(03/22/11 4:00am)
When asked their reasons for entering an intellectual field like legal studies, it is not uncommon for people to give reasons akin to having the ability to do research in the field or to share one's knowledge of the law. They may teach because they prefer the slow pace of academic life or because they usually get summers off.But Daniel Breen, a lecturer for the Legal Studies program, has his own unique reasons for entering the field. When asked why he went into law, Breen attributes it mostly to lineage. "My father had been a lawyer and it always seemed to me to be a good, interesting career," Breen said. "I was one of the few people who would stay late at night at the law library to read articles on subjects I was interested in," Breen recalled of his early days studying law. "[Law] always attracted me as an intellectual discipline."But something else served as a significant influence on Breen: While his career in law began as a result of his lineage and intellectual attraction, it has been his real-life experiences witnessing and hearing first-hand accounts of injustice that have made him so passionate about law and have furthered his career.One of Breen's first experiences studying law in a more hands-on way came when he decided to study abroad while he was attending the University of Wisconsin in the 1980s. Breen chose to study abroad in Kathmandu, Nepal because it allowed him to see what happens when corruption disrupts the law. According to Breen, corruption was rampant, and the law was like a friendly parent in Nepal-present, but not in control of the situation. Breen's time in Nepal allowed him to see "firsthand how damaging it could be if a society lacks the rule of law. There was a great deal of corruption, which led to a sense of despair," he said. "My project there was interviewing members of the government. [I] heard from them tales of dishonesty happening in the country while I was there."Following his time in Nepal, practical experience became a crucial aspect of law for Breen."I always felt my practical experience as a lawyer was really valuable, because you really get a sense for the complexity of legal doctrine and [how] to evaluate it according to how you see that doctrine affect people around you in practice."Nepal, therefore, served as a mere start for Breen's career. He went on to work as a clerk for a United States district judge in Georgia and then worked for a law firm in Atlanta until the recession of 1992. When there was little work during the recession, Breen decided to switch his course and pursue graduate work. In 1998, Breen answered an advertisement and landed a job here at Brandeis, teaching under Prof. Richard Gaskins (AMST) and working as a Guberman Teaching Fellow in the "Introduction to Law" course. As more opportunities presented themselves to Breen, he started to co-teach and eventually began teaching his own classes, mostly in legal studies and philosophy.Since Breen's time at Brandeis, he has started teaching "Science on Trial," one of his most well-known courses. The course, according to Breen, allows him to talk about not only law on a philosophical level, but in regard to science as well. The course "asks how the very distinct discourses of science and law affect each other and help to make public policy," he explained. For Breen, the unique classes he teaches, including "Civil Liberties in America" this semester, allow him to utilize his dynamic teaching style which is often talked about and has the ability to excite any class. Breen is often noted for his constant movement around the classroom and his engaging actions as he lectures. When he's not moving, Breen keeps a captivated audience with his ability to remain fixed in interesting positions during class, a skill he says his acquired during his time living in Nepal. "While there, we would often go to different villages around the city. And the way they would sit, tell stories and commune with each other was in a squatting position that helped me develop strong ankles. It's all in the ankles," Breen joked.Breen also emphasizes his students when discussing his success and love for teaching. "Brandeis students are quite challenging, so I do prepare as much as I can, because you guys know a lot." While Breen is loved for his engaging teaching style, he adds that his speaking skills have developed over time. "When I was younger, I was petrified of speaking in public. I didn't speak up in class in college or law school. I dreaded the first history class I taught because I did not like to get up in front of people and talk," he said. "When I began to [teach], I began to learn how enjoyable it was to talk about things I cared about," Breen said. "To me, it was so much fun that ultimately I put aside most of my fears.
