Brandeis University

Brandeis University   (University)
Motto	אמת ("Emet", Hebrew; "Truth even unto its innermost parts")
Formation	1948
Headquarters	Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Type	Private
Sponsored by	Hewlett Foundation
Other name	Judges
Strong liberal arts focus, closely connected to the Jewish community

Brandeis University is a private research university located in the Boston suburb of Waltham, Massachusetts. Founded in 1948 as a non-sectarian, coeducational institution sponsored by the Jewish community, Brandeis was established on the site of the former Middlesex University. The university is named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

In 2018, it had a total enrollment of 5,800 students on its suburban campus spanning 235 acres (95 hectares). The institution offers more than 43 majors and 46 minors, and two-thirds of undergraduate classes have 20 students or fewer. It is a member of Association of American Universities since 1985 and of the Boston Consortium, which allows students to cross-register to attend courses at other institutions including Boston College, Boston University and Tufts University.

The university has a strong liberal arts focus and attracts a geographically and economically diverse student body, with 72% of its non-international undergraduates being from out of state, 50% of full-time undergraduates receiving need-based financial aid and 13.5% being recipients of the federal Pell Grant. It has the eighth-largest international student population of any university in the United States. Alumni and affiliates of the university include former first lady of the United States Eleanor Roosevelt, Nobel Prize laureate Roderick MacKinnon and Fields Medalist Edward Witten, as well as foreign heads of state, congressmen, governors, diplomats, and recipients of the Nobel Prize, Pulitzer Prize, Academy Award, Emmy Award, and MacArthur Fellowship.

History

Founding

Seal of the former Middlesex University

Usen Castle, a building on campus

Middlesex University was a medical school located in Waltham, Massachusetts, that was at the time the only medical school in the United States that did not impose a quota on Jews. The founder, Dr. John Hall Smith, died in 1944. Smith's will stipulated that the school should go to any group willing to use it to establish a non-sectarian university. Within two years, Middlesex University was on the brink of financial collapse. The school had not been able to secure accreditation by the American Medical Association, which Smith partially attributed to institutional antisemitism in the American Medical Association, and, as a result, Massachusetts had all but shut it down. Alpert was to be chairman of Brandeis from 1946 to 1954, and a trustee from 1946 until his death.

By February 5, 1946, Goldstein had recruited Albert Einstein, whose involvement drew national attention to the nascent university. Einstein believed the university would attract the best young people in all fields, satisfying a real need.

Rabb Graduate Center (1965, Benjamin Thompson)

The trustees offered to name the university after Einstein in the summer of 1946, but Einstein declined, and on July 16, 1946, the board decided the university would be named after Louis Brandeis. Einstein objected to what he thought was excessively expansive promotion, and to Goldstein's sounding out Abram L. Sachar as a possible president without consulting Einstein. Einstein took great offense at Goldstein's having invited Cardinal Francis Spellman to participate in a fundraising event. Einstein also became alarmed by press announcements that exaggerated the school's success at fundraising.

Einstein threatened to sever ties with the foundation on September 2, 1946. Believing the venture could not succeed without Einstein, Goldstein quickly agreed to resign himself, and Einstein recanted. Einstein's near-departure was publicly denied. Goldstein said that, despite his resignation, he would continue to solicit donations for the foundation. On November 1, 1946, the foundation announced that the new university would be named Brandeis University, after Louis D. Brandeis, justice of the United States Supreme Court. By the end of 1946, the foundation said it had raised over five hundred thousand dollars, and two months later it said it had doubled that amount.

In early June 1947, Einstein made a final break with the foundation. According to George Alpert, a lawyer responsible for much of the organizational effort, Einstein had wanted to offer the presidency of the school to left-wing scholar Harold Laski, someone that Alpert had characterized as "a man utterly alien to American principles of democracy, tarred with the Communist brush." He said, "I can compromise on any subject but one: that one is Americanism." Two of the foundation's trustees, S. Ralph Lazrus and Dr. Otto Nathan, quit the foundation at the same time as Einstein. In response, Alpert said that Lazrus and Nathan had tried to give Brandeis University a "radical, political orientation." Alpert also criticized Lazrus' lack of fundraising success and Nathan's failure to organize an educational advisory committee. Einstein said he, Lazrus, and Nathan "have always been and have always acted in complete harmony."

