Newspaper Page Text
Brandels University plans
double celebration for Oct
by Jerry Rosenwaike
WALTHAM, Mass (JTA)—
When Brandeis University
inaugurates Evelyn Handkerasits
fifth president Oct. 9 at Boston’s
historic Symphony Hall, it will
also be celebrating another
university milestone—its 35th
anniversary.
"You know, most people are
amazed when you remind them
that Brandeis is so very young,”
said Dr. Abram Sachar, Brandeis'
founding president who was
inaugurated at Symphony Hall
Oct. 7, 1948 "It is as if they cannot
believe we have come so far, so
fast.”
The university is named for
Louis Dembitz Brandeis, "the
people’s lawyer” and the first Jew
to sit on the United States
Supreme Court. The nation's only
Jewish-founded, nonsectarian
liberal arts institution of higher
learning, Brandeis today is widely
recognized by leading educators as
one of the country’s finest private
liberal arts universities.
Although it has no medical
school, Brandeis students
consistently are accepted at
medical schools at a rate that far
exceeds the national average.
Although it has no law school,
Brandeis students have historically
been sought after by the best law
schools in the nation.
The Brandeis success story is
one that, ironically, was bom of
failure—the dissolution of a
medical and veterinary college,
Middlesex University in Waltham
that previously occupied the
Brandeis site. Fortuitously, at the
same time insolvency loomed for
Middlesex, a committee of public-
spirited Jews in New York City
was seeking a campus for their
plan to establish a Jewish-founded
university.
After hearing about the plight of
Middlesex, and following a series
of negotiations between the two
parties, the campus and the charter
passed to the committee with no
purchase investment.
Although the group had to
assume many of Middlesex’s
outstanding obligations, Jews in
America could be “a host at last' to
gifted young male and female
scholars. But the committee—
there were eight founding
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Sachar
trustees—had no money, no
constituency and no educational
objectives except the conviction
that the school represented a gift
from the Jewish people to
American higher education.
“In the past 35 years, the
precious gift has been sustained by
Jews and non-Jews alike,” said
Sachar, who served for 20 years as
president and for many years
thereafter as chancellor.
In order to represent a lasting
bequest to America by the “people
of the book,” Brandeis felt it had to
epitomize the best. It had to strike
boldly for the top rank
immediately, using as models the
Harvards, the Princetons, the
Stanfords and others of the
traditional elite. “That was a
conscious decision by the eight
founders,” explained Sachar.
“They wanted the best students,
the most distinguished faculty, and
the most adequate facilities. They
were not about to accept anything
less.” Brandeis’ first entering class
in 1948—the same year Israel was
founded—consisted of 107
intrepid young men and women
and 13 equally adventurous
faculty. Today the nearly 3,500
undergraduate and graduate
students—scholarly legatees of the
1948 pioneers—freely choose an
energetic intellectual atmosphere,
a distinguished and internationally
known faculty, and an institution
that has, from its inception,
maintained the highest academic
standards.
Brandeis' commitment to
excellence was swiftly recognized
by Phi Beta Kappa, the national
honor society, which granted
recognition to Brandeis just 13
years after the University was
founded—the youngest institution
so honored in over 100 years.
Recently, Brandeis was one of only
12 universities in America ranked
among the top 10 in the country in
three or more of six undergraduate
disciplines surveyed.
At a time when many colleges
and universities have abandoned
or cut back their commitment to
liberal arts in favor of technical
training, Brandeis has actually
strengthened its traditional
commitment to the liberal arts.
“As our society becomes more
complicated and increasingly
technologically oriented,” said one
Brandeis administrator, “the
ability to learn how to learn and
apply knowledge—both hallmarks
of a liberal arts training—will
become even more valuable in the
future."
For the overwhelming majority
of jthe nearly 17,000 men and
women who are Brandeis alumni,
such a philosophy 1 has equipped
them for leadership positions in
business, medicine, the law, the
arts, and nearly every other
professional endeavor.
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PAGE 15 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE August 26. 1983