Boas, when he was threatened with being fired because of his objections to World War I. Professor Boas was a Jewish immigrant from Germany and a socialist. Among the Barnard undergraduates, Boas headed the department that included several of the century's most outstanding anthropologists, including Margaret Mead. Barnard only had a few African-American students during Gildersleeve's tenure. Zora Neale Hurston was a pioneer in 1925, who attended Barnard with assistance from her literary mentor Fannie Hurst and Barnard College co-founder Annie Nathan Meyer. In the early 1940s, out of her own pocket, Dean Gildersleeve paid for the full scholarship of at least one African-American student from Harlem. Enrollment of Jewish students at Columbia College had reached 40 percent before World War I. Gildersleeve opposed religious exclusivity and refused to openly categorize Barnard students, but reportedly took steps to reduce the number of Jewish students. In the 1930s, roughly 20 percent of Barnard students were Jewish, compared to 6 to 10 percent at most other women's colleges. According to Gildersleeve's biographer Rosalind Rosenberg, at that time, both Columbia and Barnard began recruiting students from outside New York City. They evaluated applicants on the basis of psychological tests, interviews, and letters of recommendation, as well as academic criteria. In the two decades before World War II, this process of selective admissions reduced the percentage of Jewish students at Columbia to match the 20 percent at Barnard. Politics and foreign affairs Even though the Barnard College board of trustees believed that "marching in a parade would be a shocking and shameful thing" for women students to do, and some school administrators considered political activism "unladylike" and "too sordid for a refined woman," Gildersleeve encouraged faculty and students to engage in all the political movements of the day. During World War I, Gildersleeve contributed vigorously to wartime civil defense activities in New York City. She was an early and strong supporter of the formation of the League of Nations. On February 22, 1918, Gildersleeve called for "some ordered system of international government, backed by power enough to give authority to its decrees." When Germany invaded Poland in 1939, Gildersleeve was a strong interventionist. In 1942, early in World War II, Gildersleeve was instrumental in founding the WAVES ("Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service"). Its second in command was Gildersleeve's companion, English Professor Elizabeth Reynard. All of its members—90,000 in all—were college graduates. In 1945,