"Alma Mater"
To thee, Alma Mater,We'll always be true.
All Hail to thy standard,
The white and the blue.
Proclaiming thy future,
Recalling thy past.
Our hopes spring from mem'ries
Eternally cast.
With sorrows we'll leave thee,
New worlds to create.
May deeds of thy children
Make thee forever great!
Notable Alumni
Brandeis counts among its graduates Pulitzer Prize winners, Emmy Award winners, best-selling authors — even a Nobel laureate. But it doesn't stop there. Brandeis graduates occupy leadership roles in virtually every walk of life. Here are just a few:
Activism and Public Service
- Deborah Bial ’87, education strategist; founder and president, Posse Foundation (MacArthur Fellow)
- Devika Mahadevan ’00, CEO, Mumbai Mobile Creches
- Bobby Sager ’76, philanthropist; former president, Gordon Brothers Group
- Michael Ratner ’65, president, Center for Constitutional Rights; professor, Columbia Law School
- Shen Tong ’91, student leader, 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising
- Sam Vaghar ’08, executive director and cofounder, Millennium Campus Network
- Eric Yoffie ’69, president, Union for Reform Judaism
Arts and Entertainment
- Caroline Baron ’83, film producer, “Capote” and “Monsoon Wedding;” founder, FilmAid
- David Crane ’79 and Marta Kauffman ’78, co-creators, "Friends"
- Loretta Devine, M.F.A. ’76, Emmy Award-winning actor ("Dreamgirls," "Grey's Anatomy")
- Gary David Goldberg ’66, television producer and writer, "Family Ties," "Brooklyn Bridge" and "Spin City”
- Debra Granik ’85, film director and screenwriter, “Winter’s Bone” and “Down to the Bone”
- Marshall Herskovitz ’73, director, producer and screenwriter ("The Last Samurai," "Traffic")
- Michael Kaiser ’75, president, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts
- Jonathan Landau ’68, music producer and manager (Bruce Springsteen)
- Debra Messing ’90, Emmy Award-winning actor ("Will & Grace" and "Smash")
- Anand Patwardhan ’72, documentary filmmaker
- Theresa Rebeck, M.A. ’83, M.F.A. ’86, Ph.D. ’89, Broadway playwright
- Gary Tinterow ’76, director, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
- Adam Weinberg ’77, Alice Pratt Brown Director, Whitney Museum of Modern Art, New York
Authors
- Mitch Albom ’79, "Tuesdays With Morrie," "Five People You Meet in Heaven"
- Stacey Ballis ’92, “Inappropriate Men,” “Sleeping Over,” “Room for Improvement”
- Edward Dolnick ’74, “The Clockwork Universe,” “The Forger's Spell,” “The Rescue Artist”
- Karen Drogin ’87 (aka Carly Phillips), “Serendipity, “Destiny”
- Ha Jin, M.A. ’89, Ph.D. ’93, "Waiting," “War Trash”
- Jesse Kellerman, M.F.A. ’03, “Sunstroke,” “Genius,” “Trouble,” The Executor”
Business and Industry
- Leonard Asper ’86, former president and chief executive officer, CanWest Global Communications
- Mia Bauer ’91, co-founder and owner, Crumbs Bake Shops
- Mitch Caplan ’79, adviser, Aquiline; former president and chief executive officer, E*Trade
- Tony Chang, Ph.D. ’83, founder and director, Tech-Link Silicones
- Steve Cloobeck ’83, CEO, Diamond Resorts International
- Jeri Finard ’81, senior vice president and global brand president, Avon Products
- Ellen Gordon ’56, chief operating officer, Tootsie Roll Industries
- Lou Perlmutter ’56, retired senior partner, Lazard; senior advisor, Corporate Partners private equity fund
- Robert F.X. Sillerman ’69, businessman and media entrepreneur
- Sam Sisakhti, M.A. ’07, CEO, UsTrendy
- Perry Traquina ’78, CEO, Wellington Management investment firm
Education
- Arthur Caplan ’71, Emmanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics and director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania
- Martha Kanter ’70, undersecretary, U.S. Department of Education
- Angela Davis ’65, former director, feminist studies department, University of California, Santa Cruz; political and social activist
- Ted Gup ’72, chair, journalism department, Emerson University; investigative journalist
- David Oshinsky, Ph.D. ’71, Jack S. Blanton Chair in History, University of Texas-Austin (Pulitzer Prize winner)
- Jehuda Reinharz, Ph.D. ’72, president emeritus, Brandeis University; Jewish historian; president, Mandel Foundation
- Michael Sandel ’75, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government, Harvard University
- Michael Walzer ’56, political theorist; professor emeritus, Institute for Advanced Study
- David Yoffie ’76, Max and Doris Starr Professor of International Business Administration; senior associate dean; chair, executive education at Harvard Business School
- Robert Zimmer ’68, president, University of Chicago
Government and Politics
- Alex Goldstein ’06, executive director of the Deval Patrick Committee (DPC) and the TogetherPAC (TPAC); former press secretary for Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick
- Geir Haarde ’73, former prime minister, Iceland
- Otis Johnson, Ph.D. ’80, mayor, Savannah, Ga.
- Olubanke King-Akerele ’67, former foreign minister, Liberia
- Lisa Kubiske ’75, U.S. ambassador to Honduras
- Haile Menkerios ’70, United Nations secretary-general’s special envoy for Sudan and South Sudan
- Dimitrij Rupel, Ph.D. ’76, minister of foreign affairs, Slovenia
- Daniel Shapiro ’91, U.S. ambassador to Israel
- Nikolai Vassiliev, M.A. ’97, deputy prime minister, Bulgaria
Journalism and Media
- Paula Apsell ’69, senior executive producer, "Nova," and director of WGBH-TV science unit (Emmy Award winner)
- Joe Conason ’75, editor-in-chief, The National Memo
- Thomas Friedman ’75, foreign affairs columnist, The New York Times (Pulitzer Prize winner)
- Margo Jefferson ’68, critic-at-large, The New York Times (Pulitzer Prize winner)
- Walt Mossberg ’69, technology columnist, The Wall Street Journal (Loeb award winner)
- Peter Osnos ’64, founder and editor-at-large, Public Affairs Books
- Martin Peretz ’59, former editor-in-chief, The New Republic
- Guy Raz ’96, weekend host, "All Things Considered," National Public Radio
- Bill Schneider ’66, senior political analyst, CNN
- Bob Simon ’62, correspondent, CBS News (Emmy Award winner)
- Ellis Verdi ’77, co-founder and CEO, DeVito/Verdi advertising agency
Science and Mathematics
- Paul Anastas, M.A. ’87, Ph.D. ’90, assistant administrator for Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of Research and Development, known as "Father of Green Chemistry"
- Susan Band Horowitz, Ph.D. ’63, Rose C. Falkenstein Professor of Cancer Research, Albert Einstein College of Medicine; inventor of cancer-fighting drug Taxol
- Roderick MacKinnon ’78, John D. Rockefeller Jr. Professor, The Rockefeller University (Nobel laureate, Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator)
- Karen Uhlenbeck, M.A. ’67, Ph.D. ’68, Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair in Mathematics, University of Texas-Austin (MacArthur Fellow)
- Edward Witten ’71, Charles Simonyi Professor of Mathematical Physics, Institute for Advanced Study (Fields Medal winner)
Sports
- Nelson Figueroa ’98, pitcher, Arizona Diamondbacks
- Michael Gliedman ’85, senior vice president and chief information officer, National Basketball Association
- Jeffrey Lurie, Ph.D. ’87, owner, Philadelphia Eagles
- Tim Morehouse ’00, Olympic fencer