Spring '10 President's letter to the Community

Brandeis University

June 2010

Dear Friends, The past 18 months have presented all of American higher education with an unprecedented financial situation that has forced colleges and universities to make dramatic and often damaging budget reductions. Many of our peer institutions have chosen to address the problem with across-the-board cuts, which give the appearance of equity but often inflict serious long-term damage on the academic program. By contrast, Brandeis chose to approach its financial challenges strategically, examining all areas of University operations, including the Academy. As a result, Brandeis is making reductions where appropriate and actually growing in other areas. For example, last year’s Curricular and Academic Restructuring Steering (CARS) Committee agreed to reduce the size of the faculty by 35 over several years and increase the undergraduate student body by 400 over four years. The Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the International Business School have chosen a strategic growth option.

After the first round of recommendations, CARS became the “Brandeis 2020 Committee” with 19 faculty members, one undergraduate, one graduate student, and two academic administrators. Led by Dean Adam Jaffe, the Committee reviewed information on all academic majors and minors, course evaluations, faculty, staff, and operating budgets by program, admitted students’ expressed interests, graduate admissions, matriculation, budget, and placement and satisfaction measures. In addition, the 2020 Committee consulted extensively with faculty members not on the committee. The 2020 Committee adopted a thoughtful approach that considered seven different empirical indices, and took great care to ensure the continued excellence of the overall academic and extracurricular experience for undergraduates. The full text of the Brandeis 2020 Committee Report is available on the Provost’s website at http://www.brandeis.edu/provost.

In addition to the curricular changes recommended by the Brandeis 2020 Committee, the Board of Trustees approved several new degree options. In my letter last year at this time, I mentioned the new majors in Business and in Film, Television and Interactive Media, each of which has generated tremendous interest among both current and prospective students. Two of this year’s five Film, Television and Interactive Media graduating students, Mohammad Kundas ’10 (Tel Aviv, Israel) and Avner Swerdlow ’10 (Marietta, Georgia), have been admitted to the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California, arguably one of the world’s finest film programs, as was last year’s graduate Vladimir Sillman ’09. In March, the Board approved a BA/MA degree program in Computer Science and Information Technology Entrepreneurship and MS and BS/MS degree programs in Biotechnology.

1

Reconfigurations within the academic program, together with savings identified by the Administrative Resources Review Committee, in addition to new revenues and cost-avoidance measures, have placed Brandeis on a clear path to long-term fiscal stability.

The current year’s budget was balanced at considerable expense to our faculty and staff by a one-year withholding of $7.5 million in retirement contributions.

I am pleased to report that this contribution has been reinstated, effective July 1, 2010, and the Trustees approved a modest salary merit increase pool for individuals earning less than $150,000.

At its annual meeting in March, the Board of Trustees approved the Brandeis 2020 Committee Report. The proposed four-year budget plan presented to the Board by the administration is one part of a comprehensive effort to address the University’s budget Mohammad Kundas ’10 problems without asking for additional faculty and staff contributions. It reflects months of effort by administrators and faculty within all of Brandeis’s principal units both to reduce expenses and to increase revenues, recognizing that the optimum solution is a combination of the two. The savings resulting from changes to the University’s academic programs and the additional revenues to be generated will be phased in over a period of several years. They will, however, reduce substantially the overall operating deficits that were projected last fall, eliminating them altogether by FY2014, barring unforeseen circumstances.

Another strong indicator that Brandeis has turned the corner successfully from the recession and the nationwide decline in college and university endowments results from this year’s undergraduate admissions effort, led by Jean Eddy, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment, and the members of the Admissions Office staff. Applications for the Class of 2014 jumped nearly 15 percent over last year to an all-time record of 7,738, the average SAT rose to 1400, the admit rate declined to 33 percent, and the percentages of international students and students of color in the applicant pool rose to 21 and 27 percent respectively. Record numbers of prospective students and parents visited campus this spring, and on April 12 we welcomed more than 1,500 students and parents to the University’s largest Admitted Student Day on record. ♦ In February, I spent two fascinating weeks in India meeting with alumni, prospective students and their parents, and participated in a panel on “Mobilizing Knowledge and Knowledge Institutions” at the Delhi Sustainable Development Summit 2010, hosted by Dr. R. K. Pachauri, Chancellor of the TERI University and a 2009 Brandeis commencement honoree. I also addressed the Asia Society in Mumbai on “Partnerships for Knowledge and Social Justice: Higher Education in the Global Age.” My talk focused

2

on globalization in higher education and opportunities for expanding Brandeis’s longstanding relationship with India. The demand for higher education is increasing exponentially in India, and India, in turn, is encouraging international educational cooperation.

