When he saw the graph, Perry Brickman realized that his secret shame wasn’t his alone.

In 1951 Brickman enrolled in Emory University’s dental school. He thought he was doing well. But after his first year he got a letter from John Buhler, dean of the dental school, telling him he had flunked out. Goodbye!

No one believed him when he said he’d been doing well. His parents said he hadn’t studied enough. Three other students in the dental school had also flunked out. Oddly, like Brickman, they were Jewish. Their parents thought they hadn’t studied enough.

Ejected from Emory, Brickman went to dental school in Tennessee. He graduated with honors and became a successful dentist. No one knew about his earlier disgrace. He didn’t want to talk about it.

The Quad at Emory. Museum on the right.

In 2006, at Emory’s library, Brickman saw an exhibit about “Jews at Emory.” There was a section about anti-Semitism at the dental school when John Buhler was its dean. Articles, a chapter in a book – and a graph. An eloquent graph.

The graph showed the failure rate of Jewish students at the dental school – low in the 30s and 40s, and booming from 1948 to 1961, when Buhler was dean. Under Buhler, 65% of Jewish students failed or had to repeat entire years. Somehow none of the Emory faculty or administrators of the time had the heart to interfere with Buhler’s system.

Emory had a Jewish quota in those days, but apparently that still meant too many Jews for Buhler’s taste. Oh Lord, some of them were persistent – they took those “failed” years over again. In 1961 Buhler changed the dental school application so students had to say whether they were “Caucasian, Jew or Other.” Oh, subtle.

Not too subtle for the Anti-Defamation League to notice, however, and they complained to the school. Something happened. Buhler resigned. No one would say it was because of the new question or what it showed about prejudice at the dental school. Nobody wanted to talk about it. Years passed. (In 1992 the dental school closed.)

But that graph – the more Brickman thought about what it showed and what that meant – it wasn’t just him, and he had been a good student, and he wasn’t the only one with a humiliating secret – the more he did want to talk about it. He videotaped interviews with dozens of other Jewish students from the dental program in the Buhler regime. For years they’d been too ashamed to talk about it. Now they did. One quoted Buhler saying, “Why do you Jews want to go into dentistry? You don’t have it in the hands.”

Brickman took the interviews to Gary Hauk, Emory’s vice-president. “It’s shameful, a blot on the institution’s history” Hauk has said. Instead of glossing over the ancient blot, Emory, remarkably, hired filmmakers to make a documentary about it, using some of Brickman’s videos, and adding interviews with Emory staff.

The documentary premiered in an Emory ballroom October 10, 2012, at a public ceremony to which the surviving students were invited. James Wagner, the university president, officially apologized to them. “I hereby express in the deepest, strongest terms Emory’s regret for the anti-Semitic practices of the dental school during those years. We at Emory also regret that it has taken this long for those events to be properly acknowledged. I am sorry. We are sorry.” (Buhler died in 1976. He probably wouldn’t have been sorry.)

It’s an excellent apology. The school let Buhler get away with bigotry until he got so outrageous (and put it in print) they were forced to act. Then they ignored the matter for decades until it seemed forgotten.

Dentistry’s not for everyone.

But when Brickman brought them the videotaped testimony, words that showed what the graph’s figures really meant in people’s lives, they acted decisively. The documentary showed specifically what the apology was for.

The apology was an emotional vindication for the former students. One former student said he had never believed Emory would let the story come out in his lifetime. “The truth in a situation like this is never really validated until the perpetrator says sorry,” Brickman said.

I love a story that shows the power of a good apology, not to mention the power of a nice, clear graph.