Newsmakers
David Weil, an internationally recognized expert in employment and labor market policy, is the new dean of the Heller School for Social Policy and Management, succeeding Professor Emerita Marty Krauss, PhD’81, who had served as interim dean since 2014. Previously, Weil was the Peter and Deborah Wexler Professor of Management at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. He took a leave from BU from May 2014 to January 2017 to head the U.S. Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division, charged with promoting and achieving compliance with fundamental labor standards, including those related to the minimum wage, overtime, child labor and family medical leave.
In May, Eve Marder ’69, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Neuroscience, received an honorary degree from Tel Aviv University, alongside eight other researchers and leaders from around the world. Marder’s research on small neural circuits found in lobsters and crabs has revolutionized the understanding of the fundamental nature of neuronal circuit operation. She and two fellow scholars were awarded last year’s Kavli Prize for neuroscience.
Rabbi Seth Winberg has been named executive director of Hillel at Brandeis. He will also serve as a senior Jewish chaplain and a member of the senior leadership team in the Division of Students and Enrollment. Formerly, Winberg was executive director at Metro Chicago Hillel. The parents of his wife, Shoshanna Lockshin, met at Brandeis as students in the 1970s.
Samuel Solomon is the university’s new chief financial officer and treasurer. He comes to Brandeis from the Rhode Island School of Design, where he was named chief financial officer in 2014. Earlier in his career, he was treasurer and director of finance at Northeastern University. Solomon succeeds Marianne Cwalina, senior vice president for finance and treasurer, who retired at the end of June.
In a New York Times Op-Ed published on Aug. 8, Anita Hill, University Professor of Social Policy; Law; and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, said women should consider filing class-action lawsuits to fight workplace discrimination at high-tech companies. “We can’t afford to wait for the tech industry to police itself,” she wrote, “and there are few indications that it will ever do so.”