Dr. R. K. Pachauri

A point that I emphasized in my talks and interviews in India is that one of the great strengths shared by virtually all of the top American and other western universities is a strong commitment to liberal arts education as a preparation for professional training.

Currently, many American institutions, Brandeis included, are wrestling with how best to accommodate students’ desires for professional or preprofessional training while maintaining and ensuring the best that a liberal arts education has to offer. The need to balance this tension is central to the development of international partnerships.

Liberal education teaches students to think in an orderly manner. It encourages exploration of the broader world with greater understanding and nuance. It teaches students how to analyze and develop opinions, attitudes, values, and beliefs, based not merely on authority, but primarily on examination and evaluation of argument and evidence. It trains the mind to think creatively and independently when dealing with complex issues. The great problems and issues facing the world today—climate change, pollution, economic inequality, human rights, hunger, and the changing roles of women in different societies, among others—will find their solutions largely in an increasingly complex international context, precisely because they are global in nature.

A highlight of my trip to India was meeting alumni, many of whom are implementing the commitment to social justice that was part of their education at Brandeis.

Sundar Burra ’71 is an administrator of the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), an Indian NGO that supports efforts to organize hundreds of thousands of slum dwellers and pavement dwellers to address issues related to urban poverty. Collectively, these organizations focus on affordable housing and sanitation. Devika Mahadevan ’00 is the Mumbai division

3

director of Mumbai Mobile Creches, an NGO supporting the health, education, and safety of workers in the construction industry, the single largest employer of migrant labor in India. In Delhi, I met with several recent alumni of the Heller School’s Sustainable International Development program, including, among others, Reena Gupta, MA SID ’02, a natural resources management specialist with the World Bank; Chandan Samal, MA SID ’03, a project development specialist with USAID; and Alok Devika Mahadevan ’00 Kumar, MA SID ’06, who is working on capacity development projects in rural India. Tenzin Dhonyo, MA SID ’08, made his way to Delhi from Dharamsala, where he is working for the Tibetan government in exile.

I hope we can build on their work and encourage more Brandeis students to spend time in India, learning both in the classroom and from leaders like these alumni.

The Arts In February, 2010 Hadassah-Brandeis Institute Artist-inResidence Andi Arnovitz of Jerusalem exhibited a new body of work, Tear/Repair (kriah/ichooi), a series of unwearable paper coats for Jewish women that form an extension of her “Garments of Faith” series. Each of the garments, fabricated from torn or intact Andi Arnovitz wedding wrapping papers, scrolls, and book pages, represents injustices related to Jewish women. The 2010 HBI Artist-in-Residence Program is made possible through the generous support of Carol Spinner and Avoda Arts, Arnee and Walter Winshall, and Brandeis’s Schusterman Center for Israel Studies. Seven groups—from the children of the Lemberg Center to residents of Lasell Village—received tours given by curator Michele L’Heureux. From April 28 through June 20, 2010, the Kniznick Gallery at the Women’s Studies Research Center explores the connections between science and art with an exhibition of work by painter/ printmaker Guhapriya Ranganathan and sculptor Nancy Selvage.

4

In March, our most recent World Music Concert by Alim Qasimov from Azerbaijan played to a sold-out audience. The New York Times has hailed Mr. Qasimov as “simply one of the greatest singers alive.” Parents and alumni on the Brandeis Arts Council, which has raised $250,000 for programs in the School of Creative Arts during the past three years, funded the concert, in part.

