Brandeis Needs a Reboot

Brandeis Needs a Reboot
By David E Y Sarna
 
On January 30, 2015, Brandeis President Fred Lawrence announced his "resignation" as president of the prestigious Brandeis University (ranked 35th nationally by US News & World Report) after five mostly tumultuous years marked by repeated negative publicity. His tenure included the university's decision, under his leadership, to revoke an honorary degree set to be awarded to activist and writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali. "More recently, Lawrence had come under fire for his handling of a campus controversy that began when a student named Daniel Mael published a fellow student's anti-NYPD tweets, and which quickly escalated to a contentious battle over the limits of free speech," reported Tablet Magazine. Uriel Heilman wrote in The Jewish Telegraphic Agency: the failures that ultimately doomed his tenure were more fundamental, insiders say: "His fundraising just wasn't good enough and his administrative track record was wanting... . The university's largely Jewish donor base was put off by Lawrence's incapacity to respond more forcefully to some of these controversies and articulate Brandeis' values unabashedly."
 
It's not a first time for Brandeis.
In 1990, Brandeis' fifth president, Evelyn Handler also resigned under pressure. While the circumstances were different, they had common elements, that can be summarized as "What type of university does Brandeis want to be?"
 
It has always suffered from an identity crisis and cognitive dissonance., and a type of dissociative identity disorder formerly called schizophrenia.
 
Founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian Jewish community-sponsored coeducational institution on the site of the former Middlesex University, the university is named for Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), the first Jewish Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States. It was founded in an era of an open numerus clausus restrictions, which limited the number of Jews admitted to elite universities.
 
Overt restrictions on Jewish enrollment have long-ago been banned from American universities. But Brandeis has never quite figured out the contradictions inherent in being non-Sectarian and Jewish sponsored.
 
As Brandeis looks for its ninth president, it's time for a reboot and a clear identity.
 
Its original raison d'etre has long come inoperative. Its second raison d'etre, as a good place for (mostly) non-Orthodox Jews to find Jewish spouses is also mostly inoperative. Brandeis today is 48% Jewish among undergraduates and 20% among graduates. Schools such as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell NYU and most other quality universities have more or less vibrant Jewish communities, usually centered around Hillel which builds connections with emerging adults at more than 550 colleges and universities. In terms of raw numbers, many colleges have larger Jewish populations. NYU has arguably displaced Brandeis as the preeminent center for Judaic studies, in terms of both quality and quantity, along with other major universities, poaching many senior Brandeis faculty along the way.
As the Yiddish phrase does, it is nisht ahin nisht aher, neither here nor there.
 
What to do?
 
One school of thought believes that Brandeis should continue to deemphasize - meaning forget - its Jewish origins, and become a small, high-quality, left-leaning university – a small Berkeley in the East. Its point of difference, such adherents argue would be its small size, high focus on research and social activism. In this, it would be like many Jewish-founded hospitals, such as Boston's Beth Israel, now called Beth Israel Deaconess, a teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, its Jewish roots surviving only in its name, its Jewish roots nowhere mentioned in its current Mission Statement.
 
As a Brandeis alum (class of '70) whose father taught at Brandeis for many years, and whose brother still does, I would be very sad were that to happen.
 
If you remember your history, the years I attended Brandeis, 1967 -1970 marked the height of college unrest at American universities. We at Brandeis endured protests galore (mostly against the War in Vietnam), the takeover of Ford Hall in 1969 by African-American students, and protests occasionally cancelled classes. Most students boycotted commencement exercises.
 
Faculty at the time included many who were very left-leaning: psychologist Abraham Maslow, philosopher and social scientist Herbert Marcuse, drama critic Louis Kronenberger, my teacher Jean van Heijenoort, the Logician, who was Trotsky's personal secretary, and the poet Allen Ginsberg. But it also included giants of Judaic Studies, including my teachers, Professors Alexander Altman, Nahum Glatzer, and my father, Nahum Sarna.
 
Famous Brandeis alumnae include Anita Hill, Abbie Hoffman, Angela Davis, and Thomas Friedman and technology journalist Walter Mosseberg, the influential long-time principal technology columnist for The Wall Street Journal. Many of my classmates we to on to shed their beads, sandals and drugs and became distinguished academics, lawyers, doctors, scientists and Rabbis. A few went into real estate and business.
 
Brandeis in those days was a very open place, with close faculty-student interaction, small classes, and highly individualized study programs, from which I greatly benefited.
 
I remember Brandeis as very Jewish, not particularly observant, socially conscious and also as a tolerant place, operating as a vibrant and occasionally chaotic marketplace of ideas. The periodic demonstrations were directed outward towards tikkun olam, making the world a better place, whatever one's view of that was, rather than towards destructive internecine struggles.
 
My, how the world has changed!
 
Brandeis today is torn asunder by extremists unwilling to tolerate freedom of expression, manifest public rudeness or worse, all of which has discouraged some excellent students, faculty, and donors who have voted with their feet.
 
A change was much needed.
 
Of course, at 65, I am given to nostalgia for the "good old days," and what I say is subject to discount, but I do have a vision for Brandeis.
 
I would like to see a diverse, but still largely Jewish student population, led by a strong, well-respected, and committed leader with a well-articulated vision, clear backing of the Board of Trustees and the tenacity not to be side-tracked while executing his or her vision.
 
It's a tall order.
 
I can only hope and pray that a new president will be selected who will honor the legacy of my distinguished teachers, many of whom gave the best years or their lives to Brandeis.
 
David E Y Sarna is a writer and former entrepreneur. He has six published books including Evernote For Dummies, V2, has nearly completed his first novel, about the Jewish treasures in the Vatican's secret archives and is hard at work on a book about the Talmud for general readers.
 
©2015 by David E. Y. Sarna