Brandeis University was founded in 1948 “by the American Jewish community at a time when many elite universities were discriminating against Jews,” according to its website. 

As Jewish students today at many elite universities are facing levels of discrimination on campus not seen in several generations, Ronald Liebowitz, who has served as the president of Brandeis since 2016, sat down with Jewish Insider to discuss this precarious moment in academia. 

Liebowitz spoke of the challenges that come with leading a historically Jewish institution today and figuring out where it fits in the larger academic space. “When I go to the West Coast and talk about Brandeis, people there say ‘we’re not gonna send our kids to Brandeis, they don’t wanna study Hebrew or Talmud, they don’t wanna wear kippahs.’ And I said that’s not who we are. While on the East Coast, places like Riverdale or even Manhattan, people say ‘does Brandeis remember it’s Jewish? It’s abandoned its Jewish roots,’” Liebowitz told JI. 

Liebowitz, a self-proclaimed “firm believer in free speech,” defended his decision to ban the group Students for Justice in Palestine from Brandeis’ campus in November — making Brandeis the first private university to do so since Oct. 7. 

“One thing I’m also opinionated about is selective free speech and a university cannot take selective stances on when it’s OK to do what some might describe as hate speech— I call it gratuitous speech,” he said. “I look at gratuitous speech as speech that is unnecessary to advance the mission of the institution. To me the mission of the institution is to promote the engagement of different ideas, even as difficult as they are. The SJP situation to me was one of those examples where they were simply being a mouthpiece [for Hamas], which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S.”

Below is a curated transcript of JI’s conversation with Brandeis President Liebowitz:

Q: In light of rising antisemitism on campuses, does your founding mission have renewed resonance? 

Part of the larger picture is understanding that Brandeis is somewhat unique within the whole realm of 3,500 or so colleges and universities in the U.S. in that it’s the only secular university founded by the American Jewish community. With that has always come certain expectations and hopes but also certain guarantees that Brandeis was not going to be a yeshiva, it was going to be a liberal arts university that respected Jewish values and its Jewish roots. That was made clear by our founding president, Abram Sachar, who wanted Brandeis to be more like a Princeton or a Swarthmore and not necessarily a religious institution. We carried with us for a long time this notion of what it means to be a Jewish founded institution when American Jewry was changing so dramatically.  

At our 50th anniversary, there was a telling article in The New York Times that asked what’s the purpose of Brandeis now? Jews have entered all aspects of society so is there a mission for Brandeis? Fast-forward 25 years, I don’t think people are asking that question any longer. 

We have to contemporize our founding values going forward. What I found when I got here was a mixed bag, where people are not quite sure. There was a sizable contingent, including Jewish faculty members, who would ask why we have to talk about our Jewish roots and values. To me, that’s what drew me to Brandeis, the exceptional factor that made me want to come into a second presidency after doing 11 years at Middlebury College and to try to steer Brandeis into what I call threading the needle – being both a Jewish institution and very much committed to the secular nature of its founding. 

It’s been a challenge but that background puts us in a very different situation than others because the feeling was that Jewish students have been privileged on this campus. There was a feeling of pride but also maybe guilt that Jews have had this privilege. To that I say for 2,000 or so years Jews were wandering around without their own place. Now that they have their own place they feel guilty about it. 

Since Oct. 7, has Brandeis seen a rise in applications for admission among Jews? Why has there been a decline in non-Jewish applicants?   

We have not seen a marked increase. Our domestic applications are flat to a little up, our international applications from China are a bit down. When we talked to admissions officers, the feeling right after Oct. 7 was that this incoming class was already set in their college applications so we weren’t going to see a big shift. 

What we were advised was to look for the yield. Look for how many students chose to come to a place like Brandeis that is identified as being much more hospitable and friendly to Jewish students and that we might see come April or May when students start accepting their offers for admission. So we haven’t seen a big bump in applications but we don’t know what we’re going to see in our yield. 

[The decline in non-Jewish applicants] is mostly international. We have a large number of students from China – about 16% of our student body. We saw a decline that is attributable to a whole bunch of things, not least of which is the political environment and also the challenges of getting visas over the last three years. 