Alim Qasimov

On March 22, Kristin Parker joined the staff of the Rose Art Museum as Collections Manager and Registrar. She has worked in a similar capacity at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum since 1998. A search committee is currently reviewing applicants for the position of Education Director at the Rose. At present, the Rose Art Museum is featuring its renowned permanent collection in a historic exhibition and catalog that includes modern and contemporary masterworks by some of the 20th century’s most revered artists. The wide-ranging show The Rose at Brandeis: Works from the Collection presents pieces from dozens of artists representing different periods, from Willem de Kooning to Jasper Johns, Roy Lichtenstein, Andy Warhol, Robert Motherwell, Max Weber, Cindy Sherman, Stuart Davis, Frank Stella, Milton Avery, Hans Hoffman and Ellsworth Kelly, among others. The exhibition was open at commencement and will remain open through Reunion to provide an opportunity for returning alumni to enjoy it.

In April, Brandeis celebrated Russian Culture Week.

Sponsored by the Brandeis–Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry, the Brandeis Russian Club, and the Russian Studies Program, events included an interactive workshop on Russian folklore with the musicians of Zolotoy Plyos, a professional Russian folk music The Rose at Brandeis: Works from the Collection trio; a lecture by Smith College Professor Sergey Glebov, “After Weimar Russia? Post-Soviet Landscape of Xenophobia,” about the growing sense of ethnic and religious intolerance in the Russian 5

Federation; a tournament of the popular Russian card game “Durak”; and a Russian dance party. Julian Olidort ’10 (New York, New York) coordinated an interdisciplinary program, “Painting the Face of Russian Jewry: The Art and Journey of Marc Klionsky,” that included a display of some of Klionsky’s paintings and a discussion led

by Professor Antony Polonsky (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies) and Professor Nancy Scott (Fine Arts).

Julian Olidort ’10 (right)

Also in April, Brandeis University and the National Center for Jewish Film presented 13 films — six fiction feature films and seven documentaries, from six countries — at JEWISHFILM.2010, The National Center for Jewish Film’s 13th Annual Film Festival.

The films were screened on campus at the Wasserman Cinematheque, with additional screenings at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Fine Arts. At many screenings the director was present.

Each academic year, Brandeis hosts more than 350 arts events, culminating in the annual Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts, founded in 1952 by composer, conductor, and former Brandeis faculty member Leonard Bernstein. In the spring, the Brandeis campus blooms in a celebration of creativity and community. We feature work by national and regional artists, as well as Brandeis faculty and students. The Leonard Bernstein Ruth Ann Perlmutter Festival of the Creative Arts, coordinated by Scott Edmiston and Ingrid Schorr, was made possible this year by the generous support of Ruth Ann Perlmutter, Eric Green, P’05 and ’07, Danny Lehrman ’64, Fern Lowenfels ’59, Ann Tanenbaum ’66, Jolie Schwab ’78, David Hodes ’77 and the Aaron Foundation.

Highlights of the 2010 festival, which ran from April 28 to May 2, included the Brandeis Theater Company production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost and the unveiling of a large-scale public artwork created by Michael Dowling, the 2010 Ruth Ann and Nathan Perlmutter Artist in Residence, in collaboration with the Brandeis 6

community. Called “one of America’s most innovative and courageous artists,” Dowling conceived the work, Source/ReSource, as a reflection of Brandeis’s history and values, which he got to know by attending classes, researching the Brandeis archives, and talking with faculty and students. As part of his semester-long residency, he also taught a sculpture class in which students contributed to Source/ReSource and designed their own public artworks.

Source/ReSource

Love’s Labour’s Lost

Other Arts Festival highlights included the Brandeis-Wellesley Orchestra performing music from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, as well as Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scherehezade, on April 29 and the Irving Fine Tribute Concert on May 1, named for the founder of the Brandeis music department, performing Aaron Copland’s Appalachian String suite and Fine’s Serious Song: Lament for String Orchestra, under the direction of Nicholas Brown ’10 (Brookline, Massachusetts). Also on the schedule was the program Art Connects Generations and Cultures on Sunday, May 2, when more than 200 actors, singers, dancers and musicians performed across campus, with art-making Nicholas Brown ’10 activities for the entire family.

