Related Articles
Brandeis University said on Wednesday that its president of eight years, Ronald D. Liebowitz, will step down. The announcement by the university’s board of trustees followed a vote of no confidence in Dr. Liebowitz by the faculty, which accused him of “damaging errors in judgment and poor leadership.”
In taking the vote, members of the faculty had cited budget and fund-raising shortfalls as well as what they viewed as an overreaction to pro-Palestinian student activists last year. Enrollment at the university had declined by about 9 percent in the past five years.
The faculty vote was adopted last week by a margin of only 10 votes, 159-149, and publicized on Tuesday, calling on the university’s board of trustees to “act.” On Wednesday morning, the trustees announced the resignation of Dr. Liebowitz, effective Nov. 1.
His departure marks at least the fifth major university president who has stepped down due, at least in part, to campus conflict over the war in Gaza.
Brandeis, a historically Jewish university in Waltham, Mass., was founded at a time when elite universities discriminated against Jewish applicants. The university, with a total enrollment of about 5,500 students, regards itself as secular, but the student body remains about one-third Jewish. It is also one of the smallest research universities and is known for its low student-to-faculty ratio.
Last fall, as protests over the Israel-Hamas war appeared on college campuses around the country, Brandeis cut ties with the campus chapter of the Students for Justice in Palestine. A pro-Palestinian demonstration also led to the arrests of seven people last fall, a surprising development on a campus known for its vibrant history of campus dissent.
In April, seeming to capitalize on its reputation as a Jewish institution, Dr. Liebowitz released an open letter inviting students to transfer to the university and extending the school’s normal deadline for transfer applications.
Promising that Brandeis would provide an environment “free of harassment and Jew-hatred,” Dr. Liebowitz wrote that “Jewish students are being targeted and attacked physically and verbally, preventing them from pursuing their studies and activities outside of class, just because they are Jewish or support Israel.”
Professors later criticized the outreach and an accompanying advertising campaign, and noted that it yielded only a few new students.
Julie Jette, a spokeswoman for Brandeis, said Dr. Liebowitz would not be available for interviews. But in a letter to the Brandeis community, he seemed to refer to the geopolitical strife buffeting campuses, saying that his decision to resign was made “with mixed emotions because this is an exceptional institution, with great meaning, especially at this time, due to the reason for its founding.”
The vote of no confidence resolution by the faculty had first circulated in May and resurfaced when classes resumed this month, passing on Sept. 20.
Documents circulated by the faculty before the resolution criticized Dr. Liebowitz for mismanagement, the elimination of 60 staff positions, the restructuring of its doctoral programs and social policy programs, crumbling infrastructure, and fund-raising deficits.
“It is especially striking that Dr. Liebowitz has been at Brandeis for eight years with no capital campaign,” the documents said.
Dr. Liebowitz, 67, a former president at Middlebury College, holds a Ph.D. from Columbia University in geography.
In his letter to the Brandeis community, he said that leaving the university would provide him a “valuable moment” to create new pathways for innovation and reform in higher education.
The university announced that Brandeis’s interim president would be Arthur Levine, a Brandeis alum who previously served as president of Teachers College at Columbia University.
Lisa R. Kranc, chair of Brandeis’s board, applauded what she called Dr. Leibowitz’s accomplishments, adding that the board had fully supported his position against antisemitism.
“Ron’s stance that Brandeis will be free of harassment and free of Jew hatred, that’s a stance that we subscribe to wholeheartedly,” she said.
<
