As we’ve all heard by now, President Ron Liebowitz recently resigned from his role as Brandeis’ president. His resignation followed a vote of no confidence from the faculty. The position will be filled on an interim basis by Arthur E. Levine (check out our features section for more on that). Of course, this has created an opening that the Board of Trustees will have to fill on a more permanent basis. Here are some things that the board should consider during the course of their search:
Their position on free speech
Free speech has been a major issue on campus over the past year. The administration under Liebowitz has been openly hostile to free speech rights. It first became an issue when Liebowitz made the controversial decision to de-charter the Brandeis chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) over their views on the war in Gaza. It’s worth noting that de-chartering was a tactic originally used by Southern segregationists to suppress civil rights protests by taking away the charter of groups such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored Persons (NAACP), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other civil rights organizations. The decision to de-charter SJP was announced in an op-ed piece in The Boston Globe written by Liebowitz, which included a list of phrases aligned with the pro-Palestine movement that “must not be tolerated.”
The next week, students gathered to hold what was supposed to be a peaceful protest demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the reinstatement of SJP. Students that were exercising their right to peacefully protest were assaulted by police officers, including from the Brandeis Police Department, as well as a somewhat shady private security firm called Provident Response. Seven arrests resulted from this protest. In an email sent to students after the protest, the administration made it clear that the reason for the violence and arrests was that the protesters used chants that the administration disapproved of.
Following the arrests, Liebowitz created the Presidential Task Force on Free Expression to re-evaluate Brandeis’ free speech policies. The task force is still ongoing, although I fear that they may place more, not fewer, restrictions on speech.
The fear surrounding free speech rights are evident with a look at The Hoot website. From The Hoot’s founding until 2022, we have found it necessary only five times to grant an author anonymity due to fear of retaliation. Last year alone, we had to do it twice. The articles where the author felt the need to hide their identity dealt with subjects that are important to discuss. Ironically, one of those articles was about a phrase the university had banned. It is vital to the paper and to the community that our authors feel comfortable sharing their opinions without fear.
Brandeis’ motto is “truth, even unto its innermost parts.” This is a fitting motto for a university named after Louis D. Brandeis, who was one of the greatest defenders of free speech in the history of the Supreme Court. The innermost parts of truth cannot be reached if students will be punished for expressing ideas different from those held by the administration, nor if they are afraid that they will.
The next president will have a lot of discretion in if or how the task force’s recommendations are implemented. The board should look for a president that will implement them in a way more conducive to freedom of speech than that of the previous administration. The next president should commit to peacefully resolving peaceful protests, not repressing them through violence. The next president must allow clubs to express views different from their own without fear of losing funding and recognition. To put it simply, the next president must support rather than oppose the rights of students to exercise their freedom of speech.
How they will deal with workers
Negotiations between the administration and several of the unions on campus are still ongoing. The next president will be responsible for setting the priorities of the administration during these negotiations. Currently, Brandeis workers are underpaid and overworked. Pay at Brandeis is well below the regional average for many of these workers. At a recent rally, workers described having to work two or three jobs to survive because the cost of living has gone up while Brandeis’ pay has not. It is in the school’s best interest to have the best talent working here. That will not happen if the pay here is unlivable. When searching for a new president, the board should look for someone that is willing to pay the people that make Brandeis run the amount they need to survive.
In the past year, The Hoot has reported on flagrant violations of workers’ rights, including 10-hour shifts with no breaks and wage theft that have occurred under the current administration. While it was technically Harvest Table and not Brandeis that committed these violations, the university has several ways to influence what occurs at the dining halls, up to and including the threat of not renewing their contract with Harvest Table. The new president should be someone who is ready and willing to use their power and their platform to stand up for dining workers.
In addition to influencing the contract negotiations, the next president will have to address dozens of vacancies in important roles left from the current administration. These vacancies are beginning to have actual negative impacts on the operations of the university. After being unable to fill the position of Sustainability Director for over a year, Brandeis shut down the sustainability office. Facilities services also recently announced that they were reducing the frequency of trash pickup at some locations due to reduced staffing levels.
All of this leaves the next president in a position to make a major decision very soon after taking office. Do they hire staff to fill these positions, spending even more from an already strained budget, or do they keep major positions unfilled and departments understaffed, leading to negative consequences within the university? This is not an easy question to answer, but the board should be sure that the new president has an answer before they hire them.
Their plan to fix the financial situation
By far the most serious issue the new president will face is the current financial crisis facing the university. Student tuition this semester is the highest it has ever been, and Brandeis was already among the most expensive universities in the world. Despite that, Brandeis is facing a financial shortfall. Donations have dropped since 2022. Brandeis currently operates on a budget deficit of two million dollars a year. As I’ve mentioned above, Brandeis has laid off staff and underpays its employees. In addition, Brandeis needs to build a new residence hall, which will result in taking on even more debt. The administration under President Liebowitz took some short-term steps to address these problems, including an increase in endowment spending, suspending plans for a new science building and delaying faculty raises for three months. The inability of the administration to address these issues is what prompted the faculty to issue their no-confidence vote in the first place.