There were Latin rhythms by Sol y Canto; performances by Big Nazo, the international group of visual artists and puppet performers; and a presentation of The Dragon King by the Tanglewood Marionettes.

7

Festival of Arts

The Tanglewood Marionettes

This year’s recipient of the 2010 Arts Faculty Award for Distinguished Contribution to the Arts at Brandeis is Professor Susan Lichtman (Fine Arts). Susan has been a member of the Brandeis faculty since 1980 and was the first female faculty member in studio art. She has served as the director of the studio art program and chair of the fine arts department. An accomplished painter, Susan has exhibited in Paris, Providence, Rhode Island, New York City, and Philadelphia. ♦ The International Business School (IBS) is among the 15 graduate schools of business named to the Princeton Review’s 2nd Annual “Student Opinion Honors for Business Schools” in the Finance and Global Management categories. A new initiative—Finance and Society—will Susan Lichtman serve as the cornerstone of the IBS offerings in socially responsible business, which represents the intersection of global finance and entrepreneurship, two of the core competencies at IBS. Steven Bunson ’82 has provided initial seed funding of $250,000 for this initiative, In March at IBS, entrepreneur Shai Agassi and investor Michael Granoff of the electric vehicle firm Better Place, the best-funded clean technology company in history to deploy an electric car system, shared their vision for an oil-independent world as they received the 2010 Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship. And in May, the Perlmutter Institute for Global Business Leadership at IBS honored Henrique Meirelles, governor of the Central Bank of Brazil and Chairman of the Society for the Revitalization of the City of São Paulo, with the Perlmutter Award for Excellence in Global Business Leadership.

8

Dean Lisa Lynch of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management has been appointed a Member of the National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics, and Heller Professor Susan Curnan will co-chair the Detroit 2016 Task Force responsible for managing and leading the 10-year “Good Neighborhoods” initiative, investing $500 million in six communities to create conditions enabling children to be safe, healthy, welleducated, and ready for adulthood. The Heller School will also be the evaluation and learning partner for a Gates Foundation project to double the number of young people who complete post-secondary education.

The Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism’s Founding Director Florence Graves and student research assistant Elizabeth Macedo ’10 (Bristol, Rhode Island) were selected as Fellows for the 2010 Peter Susan Curnan Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution in Philadelphia, a weekend of in-depth examination of current Constitutional debates in the news. At the invitation of the U.S. Embassy in Sofia, Bulgaria, Florence Graves spoke via videoconferencing with female Bulgarian journalists about challenges facing investigative journalists. The Embassy selected Florence Graves specifically because of the Schuster Institute’s commitment to investigate significant social and political problems, and to uncover corporate and government abuses of power.

Sharon Feiman-Nemser, Mandel Professor of Jewish Education at Brandeis and director of the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education, has been named to a new blue ribbon panel of the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education to create recommendations for restructuring the preparation of teachers to reflect teaching as a practice-based profession akin to medicine, nursing, and clinical psychology.

Professor Derek Isaacowitz (Psychology) won the Margaret M. & Paul B. Baltes Foundation Award in Behavioral and Social Gerontology, which recognizes outstanding early career contributions in behavioral and social gerontology. Professor James Haber, the Abraham and Etta Goodman Professor of Biology and director of the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center, has been elected a member of the National Academy of Sharon Feiman-Nemser Sciences (NAS), bringing to 11 the total number of Brandeis faculty members elected to the NAS. Professor Gregory Petsko (Biochemistry) has been elected to the American Philosophical Society, America’s first learned society, and Professor Joël Bellaïche (Mathematics) received the 2010 American Mathematical Society

9

Gregory Petsko

Derek Isaacowitz

Centennial Fellowship for excellence in research, awarded to a mathematician who has held a doctoral degree for fewer than twelve years. Professor Ralph Thaxton (Politics) has been invited to be one of Amherst College’s inaugural Croxton Lecturers in 2010–11.

