Evelyn Handler, who served as the fifth president of Brandeis University, was killed Dec. 23 when she was struck by a car while crossing the street in Bedford, N.H. Handler served as president from 1983 to 1991 as the first and only women to ever hold the position. She was 78 years old. As a current student at Brandeis, I first heard about it in a campus-wide email from our current president, Fred Lawrence.
Handler’s term, which followed her time as president of the University of New Hampshire, sparked controversy at Brandeis as she worked to diversify the nondenominational Jewish-sponsored university. Hoping to make the university appeal to a wider variety of non-Jewish students, Handler introduced pork and shellfish to the cafeteria menu and removed the Hebrew word emet (truth) from the University’s seal.
Her decisions met with controversy from both the student body and donors as the university lost significant funding from benefactors as a result of the changes. Donors such as Steve Grossman, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, refused involvement with the university during Handler’s presidency.
Following Handler’s resignation in 1991, the Hebrew logo was reinstated, the cafeteria menus were changed back and Jewish holidays were reinstated on the university calendar.
“It was confused,” Brandeis’ seventh president, Jehuda Reinharz, said of the Brandeis he inherited, according to an article in the Forward. “There was a lot of uncertainty. We had a previous administration that was not clear about what it wanted. When you try to run an institution and try to make it appealing to everyone … you are bound to fail. You need to have a clear identity,” he said.
After leaving Brandeis, Handler worked as a research fellow and associate at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. At the same time, Reinharz built the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Mandel Center for Jewish Education and Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies at Brandeis to help rebuild the strong Jewish identity the university still holds on to today.
For more details, see the JTA report and the story in the Brandeis Justice.
