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In a Daily Beast exclusive, a top Brandeis official opens up about the university’s financial collapse—including a potential $79 million deficit. The stark choice: Fire more than half of the faculty or sell the Rose art collection. Brandeis University, which claims Irving Howe, Thomas Friedman, Christie Hefner and Walt Mossberg among its alums—and trustees such as Michael Steinhardt, Vartan Gregorian, and John Rosenwald—has incurred the wrath of the art world for deciding to shut down its Rose Art Museum and sell off its famed collection, which was valued at $350 million in 2007. Other museums have sold off works before...

A financial crisis is forcing Brandeis University to close the school's 48-year-old Rose Art Museum and to sell off a prized collection of contemporary American art, the university announced today.

"These attacks that he's not supportive of Israel are just not true," said Rabbi Steve Bob of Congregation Etz Chaim in Lombard, Ill. Jonathan Sarna, the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, said he believes Rabbis for Obama is a first in the Jewish community. "I certainly can remember many newspaper ads that rabbis would sign" backing a candidate, Sarna said, but "I can't remember another organization with this kind of title." Given the increased mix of religion and politics that the United States has seen in the past 20 to 30...

BOSTON—A longtime Brandeis University professor says he has been the victim of "vindictive persecution" by school administrators after he was found in violation of the university's nondiscrimination policy for describing a racist word in one of his classes. Politics professor Donald Hindley, who has taught at the Waltham school for 47 years, had a monitor placed in his classroom and was asked to undergo sensitivity training after he told students in his Latin American politics class last semester that Mexican migrants are sometimes referred to pejoratively as "wetbacks," according to the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which is aiding...

Dr. Pipes Comes to Brandeis By Linda Keay April 24, 2007 A metal detector and police outside the lecture hall doors aroused curiosity by students at Brandeis University. A young woman walking by the apparatus frowned and shook her head in disapproval. Two young men stopped and watched as people cued up at the hall door. “What’s going on?” asked one. “Pipes,” said the other. “Oh,” said the first. The two got in line. One said he thinks Pipes is a racist. The other said, “But he’s right about a lot of things,” adding, “but maybe he is a racist.”...

In October 2006, the Brandeis Middle East Review and the Middle East Forum at Brandeis invited me to speak at the University, and I quickly accepted. The hosts and I selected the date April 23 and the topic ("The Islamization of Europe?"), and everything appeared settled. But on Jan. 23, former President Jimmy Carter visited Brandeis, Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz quasi-debated him, and the ensuing contention prompted the University to establish a closed student-faculty committee to monitor speakers on the Middle East. (This committee comes on top of an already existing committee the provost created earlier in response to...

BOSTON --Former President Carter has decided not to visit Brandeis University to talk about his new book "Palestine: Peace not Apartheid" because he does not want to debate Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz as the university had requested. "I don't want to have a conversation even indirectly with Dershowitz," Carter told The Boston Globe. "There is no need ... for me to debate somebody who, in my opinion, knows nothing about the situation in Palestine." ... "There is no debate in America about anything that would be critical of Israel," [Carter] said. But it's Carter who is unwilling to debate...

Maybe one of the reasons that we have never-ending battles over academic freedom is that many academics seem to define it differently. “Academic freedom means that if I think that there may be an intellectual payoff to be had by turning an academic lens on material others consider trivial — golf tees, gourmet coffee, lingerie ads, convenience stores, street names, whatever — I should get a chance to try,” veteran professor Stanley Fish recently wrote in The New York Times. “If I manage to demonstrate to my peers and students that studying this material yields insights into matters of general...

Brandeis sparks new controversy By NICOLA BRODIE / JTA Despite mixed feelings in and outside the college community, Brandeis University is standing by a decision to give Tony Kushner, a Jewish playwright who is fiercely critical of Israel, The decision to honor Kushner, a Pulitzer Prize winner known most recently for his screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Munich, has been blasted by groups like the Zionist Organization of America. Kushner, who is Jewish, has called the founding of the State of Israel a "mistake," has accused Israel of carrying out ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and told reporters "it would have been...

Brandeis University has created a special relationship with the Arab Palestinian al-Quds University, a partnership which it says will “make the world a better place.” This is a pathetic gesture, one which blinds the recognition of evil. Al-Quds University honors the murderers of Israelis and Americans. Brandeis continues working towards “bridging cultural divides” even though the murderous intent seething on the al-Quds side of the bridge continues unabated. The long relationship of these sister universities has done nothing to change the final solution envisioned by the “partner.” Al-Quds University is a breeding ground for terrorists whose goal is to murder...

