e.g., Cohen, 1983; Fisher, 1979;
Liebman, 1973), the social and political background and outlook of
American Jews in leadership positions have not been studied in detail.
It is possible that assimilation has occurred at the highest pinnacles of
success, creating an elite of American Jews as conservative as their
Gentile counterparts.
The emergence of a small cadre of Jewish neoconservative intellec-
tuals raises questions about the stability of Jewish liberalism. It is at
least possible that they may have weakened the heretofore solid Jewish
intellectual consensus in favor of liberalism (e.g., Kristol, 1983; Stein-
fels, 1979). The visibility of this group lends weight to the view that
Jews, especially Jews who are elite members of various American
institutions, are not as hostile to conservatism as they once were and
thus do not support liberalism as whole-heartedly as they once did.
The first part of this paper compares the political ideology of Jewish
elites with their Gentile counterparts. We find that elite Jews are more
liberal than non-Jewish elites, and that this difference persists despite
the introduction of numerous control variables.
The second part of this paper tackles a more difficult task: an explo-
ration of the reasons for continued Jewish liberalism at the elite level.
Competing explanations abound (e.g., Liebman, 1973; Cohen, 1983).
Religious heritage is often given as one explanation for Jewish liberal-
ism (e.g., Fuchs, 1956). Another commonly proposed explanation is
ethnic discrimintion (e.g., Lipset, 1981).
Based on our analysis we have formulated still another explanation.
We propose that the contemporary ideology of Jewish elites is a prod-
uct of political socialization. Jewish liberalism is part of a family tradi-
tion of liberalism that developed in response to European conditions.
The tradition persists despite the changes that have taken place in
American society in recent years.

Data and Definitions

THE CONCEPT OF ELITE AND DEFINITION OF THE SAMPLE

Political scientists and sociologists since the 1950s have debated,

sometimes with great acrimony, the nature of the American power
structure. Is America ruled by the few or the many, are they in conflict
or consensus, and how significant are differences in attitudes, values,
and worldviews in an analysis of American elites?

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332 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

Since C. Wright Mills (1956), two "schools" of social theory-the

power elite theorists and the pluralists-have argued about the struc-
ture of American power. Theorists of the "power elite" school follow
upon the work of Mills and continue to contend that power is funda-
mentally divided between two groups, the elite and the masses. The
elite are homogeneous, cohesive, and autonomous, and represent the
most exclusive segments of society. They seek to maximize their own
power as opposed to mass interests. "The power elite," says Domhoff
(1967:144), "is rooted in the upper class and serves the interests of the
members of the upper class."
In contrast to the assumption of the power elite theorists, the
"pluralists" start from the premise of multiple and varying groups of
elites, for they believe that power in modern society reflects the struc-
tural complexities of modern bureaucratic society (Dahl, 1961; Keller,
1963; Polsby, 1963; Rose, 1967; Dye, 1986). The complexity of the
modern state and society has resulted in different groups with different
interests (i.e., interest groups), frequently pitted against each other
(e.g., labor versus business). For the pluralists, power is diffuse, spe-
cialized, and differentiated. Unlike the power elite model, elites in a
pluralist paradigm are multiple, fragmented, and often in conflict.
We rely largely on an institutional approach in order to designate
elites in America. Following Suzanne Keller (1963), Thomas Dye
(1986), and others, we define elites as occupants of leadership roles in
institutions responsible for the allocation and distribution of resources,
and those who create and distribute influential perceptions of reality.
The growing diversity and complexity of American society produces
growing diversity, complexity, specialization, and differentiation
among strategic elites.
The data used in this study were collected as part of a larger study of
American elites directed by Rothman (Rothman and Lichter, 1987;
Lichter, Rothman, and Lichter, 1986; Rothman and Lichter, 1984; and
Rothman, Lichter, and Lichter, forthcoming). The data analyzed in
this article consist of responses to an extensive questionnaire adminis-
tered by trained interviewers to random samples of elites. Our sample
consists of 1,340 persons drawn from the following leadership groups:
high-ranking military officers, corporate business leaders, corporate
law partners in major law firms, upper-level federal civil servants,
journalists working for leading news media, prime-time television pro-
ducers, directors, and writers, major motion picture producers, writ-
ers, and directors, and leaders of public interest groups.'

