Can the University's new Schusterman Center for Israel Studies function in other than an advocacy role? Last week's Justice described concerns of several faculty, with it-ain't-necessarily-so's from the Center's respected director, Prof. Ilan Troen (NEJS), and others. To understand this challenge, recognize that the Schusterman Center sits on a fault line between "service to the Jewish community" and the nonsectarian mission of the University. President Carter's seismic visit demonstrates how volatile that fault line is.
In 2003, University President Jehuda Reinharz addressed the United Jewish Appeal-Federation. An edited version of this speech is in a publication of Brandeis' Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies titled, "Israel in the Eyes of Americans: A Call To Action." Talia Bloch, editor of the Jewish newspaper Aufbau, summarized it as, "An 'Al Jew-zeera' to Educate the Public: Jehuda Reinharz Puts Forth a Plan for Securing Israel." His coinage came during his suggestion to create such a Jewish television network, which Bloch wrote "drew the most applause."


Said New York UJA Vice President John Ruskay, questioning whether Reinharz's advocacy implied blanket support for Israel, "We are going to have to come to the view that sees education as helping young people develop their own views." President Reinharz responded, wrote Bloch: "There is a difference between being critical and not caring. You can be anywhere and be supportive of Israel."



But Brandeis University is a nonsectarian institution with an official mission statement proclaiming "a center of open inquiry and teaching, cherishing its independence from any doctrine or government," without exception for caring about or supporting Israel, Zionism or Palestinian nationalism. Brandeis "strives to reflect the heterogeneity of the United States and of the world community whose ideas and concerns it shares," including opinions that may set people's teeth on edge-Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinedjad spoke at Columbia University yesterday, introduced by university President Lee Bollinger.



The Schusterman Foundation, which founded the Israel Studies Center, has another mandate. "We are committed exclusively to bringing greater vitality and joy to Jewish life," its Web site reads. "We will help forge a shared destiny in which Jewish life flourishes," and that "the notion of k'lal Yisrael-Jewish peoplehood-is central to our mission."



Despite the de jure mismatch expressed in these two well-intentioned, laudable missions, there is considerable de facto concurrency. In other words, do we believe our mission statement?



A recurrent phrase from the Office of Development is "service to the Jewish community," inverting the last of President Reinharz's "four pillars," which interpret our mission statement.



"Brandeis," he said in 1995, "has a clear and unambiguous identity that rests on four solid pillars: dedication to academic excellence, non sectarianism, a commitment to social action and continuous sponsorship by the Jewish community." (When awarded an honorary degree by Ben-Gurion University in 2006, these became "outstanding research, social justice, pluralization and service to the Jewish people.")



After President Carter's appearance, the Brandeis Faculty Senate council addressed the Board of Trustees. Speaking for the Board, its chairman, Stephen Kay, said "We support Israel." That's well and good, but is not what we do here.


Brandeis trustee Myra Kraft told the Boston Globe last spring about her interests in philanthropy to Israel.


"It's not religion," she said, "it's peoplehood." Trustee Michael Steinhardt told the UJA in 2003 of his "vision of a common Judaism," beginning with "the pre-eminence of Jewish peoplehood as a unifying ideal; the centrality of the State of Israel to the Jewish soul." Brandeis' Steinhardt Social Research Institute, devoted to Jewish demography, facilitates his vision.


In a 2002 Ha'aretz interview with President Reinharz, journalist Benny Landau wrote that Reinharz "was being granted a rare opportunity not only to head an excellent academic institution, but also to be the president of a university whose mission in the life of the Jewish people is unique."


"Perhaps it sounds bombastic, but that is how I think about it," President Reinharz said. Part of the responsibility of the university-and since I am the president, I am the one who determines such things-is to promote the Jewish agenda in the world. When I agreed to the offer, I decided to establish good centers and institutes of research, and to fill with them a certain void which, as I perceived it, was created within the Jewish People." The Schusterman Center is another such institute.


These words of University leaders-genuine, well-meaning and parochial-are at cross purposes with the mission statement. The Faculty Senate council told the Board:


"A university is a special place for scholarship, teaching people to think for themselves and to be responsible citizens in our democratic society. Those intellectual commitments characterize the University's service-service to the greater community."


"The whole point," Justice Brandeis said of his court opinions, "is to educate the country." The same can be said of the nation's great universities. Can we be one of them?



The writer is a computer science professor. He served two terms as chair of the Faculty Senate.