Lisa Lynch began her term as interim president on Wednesday, July 1, taking over for former President Frederick Lawrence who officially stepped down on June 30.

Lynch served as the University’s Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs last year, and will return to these roles after her term as interim president. She is also the Maurice B. Hexter Professor of Social and Economic Policy.

Lynch said in an email to the University “I approach the opportunity of being interim president with great excitement and humility. We all agree that this is not a time to stand still, and I know that with your help and support we will continue to move forward to advance the vitality and dynamism of Brandeis University.

History at Heller School

Lynch began her time at Brandeis in 2008 as Dean of the Heller School, having previously served on the Tufts University faculty and working as a chief economist for the U.S. Department of Labor from 1997 through 1999, according to her biography on the University’s website. She viewed the position at Heller School as a way to “put all of the different components of my life all together,” Lynch said in an interview with the Justice, citing her work as a labor economist and her work with policy on a national and international scale.

Lynch said that her primary goals coming in to Heller were to oversee its physical growth and to further engage with the undergraduate programs at Brandeis. “And that happened. We saw that,” Lynch said in an interview with the Justice. “I think there’s over a thousand undergraduates a year that are taught by Heller faculty. You have a doubling of the graduate program at Heller, new degree programs added while I was there.”

In addition to focusing on Heller’s growth, Lynch explained that another primary focus of her time as Dean was addressing issues of diversity and inclusion. She set up a diversity steering committee for the first time at Heller in 2011. “In my opinion, no academic institution can claim to be excellent if it does not advance and successfully have a diverse community and a community that is one that is truly inclusive,” Lynch explained. “And that was my focus at Heller, that was my focus as Provost in my seven months of being Provost, and it will continue will be my focus as interim president.”

Diversity and inclusion

Lynch said that a main focus of her interim presidency would be issues of diversity and inclusion, and that the presidential search committee would not hire a new president who is not committed to these ideals.

She made two announcements regarding diversity and inclusion; a summit for young African-American men from the Home for Little Wanderers philanthropy organization and the creation of a new VP for Diversity and Inclusion.

The Home for Little Wanderers is the largest private child welfare organization in Massachusetts, and includes services such as adoption, foster care, special education and clinical and family support. Its current president, Joan Wallace-Benjamin, earned her Ph.D at the Heller School and is now a member of the Board of Overseers. Lynch contacted Wallace-Benjamin after receiving an end-of-the-year letter from her reacting to the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., in which Wallace-Benjamin described “what she has had to say to her sons in terms of how they need to be aware of their circumstances, and how people are reacting to them, and how oppressive that is,” according to Lynch. Lynch asked Wallace-Benjamin if “there’s something that we can do” to help young men of color in care, “because that is an incredibly vulnerable group.” The Summit will invite “probably a hundred young men, ages 12 to 18, of color” to campus for “a day of empowerment,” according to Lynch. Undergraduate and graduate students are writing programming for the event in conjunction with staff from the Home for Little Wanderers.

The VP for Diversity and Inclusion will be “either a vice president or a vice provost” who’s roles and responsibilities are still being determined, according to Lynch. The position came out of a recommendation from the Provost Steering Committee on Diversity to establish either a vice provost or a vice president of diversity and inclusion. Lynch told the Justice that she is analyzing similar administrative roles at other colleges and universities, and that the position will likely entail “pull[ing] all of the Title IX activities [together] and hav[ing] those individuals reporting directly for, say, a vice president for diversity and inclusion who might then be reporting directly to the president. And just kind of create a separate pathway.” Under this model, administrators such as Sexual Assault Services and Prevention Specialist Sheila McMahon would report directly to the VP for diversity and inclusion. Lynch added that “My prior—my strong prior, but I’ve not made a final recommendation on this—is that the best thing to do is to have a vice president who’s reporting directly to the president to be doing this. Because this [sexual assault] is an issue that is not just in the provost purview. This is across the University.” Lynch noted that she plans to reexamine the University’s reporting structure for survivors of sexual assault and determine if changes need to be made.

