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In 1905, the managing editor of the Jewish Encyclopedia, Isidore Singer (1859–1939), published an article in the journal Ost und West from a "bird’s eye perspective on the development of American Jewry in the last 250 years." In this historical overview, Singer eventually attested that Jewish scholarship in America had an "absolute dependency on the European motherland." This judgment was based on his disapproving view of the two American rabbinical seminaries that existed at that time. According to Singer, there were still no scholars at the Hebrew Union College (HUC) in Cincinnati of the "already American[-born] generation of Israel." In fact, Singer’s observation was appropriate because it applied to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) in New York as much as to the HUC.3 Despite the history of Jewish settlement in America, around 1900 there was still no native Jewish scholarship in America. The scene was dominated by scholars educated in Europe, who often came with broken English and a strict academic sense of mission. In 1903, Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), born in Bavaria and trained at German universities, was chosen as the president of HUC. And a year earlier, Solomon Schechter (1847–1915) had been called to the JTSA in New York as its new president. ...
The author, a professor of English linguistics at Freiburg University, was a member of the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat) from 2006 to 2012 and, in this capacity, was involved in this advisory body’s rating and assessment activities. The present contribution focusses on issues arising in the rating of research output in the humanities and is informed by his dual perspective, as planner and organizer of the ratings undertaken by the Wissenschaftsrat and as a rated scholar in his own discipline, English and American Studies.