1. The interviewing of the business and media samples took place in 1979, while inter-
viewing for the other samples took place in 1982 and 1983. The companies responsible for
the interviewing were Response Analysis Corporation of Princeton, NJ; Metro Research,
Washington, DC; Depth Research, New York City; and Carol Davis Research, Los

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 333

The samples were selected as follows:

The military elite. The military are a random sample of field-grade
officers from (a) the Pentagon phone book and (b) the class roster of the
National Defense University. The Pentagon staff sample consists of
general- and flag-grade officers, while the NDU sample consists of
noncivilian students mostly at the rank of colonel or commander and
above. The final sample size is 152. The response rate is 77%.
The business elite. The business sample consists of 242 upper- and
middle-management personnel drawn from four Fortune 500 com-
panies and one firm selected from Fortune lists of the 50 leading Ameri-
can retail outlets, banks, and public utilities. In each case, we devel-
oped a randomly based sample of top- and middle-management
personnel from official company lists. The names of the corporations
cannot be publicly disclosed since a requirement for cooperation in
each case was a promise of anonymity. The response rate was 96%.
The federal civil service. The top-level federal bureaucrats constitute
a random sample from the Office of Personnel Management's List of
Senior Executive Personnel. Political appointees are excluded. Half
the sample is drawn from "activist" agencies such as EPA, and half
from "traditional" agencies such as Commerce or Agriculture. The
final sample size is 200, with a response rate of 85%.
The corporate lawyers. The lawyers are a random sample of partners
in New York and Washington law firms defined as "large" (more than
50 partners) in the Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. The final sam-
ple size is 150, and the response rate is 66%.
The media elite. The media sample consists of a random sample of
journalists and editors from the New York Times, the Washington
Post, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, U.S. News and World
Report, and the news organizations at NBC, ABC, CBS, and PBS. The
sampling frame is derived from internal phone directories and, in the
case of news magazines, the names of individuals listed on mastheads.
Staff members with responsibility for news coverage were chosen in
consultation with knowledgeable people. A computer-generated ran-
dom sample was chosen from this pool of names. The final sample size
is 238. The response rate is 74%.
The makers of prime-time television. The television sample is drawn
from an initial list of 350 names of the most influential television writ-

Angeles. All interviewers were employees of the firms conducting the research. They
received special training for this study, attended an orientation seminar, and conducted
preliminary practice inteviews. Response Analysis supervised the pretesting of the origi-
nal questionnaire.
The questionnaires and a copy of the data tape for the media and business samples
have been desposited with the Roper Center. We plan to send the other questionnaires
and data there as well at some time in the future.

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334 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

ers, producers, and executives. This is a reputational sampling frame

derived from industry sources. In order to be included in the frame,
persons had to be associated with the development of two or more
successful prime-time television series. From this list, a random sam-
ple of 172 names was drawn. The final sample size is 104. The response
rate is 60%.
The movie elite. The motion picture sample consists of a list of 149
writers, producers, and directors responsible for the fifty top-grossing
films made between 1965 and 1982, according to listings in Variety
magazine. The final sample size is 96, with a response rate of 64%.
The public interest elite. The public interest sample is drawn from
lists of presidents and members of boards of directors of formal lobby-
ing organizations, and attorneys in public interest law firms. For the
lists of presidents and members of boards of directors of formal lobby-
ing organizations, sources included Public Interest Profiles, Washing-
ton Five, and the Encyclopedia of Associations. For attorneys in
public interest law firms, we drew upon the Ford Foundation's Public
Interest Law: Five Years Later and the Council for Public Interest Law
compendium Balancing the Scales of Justice. Knowledgeable indi-
viduals were also consulted. The sample is restricted to individuals
affiliated with groups based in the Washington, DC, and New York
metropolitan areas. We randomly sampled equal numbers from each
sector. The final sample size is 158. The response rate is 84%.

CLASSIFYING JEWISH AND NON-JEWISH ELITES

How does one define a Jew? Does one include only the religiously
observant? What about converts to another religion? In order to better
unravel the complexities of Jewish political beliefs, we opted for a
broad definition of who is Jewish. We classified individuals as "Jew-
ish" if they gave their current religious affiliation as Jewish, if they
were raised in the Jewish religion, or if they identified themselves as
"Jewish" when asked about their ethnic descent.
This procedure has two advantages. First, it enabled us to obtain a
sufficient number of cases for detailed analysis. Twenty-eight percent
of our total sample of American elites, 375 out of 1,340, are Jewish.
Second, it allows us to examine in some detail differences in liberalism
between the various Jewish subgroups.
We subdivided our Jewish sample into subgroups based on their
current religious affiliation. The subgroups are orthodox, conservative,
reform, "just Jewish," none, and other. The first three categories are
self-explanatory. The "just Jewish" group consists of those respon-
dents who, when asked to give their current religion, reply "Jewish"

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 335

or "just Jewish" without any specific denominational label. The

''none' group consists of those respondents who were either raised
Jewish or list "Jewish" as their ethnic identity, but who also list their
current religion as "none." The group labeled "other" consists of
those respondents who were raised Jewish but who have converted to
another religion.2

Liberalism Among Elite Jewish Americans

Elite Jews are considerably more liberal than elite non-Jews as re-
flected in their voting behavior, self-labeled ideological position, and
their responses to a wide variety of social, economic, and political
attitude questions.

