Brandeis Magazine

The Brandeis University Board of Trustees has elected Lisa Kranc ’75 as its new chair. Kranc, a retired marketing executive who has served on the board since 2012, is the first woman to serve in this capacity. She succeeds former chair Meyer G. Koplow ’72, P’02, P’05, who announced his retirement from the board. Kranc, the daughter of Holocaust survivors, is one of eight members of her family to attend Brandeis. The board also welcomed Ronald Ratner ’69 and Daniel Blumenthal ’85 as new members. Ratner is the owner of the Max Collaborative, a company that designs living spaces, and serves as a partner with RMS Investment Group, a $1 billion family office and real estate company. Blumenthal is chief executive officer of Blue River PetCare, a multistate owner and operator of high-quality veterinary hospitals, which he co-founded in 2009.

Provost and executive vice president Carol Fierke, PhD’84, an internationally recognized biochemist, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Two other Brandeisians were also selected for the honor: civil rights activist and scholar Angela Davis ’65, and American literary critic and Black feminist scholar Hortense Spillers, PhD’74. This year, 55% of the members elected by the academy are women.

The Heller School for Social Policy and Management was named a Top 10 program in two categories in the 2022 U.S. News and World Report listing of top graduate schools of public affairs. Heller was ranked No. 9 in both the health policy and management category, and the social policy category, one of only two New England institutions to be ranked in either specialty area.

Susan Lovett, the Abraham S. and Gertrude Burg Professor of Microbiology, was elected in April to the National Academy of Sciences. Lovett, the 10th Brandeis faculty member to join the academy, was among 120 new members elected, and one of 59 women, the most elected in a single year. She studies the mechanisms by which cellular genetic material remains stable over time.

Historian Deborah Lipstadt, MA’72, PhD’76, H’19, has been nominated by the Biden administration to serve as a special envoy within the U.S. State Department. Pending her confirmation by the Senate, she will hold the rank of ambassador, with the charge of monitoring and combating antisemitism. Lipstadt is the Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies at Emory University. Her research, leadership and activism over several decades have led to her acclaim as one of the world’s foremost authorities on antisemitism.

A quartet of former Brandeis coaches — baseball’s Pete Varney, fencing’s Bill Shipman, men’s soccer’s Mike Coven and women’s soccer’s Denise Dallamora — will be inducted into the Joseph M. Linsey Brandeis Athletics Hall of Fame on Oct. 9, during Homecoming. These coaches, who collectively tallied 155 years of experience, accumulated 62 trips to the NCAA championships and more than 2,300 wins.