Campus Sustainability

Lynch told the Justice that the other main goal of her interim presidency would be to improve sustainability on campus. “I want to focus on direct actions that we can undertake today on this campus to reduce our impact on climate change,” she said in an interview with the Justice, and explained that the first thing she wants to do is a campus-wide audit “to understand our current consumption of fossil fuels and then to set aggressive targets for the University for reduction in our consumption of fossil fuels.” She also told the Justice that the University has already hired a new sustainability manager who is set to start early in July. This manager will gather data on the University’s energy use and the impact of deferred maintenance on reducing the University’s carbon footprint, according to Lynch.

Regarding the campus movement toward divestment from fossil fuel companies in the University’s portfolio, Lynch told the Justice that she’d like to hold a forum on the pros and cons of divestment, including speakers and events similar to those held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in April. A proponent of the movement to divest from apartheid South Africa in the 1970’s and 80’s, Lynch said that she feels fossil fuel divestment is “a very different setting,” with the key difference being that “I can directly impact today my contribution to greenhouse gases. When I was involved as a student and as a faculty member in the campaigns to get companies to divest from South Africa, I could do that [participate in the divestment movement] but there wasn’t something I could do right at that moment that would have had an impact. So that’s for me first and foremost, it’s direct action of what we’re doing on this campus.” Lynch has no direct control over the University’s portfolio as interim president, because it is managed by the Board of Trustees.

Faculty Issues

Lynch has also been vocal about her commitment to issues such as faculty retention and salary gaps. At the faculty meeting on March 19 she suggested using some of the funds from the $32 million sale of the Brandeis House in New York towards these issues. Lynch told the Justice that she has been working to address salary gaps between associate and full professors on campus, and will continue to give out teaching and research innovation awards. This will include awards for professors who integrate new technology into their teaching styles and develop new classes across departments, according to Lynch. She will also continue funding early-stage research projects for professors seeking funding for new research projects.

Regarding adjunct faculty unionization, Lynch told the Justice “I completely support the right of our employees to make that decision about whether or not they want a union to be representing them.” Citing her own work as a labor economist, Lynch said that she’s “done a lot of my own work looking at the positive impact of unions on employment outcomes,” but added that she hopes that “we’ll have an extraordinarily turnout if we do end up having an election…I want to make sure that people feel if it comes to the point where they’re voting for a union to represent them on campus, that they feel they are fully informed of what that unionization will or won't do with respect to the issues that are of most importance to them on campus.”

Fundraising and Future Events

Regarding fundraising, Lynch noted that she will only be interim president “for six to 12 months” and said that “we have to have realistic expectations and understanding of what the nature of that fundraising process is going to be over the next six to 12 months.” She added that donors who may be interested in supporting certain aspects of the University will want to know who the permanent president is that will guide their investment, and said she can “work with our development staff to shepherd and keep moving forward various initiatives that are already underway.” 

Lynch told the Justice that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg will be coming to Brandeis on January 28th, 2016 as part of a panel discussing Justice Louis Brandeis. The upcoming school year falls on the centennial celebration of Justice Brandeis joining the Supreme Court: Brandeis was nominated on January 29th, 1916 and confirmed on June 1st, 1916. Lynch said of Ginsburg “She’s a rock star. She’s awesome. That will be a very exciting event that we have on campus.”

The Year Ahead

Lynch will have no direct input on the presidential search process during her time as interim president, but expects that she’ll meet with the finalists selected by the search committee before a final decision is made. The interim president usually does not have input on the search process because “usually, you don’t get to pick your own boss, as fun as that might be,” according to Lynch. She told the Justice that restarting the University’s relationship with Al-Quds University, which was suspended in November 2013, was a decision for her successor.

Lynch will be the first Brandeis president who is not a practicing Jew. In her email to the community, she wrote "I came to Brandeis because of its rich history as a Jewish-founded nonsectarian university open to all and because of its core values: deep intellectual inquiry, rigorous discussion and debate, and a commitment to thinking about others before self in order to repair the world."

 Lawrence announced his plans to step down as president of the University and for Lynch to take his place in an interim capacity in an email to the Brandeis Community at the end of January. He served as President for five years.

Read the full transcript of the Justice's interview with Lisa Lynch here.