Brandeis University

Brandeis University, founded in 1948, is the only Jewish-sponsored yet nonsectarian institution of higher education in the United States of America. It is named for Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the Supreme Court of the United States. Albert Einstein and Eleanor Roosevelt were instrumental in its founding.

While it is a recognized research university, it makes a point of having interdisciplinary and research opportunities available to undergraduates, in its liberal arts oriented program.

It is located in Waltham, Massachusetts, a suburb of Boston.

Zionism

Brandeis has produced much research on Zionism.

Another view suggests its work to bring Arabs to the campus is directed at its own approach to coexistence in the Middle East. Officially a 'non-sectarian, Jewish-sponsored university,' most of its principal donors are Jewish, and some members of the larger circle of alumni and community members have already registered their displeasure...'We need a first-rate center for Middle East Studies that is not pro or con anything,' Brandeis president Jehuda Reinharz said in a Feb. 27 article in The Jerusalem Post, an English-language Israeli daily. Wjen it started a seminar with a Palestinian lecturer, Khalil Shikaki, the New York Sun linked him with "Palestinian Islamic Jihad, an insurgent group that has taken responsibility for dozens of attacks on Israeli civilians. The Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) responded to the claims by threatening to ask alumni to financially boycott Brandeis if it did not conduct a full investigation into Shikaki."

University President Reinharz responded to ZOA with a February 2 letter saying "In a February 7 letter to the ZOA, Reinharz called Shikaki an esteemed Palestinian pollster and peace advocate, and wrote, 'the ZOA's charges against Professor Shikaki constitute a form of Jewish McCarthyism — accusing and judging him before any credible evidence has been put forward.' He added that the university's namesake, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, served as the ZOA's honorary president when it was first established and 'would be saddened and distressed to see the depths to which the ZOA has fallen.'"

In April 2006, ZOA criticized Brandeis for forming, with Ford Foundation sponsorship, a relationship with Al-Quds University, a Palestinian educational institution in eastern Jerusalem, "whose website denies the Jewish historical connection with Jerusalem and promotes other falsehoods...Brandeis’ International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life, which has coordinated Al-Quds visitors programs, also includes Al-Quds University President Sari Nusseibeh on its advisory board. Nusseibeh is often falsely presented as a Palestinian moderate but, as ZOA revealed in October 2002, Nusseibeh has actually demonized Israelis, praised jihad fighters and justified the killing of so-called Palestinian 'collaborators.' "

Militant Islam Monitor, in 2008, wrote

randeis' outreach to Al Quds is extraordinarily ill-considered, antithetical to everything that Brandeis claims to stand for. This is made especially compelling given the university's Jewish roots and its motto which is, "Truth even unto its innermost parts." This exchange has already caused substantial harm, providing undeserved legitimacy to Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. It also serves as a conduit, allowing people of the ilk of Mustafa Abu Sway access to the American university system, delivered with Brandeis' seal of approval.

This program has no place at Brandeis or any American university. It must cease.