Brandeis Magazine

Brandeis University again earned an A on the Anti-Defamation League’s second annual Campus Antisemitism Report Card, which tracked how colleges and universities are addressing antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. The ranking assessed 135 institutions in 30 categories, including administrative practices, Jewish campus life, and campus conduct and climate, and also considered the impact and enforcement of recent policies and campus incidents.

The Jewish Book Council selected publications by husband-and-wife faculty members President Emeritus Jehuda Reinharz, GSAS PhD’72, H’11, and Shulamit Reinharz, GSAS MA’69, PhD’77, the Jacob Potofsky Professor of Sociology, Emerita, as finalists in the 2024 National Jewish Book Awards. Jehuda co-authored “Chaim Weizmann” (Brandeis University Press, 2024), a finalist in the Biography category. Shulamit’s book “Hiding in Holland” (Amsterdam Publishers, 2024) was named a finalist in the Holocaust Memoir category. (Read an excerpt from “Hiding in Holland.”)

Jordan Tannenbaum ’72 has been named senior vice president of the university’s Institutional Advancement Division, overseeing alumni relations, fundraising and donor engagement. Most recently, Tannenbaum was chief development officer at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington, D.C., where he oversaw major gifts, the annual fund, planned giving, and corporate and foundation relations, and strategically developed and implemented a comprehensive fundraising campaign that exceeded its goal of $1 billion. Early in his career, Tannenbaum worked as a fundraiser at Brandeis.

Brandeis researcher Julianne Pelaez, a postdoctoral associate in biology, was one of 25 outstanding early-career scientists awarded the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Hanna Gray Fellowship last January. The award, which provides Pelaez up to $1.5 million over the course of up to eight years, will support her study of insect gustatory receptors (specialized cells that allow insects to taste, and drive critical decisions related to feeding, mating and egg laying).

Yu-Hui Chang, the Victor and Gwendolyn Beinfield Professor of Music, was awarded a 2024 Commission Prize by Harvard University’s Fromm Music Foundation to compose a work to be performed by the ensemble Fredaissance, a faculty trio at the State University of New York, Fredonia. The composition, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of this year, will premiere in spring 2026.

The world premiere of “The Victim,” written by former Brandeis marketing communications staffer Lawrence Goodman, runs June 19-July 20 at Shakespeare & Co., in Lenox, Massachusetts. Directed by Daniel Gidron ’66, GSAS MFA’68, the play features Annette Miller ’58, GSAS MFA’76, as a Holocaust survivor finding her way back to love and healing.

For the second year in a row, a Brandeis undergraduate has been awarded a Truman Scholarship, given to aspiring public-service leaders in the U.S. Zac Gondelman ’26, a Near Eastern and Judaic studies major, was chosen for his outstanding leadership potential, commitment to a government or nonprofit-sector career, and academic excellence. Each Truman Scholar receives funding for graduate studies, leadership training, career counseling, and special internship and fellowship opportunities within the federal government.