At the time he was writing about (pre-WWII), many people of Jewish descent who by looks and/or surname could "pass" as non-Jewish, did so to avoid anti-semitism. Many of them even practiced a degree of anti-semitism themselves. MacLean is suggesting that Michelson (who didn't identify as Jewish despite his heritage) was such a person.
I read it as a specific aside on the way the drawings were caricatures of the other faculty. Without an example, itβs hard to discern intent.
> The waitress told us he drew sketches of the faculty he did not care to eat with. She said they all had long noses.
...it sets off strange alarm bells, but I don't quite have the cultural context to figure out how I should interpret it. Of course, everyone knows that long noses are a Jewish stereotype, and that in the 70s when this article was written, anti-semitism was far enough out of fashion that it would have been impolite to express it in more than an oblique way. Can someone explain to me what MacLean was trying to say here? I know Michelson himself was of Jewish descent, which makes the comment all the more confusing.