As a Trustee, adjunct associate professor at the International Business School, alumnus, parent of alumnae and donor, I watched with interest the events on campus in the late fall when students took over the Bernstein-Marcus Administration Center as part of a concerted effort to make and negotiate for a set of demands.

I must admit to a bit of déjà vu being a graduate of the class of 1972 during which time students also occupied Ford Hall, Pearlman Hall and others as part of the campus protests at the time. Then, as now, a portion of the faculty supported the actions of the students. What seems to me to be a significant difference between then and now is that back then students were trying to avoid going to fight in Vietnam where a serious aggression might constitute being killed or killing another in a southeast Asian jungle. Today’s feared aggressions appear more micro by comparison. That said, no one can deny that protests, controversy and activism in their many forms constitute part of the fabric of a student’s college years, with the nature and content of those activities a reflection of the culture of the time.

Nevertheless, what I found most disturbing with the recent protests, which in my mind also clearly distinguishes them from those in the late ’60s, is that this time I see faculty issuing statements which, intentionally or not, constitute a clear distortion of history of the very University where they teach. I am referring to the statement by the African and Afro-American Studies faculty in their letter of support for the students they issued to the effect that Brandeis “aggressively confront its own history of white supremacy.”

The AAAS statement left unanswered whether only “the students” believed this and not the AAAS faculty or whether the AAAS faculty also believed this. One is led to infer that the AAAS signatories also believed this, since they did not take the opportunity to support the students, yet correct the false statement at the same time.

While other contents of their statement were also troubling, this particular allegation left me shocked and saddened, especially since there is so much to be said in favor of Brandeis on this score. The fact that this statement’s allegation about Brandeis’s history could be put forward without proffering the slightest evidence for its veracity — and without balancing it with any contrary evidence — struck me as a most unfortunate departure from the basic principles of scholarly inquiry which demand examining all sides of an argument.

But universities are supposed to be thought laboratories. So like a good Cartesian, I proceeded to question my own assumptions and review the evidence.

I reread “A Host At Last,” Abraham Sachar’s history of Brandeis. Then, I contacted the Brandeis archives to see if there was any historical evidence in support of Brandeis’ white supremacist past.

For starters, the pictures in Sachar’s history contain, early on, many examples of African Americans — male and female — including an African-American Trustee. 

Not what I would have expected of a white supremacist institution.

The founders behind Brandeis were, by and large, Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the shoe business, corrugated box business, real estate business, clothing business and other like trades.

Brandeis was founded to combat quotas on Jews, women, people of color and other discriminated groups. 

Describing this goal as in any way “white supremacist” requires a serious explanation and supporting documentation.

I then came upon a lot of instances of Brandeis behavior inconsistent with a “white supremacist” history.

In 1960, for instance, Oluwatope Mabogunje came to Brandeis from Nigeria. He majored in biology, graduated magna cum laude with Phi Beta Kappa honors and went to Harvard Medical School. After an illustrious career, he became president of the Nigerian Surgical Research Society in 1987. Brandeis awarded him an honorary degree in 1991.

Further, in 1952, Brandeis’ first group of honorary-degree recipients included Ralph Bunche, an African-American diplomat who won a Nobel Prize. Sacher’s book notes that a hotel in Boston would only give him a room on condition he not take his meals in the hotel and relates how the University’s public affairs manager told the hotel manager to “go to hell.”  

Better still, Brandeis established the Wien International Scholarship Program in 1958 to bring international students — including Africans — to Brandeis. As for the impact of the Wien program, Sachar describes the program as bringing “a delightfully diverse quality to the campus. They were not isolated as foreign students had been in the early years of the Rockefeller International Houses at the University of Chicago and at Columbia. They lived and ate with the American students, attended classes and social functions with them, and were frequent visitors in the homes.” Sachar makes the point that Kenyans played on Brandeis soccer teams. This is not what I would expect from a white supremacist institution in those days.

For domestic students, Brandeis encourages racial diversity and inclusion with the Myra Kraft Transitional Year Program — established in 1968 — and the Brandeis Posse Program. According to the TYP website, around 200 students apply to the program each year, and 20 are admitted, totaling in more than 1000 students admitted to the school since its inception.

When it came to sports, Brandeis again led the way in merit over prejudice when, in 1966, it hired Boston Celtics player K.C. Jones as head coach of Brandeis’s basketball team. Sachar remarks that this gave Brandeis the honor of being the first college in the country to name a black head coach of a major sport.

Perhaps most probative of Brandeis’ early history, the archives contain an article from the February, 1952 issue of Ebony Magazine. It states, “America’s newest University — so young it has never issued a diploma because it has never had a graduating class — operates on a set of democratic principles which could easily serve as the goals for every other university in the United States. There are no quotas limiting students of any religion and no racial barriers at Brandeis University. Brandeis school records, including the admissions application, have no place on them for race or religion and it is only by physical count that school authorities are able to tell that there are eight negro students now enrolled. On the faculty there is one Negro professor, Dr. Robert A. Thornton, a former University of Chicago scientist hired by Brandeis not because he is a Negro but because he is an outstanding physicist and an inspiring teacher.”

Amazingly, the Ebony article, which contains 12 pictures testifying to Brandeis’ inclusiveness, including white students and African-American students eating alongside one another in the cafeteria, also notes that Brandeis was generally criticized for “going too far.” But in so doing, Ebony attests to Brandeis’ founders not backing down from being pioneers in inclusiveness and fighting discrimination. At a time when discrimination was a daily fact of life at American universities, what greater testament can a university ask for?

When viewed in a mature context, if any university can lay claim to a legacy of inclusiveness and fighting racial discrimination, Brandeis surely has a great case to make. Unsupported allegations of a white supremacist past are inconsistent with Brandeis’ proud record.

— Martin Gross ’72 is a member of the Brandeis Board of Trustees.