VOTING BEHAVIOR

Jewish elites are far more likely to vote for Democratic presidential
candidates and far less likely to vote for Republican presidential candi-
dates than non-Jewish elites (see Table 1). Elite Jews have consistently
supported the Democratic candidate by margins of more than four to
one. Support for the Republican candidate among Jewish elites has not
increased since 1972.
Elite Jews are even stronger supporters of the Democrats than the
Jewish public. Moreover, the gap between Jewish elites and the Jewish
public has grown. The Jewish public until 1980 had been Democratic
supporters, but in increasingly smaller percentages than Jewish elites.
The gap was largest in 1980, when Carter won a majority of the elite
Jewish vote, while Reagan won the plurality of the Jewish mass vote.3
In contrast to elite Jews, non-Jewish elites preferred the Democrats
in 1968 and in 1976 by only a slight majority. They supported the

2. The numerical breakdown is as follows.

Religious Group N Percent

Orthodox 10 2.7%
Conservative 57 15.2%
Reform 91 24.3%
Just Jewish 88 23.5%
None 116 30.9%
Other 13 3.5%

Total 375 100.1%

Because of rounding, the percentages sum to slightly more than 100%.

3. In 1984, a majority of Jewish voters supported Mondale (Schneider, 1984/1985). Un-
fortunately, we do not have comparable elite data.

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 336 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

Table 1. Voting Behavior, 1968-1980

Jewish Jewish Non-Jewish American

Public Elite Elite Public

1968
Humphrey 83% 89% 50% 43%
Nixon 8 48 43
1972
McGovern 65% 85% 45% 38%
Nixon 15 54 61
1976
Carter 74% 83% 52% 50%
Ford 15 47 48
1980
Carter 38% 64% 38% 41%
Reagan 39 14 51 51
Anderson 19 22 10 7

SOURCES: Data for Jewish public 1968-1976 from Fisher, 1979 (only Democratic
vote available). Data for Jewish public 1980 from Cohen, 1983. Data for American
public from the U.S. Statistical Abstract, 1981. N = 1,333 for elites surveyed for
1968-1976 elections; N = 853 for elites surveyed for 1980 election.

Republicans in 1972 and again in 1980. Additionally, the gap between

Gentile elites and the Gentile public is much smaller than that between
elite Jews and the Jewish public in 1972 and in 1980.
Somewhat surprisingly, Jewish elites of all religious denominations
generally prefer Democrats to Republicans in roughly similar propor-
tions (see Table 2). The only group that consistently deviates from this
pattern are those members of elite groups who were raised Jewish but
who have converted to another religion. While the small number of
these persons makes generalization hazardous, they are more likely to
support Republican candiates than are other Jewish elites, but they are
still not as supportive as non-Jewish elites.
Democratic support, however, has declined among some Jewish
subgroups. The orthodox, conservatives, and "nones" supported
McGovern in smaller proportions than they did Humphrey-support
which, incidentally, translated into Republican votes. The same was
not true in 1980. While all Jewish subgroups except the "others" sup-
ported Carter in smaller proportions in 1980 than in 1976, this resulted
in a substantial increase in Republican support only among Orthodox
Jews.

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 337

Table 2. Elite Jewish Vote by Jewish Religious Affiliation,

1968-1980

Jewish Religious Affiliation

Nondenomi-
Orthodox Conservative Reform national None Other

1968 (N = 295)
Humphrey 90% 93% 93% 89% 94% 73%
Nixon 10 7 7 11 6 27
1972 (N = 319)
McGovern 70% 79% 92% 85% 87% 67%
Nixon 30 21 8 15 13 33
1976 (N = 338)
Carter 90% 76% 89% 84% 89% 40%
Ford 10 24 11 16 11 60
1980 (N = 255)
Carter 60% 47% 73% 71% 66% 50%
Reagan 20 20 14 9 10 25
Anderson 20 32 14 20 24 25

SELF-IDENTIFIED IDEOLOGY

We asked our sample of American elites to place themselves on a

seven-point scale of political ideology, ranging from extremely conser-
vative ("a score of one") to extremely liberal ("a score of seven")
(see Table 3).
While one-third of the Jewish public calls itself liberal, almost three
out of four elite Jews identify themselves as such. A similar gap occurs
between elite Jews and elite non-Jews. Only 37% of the non-Jewish
elite call themselves liberal.
Consistent with the voting data, we found little relationship between
Jewish religious affiliation and self-identified liberalism (see Table 4).
Members of the Jewish elite call themselves liberal, regardless of
whether they are orthodox, conservative, reform, "just Jewish," or
atheists.
Converts to other religions are again the only exception. Those Jew-
ish elites who converted to other religions resemble non-Jewish elites
more closely than they resemble other Jewish elites. Compared to
other subgroups of Jewish elites, a larger proportion identify them-
selves as conservatives, and a smaller percentage see themselves as
liberals.

