布兰迪斯大学｜Brandeis University

Brandeis University (pronounced: bran-dice) is a private research university with a liberal arts focus,[1] located in Waltham, Massachusetts, United States. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, nine miles (14 km) west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students.[2] It was ranked by the U.S. News and World Report as the number 31 national university in the United States.[3]

Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a coeducational institution on the site of the former Middlesex University. The Heller School for Social Policy and Management, founded in 1959, is noteworthy for its graduate programs in social policy, social work, and international development[citation needed].

The university is named for the first Jewish Justice of the United States Supreme Court, Louis Dembitz Brandeis (1856 1941).

Brandeis is also sponsor of the Wien International Scholarship for non-American students.

一、About Brandeis

The schools of the University include:

The College of Arts and Sciences

The Graduate School of Arts and Sciences

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management

Rabb School of Summer and Continuing Studies

Brandeis International Business School

The College of Arts and Sciences comprises 24 departments and 22 interdepartmental programs, which offer 41 majors and 46 minors. Brandeis is home to the Rose Art Museum, a museum of modern and contemporary art, widely renowned as the best modern art museum in New England.

The Brandeis University Press, a member of the University Press of New England, publishes books in a variety of scholarly and general interest fields.

The Goldfarb Library at Brandeis has more than 1.2 million books and 60,000 e-journals. It also has a section of monthly issues.

二、Presidents

The presidents of Brandeis University have been:

Abram L. Sachar 1948-1968

Morris B. Abram 1968-1970

Charles I. Schottland 1970-1972

Marver H. Bernstein 1972-1983

Evelyn E. Handler 1983-1991

Stuart H. Altman (interim) 1990-1991

Samuel O. Thier, M.D. 1991-1994

Jehuda Reinharz 1994-current

三、Student life

The university has an active student government, the Brandeis Student Union, as well as more than 270 student organizations . Fraternities and sororities are officially prohibited by Brandeis University, as they are contrary to a central tenet of the university, namely, that student organizations be open to all students, with membership determined by competency or interest. Exclusive or secret societies are inconsistent with the principles of openness to which the University is committed. The university is 9 miles (14 km) west of Boston, accessible through a commuter rail on campus, a free shuttle Thursday through Sunday, or the nearby MBTA subway stations.

Brandeis has two administratively independent student newspapers, The Justice and The Hoot, and one satirical paper, The Blowfish. WBRS at 100.1 FM is the school s radio station.

Emergency medical services are provided by the Brandeis Emergency Medical Corps (BEMCo).

Escort services are provided around the campus and into Waltham by the student-run Branvan . They run on a daily schedule from 4:00 pm to 2:30 am on weekdays and from 12:00 pm to 2:30 am on weekends.

Brandeis has eleven a cappella groups, six undergraduate-run theater companies, one sketch comedy troupe (Boris Kitchen), and four improv-comedy groups -To Be Announced, False Advertising, Bad Grammer, and Crowd Control, as well as many other cultural and arts clubs.

Cholmondeley s coffeehouse, commonly rerred to as Chums , is located in Brandeis Usen Castle. Chums is a popular site for student performances and concerts, including Tracy Chapman, Joan Baez, and Genesis (notable as their first American performance). Chums is also considered to be the inspiration for Central Perk, the coffeehouse featured on the popular television show Friends.

四、History of Brandeis

1、Founders

Names associated with the conception of Brandeis include Israel Goldstein, George Alpert, C. Ruggles Smith, Albert Einstein, and Abram L. Sachar.

Usen Castle, the most recognized building on campus

C. Ruggles Smith was the son of Dr. John Hall Smith, founder of Middlesex University, who had died in 1944. In 1946, the university was on the brink of financial collapse. At the time, it was one of the few medical schools in the U. S. that did not impose a Jewish quota; but it had never been able to secure AMA accreditation in part, its founder believed, due to institutional antisemitism in the AMA and, as a result, Massachusetts had all but shut it down.

Israel Goldstein was a prominent rabbi in New York from 1918 until 1960 (when he immigrated to Israel), and an influential Zionist. Bore 1946, he had headed the New York Board of Rabbis, the Jewish National Fund, and the Zionist Organization of America, and helped found the National Conference of Christians and Jews. On his eightieth birthday, in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin and other leaders of the government, the parliament, and the Zionist movement assembled at his house to pay him tribute.But among all his accomplishments, the one chosen by the New York Times to headline his obituary was: Rabbi Israel Goldstein, A Founder of Brandeis.