Professor Larry Wangh (Biology) and his colleagues have invented technologies that will be the basis for highly informative diagnostic tests for infectious diseases. These technologies, collectively known as LATE-PCR, are owned by Brandeis University and are exclusively licensed to UK-based Smiths Detection. Smiths Detection has supported research in the Wangh laboratory and has just announced a new collaboration and licensing agreement between Smiths Detection Diagnostics and Novartis Diagnostics in the field of infectious diseases. In addition to detecting human and animal infectious diseases, the Brandeis technologies are useful in biodefense, cancer detection, food testing, drug discovery, and species conservation.

Larry Wangh

10

The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded Brandeis $1 million for a three-year project titled, “Active Matter at Micro-, Meso, and Macroscopic Scales,” which will use interdisciplinary research in biology and physics to make advances in the field of soft-matter physics. The National Endowment for the Humanities Challenge Grant for the Mandel Humanities Center will provide $600,000 over five years, to be matched by $1.8 million to be raised by Brandeis. The total of $2.4 million will fund the programmatic activities of the Center over a ten-year period and also accumulate an endowment that will support these activities going forward.

In March, the Social Justice Leadership Series, which brings to campus inspiring speakers whose lives are driven by a commitment to social justice and human rights, presented a talk by Gloria White-Hammond, a founder of the faith-inspired, multiracial, collective of women known as My Sister’s Keeper. The organization provides humanitarian assistance to communities of women globally, with a focus on Sudan. And on April 8, the Film, Television and Interactive Media Program hosted popular crime novelist Patricia Cornwell for a preview screening of the film adaptation of her book, The Front. Her co-executive producer, Stanley Brooks ’79, joined her for a conversation with the audience following the screening.

In April, the distinguished international jurist, human rights advocate, and former Attorney General of India Soli Jehangir Sorabjee, in whose honor Brandeis launched a new lecture series last autumn as part of the South Asian Studies and the Brandeis-India Initiative, delivered a talk on the “Rule of Law: A Moral Imperative for South Asia and the World.”

Among other topics, Mr. Sorabjee explored the effects of globalization and the rise of terrorism on the commitment to the rule of law. Sugata Bose, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs at Harvard University, delivered the inaugural lecture, “Different Universalisms, 11

Soli Jehangir Sorabjee

Sugata Bose

Colorful Cosmopolitanisms: The Global Imagination of the Colonized,” this fall. In a related event, Ms. Paromita Vohra, one of India’s leading documentary filmmakers, screened two of her recent films, met with students, and answered questions from the audience.

Maura Jane Farrelly

Alfonso Canella

Melissa Kosinski-Collins

Brandeis prides itself on the commitment of its faculty to teaching and mentoring students. This year’s recipient of the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer ’69 and Joseph Neubauer Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring is Professor Elizabeth Emma Ferry (Anthropology); Professor Maura Jane Farrelly (American Studies) is the recipient of The Michael L. Walzer Award for Teaching; and Professor Melissa Kosinski-Collins (Biology) won The Louis Dembitz Brandeis Prize for Excellence in Teaching. The Dean of Arts and Sciences Graduate Mentoring Award went to Professor Allan Keiler (Music).

The Teaching Award and the Mentoring Award at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management have been presented to professors Eric Olson and Lorraine Klerman respectively. Professor Edward Bayone and Senior Lecturer Alfonso Canella won the IBS Prize for Excellence in Teaching for full-time faculty, and Adjunct Professor Joel Singer received the IBS Prize for Excellence in Teaching Award for part-time faculty.

Students Daniel Acheampong ’11 (Brooklyn, New York) has been elected president of the Student Union for the 2010–11 academic year, succeeding Andrew Hogan ’11 (San Diego, California), who is serving as a member of the presidential search committee. A former Student Union Treasurer, Daniel is completing majors in Economics and Politics, and this summer will intern with Goldman 12

Daniel Acheampong ’11

Sachs. Also voted in were Vice President-elect Shirel Guez ’12 (Brooklyn, New York), Secretary-elect Herbie Rosen ’12 (Rochester, Minnesota), and Treasurer-elect Akash Vidalia ’12 (Manchester, New Hampshire).

