Brandeis Magazine

Interim President Arthur Levine
Photo Credit: Mark Finkenstaedt

I have been back at Brandeis for six months and have once again fallen in love with it — the students, faculty and staff. There is a warmth and sense of caring here that seems to me unique among world-class research universities, where I have spent much of my career.

These six months have included highs and lows. The highest point occurred on April 29, when the Brandeis Board of Trustees enthusiastically voted to reinvent the American liberal arts college and lead higher education into the future. (In March, 88% of the faculty voted to move in this direction.)

Here’s why.

Our nation is shifting from a national, analog, industrial economy to a global, digital, knowledge economy. The contemporary model of higher education was created for the Industrial Age. It worked very well for more than a century. But today we need to prepare students for a new world with dramatic demographic, economic, technological, ecological, political and global changes.

The liberal arts have perennially evolved to meet the demands of the times and the state of human knowledge. Throughout history, they have remained practical. Students studied the trivium and quadrivium of the medieval university, not as an idle intellectual pursuit, but because such study prepared them for jobs, generally in the church. At Harvard, students studied Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Syriac, not out of love for dead languages, but to prepare for careers as leaders in the Colonies.

To paraphrase the social reformer Jane Addams, the liberal arts are most successful when they have one foot in the library, the accumulated knowledge of humanity, and one foot in the street, the real world. In times of rapid change, colleges and universities lose traction with the street. This is such a moment.

Accordingly, Brandeis will adopt several fundamental changes that are now in the planning stages, some of which will be introduced as early as the fall. These changes include:

1. The Core, or general education curriculum, will be redesigned to provide students with the skills, knowledge and values to thrive in a global, digital, knowledge economy.
2. A center will be established to support students as they prepare for their careers. It will serve as the dynamo driving the plan and fueling innovation, including:
   • Four years of career counseling, beginning during Orientation. Each student will be assigned an academic adviser (a faculty member) and a career adviser (a career counselor or a successful professional in the student’s intended career field, such as an alumna/us).
   • Internships and apprenticeships for all students.
   • A second, career transcript recording the professional competencies students achieve while at Brandeis and throughout life that can be sent to employers and graduate schools.
   • A skunk works or experimental lab for the applied liberal arts, focusing on pedagogy and technology such as AI and virtual reality.
3. We are reorganizing the university with the goal of combining theory and practice, integrating the liberal arts and professional education. Today, the liberal arts and professions are divided and separate at Brandeis, consisting of arts and sciences; business; and social policy, through Heller. The reorganization will establish four schools: arts, humanities and culture; science, technology and engineering; business and economics; and social science and social policy. The liberal arts and professions will permeate the entire university. The reorganization provides an opportunity to fundamentally rethink Brandeis’ programs, departments and majors.

In this way, Brandeis will reinvent the liberal arts and prepare our students for the world they will live in rather than the world of their parents.

I mentioned the highest point. The lowest point in my tenure has been having to defend and protect Brandeis, higher education and the nation against Washington’s deliberate destruction of one of our country’s most valuable resources, our colleges and universities, whose research and teaching fuel the future and have enabled the United States to reach a historic pinnacle.

My most enjoyable experience has been knocking on a student’s door in the Shapiro B residence hall. When she opened it, there was an old guy standing outside. I told her I was president of Brandeis and had lived in her room. She invited me in. Except for the beds, the room was exactly the same. In exchange, I showed her the closet where my roommate kept a contraband kitten for a year. The room smelled a lot better now.

Cordially,

Arthur Levine ’70
Interim President