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338 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

Table 3. Self-Labeled Ideology, Jewish Versus Non-Jewish

Self-Identified Jewish Jewish Non-Jewish American

Ideology Publica Eliteb Eliteb Publica

Liberal 33% 74% 37% 21%

Moderate 48 14 21 36
Conservative 19 12 42 43

N 375 958

a Data from Cohen, 1983:145. Liberal = liberal + radical; moderate = moderate;

conservative = conservative + very conservative.
b On our 7-point scale, conservative = 1-3; moderate = 4; liberal = 5-7.

Table 4. Self-Labeled Ideology and Jewish Religious Affiliation

Jewish Religious Affiliation

Self-Identified Nondenomi-
Ideology Orthodox Conserative Reform national None Other

Liberal 70% 77% 75% 70% 76% 46%

Moderate 20 14 15 15 15 15
Conservative 10 9 10 15 9 38

N 10 57 91 88 116 13

NOTE: On our 7-point scale, conservative = 1-3; moderate = 4; liberal = 5-7.

POLITICAL ATTITUDES

Jewish elites also offered more liberal responses than non-Jewish elites
to the overwhelming majority of attitude questions we asked (see
Table 5).
Economic issues. Jewish elites are generally less favorable toward
laissez-faire capitalism. A minority of Jewish elites but a majority of
the non-Jewish elites think that less regulation of business is a good
thing. Fewer members of the Jewish elite believe that private enter-
prise is fair to workers, and fewer also believe that government should
not guarantee jobs. Likewise, more than two-thirds of the Jewish elite
but less than half of the non-Jewish elite agree that the government
should reduce the income gap between rich and poor.
Perhaps most indicative of their economic liberalism is the fact that
21% of Jewish elites believe that big corporations should be publicly

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 339

owned-2.5 times that of the non-Jews. Even more strikingly, 31% of

elite Jews think that the United States should move toward socialism,
more than twice the proportion of non-Jewish elites.
Despite these differences in attitudes toward the economy, both
groups agree on rewarding ability. Eighty-seven percent of elite Jews
and 88% of elite non-Jews believe that the more able should earn more.
Alienation from the American system. Elite Jews are also more
alienated than their Gentile counterparts. A larger proportion of elite
Jews compared to elite non-Jews believe that the American legal sys-
tem favors the wealthy; a larger proportion also believe that U.S.
institutions need overhauling; and a majority of Jewish elites compared
to roughly one in three non-Jewish elites think that the American social
structure causes alienation.
Social issues. Jewish leaders are also considerably more liberal than
their non-Jewish counterparts on social issues. More elite Jews than
elite non-Jews believe that a woman has a right to choose whether to
have an abortion, although a large majority of both groups support this
idea. A much larger proportion of the Jewish elite also supports a
homosexual's right to teach in public school. Similarly, only one in five
elite Jews condemn homosexuality as wrong, compared to 49% of the
non-Jewish elite. Less than a majority of Jewish elites also frown upon
adultery, but two in three members of non-Jewish elite groups believe
adultery is wrong.
The pattern is the same for other issues. There is a large gap between
attitudes of elite Jews and non-Jews toward concern in our courts for
criminals, while a larger percentage of Jewish elites believe that special
preference should be given in hiring blacks.
Foreign policy issues. Jewish elites are also more liberal than non-
Jewish elites on foreign policy questions. A larger percentage of elite
Jews agree that the goal of American foreign policy is to protect big
business. Less than half of the Jewish elites support the necessity of
the CIA sometimes overthrowing foreign governments, compared to a
majority of non-Jewish elites.
Responses to the Israel question, however, deviate from the general
pattern. Most elite Jews and non-Jews believe in American support of
Israel, but in this case a larger proportion of elite Jews compared to
non-Jews believe that the United States has a moral obligation to de-
fend the Jewish state.

DIMENSIONS OF LIBERALISM

How do these responses to individual attitude questions hang together?

We created composite indicators of liberalism using factor analytic
techniques (see Table 6). Three stable dimensions of liberalism

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Table S. Political Attitudes of Elites (Percentage Agreeing)

Jewish Non-Jewish

Economic Issues

Less regulation of business is good for the coun-

try 44 73
The American private enterprise system is gener-
ally fair to working people 63 79
It is not the proper role of government to insure
that everyone has a job 46 54
The government should work to substantially re-
duce the income gap between the rich and the
poor 67 50
Big corporations should be taken out of private
ownership and run in the public interest 21 8
The U.S. would be better off if it moved toward
socialisma 31 14
Under a fair economic system, people with more
ability should earn higher salaries 87 88

Alienation

The American legal system mainly favors the

wealthy 85 72
The United States needs a complete restructuring
of its basic institutions 36 27
The structure of our society causes most people
to feel alienated 52 34

Social Issues

It is a woman's right to decide whether or not to

have an abortion 96 83
Lesbians and homosexuals should not be allowed
to teach in public schools 12 36
It is wrong for adults of the same sex to have
sexual relations 20 49
Our environmental problems are not as serious
as people have been led to believe 14 32
It is wrong for a married person to have sexual
relations with someone other than his or her
spouse 48 67