Have you explicitly branded yourself as a safe haven for Jewish students, especially in the Boston area where many elite universities have been a hotbed for antisemitism?

Before Oct. 7, we started a branding campaign in May. The essence was to really articulate and remind folks of why Brandeis existed and what it stands for. What we found from the branding campaign was that people who had known about Brandeis benefited from these ads because what we found in the two studies we’ve done since I became president was there was brand confusion. 

When I go to the West Coast and talk about Brandeis, people there say ‘we’re not gonna send our kids to Brandeis, they don’t wanna study Hebrew or Talmud, they don’t wanna wear kippahs.’ And I said that’s not who we are. While on the East Coast, places like Riverdale or even Manhattan, people say ‘does Brandeis remember it’s Jewish? It’s abandoned its Jewish roots.’

Brandeis also has a campaign with Robert Kraft to combat antisemitism on campus, established before Oct. 7. What has the partnership accomplished and how does the new entity differ from work being done by other established Jewish organizations? 

Robert’s wife, Myra, was on the board of trustees of Brandeis for 15 years. He’s been a friend of Brandeis and we had a lot of conversations. His view of how to fight antisemitism had a slightly different slant than mine as an academic and president of a university. But we came to a meeting of the minds with his desire to have a part of this be about undergraduate and graduate students and my insistence that we do something with leadership in higher education. 

Unless and until leaders of colleges understand antisemitism and be given some sort of tool kit to deal with it, all the student engagement in the world is not going to matter. We need it from the top. So we created the program last year. First, it was an undergraduate internship program that students are placed at Robert’s Foundation to Combat Antisemitism, doing work for that foundation, engaging in research. That’s been going on now for three semesters.

The second part is [focused on] leadership. In November, more than 100 administrators came to campus for a two-day conference here. The idea was a pilot program just for greater Boston area schools and around three weeks before the conference, we [decided] to include other institutions facing problems like Columbia and Penn. Our goal in this part of the program was not to compete with those organizations doing great work in the space, but rather to coordinate and bring together all these different groups so we can share resources with senior administrators. 

We’re having a second set of events this semester as well, aimed at higher education leaders. Our goal is to expand this program to K-12 leadership as well, because the feeling is once kids get to university it’s almost too late. 

In November, Brandeis became the first private university to ban the group Students for Justice in Palestine. How did you come to this decision, which some say violates freedom of speech, and where do you draw the line between free speech and hate speech?  

I’m a firm believer in free speech. One thing I’m also opinionated about is selective free speech and a university cannot take selective stances on when it’s ok to do what some might describe as hate speech — I call it gratuitous speech. I look at gratuitous speech as speech that is unnecessary to advance the mission of the institution. To me the mission of the institution is to promote the engagement of different ideas, even as difficult as they are. The SJP situation to me was one of those examples where they were simply being a mouthpiece [for Hamas], which has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. 

That was important in the decision, but what was really most important was the unnecessary nature of the commentary that was being spewed, mostly on social media, aimed at Jewish students. When you’re telling Jewish students there’s only one solution, that has a real deep meaning. People can claim that these students didn’t know what they were doing or that they were just pushing forth ideas from National SJP, but they have an impact on this campus. For free speech not to advance the educational atmosphere on campus, but rather to make it smaller and harass people, all that really led to the decision to do this. 

All we were saying was you can continue to promote your views on Palestinian rights, we’re not against that at all. But we’re not going to fund the type of speech that’s going on. You’re not going to be able to use the name Brandeis to do that. You’re not going to be able to take advantage of the perks, reserving space and so forth, if you use this type of language. 

Brandeis University hosted its first leadership symposium on antisemitism in higher education for university administrators for two days in November. Soon after, presidents of Harvard, MIT and Penn testified before Congress and refused to say that calling for the genocide of Jews violates their university policies. What sense did the seminars at Brandeis give you on how Ivy League university leaders are addressing the issue? 