For the third time in the past decade, the Society of American Historians has judged a Brandeis doctoral dissertation the best in the nation. Noelani Arista, an Irving and Rose Crown Fellow, awarded her PhD at this year’s commencement, won the 50th annual Allan Nevins Prize for her interdisciplinary thesis, “Histories of Unequal Measure: Euro-American Encounters with Hawaiian Governance and Law, 1793-1827.”

Shaina Gilbert ’10

Heller Master of Public Policy students Charles Frances and Elizabeth Paulhus, along with IBS MBA student Jacob Lewis, have been selected as Presidential Management Fellows. Jack Gettens, Heller PhD’09, received Honorable Mention for the John Heinz Dissertation Award, presented by the National Academy of Social Insurance, for his doctoral dissertation titled “Medicaid Expansions: The Work and Program Participation of Persons with Disability.”

Shaina Gilbert ’10 (Boston, Massachusetts), Jonah Cohen ’10 (Abington, Pennsylvania), and Edward Crowley ’10 (Cranston, Rhode Island) have received Davis Projects for Peace awards, joining students from over 90 colleges and universities during summer 2010 to complete projects in all regions of the world. Shaina will continue working with the Empowering Through Education summer camp that she opened in Hinche, Haiti last summer. Jonah and Edward will bring the inspiring story of the Costa Rican Ministry of Peace to an international audience through a documentary film that will seek lessons from Costa Rica’s culture of peace, and translate that to a transnational network.

Brandeis had a record nine Fulbright national finalists this year. Four of the finalists have already been approved Jonah Cohen ’10 by their country of choice. Nadine Channaoui ’10 (Plattsburgh, New York) will pursue a project in Bolivia titled “What Happens When They Leave? Experiences of External Migration in Bolivia”; Danielle HollenbeckPringle ’10 (Carson City, Nevada) will pursue a study of “Midwifery in Sri Lanka”; Hilda Poulson ’10 (Los Angeles, California) will be in Venezuela working on “Community Engagement in the Context of Venezuelan Political History”; and Anna Pancheshnikov ’10 (Albuquerque, New Mexico) will be in the Dominican Republic pursuing a project on “Access to Prevention of Prenatal HIV Transmission: Maternal and Infant Health Risks.”

13

Brandeis is one of nine colleges and universities chosen this year for the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Scholars program, which supports undergraduate research in the biological and chemical sciences. Under the terms of the award, Brandeis chooses five students as Beckman Scholars over a maximum of three years. The participating departments are Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, and Neuroscience. Each Beckman Scholar has a faculty mentor and receives a total package of $19,300 to support research over an academic year and the summers immediately before and after.

Student Events, the campus programming board, has been selected by the Student Union to receive the “Club of the Year” award. Student Events plans major annual events on campus such as the Louis, Louis Weekend, the Bronstein Weekend, and major concerts. This year, their major events featured Ben Folds, Mike Posner and Springfest 2010 Big Sean, Michael Ian Black and Passion Pit. Their programming this year featured the ever popular Monday Morning After events, which welcomed their peers to the academic week with refreshments and marketed upcoming events; the Munchie Mobile, which visited each residential quad with pizza, snacks, and beverages; Thirsty Thursdays in the Stein, which gave students the opportunity to take a break and relax on Thursday afternoons; and a weekly blockbuster film series held every Friday and Saturday night. These events, coupled with other special programs, made them shine this year.

On March 6, Brandeis’s semi-professional Israeli dance troupe, B’yachad, and Mochila, Brandeis’s Arab jazz fusion band, founded by Mohammad Kundas ’10 (Tel Aviv, Israel) sponsored “A Coming Together…Musika Rox/‫سكور ىقيسوم‬/‫הקיזומ‬ ‫סקר‬,” an original cross-cultural performance. Musika Rox was a coming together of identities, talents, and beliefs focusing on the possibilities of peace and coexistence through a cultural model.

Taisha Sturdivant ’11

14

On April 24, Culture X, Brandeis’s biggest annual campus–wide cultural event, sponsored by the Intercultural Center, celebrated its 10th anniversary with “Limitless Dreams,” a series of performances exemplifying the range of diversity on campus.

