Past Messages from the Dean
From August to May, the Dean distributes a monthly newsletter that includes updates for faculty and staff. Each newsletter also includes a message from the Dean. Messages are archived below from the past semester.
To see the most recent message from the dean, please visit the faculty and staff news page.
April 2025
Dear Colleagues,
As many of you know, before coming to Brandeis in August of 2023, I spent eleven years at the University of Connecticut. But even before my arrival at UConn in 2012, I was a huge fan of the UConn Women’s basketball team. So you can probably imagine that I am pretty thrilled by the team’s utterly dominant performance in this year’s NCAA tournament.
There’s a lot to love about this year’s championship team, but what has impressed me most has been its resilience. This is a team that had all kinds of expectations for success when it first began coming together five years ago with the arrival of its superstar, Paige Bueckers. But if you have followed women’s college basketball you will know that those expectations were deferred because of a series of injuries, not only to Bueckers but also to at least four other key players over the last several years. The team’s victory against South Carolina on Sunday marked the culmination of a lot of hard work and could only have happened because the team had the confidence and mental fortitude to persist despite significant challenges over the years. They didn’t feel sorry for themselves. They just kept fighting back.
In a post-game interview after the championship, Paige Bueckers was asked about her relationship with her coach, the legendary Hall of Famer, Geno Auriemma. Her response was moving in a lot of ways, but the comment that especially stood out to me was how Bueckers described Geno’s ability to get the very best from his players: “he's challenging me and making me better in ways I never even knew I could be.” I am sure Bueckers’s comment could have been said about many sports coaches and I am highlighting this response not because I think it says something unique about Auriemma but because it captures for me the essence of good teaching.
Let me offer another example, from an entirely different realm of activity. My family and I were early enthusiasts of the reality TV show, “Project Runway,” and we watched it regularly for the first five or six seasons it was on air. There was a lot I admired about the show and it was amazing to see the creativity and ingenuity of the contestants creating “looks” from unusual raw materials and in response to specific challenges. But the more I watched the show, the more I realized that what kept me coming back was Tim Gunn, the show’s mentor and guiding spirit. With his famous mantra, “Make it work,” Gunn was the epitome of a good teacher, pushing contestants to realize their own visions, not the assumptions or preferences of their teacher. “I pummel people with questions,” Gunn once said, “because I need to know what they’re thinking, what they’re trying to achieve, what they believe the final outcome is going to be.”
Scholars of education may recognize what I am trying to describe in citing these two exceptional teachers from such different domains as versions of what psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) called the Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD). The ZPD describes tasks that are beyond a learner’s current abilities but are attainable with the help and guidance of a more knowledgeable teacher or mentor.
Pushing students into that Zone of Proximal Development is the essence of good teaching. It’s where growth happens and where our students are best positioned to realize their own distinctive potentials. And it requires a core humility on the part of the teacher, who must deflect and constrain their own personal ambitions and predilections to create the space for that growth to happen.
In my two years at Brandeis, I have met quite of a few teachers who understand this at the center of their being. I feel fortunate to call them my colleagues and, even more important, our students are fortunate to be in their classrooms, seminars, studios, and laboratories. As we near the end of another academic year, I write this to salute all of you for your dedication to our students and to their success in achieving their fullest potential.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
March 2025
Dear Colleagues,
Today is the festival of Purim, which celebrates the survival of the Jews in ancient Persia who were under threat of extermination from the genocidal intentions of Haman the Agagite. The story is recounted in the biblical book of Esther, named for the heroine of the story, Queen Esther, who uses her influence with King Ahasuerus to prevent Haman from carrying out his plan.
As those who are familiar with the holiday know, Purim is a carnivalesque festival, a day that celebrates the sudden and salvific reversal of fortunes of the Persian Jews; observances of the holiday often include costumes, playful, even scandalous sketches and jokes, and more than a little drinking. It’s a time to express gratitude and, in many ways, is the epitome of the old Jewish joke that describes all holidays as celebrations of the same story: “they tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.”