I do think they are taking it seriously but we have to acknowledge that this is a highly complex situation. This is not new, antisemitism has been going on for thousands of years. Antisemitism waxes and wanes and also comes in new forms. This newest form of antisemitism is showing itself as anti-Zionism, which is even more complicated. The Israel factor and the ignorance surrounding Israel’s history is very unfortunate. 

I could get into the TikTok generation and how much students are actually learning these days on the topic but are very willing to give their opinions on the topic. I think these institutions are trying to take it very seriously, but it’s tough to figure out where to get things going. It’s pervasive, it was under the surface, people argue it’s in the curriculum or the self-conscious. I do think that leadership of institutions are trying to address the issue but it’s not so simple.

How much can any one university president do to push against growing campus antisemitism? What needs to be done to change the university bureaucracy?  

I’m not going to underestimate the challenges. The challenges are great, even here at Brandeis where one would think [otherwise]. 

I have a lot of opposition on the faculty. In fact, we’ve had multiple faculty meetings, regular and special, where the faculty have expressed great concern and criticism that the institution was leaning too heavily one way and was not being fully objective. It’s not so simple. 

I think it’s harder at larger institutions. Harvard is known to be a decentralized enterprise, that’s historic. The board of trustees at any of these universities has to be united and in support of the president, that the president is going to make any type of leadership move. That’s been the big challenge — presidents feel pulled in so many directions. I like to joke that we have nine constituencies that we think about every day and if you could be on the good side of five of them, you’re really succeeding as university president. I think that’s what’s going on. I’m very fortunate to have the support of my board, they’ve been terrific and 100% supportive. 

How big a problem is the lack of ideological diversity at universities?  

I do believe that there’s a very strong bias to the left of center in university faculty. But I don’t believe it necessarily translates into what goes on in the classroom as you’re hearing from the biggest critics. In other words, I know colleagues at both Middlebury and Brandeis who walk that line very well. They have strong personal opinions and their political leanings might be one way, but they present material that is unbiased. 

That’s not saying what you’re hearing about, the one-sided curriculum doesn’t exist. It exists for sure, I’ve seen it. You look at syllabi of some classes and you question whether or not students are getting a full view of what the issues are. 

In the next year at Brandeis we are reviewing what is called the core curriculum. It was up for review anyway; I’m encouraging the dean of arts and sciences to lead that conversation to ensure that our classrooms are that neutral space for students who have different opinions and can actually raise those opinions. Now our faculty might have deeply seated views of things. Eighteen to 22 year olds are just forming their opinions and so the idea that you can create and keep an open environment in the classroom is of utmost importance, especially these days. 

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion programs at colleges have come under scrutiny in light of recent events that underscore how programs designed to promote inclusion have failed to address campus antisemitism and sometimes perpetuate it. There’s a debate among Jewish leaders on whether to work within the current system or to dismantle the ideology altogether. What approach do you think is best? 

I think you have to separate ideology and goals. The goals of DEI are right. In the abstract, small ‘d,’ small ‘e,’ small ‘i,’ those goals are terrific. Who doesn’t want diversity in the classroom? When I was a full time faculty member I loved having students who challenged me and also challenged other students. The equity issue is problematic in the sense that equity today is defined by equity of outcome, which I think is the wrong approach. Equality of opportunity is certainly the ‘e’ I would put forward. 

Inclusion is belonging and you want people on campus to feel that they’re part of the larger campus so they can participate in all the activities both in the classroom and outside. So I think the goals of DEI are admirable and are something we have to maintain.

The ideology of DEI, what’s become of DEI, is being shown to come up short. Some groups do get left out. Intersectionality has made it impossible for those with multiple identities to fit in, Jews being the primary one. In my view, we step back and ask ourselves what aspects of DEI do we want to retain, how are they best advanced and really question whether our DEI office has served well. 

The DEI division is hosting this month a conference with 25 speakers about racism, antisemitism and the whole question of where Jews fit in and why they’ve been left out. 

So I do believe the goals are great. The ideology that has emerged in the first 15 years of DEI — cause it’s not really an old organization on campuses — has unfortunately become too narrow.