340

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Table S. (Continued)

Jewish Non-Jewish

There is too much concern in court for the rights

of criminalsa 15 64
Special preference in hiring should be given to
blacksa 58 44

Foreign Policy Issues

The main goal of foreign policy has been to pro-

tect U.S. business interests 61 40
It is sometimes necessary for the CIA to protect
U.S. interests by undermining hostile govern-
ments 45 63
The United States has a moral obligation to pre-
vent the destruction of Israel 88 60

NOTE: Ns range from 1,312 to 1,330.

a Asked only of bureaucrats, the military, public interest leaders, and corporate
lawyers.

Table 6. Mean Factor Scores of Elites

Expressive System Collectivist

Individualism Alienation Liberalism

Non-Jewish (N = 898) 97.96 99.05 99.00

Jewish (N = 348) 105.26 102.45 102.58
Orthodox 100.21 98.36 101.60
Conservative 103.08 99.42 103.82
Reform 103.95 104.39 104.60
Nondenominational 105.34 102.74 100.61
None 106.72 102.90 102.76
Other 100.66 106.50 93.50'

NOTES: Expressive individualism = woman has right to abortion, gays should not
teach, environmental problems not serious, adultery is wrong, homosexual relations
wrong. System alienation = legal system favors wealthy, private enterprise fair to
worker, U.S. institutions need overhaul, big corporations should be publicly owned,
social structure causes alienation, goal of foreign policy is to protect business. Collec-
tivist liberalism = less regulation of business is good, government should not guaran-
tee jobs, U.S. private enterprise fair to workers, more able should earn more, govern-
ment should reduce income gap, big corporations should be publicly owned, CIA
overthrows sometimes necessary.

341

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 342 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

emerge.4 Questions relating to such issues as abortion, gays teaching in

school, the seriousness of environmental problems, adultery, and
homosexual relations are highly correlated and form one dimension of
liberalism, which, following Bellah, we call "expressive individual-
ism" (Bellah et al., 1985).5
We call the second dimension of liberalism "system alienation."
Questions concerning such issues as whether the legal system favors
the wealthy, the fairness of private enterprise, the need to overhaul
American institutions, the public ownership of corporations, social
structure causing alienation, and the relationship between foreign pol-
icy and business make up this dimension of liberalism.
The third dimension of liberalism is "collectivist liberalism" follow-
ing Shils (1980). Questions loading onto this dimension include: regula-
tion of business, government guaranteeing jobs, the fairness of private
enterprise, the relationship between ability and earnings, government's
role in reducing the income gap, the public ownership of big corpora-
tions, and the necessity of the CIA overthrowing foreign governments.6
When comparing their factor scores, we find a significant ideological
gap between Jewish elites and non-Jewish elites on these three dimen-
sions of liberalism, consistent with our voting, self-identification, and
attitudinal data. The ideological distance is greatest on questions of
expressive individualism. The mean factor score for Jewish elites on
expressive individualism is 105.26, while the mean factor score for
non-Jewish elites on this dimension is 97.96. Jewish mean factor
scores average about three points higher than non-Jewish factor scores
on the alienation and collectivist liberalism dimensions.
When examining factor scores for each Jewish subgroup, we find
that the more observant are the more conservative on issues of expres-
sive individualism. The mean factor scores of orthodox Jewish elites
(100.21) are more than six points lower than the mean factor score of
atheistic elite Jews.
On the dimension of alienation, the trend is less clear. Here again
reform Jews are more liberal than are the conservatives and orthodox,

4. The factor analyses reported here are preliminary in nature. They do not use all the
questions reported in the text. In particular, the questions on socialism, affirmative
action, and crime were not included because they were not asked of all groups in our
sample.
5. Bellah et al. (1985) first coined the phrase "expressive individualism" in reference to
one strand of American culture, best represented by poems of Walt Whitman, focusing
on the self and the primacy of self-expression in all aspects of life.
6. The question concerning the necessity of CIA overthrows clearly doesn't fit the label
we have given this factor. Fortunately, the factor score coefficient for this question that
we used to compute the scale of collectivist liberalism is sufficiently small so as to make
it unlikely to affect our overall results.

