Brandeis University history

Eleanor Roosevelt joined the board of trustees in 1949.

Construction on an athletic field began in May 1950.

Construction of on-campus dormitories began in March 1950 with the goal of ninety percent of students living on campus. Its first varsity game was on September 29, 1951, with a home loss against the University of New Hampshire.

Construction of a 2,000-seat amphitheater began in February 1952.

As Brandeis continued to grow, Sachar announced in 1953 that Brandeis would begin construction of a Jewish chapel, but did not yet have the funds to build a Protestant and Catholic chapel as well.

In 1954, Brandeis began construction on an interfaith center consisting of separate Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish chapels.

In 1956 Brandeis received a one-million-dollar donation from New York industrialist Jack A. Goldfarb to build a library.

In 1959, in one of many firsts, Brandeis launched the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, the first school of its kind to bridge the gap between social welfare and social policy.

On May 16, 1960, Brandeis announced it would discontinue its varsity football team.

In 1961, only 13 years after its founding, Brandeis won Phi Beta Kappa accreditation, a distinction fewer than 10 percent of United States colleges and universities earn.

A trip to Israel in 1968 to visit his sister, who was studying at Tel Aviv University, first sparked Friedman’s interest in the Middle East.

Brandeis became an epicenter of radical student activism and anti–Vietnam War protests during the counterculture of the 1960s. It was the National Student Strike Information Center during the student strike of 1970.

He earned a bachelor’s degree (1975) in Mediterranean studies from Brandeis University, having spent a semester at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and another at American University in Cairo.

In 1984 Friedman moved to Jerusalem as bureau chief.

Handler, wanting to appeal to a wide variety of non-Jewish students, also removed the Hebrew word “emet” (truth) from the Brandeis seal, but donors threatened to revoke funding, and after Handler’s resignation in 1991, both the original seal and cafeteria menus were reinstated.

In 1992, the Rabb School of Continuing Studies was launched, offering opportunities for professional development and lifelong learning through innovative courses for on campus and online learners.

Brandeis International Business School was established in 1994.

When he became the newspaper’s foreign affairs columnist in 1995, he announced that he intended to concentrate on developments in Asia, where he believed the most profound changes would take place over the following years.

Beginning in 2003, Friedman commented extensively on the Iraq War.

In 2014, Brandeis announced it would offer an honorary doctorate to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "a staunch supporter of women's rights", and an outspoken campaigner against female genital mutilation, honor killing and Islamic extremism in general.

With data growing evermore critical to competitive advantage, the school launched a Master of Science in Business Analytics (MSBA) program in 2018 to prepare students to innovate at the intersection of business and data.