Student coordinators Taisha Sturdivant ’11 (Boston, Massachusetts), Kevin Yim ’10 (Islip Terrace, New York), Talisa Torres ’10 (New York, Culture X New York) and Ann-Nin Wong ’11 (Webster, New York) organized, among other acts, a wonderful evening of Korean dance and pop culture music; Scottish smallpipes; African, Russian, Argentinean, hip hop, and Filipino dance; and Poi, a performance art that originated with the Maori people of New Zealand and is enjoyed worldwide as a popular hobby, dance, and exercise.

On April 15, Dr. Howard Dean, former Governor of Vermont, presidential candidate, and chair of the Democratic National Committee, visited campus to speak about his career, current political debates, and youth participation in the political process.

Sponsored by Brandeis Democrats, Democracy for America, Gen ED Now, the Activist Resource Center (ARC), the International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life, and the Student Union Executive Board, the event drew over 400 students.

Howard Dean

Brandeis held its third annual American Cancer Society Relay For Life on April 2425 in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. The Relay For Life is the biggest celebration on campus for a great cause—fighting back against cancer. Teams camp out overnight and take turns walking or running around a track while listening to live entertainment, munching on donated food, and playing games. Each team is asked to have a representative on the track at all times during the event because cancer never sleeps. Ninety teams with 790 participants raised more than $65,000 to help the American Cancer Society save lives.

15

The Waltham Group’s first Celebration of Service took place in the Rose Art Museum this month. The event highlighted all student volunteer efforts on campus, ranging from the more than 600 students who volunteer with the Waltham Group to students active in Community-Engaged Learning, students residing in the Living and Learning Community, and student clubs focused on service. In April, the Waltham Group’s Blood Drive collected its 10,000th pint donated since 1994, when the Red Cross began keeping records by school.

Athletics Brandeis students also pursue excellence beyond the classroom or laboratory. Since the start of 2010, Brandeis athletics has had five All–Americans and several nationally ranked teams. Jessica Chapin ’10 (Mendon, New York) was named University Athletic Association Player of the Year and was selected as a first-team All–American by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. At the NCAA Division III Indoor Track and Field championships, the quartet of Elizabeth Pisarik ’10 (Chelmsford, Massachusetts), Anifreed Sinjour ’13 (New Bedford, Massachusetts), Emily Owen ’11 (Cicero, New York) and Grayce Selig ’11 (Narberth, Pennsylvania) finished third in the distance– medley relay to earn All–America honors. Meanwhile, the men’s basketball team qualified for their fourth–straight NCAA tournament, defeating St. Lawrence, St. John Fisher, and Rhode Island College to reach the Elite Eight for the second time in three years. The softball squad earned its first-ever national ranking this spring, reaching as high as 14th in Division III, while the women’s tennis team peaked at 28th in the nation. Following the most successful regular season in school history, the softball team earned its first–ever NCAA Division III tournament berth. In the first round, the team had an 8–0 win over Endicott, but their sensational season came to an end as the squad dropped a 4–1 decision to the Coast Guard Academy. The Judges closed out their season with a 29–9–1 record after advancing further than any team in school history.

Basketball became the focus of the Haitian relief effort on April 15, when the students challenged the staff in a fundraising basketball game. In February, two-dozen Brandeis students formed the Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort (BHRE) to aid victims of the January earthquake that ravaged the Caribbean nation. Led

by Shaina Gilbert ’10 (Boston, Massachusetts)

Hoops for Haiti

16

and Nate Rosenblum ’10 (Prospect, Kentucky), BHRE has raised more than $30,000 from the president’s office, Brandeis students, faculty, and staff. Students fell just short against staff, 37–31, in the “Hoops for Haiti” exhibition game, spearheaded by Michelle Stoistis ’11 (Cortlandt Manor, New York). The event was a big win for the Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort, raising just over $1,400 and providing a great boost for school and community spirit. Proceeds from the Brandeis Haiti Relief Effort will support Partners in Health, ETE Camp, and Hope for Haiti.