C. Ruggles Smith, desperate for a way to save something of Middlesex University, learned of a New York committee headed by Goldstein that was seeking a campus to establish a Jewish-sponsored secular university, and approached Goldstein with a proposal to give the Middlesex campus and charter to Goldstein s committee, in the hope that his committee might possess the apparent ability to reestablish the School of Medicine on an approved basis. Goldstein was concerned about being saddled with a failing medical school, but excited about the opportunity to secure a 100-acre (0.40 km2) campus not far from New York, the premier Jewish community in the world, and only 10 miles (16 km) from Boston, one of the important Jewish population centers. Goldstein agreed to accept Smith s offer.

Goldstein then proceeded to recruit George Alpert, a Boston lawyer with fund-raising experience as national vice president of the United Jewish Appeal.

George Alpert (1898-September 11, 1988) was a Boston lawyer who had worked his way through Boston University School of Law and cofounded the firm of Alpert and Alpert. His firm had a long association with the New York, New Haven and Hartford railroad, of which he was to become president from 1956 to 1961[8][9] (He is best known today as the father of Richard Alpert (Baba Ram Dass)). He was influential in Boston s Jewish community. His Judaism tended to be social rather than spiritual. He was involved in assisting children displaced from Germany.. Alpert was to be chairman of Brandeis from 1946 to 1954, and a director from 1946 until his death.

Goldstein also recruited Albert Einstein, whose involvement, while stormy and short-lived, was extremely important, as it drew national attention to the nascent university. The founding organization was named The Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc. and early press accounts emphasized his involvement.

2、The Einstein incident

The origin of what was to become Brandeis was closely associated with the name of Albert Einstein from February 5, 1946, when he agreed to the establishment of the Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc., until June 22, 1947, when he withdrew his support.

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.

On August 19, the plans for the new university were announced by prominent rabbi and Zionist Israel Goldstein, president of the Albert Einstein Foundation. Goldstein said that the planned university was to be supported by contributions from Jewish organizations and individuals, and stressed the point that the institution was to be without quotas and open to all regardless of race, color, or creed. The institution was to be deeply conscious both of the Hebraic tradition of Torah looking upon culture as a birthright, and of the American ideal of an educated democracy. In later stories the New York Times capsule characterization of Brandeis was a Jewish-supported non-quota university.

Einstein and Goldstein clashed almost immediately. 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 Spellman to participate in a fundraising event. Einstein resigned on September 2, 1946. Believing the venture could not succeed without Einstein, Goldstein quickly agreed to resign himself, and Einstein returned; his bri departure was publicly denied

The Foundation acquired the campus of the Middlesex University in Waltham, which was almost dunct except for the Middlesex Veterinary and Medical College. The charter of this small and marginal operation was transferred to the Foundation along with the campus. The Foundation had pledged to continue operating it, but began to feel that it would never be more than third-rate, while its operating costs were burdensome at a time when the Foundation was trying to raise funds. Disputes arose whether to try to improve it as Einstein wished or to terminate it.[16] Einstein also became alarmed by press announcements that exaggerated the school s success at fundraising, and on June 22, 1947 he made a final break with the enterprise. The veterinary school was closed, despite indignant and well-publicized protests and demonstrations by the disappointed students and their parents .[16] George Alpert, a lawyer responsible for much of the organizational fort, gave another reason for the break: Einstein s desire to offer the presidency of the school to lt-wing scholar Harold Laski. Alpert characterized Laski as a man utterly alien to American principles of democracy, tarred with the Communist brush. [12] He said, I can compromise on any subject but one: that one is Americanism. .

Six years later, Einstein would decline 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.

Historians Slater and Slater commented that plagued by infighting, Brandeis in early 1948 seemed a project in serious trouble. Nonetheless, the school opened in the fall with 107 students. They list the opening of Brandeis as one of their Great Moments in Jewish History.

In 1954 Brandeis inaugurated a graduate program and became fully accredited.

3、Other incidents

From January 8-18, 1969 about 70 students captured and held then-student-center, Ford Hall.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 ten demands for better minority representation on campus.[20] Most of these demands were subsequently met. Ford Hall was demolished in August 2000 to make way for a new student center, the Shapiro Center which had its groundbreaking October 25, 2000, and was opened and dedicated October 3, 2002.