For all its fairy-tale quality, however, there’s one moment in the book of Esther that always stops me in my tracks and makes me do some serious soul-searching. It happens early in the story, when Esther’s uncle, Mordecai, informs her of Haman’s plot and charges Esther with the responsibility of speaking to the king to save her people. At first, Esther demurs, claiming that it is too risky for her to approach the king without having been invited for an audience. Mordecai’s response is short and powerful: “Do not imagine that you, of all the Jews, will escape with your life by being in the king’s palace…who knows, perhaps you have attained to royal position for just such a crisis.”
In a way, Mordecai’s charge to Esther is the biblical version of the widely shared poem by the Lutheran pastor, Martin Niemöller, “First They Came…,” which so powerfully condemns the silent complicity of German intellectuals and clergy during the rise of Nazism. But I think it’s actually a more precise call than Niemöller’s poem because it explicitly highlights Esther’s position of relative privilege and links that privilege with ethical responsibility. In other words, the call to speak out is not only in the eventual service of self-preservation (“They came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me”), it is specifically a function of having the privilege of speaking out, irrespective of whether those with privilege are under direct threat or not.
I have been thinking a lot about this kind of responsibility lately and how much it needs to inform my own actions. Unfortunately, we don’t lack occasions that call for some kind of response. And to be clear, I am not talking about public statements. Those are, in my view, largely performative and of little value. What I am talking about are messages and actions that make explicit our values, our priorities, and our commitments to the most vulnerable among us. It’s not only or even mostly about public defiance of the current administration, it’s about using whatever privilege we have to stand up for our own values, ensuring that the people who look to us for strength and support know that we are in their corner and that we see their struggles and anxieties.
The challenges we face in the coming months and years are significant. But we can only face them successfully if we don’t shy away from them, if we don’t duck and cover, if we lean into our mission and our individual and institutional commitments.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey
February 2025
Dear Colleagues,
The numerous executive orders that have been issued by the current administration over the past several weeks have created concern and anxiety for many members of our campus community. Our institutional leadership has been, and continues to be, looking into the fuller implications of these executive orders and how they may impact us.
I am writing now to assure you that we are committed to remaining true to the founding principles and mission of Brandeis University. It’s helpful to quote directly from our mission statement, since it captures so effectively the values that must continue to inform everything we do. We are a research university dedicated to the advancement of the humanities, arts, and social, natural, and physical sciences. And we are a liberal arts college, committed to the importance of a broad and critical education in enriching the lives of students and preparing them for full participation in a changing society, capable of promoting their own welfare, yet remaining deeply concerned about the welfare of others…. We strive to reflect the heterogeneity of the United States and of the world community whose ideas and concerns it shares…. We welcome students, teachers, and staff of every nationality, religion, and orientation, thereby renewing the American heritage of cultural diversity, equal access to opportunity and freedom of expression. Social justice is central to our mission and we believe that diverse backgrounds and ideas are crucial to academic excellence.
I recognize that many in our community—students, staff and faculty—are experiencing high levels of stress about the safety and security of loved ones, not to mention themselves. And I know that many are feeling deep concern about the future of the academic fields of study they are pursuing. As faculty, you are often the primary face of the institution to our students. You should feel free, to the extent that you are comfortable doing so, to give your students the space and time to express their own concerns to you. You don’t need to offer solutions, but just giving them the chance to talk about their anxieties will convey to them that we care deeply about their well-being.
I want to reaffirm my own sincere belief in the dignity and value of every person in our community. I remain fully committed to the transformative possibilities of education, and to providing those opportunities to every student, regardless of their identity, background, or status. I am proud of the broad range of academic programs we offer and dedicated to the core principles of academic freedom, which are the very bedrock of robust scholarly inquiry.
I will continue to support all members of our community during these challenging times and remind you of the many resources available to you through this website.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey