Refocus History of Ideas program

To the Editor:
The Trustees of the Safier-Jolles Fund for the Program History of Ideas would like to express their gratitude to the editors of The Justice for their Nov. 26 article on the program. It is an admirable model of thorough, balanced, carefully researched investigative journalism. Should any members of the Brandeis community like to see the full texts of the documents supporting our charges, they may contact Amelie Rorty at: Amelie_Rorty@hms.Harvard.edu.
The Trustees are gratified that Dean of Arts and Sciences Susan Birren seems to have adopted our proposals for the future of the program with such enthusiasm. It is encouraging that she now appears to have undertaken to ensure that the University will abide by the conditions of the Safier-Jolles gift as solely focused on maintaining the integrity of the history of ideas as an academic discipline. The donation is explicitly intended to supplement rather than to substitute for the University's own original commitment to the program. In accepting the gift, Brandeis agreed to continue to support the program from its own endowment without using the S-J funds to cover or to substitute for the University's original support.
In view of the Dean's expression of enthusiasm for the program in the History of Ideas, we nevertheless remain troubled by the program's most recent activities in sponsoring the Nov. 4 lecture, "The Female and Her Body in Pakistani Contemporary Art" and the Nov. 12 lecture-performance, "The Great LOL of China: What's Funny in the Middle Kingdom." Whatever the merits of those lectures may have been, neither of them appears to have any substantive connection to the history of ideas.
As friends of Brandeis, we hope that the University will retain the respect of the academic community and attract the interest of potential donors, by maintaining its integrity.

-The trustees of the Safier-Jolles Fund for the History of Ideas: Steven Gerrard (philosophy, Williams College) David Lyons (law and philosophy, Boston University), David Oksenberg (CEO, BioCern) and Amelie Rorty (Harvard Medical School and Tufts University philosophy)