How a Teen Proved a Professor Wrong about NO IRISH NEED APPLY

Once upon a time, a friend of mine who was a Maths professor at Ohio State University, and to whom I was tutoring Irish, was after me to apply to graduate school at his university. So, against my better judgment, I tried it. And after the application process, I eventually received a letter saying they were out of space for foreign students and that someone like me from Ireland need not apply. (And here meself was born in Ohio.) Apparently my academic refs that indicated I had studied Irish in Ireland (in another lifetime, it seems, now) and that made them think I was Irish.

Naturally, I used to show the letter around with pride. NINA: No Irish Need Apply.

From 2015

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/08/01/the-teen-who-exposed-a-professor-s-myth.html

 An Excerpt:

In short, those famous “No Irish Need Apply” signs—ones that proved Irish Americans faced explicit job discrimination in the 19th and 20th centuries? Professor Jensen came to the blockbuster conclusion that they never existed.

The theory picked up traction over the last decade, but seemed to reach an unexpected fever pitch in the last few months. Explainer websites this year used it to highlight popular myths of persecution complexes that are, as Vox put it, “stand-ins for an entire narrative about how immigrants are treated in America.” That’s from the lede of an article printed in March called “‘No Irish Need Apply’: the fake sign at the heart of a real movement.”

Here, of course, is the problem: After only couple of hours Googling it, Rebecca, a 14-year-old, had found out these signs had, in fact, existed all along. Not only in newspaper listings—in which they appeared in droves—but, after further research, in shop windows, too.