How the next president deals with this situation in both the short and long term is likely to be the toughest part of their job. Any solution to the financial shortfall is likely to require a large increase in the amount of cash available. Indeed, the primary job of a president seems to be fundraising more than governing day-to-day operations within the university. Therefore, the board should require a potential president to present a plan to increase donations to Brandeis. They should look for someone with a proven track record of fundraising, particularly within an academic setting. The next president should also have skills in managing finances within a large institution, such as another university or a major corporation.
Potential presidents should also present a longer-term plan to increase the financial security of Brandeis. Such a plan could include things such as applying for increased federal funding, better endowment management or something else entirely. What matters is that they have a plan.
Their plan for housing
As I mentioned before, Brandeis will be constructing a new residence hall to solve the lack of availability of on-campus housing facing many upperclassmen. However, construction on that project will not even start until 2027 and will take several years to complete. In the meantime, many students are forced to live off-campus. This is especially challenging for students, since housing is less affordable than at any other time during history, including The Great Depression. The situation is even worse for Brandeis students, since Waltham is way more expensive than the national average. The median rent in Waltham is about $2,700 per month, or over $32,000 per year.
Brandeis cannot go several years without any kind of plan to house its students. The next president should make sure that there is a plan in place to provide housing to as many students as possible and to assist those who cannot get on-campus housing find an affordable option nearby. I will admit that I don’t know what a good solution to this situation would be, or if there even is an easy short-term solution. However, I think it is reasonable to expect that a university president would be able to figure something out when this issue affects the lives of so many students.
Do they reflect Brandeis’ core values?
Brandeis was founded on ideals of inclusion, truth and justice. These are the values that attracted many of us to Brandeis while we were searching for colleges. We need a president that believes in these values and lives them in their daily lives, not just uses them as talking points to recruit new students and solicit donations.
Until recently, inclusion is a value that Brandeis has always done well with. The Supreme Court recently made it much harder for a school to be diverse. After the 2022 decision banning affirmative action, universities across the country have gotten less diverse. The new president will have to ensure that Brandeis does not become part of that trend, which will obviously be a difficult task. In addition, hate is increasing across the country. However, the biggest threat to the diversity and inclusion here on campus is not one created by the Supreme Court or by random strangers in other parts of the country. It is one that was created by Brandeis. While most clubs receive less than their requested amount of funding, The Hoot has reported that cultural clubs received budget cuts of at least 50 percent. Diversity and inclusion are about more than just the color of people’s skin. It is about having a variety of cultures and fostering an environment where students can comfortably partake in their own cultural traditions while learning about those of other cultures. The cultural clubs provided the best opportunities for students to do that. The next president of Brandeis should be someone willing to publicly commit to providing cultural organizations with the funding they need to operate effectively and put on the wonderful events that we’ve had on campus for decades.
As for truth, one of the reasons that faculty members cited in their motion of no confidence was a lack of transparency by the administration. Professors cited Liebowitz shutting down channels of communication between faculty and administrators to justify the vote to remove him. The lack of transparency is not just an issue for faculty; it has also affected Brandeis’ most vulnerable students. The Hoot reported in our last edition that Student Financial Services was not transparent with students regarding the amount of financial aid that they would receive as well as forcing students to take out loans. The next president must make changes to ensure that the administration is significantly more transparent than it currently is. When looking at a potential president, it is extremely important that the board should make sure that they pick someone that has a reputation of honesty and transparency.
Justice is the value which the Brandeis administration has failed to live up to the most. This is obvious in their unjust treatment of workers, outlined briefly in this article and covered extensively in The Hoot. It is even more apparent in the way the administration reacted to the protest on Nov. 10, 2023. The Brandeis administration is quick to (rightfully) condemn police brutality when it happens in Minneapolis or Louisville, but endorses it on our own campus. After the protest led to arrests, Brandeis refused to call for the charges to be dropped, even against its own students. Although we all hope that the next president will not be forced to face a similar situation, if they do, they should seek to do so in a more just manner.
Whether they listen to the Brandeis community
The next president should be someone that is willing to make themselves more open to the Brandeis community. They should also be willing to follow the advice they receive when they do hear from the community. While the administration did hold listening sessions earlier this year where students could directly speak to senior administrators, President Liebowitz was noticeably absent from these meetings. The administrators that did show up refused to give specific answers to the questions they were asked.
While I hate to bring up the events of Nov. 10 yet again, they probably provide the best example of the current administration refusing to listen to the Brandeis community. In the months following the events of that day, a petition was circulated by students calling for President Liebowitz to ask the district attorney to drop the charges against the seven people arrested. It received more than 800 signatures. Around the same time, the faculty passed a motion calling for Liebowitz to request that charges be dropped against only the three students arrested. Students walked out of classes to protest the arrests and police brutality. Donations and applications declined following the events of that day. Yet despite the pressure from students, faculty and donors all demanding that Liebowitz ask the DA to drop the charges, he refused.
Refusing to listen to the people that you lead is terrible leadership. It is something that the next president should seek to avoid at all costs. If the next president would like to get community input, the way to do that is to ask the community, not create a task force where they hand-pick the members. Listening to the community will improve relationships with students, ensure lower faculty turnover and entice higher donations. They can start by showing up to the community listening sessions they schedule.
I know this has been a long article, so thanks for bearing with me. If you happen to be a member of the Board of Trustees or even the next president, I hope you take my advice. If you’re not, I hope that this article will serve as a valuable guide to evaluate whomever gets chosen.