Commencement 2010

Antonio Muñoz Molina

His Excellency Michael Oren

Honorable Judith Kaye

Paul F. Simon

Dr. Paul Farmer

Dennis Ross

At this year’s graduation ceremony, His Excellency Michael Oren, Israel’s Ambassador to the United States, delivered the commencement address. A scholar, historian and novelist, he is author of the best-selling Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East; Power, Faith, and Fantasy: America in the Middle East: 1776 to the Present; Sand Devil: A Negev Trilogy; and Reunion. Other honorees included Dr. Paul Farmer, co-founder of Partners in Health; the Honorable Judith Kaye, for 15 years Chief Judge of New York; award-winning Spanish novelist Antonio Muñoz Molina; former Ambassador Dennis Ross; and singer-songwriter Paul Simon, who thrilled the audience

17

with a performance of “The Boxer.” Later that day, Mr. Simon addressed the School of Creative Arts mini-commencement.

With this year’s commencement weekend Board meeting, we welcomed several new Trustees. Trustee Larry S. Kanarek ’76 is a Senior Director at McKinsey & Company and heads the company’s Washington, D.C. office. He is a former member of the Board of Overseers of the International Business School and led the alumni fundraising campaign to fund the endowed scholarship honoring emeritus Professor of Economics Barney Schwalberg. Trustee Bruce G. Pollack ’81 is the Managing Partner of Centre Partners Management LLC in New York and served as a member of his 15th and 20th Reunion Gift Committees. Trustee Michael J. Sandel ’75, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard, returns to the Board having served previously as an Alumni Term Trustee from 1981 to 1986 and as a regularly elected Trustee from 1992 to 2001.

Professor Sandel’s most recent book is Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do. Trustee Jonathan M. Sandler is Vice Chairman of the Kessler Group and Chief Executive Officer of Kessler Capital Holdings in Boston. Trustee Susan Gelman, who was formally elected last October, is Chair of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Washington and a member of the Advisory Board of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis. We welcomed back two longserving members of the Board Trustee Sylvia Hassenfeld and Trustee Stephen R. Reiner ’61. The Board also reelected Malcolm L. Sherman and Jack Connors Jr. to second three-year terms as Chair and Vice Chair of the Board respectively.

Mick Watson William Burger has joined the administration as Associate Vice President for Communications. He spent 14 years as an editor, writer and foreign correspondent for Newsweek, and during the past 15 years, has worked in the information industry at AT&T and Infonautics, a provider of online reference services and information technology products. Mick Watson, the George and Frances Levin Professor of Psychology, will become dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, effective July 1.

A member of the Brandeis faculty since 1977, Mick currently is chair of the Department of Psychology. Mick succeeds Gregory L. Freeze, the Victor of Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of History, who has led the graduate school since the summer of 2006. In that time, Gregory has started five new master’s programs and overseen the review of graduate programs for the CARS and Brandeis 2020 processes. He has improved the finances of the school Gregory Freeze

18

dramatically, taking it from a revenue deficit of about $1.6 million a year to a projected surplus next year of about $1 million. 
 Even as we welcome new and returning members of the Brandeis community, we note with sadness the passing of University Professor emeritus Saul Cohen, who died at his home in Lexington, Massachusetts, on April 24 at the age of 93. Saul joined the Brandeis faculty in 1950, and, in the course of his distinguished career, served as the first chair of the Department of Chemistry and the School of Science, the first Dean of the Faculty, and Brandeis’s first University Professor. He was an accomplished scholar and inventor, and dedicated teacher and mentor who will be missed by all who knew him.

On a personal note, I want to let you know that once I step down from the presidency of Brandeis University, I will assume the newly created position of President of the Mandel Foundation. Established in 1953 by Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel of Cleveland, Ohio, the Mandel Foundation is an internationally recognized philanthropy that helps provide outstanding leadership for the nonprofit world. The Foundation supports leadership education programs in its own institutions and at selected universities and organizations.

Its work coincides perfectly with my values and concerns, and I welcome the opportunity of serving with the Mandel family and Board. Shula and I will be moving to Brookline; she will continue her role on the faculty, and I will pursue further some of my current activities at Brandeis.

In closing, I wish you and your family a restful and pleasant summer.

Sincerely,

Jehuda Reinharz

19