Brandeis Magazine
Arthur Levine ’70 Named Interim President
An undergraduate alumnus leads Brandeis for the first time in the university’s history.

Photo Credit: Mark Finkenstaedt
By Laura Gardner, P’12
From the President
Arthur Levine reflects on his Brandeis experience as he begins his role as interim president. Read his message.
On Nov. 1, Arthur Levine ’70 became the interim president of Brandeis, succeeding Ronald D. Liebowitz, who now holds the title president emeritus.
An academic leader, writer, commentator, and researcher, Levine is one of the most influential scholars studying the seismic shifts facing higher education in the U.S. He is the first undergraduate alumnus to lead the university. (President emeritus Jehuda Reinharz, GSAS PhD’72, H’11, led the university from 1994-2010.)
In late September, Liebowitz announced his intention to step down as president after eight years at the helm. In a community message, he noted he was resigning “with mixed emotions because this is an exceptional institution, which carries great meaning, especially at this time, due to the reason for its founding. At the same time, this is a valuable moment for me and for Jessica to build on our experiences to create new pathways for innovation and reform in higher education, and I resign knowing that the university will be in good hands.”
Levine takes the reins at Brandeis during a tumultuous time in higher education — declining enrollments, ballooning costs, student demand for competency-based education, and a massive shift toward digital learning are reshaping how colleges and universities survive and thrive.
The traditional four-year residential-campus experience that was once the paradigm of higher education is losing ground to on-demand, affordable, student-centered learning. In fact, says Levine, only about 20% of all college students live on campus, study full time, and are between the ages of 18-24.
“But there’s going to be this core of students and families who are still very interested in the historic residential experience,” Levine says. Brandeis is well-positioned to offer a rich campus experience and succeed in the growing marketplace for on-demand digital learning, he says, pointing to the Rabb School of Continuing Studies as a “natural laboratory” to test what might work within the larger university.
Over the past several years, Levine, a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and former director of the graduate higher-education program and Institute for Educational Management at Harvard, has spoken at some 50 colleges and universities as a leading education researcher. Inevitably, he says, he is asked whether the liberal arts are being supplanted by vocational education that focuses solely on career training.
He refutes this assertion categorically. “Higher education, whether it’s liberal arts or vocational studies, has always been about careers,” he says. “Always.”
In a global digital-knowledge economy, he adds, the liberal arts must evolve, as they have since the Middle Ages, when students went to a university in order to land a job, often in the church.
From 1994-2006, Levine served as president and professor at Teachers College at Columbia University, where he reoriented the school’s mission, including launching what became the Center for Educational Equity, with a focus on closing the equity gap in American education. He oversaw the largest and most successful capital campaign conducted by a school of education to date, as well as significant campus investments, a reorganization of the academic departments, and faculty growth.
Earlier in his career, Levine served as president of Bradford College, in Haverhill, Massachusetts, from 1982-89. Before that, he was a senior fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for seven years.
He was president at the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation from 2006-19. Under his leadership, the organization, which is a national leader in educator preparation and school improvement, undertook a fellowship program that collaborated with 31 universities in six states to recruit and prepare STEM teachers for careers in high-need schools.
Levine, who earned a doctorate in sociology from the State University of New York at Buffalo, has used his training to chart and make sense of the turbulent course of higher education over the past several decades. He has authored or co-authored 13 books, most recently “The Great Upheaval: Higher Education’s Past, Present, and Uncertain Future” (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2021), with Scott Van Pelt. He has written articles and opinion pieces for such outlets as The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post.
At Brandeis, Levine aims to steward the university with broad community engagement and input. “This is the time for the community to come together to dream about what we want for Brandeis,” he says. “Join me, and let’s plan the future.”