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Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 343

Table 7. Social Background of Jewish Elites (Percentages)

Jewish Non-Jewish

Male 90 89
College graduate 90 92
Personal income 100,000+ 43 20
Parents' income above average 47 37
Father college graduate 38 38
Occupation
Bureaucrats 11 16
Business 5 23
Law 16 9
News media 17 18
Military 0 16
Movies 14 4
Public interest 20 9
Television 16 5

NOTE: Ns range from 1,293 to 1,340.

who are again the most conservative. Yet nondenominational and

atheist Jews have lower average scores than reform Jews and, most
puzzling of all, the converts have the highest score of all the Jewish
subgroups on this dimension.
A similar pattern can be found on the dimension of collectivist
liberalism, except that the orthodox actually score above the non-
denomination subgroup, and the converts have the lowest score of the
Jewish subgroups on this dimension.
To summarize: Only on the dimension of expressive individualism
does decreasing religiosity of the subgroups correlate with increasing
liberalism; on alienation the orthodox and the conservatives are more
conservative than the rest, but the overall trend is less clear; on the
collectivist liberalism dimension there is no trend. The converts are
especially puzzling. They are the most conservative of the subgroups
on the dimensions of expressive individualism and collectivist liberal-
ism, yet on system alienation they are the most liberal.

Why Liberalism Among Jewish Elites?

Is the greater liberalism among elite Jews due to other factors besides
being Jewish? Table 7 presents data on the socioeconomic back-

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 344 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

grounds of Jewish elites. Elite Jews do not substantially differ from

elite non-Jews. Some of the background characteristics such as per-
sonal income and original family income should predispose Jewish
elites to be more conservative.
As one would expect, almost all Jewish and non-Jewish elites are
male. An equally large majority in both groups graduated from college,
but elite Jews are currently more prosperous than their non-Jewish
counterparts.
Roughly the same percentage in each group had fathers who were
college graduates, but a larger proportion of Jewish elites grew up in
families with above-average incomes. None of these characteristics
accounts for the findings that Jewish elites are more liberal than non-
Jewish elites.
An obvious source of difference between Jewish and non-Jewish
elites is their distribution across occupations; Jewish elites are not
evenly divided among all the occupational groups. The military elite
and the business elite, two of the most conservative groups, contain a
very small proportion of Jews, while the movies, television, and the
public interest elite, three of the most liberal groups, have a large
proportion of Jews.
This suggests that the differential occupational distribution of Jewish
elites might account for their relative liberalism. However, it is possi-
ble that the development of political views closely attached to ethnic
identity plays a role in career choice, in which case controlling for
occupation is unnecessary. This is certainly the case with those choos-
ing to join the public interest groups, although the literature supports
the hypothesis for a much wider choice of fields (Ladd and Lipset,
1976; Mazur, 1986). We deal with the more difficult case for our hy-
pothesis.
The hypothesis is tested using the four different measures of liberal-
ism previously discussed: expressive individualism, alienation, col-
lectivist liberalism, and self-identified liberalism. Separate multiple
classification analyses were performed using all measures.7

7. Prior to doing the multiple classification analyses, we ran two-way analyses of vari-
ance on each measure in order to test for the possibility of interaction effects between
occupational membership and Jewishness. We found no statistically significant interac-
tion effects for expressive individualism and system alienation. However, we did find
statistically significant interaction effects for self-identified liberalism and for collectivist
liberalism at the p < .05 level of significance. We then examined specific differences
between pairs of means (e.g., Jewish and non-Jewish bureaucrats) for each dimension.
We found that on the expressive individualism dimension, Jewish military leaders (there
are only two such persons in our sample) are slightly more conservative than non-Jewish
military leaders. On the system alienation dimension we found that Jewish bureaucrats
are slightly more conservative than non-Jewish bureaucrats. On the collectivist liberal-
ism dimension we found that Jewish businessmen and Jewish journalists are slightly

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 345

Table 8. Liberalism by Jewishness, Controlling for Occupation

(Multiple Classification Analysis)

Unadjusted Adjusted

Non- Non- Grand

Jewish Jewish Jewish Jewish Mean R2

Expressive
individualism 105.26 97.96* 102.52 99.02* 100 .26#
System
alienation 102.45 99.05** 100.88 99.66** 100 .19#
Collectivist
liberalism 102.58 99.00** 100.92 99.64** 100 .23#
Self-identified
liberalism 5.25 3.93* 4.77 4.12* 4.30 .41#

* Jewish/non-Jewish difference significant at less than .0001 level.

** Jewish/non-Jewish difference significant at less than .05 level.
# Significant at less than .0001 level.

The results are presented in Table 8. Controlling for occupational

membership reduces the average difference between Jews and non-
Jews on all four measures. However, Jewish elites remain consistently
more liberal than non-Jewish elites. The relationships are statistically
significant at the p < .0001 level of significance for expressive individ-
ualism and self-identified liberalism, while the relationships are statisti-
cally significant at the p < .05 level of significance for system alienation
and collectivist liberalism.
As an additional check on the nonspuriousness of the Jewish effect,
we ran regressions on our four measures of liberalism, including not
only the Jewish and the occupation variables but also the sex of the
respondent (female = 0, male = 1), age, the socioeconomic status of
the father's job (using the Duncan scoring system), and region of origin
(South = 1, other = 0).
In each regression, Jewish elites are more liberal than their non-
Jewish counterparts, controlling for occupational membership, age,
sex, father's socioeconomic status, and region of origin (see Table 9).
The relationships are statistically significant at the p < .0001 level of

more conservative than their non-Jewish counterparts. There were no unusual differ-
ences on the self-identified liberalism dimension except that Jewish bureaucrats are
considerably more liberal than non-Jewish bureaucrats. All of the differences appear to
be idiosyncratic, possibly due to sampling error.