Early years

Eleanor Roosevelt joined the board of trustees in 1949. Joseph M. Proskauer joined the board in 1950. Construction of on-campus dormitories began in March 1950 with the goal of ninety percent of students living on campus.

In 1953, Einstein declined the offer of an honorary degree from Brandeis, writing to Brandeis president Abram L. Sachar that "what happened in the stage of preparation of Brandeis University was not at all caused by a misunderstanding and cannot be made good any more." Instead, at the graduation ceremony for Brandeis' second graduating class of 108 students, individuals given Brandeis' first honorary degrees included Illinois Senator Paul H. Douglas, Rabbi Louis Ginzberg, and Alpert. 1953 also saw the creation of the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, one of the first academic programs in Jewish Studies at an American university. Among the founders were distinguished emigre scholars Alexander Altmann, Nathan Glatzer and Simon Rawidowicz. Brandeis inaugurated its graduate program, the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, in 1954. In the same year, Brandeis became fully accredited, joining the New England Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools. As of 1954, Brandeis had 22 buildings and a 192-acre (78-hectare) campus.

After Brandeis University awarded an honorary doctorate to Israeli Premier David Ben-Gurion in 1960, Jordan boycotted Brandeis University, announcing that it would not issue currency permits to Jordanian students at Brandeis.

Student takeover of Ford Hall

On January 8, 1969, about 70 black students entered then-student-center, Ford Hall, ejected everyone else from the building, and refused to leave. The students' demands included the hiring of more black faculty members, increasing black student enrollment from four percent to ten percent of the student body, establishing an independent department on African American studies, and an increase in scholarships for black students. The student protesters renamed the school Malcolm X University for the duration of the siege, distributing buttons with the new name and logo, and issued a list of fourteen demands for better minority representation on campus. The students refused to allow telephone calls go through the telephone switchboard.Over 200 white students staged a sit-in in the lobby of the administration building. Classes continued on campus during the protest. Other campuses that had protests at the same time included San Francisco State College, the University of Minnesota, Swarthmore College, Cheyney State College, Queens College, and San Jose State College.

President Morris B. Abram said that, although he recognized "the deep frustration and anger which black students here and all over the country—and often is—the indifference and duplicity of white men in relation to blacks", the students' actions were an affront to the university, Abram said that "nothing less than academic freedom itself is under assault." The faculty condemned the students' actions as well. On the third day of the protest, Abram proposed creating three committees to "spell out in detail those points which still divide us."

On the fourth day of the protest, the Middlesex Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order, requiring the students to leave Ford Hall. While Abram said he would not allow the order to be enforced by forcibly removing the students from Ford Hall, he did say that 65 students had been suspended for their actions. On January 18, the black students exited Ford Hall, ending the eleven-day occupation of the building. Brandeis and students still were not in agreement on one of the demands, namely the establishment of an autonomous department on African American studies. Brandeis insisted that such a department be subject to the same rules as any other department. There had been no violence or destruction of property during the occupation, and Brandeis gave the students amnesty from their actions.< Ronald Walters became the first chair of Afro-American studies at Brandeis later the same year. Ford Hall was demolished in August 2000 to make way for the Shapiro Campus Center, which was opened and dedicated October 3, 2002.

 

Sponsor

Event	Description
Hewlett Foundation	Huge foundation setting the agenda by funding lots of deep state projects.

 

Alumni on Wikispooks

Person	Born	Nationality	Summary	Description
Jack Abramoff	28 February 1958		Lobbyist Businessperson	Convicted lobbyist and founder of the International Freedom Foundation
Sidney Blumenthal	6 November 1948	US
Jordana Cutler		Israel US	Diplomat Propagandist	Went from senior Israeli propagandist to leading Facebook's censorship of Israel-critics.
Thomas Friedman	20 July 1953	US	Author Journalist	CFR, TLC, two Bilderbergs
Robert Gallucci	11 February 1946	US	Diplomat Academic	Former Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs.
Daniel Marcus	5 January 1941	US	Lawyer	Lawyer who was General Counsel of the 9-11 Commission.
Daniel Shapiro	1 August 1969	US Israeli?	Diplomat	US ambassador to Israel, but flew from Tel Aviv to New York on Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's own aircraft
Aafia Siddiqui	2 March 1972	Pakistan	Scientist	American-educated Pakistani cognitive neuroscientist, tortured and raped for years by US forces, now serving a life sentence after a trial of a highly questionable nature.

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