Brandeis University began in 1948, according to its mission statement, "under the sponsorship of the American Jewish community" in order to "embody its highest ethical and cultural values." In this age of the ascendancy of the academic Left, Brandeis is in danger of becoming the polar opposite of those noble aspirations: a useful idiot of the global jihad. First there was the appointment of Khalil Shikaki as senior fellow at its Crown Center for Middle East Studies, and the flat refusal to consider the evidence linking Shikaki to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Now comes an honorary doctorate to be awarded to...

On March 10, parts of the Patriot Act expire again. Section 215, most famous for the alleged threat it poses to library patrons ... doesn't single out libraries but relates to official requests for "... books, records, ... etc.". The provision is not known to have been invoked yet .... To hear the ALA talk, librarians are the last bulwark defending our most cherished civil liberties against government assault. Yet two recent examples show again that self-anointed guardians of the public good can be very selective about the people, and rights, they choose to protect. One example came from Newton,...

Providing new evidence of the academic Left’s hardened anti-Americanism and sympathy for jihad terror, Khalil Shikaki has been appointed a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. Shikaki’s involvement with Middle Eastern politics and culture has long been more hands-on than that of most academics. On February 24, 1998, terrorism expert Steven Emerson gave this testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee: “Professor Khalil Shikaki seemed to possess such an impassioned voice for moderate political solutions to the Middle Eastern problems that it prompted the USF [the University of South Florida] to finalize its cooperative relationship with...

Providing new evidence of the academic Left’s hardened anti-Americanism and sympathy for jihad terror, Khalil Shikaki has been appointed a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. On February 24, 1998, terrorism expert Steven Emerson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Shikaki ferried “information, messages and even operational materials to his brother Fathi in Damascus, head of Islamic Jihad. When publicly asked however, Khalil always maintained he had no contact with his brother.”

Providing new evidence of the academic Left’s hardened anti-Americanism and sympathy for jihad terror, Khalil Shikaki has been appointed a senior fellow at Brandeis University’s Crown Center for Middle East Studies. On February 24, 1998, terrorism expert Steven Emerson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Shikaki ferried “information, messages and even operational materials to his brother Fathi in Damascus, head of Islamic Jihad. When publicly asked however, Khalil always maintained he had no contact with his brother.” On May 23, 2000, Emerson gave additional information about Khalil Shikaki when testifying about the World & Islam Studies Enterprise before the...

I will be applying to the Near Eastern/Judaic Studies PhD program at Brandeis University (plus other universities as well). I was wondering if there were any Brandeis alums here on Free Republic who could give me some advice on how to go about applying and getting accepted.

US intelligence officials are now beginning to believe that a woman, some sources described as 'the Al Qaeda chick', may have helped planned logistics, but was not a major participant in the terror network's activities. Dr Aafia Siddiqui (31), an alumna of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), was detained in Karachi on March 29 as soon as she returned from an overseas trip. Sources told rediff.com that her links to Al Qaeda had been corroborated by the outfit's operations chief Khalid Shaikh Mohammad, currently in the custody of US law enforcement officials after his arrest in Karachi a few...

First Woman al Qaida Suspect By: ANWAR IQBAL Source: United Press International WASHINGTON, Mar 29, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- The first woman accused of links with the al-Qaida terrorist network has a doctorate in neurological science and is a mother of three, FBI officials said. The FBI recently issued a worldwide search notice for Aafia Siddiqui, the first woman the federal investigations agency has accused of actively helping Osama bin Laden's terrorist network. Bin Laden is the Saudi exile suspected of being the driving force behind the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Siddiqui, 31, lived in Boston...

WASHINGTON (AP) - A former Boston woman sought by the FBI for questioning about possible ties to the al-Qaida terror network is in custody in Pakistan, U.S. law enforcement officials said Tuesday. Two officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Aafia Siddiqui, 31, was detained by Pakistani authorities in the past few days and was being interrogated at an undisclosed location. She originally is from Pakistan. The FBI in March put out a global alert for Siddiqui, who has a biology degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and wrote a doctoral thesis on neurological sciences at Brandeis University in...

Brandeis divided over impending war against Iraq By Benjamin Freed With President Bush's speech last night signaling imminent conflict with Iraq, opinions on the war have divided the Brandeis community. "I still feel like the president hasn't shown us any reason why we should go to war. He hasn't shown us any of these links, he just keeps saying it," said Steven Laferriere '04, a moderator of the Anti-War Coalition's mailing list. In recent months, the Coalition has been making announcements about its planned walkout should the United States attack Iraq. With the prospect of war increasing this week, Laferriere...