Volume 8 Number 14
www.thebrandeishoot.com
Brandeis University’s Community Newspaper • Waltham, Mass.
September 2, 2011
Lawrence outlines vision of ‘selective excellence’ Lawrence and Goldstein outline academic future By Nathan Koskella Editor
photo courtesy of bemco
rescue squad Michael Kenwood ’94 (second from left) with his classmates and BEMCo colleagues.
BEMCo alum dies in hurricane rescue By Jon Ostrowsky Editor
Hurricane Irene struck the Brandeis family with tragedy this weekend, claiming the life of Michael Kenwood ’94, a university alumnus who lived the values of heroism and selflessness to their fullest degree. Kenwood, a former director of the Brandeis Emergency Medical Corps
(BEMCo) who dedicated his life to saving others as a volunteer emergency medical technician, died Sunday after attempting a rescue in Princeton Township, NJ, during Hurricane Irene. He was 39. “Michael is a hero. Not for how he lost his life. But for how he lived it,” Peter Simon ’94, a close friend of Kenwood and president of the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad, said
in a eulogy Thursday afternoon at the The Robert Shoem Menorah Chapel in Paramus. “For how he volunteered to make his community better, for how he served our Squad, and for how he loved his family and friends.” Kenwood served as a volunteer EMT on the Princeton First Aid and Rescue Squad and responded to a call See BEMCO, page 15
When President Fred Lawrence took the office of president Jan. 1, his top priorities were already out of his hands: He had to hire half an administration to run from scratch. But the resignations of the second-in-command provost and the dean of arts and sciences also presented him with an opportunity to personally reshape Brandeis academics, the university’s most important asset and objective, with an entirely new vision. The vision may be one of “selective excellence,” a phrase of Lawrence’s that his new provost Steve Goldstein chose to interpret by saying, “Nothing we do at Brandeis is worth doing unless we’re doing it with excellence.”
When asked independently if this included specific departmental cuts or other priority shifts of one discipline over another, both men were noncommittal. With his appointments of University of Chicago professor and hospital administrator Goldstein as provost and Professor Susan Birren as dean, Lawrence picked one outsider, one longtime Brandeisian; one far-off administrator, one homegrown faculty member; one scientist and one more scientist. Lawrence in an interview with The Hoot acknowledged the similarity of Goldstein and Birren’s credentials, but lauded their overall fit for the university’s successful administration. “They both have expertise in the field and they have a broad understanding,” the president said. “I received a range of opinions from the faculty, and Susan [especially, since she has known faculty here for years] was broadly supported.” Lawrence said the same went for Goldstein when he was introduced to the school. See VISION, page 15
News Analysis
Lawrence leadership style offers new vision, direction for Brandeis By Jon Ostrowsky Editor
As university President Fred Lawrence welcomed his first incoming class at Brandeis this week, he talked confidently about a university that has rediscovered itself following an international controversy over The Rose Art Museum. The Rose settlement reflects just one example of how Lawrence’s leadership style is vastly different from his predecessor, Jehuda Reinharz. When Lawrence, Provost Steve Goldstein, Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren and Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel took the stage at the orientation “Brandeis Beginnings” on Monday to welcome new students and their parents, our community saw an entirely new leadership team that began when Lawrence took office in January. University presidents serve as the leader of a community and their job encompasses a wide range of roles—fundraising and alumni development, student life, academics, admissions, campus infrastructure and relations with parents. Lawrence has just completed his eighth month in office and so, while he has begun laying the groundwork for a strategic vision in each of these areas, it is his attitude and the Brandeis image he reflects that others are reacting to most. When Lawrence commented on the strategic vision of the university, he explained, “I think The Rose was a chapter that needed to be closed.” That’s a different line of reasoning than Reinharz adopted, who attempted to spin the story, backpedal and downplay its importance. Lawrence recognized the significance of The
Adventures of Couch Surfing page 17
Rose to Brandeis when he began meeting with the litigants in the lawsuit last fall before he took office. That’s a different line of decision-making than Reinharz had, who believed that major decisions on The Rose did not need community input. Those styles in decision-making represent the difference between confidence and arrogance. Friends of Brandeis will disagree with Lawrence’s policies in the future, but they are unlikely to call him arrogant, as one rabbi did of Reinharz while protesting the decision to select Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren to deliver the 2010 commencement address. As he welcomed the new students to campus on Monday in the Gosman Athletic Center, Lawrence told them, “Everyone of you richly belongs here and deserves to be here. And if you ever run out of confidence in yourselves, then you borrow some of mine, because I’ve got more than enough for each and every one of you with a little left over.” In an interview on his first official day of work Thursday, Flagel reflected on the mistakes that university administrators can make and continue to repeat, explaining that he is always careful to avoid that process. “There’s a theory called ‘garbage-can decision-making.’ And another word for it is having a solution in search of a problem,” Flagel said. “Here’s something that worked for me, so I’m just going to keep doing that. Doesn’t matter if it’s what fits.” For now, that theory of decision-making is no longer taking place at Brandeis. And for that reason, this university has discovered a new image, receiving more positive media attention See LAWRENCE, page 4
photo by nafiz ‘fizz ’ ahmed/the hoot
brandeis beginnings Lawrence and senior administrators share a laugh Monday in Gosman.
Goldstein and Birren named to top posts By Nathan Koskella Editor
President Lawrence made his top two academic appointments during the summer recess, naming Steve Goldstein the university provost and announcing Professor Susan Birren of biology to become the dean of arts and sciences. The announcements completed a months-long search for the top two academic administrators at the university. Steve Goldstein ’78, a professor at the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, has been appointed provost and chief academic officer, university President Fred Lawrence announced Wednesday. The board of trustees unanimously accepted Lawrence’s naming of Goldstein, a pediatric physician and former faculty member at Yale, to succeed eight-year provost Marty Krauss as Brandeis’ second-in-command. “His background in education and his Brandeis experience as an undergraduate, un-
Lessons of the Rose Art Museum Impressions, page 7
derstanding the mission of the liberal arts university,” Lawrence said in an interview with The Hoot, was integral to his selection. “He has the skills of an administrator, the skills of a scholar and the skills of a teacher—with the soul of the Brandeis experience,” he said. Brandeis, proud of terming itself “the liberal arts university,” will now have a medical doctor and scientific researcher atop its academic administration. Lawrence made clear that even with all Goldstein’s success in science and medicine, he found “a passion for the arts and humanities” in Goldstein as well. Goldstein said that far from being forced to balance the liberals arts and humanities with the sciences, he does not find them to be “separate endeavors.” “They all start with the same basic core skills: motivation and rationality,” he said. Even to Goldstein, a medical doctor and scientific researcher, “the importance to society of the arts See ADMINISTRATION, page 3
Senior Releases New Single page 12