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346 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

Table 9. Liberalism by Jewishness, Controlling for Occupation and

Other Background Variables (Unstandardized Regression
Coefficients)

Independent Expressive System Self-Identified Collectivist

Variable Individualism Alienation Liberalism Liberalism

Jewish 2.75** 1.63* .65** 1.69*

South -0.07 -0.46 -.08 .11
Age -0.45 -0.11* .00 - .46
Sex - 4.04** -3.51* - .36* - 3.45*
Father's SES .30* - 0.02* .00 -0.16
Occupation
Media -0.76 - 1.73* -.11 1.69
Lawyers - 1.37* -5.23* -.24* .35
Movies 0.11 1.29 .12 -0.16
Bureaucrats - 2.90** 2.89** - .13 1.16
Military - 6.50** - 3.87** -.76** -1.66
Public interest -0.96 .85 .62** 11.75**
Business - 3.58** - 2.89** - .69** - 3.32*

Constant 91.81** 98.92** 3.65** 104.72*

R 2 .27** .23** .42** .50**

NOTE: N = 1,150.
*p < .05. **p < .0001.

significance for expressive individualism and self-identified liberalism,

while the relationships are statistically significant at the p < .05 level of
significance for alienation and collectivist liberalism.

Why the Persistence of Elite Jewish Liberalism?

Several explanations for the persistence of Jewish liberalism have been

proposed and criticized (e.g., Cohen, 1983; Glazer 1972; Liebman,
1973; and Fisher, 1979). One popular explanation, for example, is reli-
gious heritage. Adherents of this theory such as Fuchs (1956) contend
that Jewish liberalism stems from a traditional religion based on univer-
salism, cosmopolitanism, and concern for social justice. According to
this theory, liberalism is a function of religion, and therefore the more
religious should be more liberal. This is clearly not the case. Liebman
(1973), Rothman and Lichter (1982), and Cohen (1983) show that more

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Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 347

religious Jews are somewhat less, not more, liberal. Our data showing
that the orthodox and the conservative are somewhat more politically
conservative than the others also supports this position.
Lipset (1981:308) advances another common explanation for Jewish
liberalism: "their sensitivity to ethnic discrimination and their lack of
effective intercourse with the upper status groups in America."
This is sometimes described to be the strain resulting from status
inconsistency. According to this theory, Jews are subjected by the
larger society to contradictory expectations: the prejudice applied to
minority group members and the prestige of high socioeconomic
status. They support liberalism and its accompanying social changes to
bring these two attributes into greater harmony by eliminating the prej-
udice.
The major stumbling block for this theory is that subsequent re-
search has shown that "indicators of anti-Semitism have diminished
steadily since the forties and are at an all-time low today" (Lipset,
1987:57). If levels of prejudice and discrimination decline, Jewish elites
should not remain disproportionately liberal; their opinions should be
distributed in a manner similar to that of non-Jewish elites. Our data
show that Jewish elites continue to be a distinctively liberal group.
Clearly prejudice alone cannot be the explanation for the persistence of
Jewish liberalism.
We propose a third explanation, that of political socialization. It is
generally accepted that party identification and political values are to
some extent passed down from generation to generation among the
general public, even though the relationship is much weaker now than
in the past (e.g., Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, 1976; Jennings and Niemi,
1981).
The same passing-down of party loyalty and political values should
be true of elites and thus of Jewish elites. This is a less obvious hy-
pothesis than it might appear. The conventional wisdom among those
who study elites is the opposite. After extensive review of the litera-
ture, Putnam (1976:93) concluded that "such characteristics as region
of birth, size of hometown, ethnicity, and parent's occupation or edu-
cation have little consistent relationship to current political opinions or
behavior. "
Despite his generalization, we speculate that Jewish elites have in-
herited a tradition of responding in particular ways to felt marginality.
This response has remained strong, even though the conditions that
initially gave rise to it have changed. Rothman and Lichter (1982) argue
that the Jewish reaction to centuries of marginality in Christian society
was the creation of a defensive subsystem-cultural, social, and famil-
ial-that reduced the sense of marginality. Emancipation and the end-

