Class Correspondent

45th Reunion
June 6-8, 2014

The Gruber Foundation awarded its 2013 neuroscience prize to Eve Marder, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience at Brandeis. The $500,000 prize recognizes and rewards “the best [neuroscience] work being done anywhere in the world,” according to the foundation. Eve studies a relatively simple network of some 30 large neurons found in the gut of lobsters and crabs, a window into humans’ much more complex nervous systems. In 2013, Kenneth Kaplan finished third in his bid for governor of New Jersey as the Libertarian Party candidate against incumbent Republican Chris Christie. The businessman from Parsippany had run twice before, in 1993 and 2009, finishing fourth both times. Kenneth told the Daily Record he decided to run against Christie and Democratic nominee Barbara Buono because “New Jersey needs a governor who respects the people of New Jersey and their individual rights.” Alvan Kaunfer is rabbi emeritus at Temple Emanu-El in Providence, R.I. At the rabbinical school at Hebrew College, he teaches a course, “Rabbi as Educator,” in which he introduces future rabbis not only to the basics of pedagogy but also to the theories and practices of synagogue havurot, family and adult education, and running a religious school. Howard Goldstein, P’06, a founding partner of Goldstein, Egloff, Ramos & Wood in Newton, Mass., joined the Jewish National Fund’s Lawyers for Israel group. Patricia Hill Collins, PhD’84, received the fifth annual Joseph B. and Toby Gittler Prize from Brandeis for lasting and outstanding scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and religious relations. She is the author of seven books, including the seminal “Black Feminist Thought,” and is a sociology professor at the University of Maryland. Patricia served as the 100th president of the American Sociological Association, the first African-American woman to hold that office.

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