Administrative News: Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies
Dear Colleagues,
I am delighted to announce the appointment of Dr. Flora Cassen as the inaugural Lavine Family Director of the Brandeis Center for Jewish Studies, a position generously established through an endowment from Jeannie and Jonathan Lavine through the Lavine Family Foundation. She is also appointed as the Director of the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness.
Dr. Cassen comes to Brandeis from the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she serves as Senior Faculty and will remain affiliated as a Senior Fellow in the Kogod Research Center. In this capacity, she plays a key role in bringing Jewish scholarship and ideas into public life, working with Jewish leaders and communities across the United States in synagogues, JCCs, and other communal settings. Her public voice also extends through essays and op-eds in Haaretz, The Forward, Slate, Aeon, Sources, and Smithsonian Magazine, where she writes on topics ranging from antisemitic imagery in European culture to memory, identity, and her own family’s story.
She also joins Brandeis from Washington University in St. Louis, where she is Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies. An accomplished scholar with a wide range of research interests, Dr. Cassen has published extensively on early modern Jewish history, including her book Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Her forthcoming book, Stained Glass: A Reflective History of Antisemitism will be published by the New Jewish Press, an imprint of the University of Toronto Press, in March 2026. During her time at Washington University, she served as chair of the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies, bringing valuable administrative experience to her new role. Before her arrival at WashU in 2019, she taught at the University of North Carolina (2011–2019) and the University of Vermont (2007–2010).
In her new position, Dr. Cassen will hold a faculty appointment in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department and an affiliation with the History Department, and will also join the Provost’s leadership team. She will lead the university in advancing Jewish Studies and Jewish communal life at Brandeis, bringing together the extensive talent and resources of the Jewish Studies Consortium - a collective of five research centers and institutes (the Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies/Steinhardt Social Research Institute; the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute for Jewish Women’s and Gender Studies; the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education; the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies; and the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry), two academic programs (the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department and the Hornstein Program in Jewish Professional Leadership), and the Consortium for the Teaching of Hebrew Language and Culture. She will also direct the Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness and provide leadership to enhance Brandeis’s public profile in Jewish Studies, through its research, teaching, and service to the Jewish community.
A native of Antwerp, Belgium, Dr. Cassen earned her BA in History and Law from the Université Libre de Bruxelles, her MA in Comparative History from Brandeis University, and her PhD in Hebrew and Judaic Studies from New York University. She will officially begin her leadership positions at Brandeis University on January 1, 2026.
Sincerely,
Carol A. Fierke, Ph.D. '84