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348 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

ing of the ghetto, however, removed the protective cocoon and sub-
jected Jews to what Cudhiddy (1974) called "the ordeal of civility"-
coping alone with the coldness and hostility of nineteenth-century
society.
Cudhiddy (1974) and Rothman and Lichter (1982) argue that the
large majority of Jews rejected religious "orthodoxy," yet required
some form of self-justification as a replacement. Ideological synthesis
fulfilled that function. Redefining "the Jewish problem" as a specific
instance of a universal problem with a corresponding universal solution
reduced a sense of Jewish distinctiveness and inferiority.
Liberalism and radicalism (especially socialism) are primary in-
stances of this kind of universalistic value system. Once the initial
response was fixed, the strength of ideological conviction persisted-
even after the initial condition that helped bring it about vanished and
despite shifts in the content of liberalism
If ideological views are partially due to the persistence of a cultural
tradition, then the most obvious means by which the tradition is passed
down from generation to generation is through the family. Thus knowl-
edge of parents' political beliefs should be a good predictor of our
respondents' political beliefs.
The tradition of a Jewish response to marginality means that we
should find a distinctive political tradition that Jewish parents pass
down to their offspring. The political tradition handed down by Jewish
parents of our elites is more likely to be a tradition of political liberal-
ism. In contrast, many of the parents of non-Jewish elites would be
expected to hand down a moderate or conservative political tradition.
Our data provide some evidence for this. Forty-five percent of the
Jewish elite remember their fathers as liberal, 26% remember them as
political moderates, and 19% describe their fathers as conservatives.
Only 23% of the non-Jewish elite remember their fathers as liberal, and
20% remember them as moderates. The majority of non-Jewish elites
remember their fathers as politically conservative.
The same is true of mothers' political ideology. Fifty-six percent of
the Jewish elite describe their mothers as liberal, and 27% describe
them as moderates, but only 17% remember them as conservatives. In
contrast, 25% of the non-Jewish elite recall their mothers as liberal,
29% as moderates, and 46% as conservatives.
There are statistically significant positive correlations between pa-
rental political ideology and our respondents' political beliefs (p <
.001). This applies to both Jews and non-Jews for our four measures of
liberalism (expressive individualism, alienation, collectivist liberalism,
and self-identified liberalism; see Table 10).
The relationship between parental and respondents' beliefs is further
affected by the frequency with which respondents and parents talked

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 Marginality and Liberalism Among Jewish Elites 349

Table 10. Liberalism by Parental Views (Pearson Correlation)

Independent Expressive System Self-Identified Collectivist

Variable Individualism Alienation Liberalism Liberalism

Father's
liberalism .148* .122* .379* .218*
Mother's
liberalism .160* .132* .368* .225*

N 1,199 1,199 1,233 1,199

*p < .001.

about politics (see Table 11).8 We tested the relationship using our four
measures of liberalism as dependent variables and the following as
independent variables: parental political ideology (the sum of mothers'
and fathers' liberalism score), the frequency with which respondents
remember talking about politics when growing up (never, seldom, fre-
quently, and often), and the product (statistical interaction term) of
parental ideology and frequency of political discussion. A test of our
hypothesis is a test of the statistical significance of this interaction. The
interaction term is statistically significant for alienation, collectivist
liberalism, and self-identified liberalism at the p < .05 level.
However, the interaction term is nonsignificant for the case of ex-
pressive individualism and parents' ideology. We speculate that this
may be because the issues that make up this factor were not political
issues at the time our respondents were growing up and hence were
simply not discussed within their families.

Conclusion

Despite their rise to the pinnacles of power in the United States, Jewish
strategic elites have not become totally assimilated. Elite American
Jews are more liberal than other American elites as measured by their
voting records, self-labeled ideology, and political attitudes. This holds
true even for the most traditional and ritualistically observant Jews.
Our data furthermore support the notion that the liberalism of elite
Jews is rooted in patterns of early family socialization. It appears that
response to a sense of marginality, like other political traditions, can

8. Thirty-eight percent of Jewish elites and 37% of non-Jewish elites recall talking about
politics frequently with their parents.

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350 Robert Lerner, Althea K. Nagai, and Stanley Rothman

Table I 1. Liberalism by Parental Ideology, Discussion of Politics

with Parents, and the Interaction of Parental Ideology and
Discussion of Politics with Parents (Unstandardized Regression
Coefficients)

Independent Expressive System Self-Identified Collectivist

Variable Individualism Alienation Liberalism Liberalism

Parental ideology .67 -.55 .07 .02

Discussed politics
with parents -.02 - 2.72** -.28** -1.57
Interaction -.07 .32** .05** .25**

NOTE: N = 1,152.
** p < .05

persist over long periods of time. Parental ideology is highly correlated

with respondents' political beliefs for elite Jews and non-Jews alike.
The more the family talked about politics, the stronger the relationship
became, with the exception of expressive individualism.
There has been frequent talk and perhaps some wishful thinking
regarding the prospect of a shift in the ideology of American Jews.
Among elite Jews, our data show that support for the liberal agenda
remains strong, stable, and cohesive as of the early 1980s. Our findings
on political socialization raise the question of whether a realignment
can occur before this cohort of Ameican Jews loses its prominence and
is replaced by a cohort with different patterns of socialization.9

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