(01/25/11 5:00am)
Imagine a world in which people's love for fantasy and magic meets Brandeis values. A place where fictional characters can inspire 100,000 people to work together to build a better world and fight for the greater good. Sounds like fantasy, right? Not to Brandeis alumnus Andrew Slack '02, creator of the Harry Potter Alliance. On Oct. 10, 2005, Slack officially founded the HPA, an organization that "uses people's love and inspiration from Harry Potter to fight for social justice." HPA uses characters from author J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels as models in their fight for social justice. The organization now has three full-time staff members including Slack, a volunteer staff and 80 chapters. Slack's organization communicates via social media like Twitter and Facebook with over 100,000 Harry Potter fans to encourage and inspire them to act as heroes in our own world by advocating and initiating social justice projects.HPA has focused its efforts on several social justice projects since its inception. It raised $123,000 for Partners in Health in Haiti, which resulted in the deployment of five cargo planes to Haiti, all of which were named after different Harry Potter characters. HPA also raised $4,000 for a village in Rwanda to help fund anti-genocide efforts. In addition, HPA focused its efforts on advocating equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer individuals by supporting Wrock 4 Equality, a campaign to prevent the passage of an act that would repeal gay marriage in Maine in October 2009. "What we've created is a movement of popular culture to social change," says Slack, who managed to harness the inspiration of the Harry Potter books and use them to encourage people to advocate and work toward social change.When asked what inspired him to start HPA, Slack credits his time studying at Brandeis more than anything else."When I went into Brandeis, my love for the arts as an artist myself and my love for literature and storytelling became fused with a love for activism," Slack says. "My professors [at Brandeis] were some of the most extraordinary human beings I've ever had the pleasure to meet," Slack explains. But his friends were ultimately what inspired him to seek social change and create the Harry Potter Alliance."My fellow students and I collaborated on so many things, having late-night conversations about how we could change the world," Slack says. "Brandeis is an intellectually stimulating campus, a spiritually stimulating campus," Slack says. "It is a campus that values things that you don't hear about too often. Unless you're a Brandeis student, you don't completely understand the magic that Brandeis has like Hogwarts. ... There's just this sense of magic in the air at Brandeis."Social justice is the fourth pillar of Brandeis. But to this social entrepreneur, that doesn't say enough. For alumni like Slack, "social justice at Brandeis isn't just social justice. It is figuring out how to maximize social justice in ways that are creative and have never been done before." Slack thinks of Brandeis as a laboratory for social justice, but he did not come up with the idea right away. "It was a clumsy beginning," he says. The idea, Slack explains, came from a blog he started whose themes centered around Harry Potter and social justice. "I began talking about the connection between social justice and Harry Potter, [and] I began thinking, 'You know, this is not enough. I would like this to be an organization.'" Then he joined forces with the band Harry and the Potters. Slack told them about his idea to start Dumbledore's Army for the real world. Dumbledore's Army, a group of wizards in the Harry Potter series, fight against injustices like the evil antagonist Lord Voldemort. The Harry Potter Alliance does this in the real world by encouraging and working on social justice initiatives. Eventually, Slack, his best friend Seth Reibstein '02 and Paul DeGeorge of Harry and the Potters started the Alliance. Slack credits Myspace specifically for help promoting the organization."Everything changed when I found out about the power of Myspace," Slack says. "I wrote an action alert about the Harry Potter Alliance, and Paul re-posted it to tens of thousands of Myspace friends." A couple of days later, thousands of people joined the Harry Potter Alliance, according to Slack. The HPA also got recognition and "communication with some of the bigger Harry Potter fan sites, The Leaky Cauldron and MuggleNet. From there, everything continued to get better," Slack says. "We continued to get media, and J.K. Rowling praised us in Time Magazine," Slack says. "In 2008, we established a board of directors, we registered ourselves as a nonprofit, and I began building a staff that is amazing, chapters that are amazing and we now have a volunteer staff, three full-time employees including myself and eighty chapters across the world."Although he does not have a formula for success, Slack nevertheless had plenty of advice to offer. "Try to surround yourself with people who are intelligent and who understand and respect your vision," he says. "For me, I fortunately have a mom that is just totally into whatever I want to do," Slack says. "I also have family members who continue to say they are proud of me but they want to know why I wasn't going to grad school. ... I thought it was an adventure, I said 'this is awesome.'"Slack suggests taking advantage of every opportunity students have, especially at Brandeis. "But really, when you're at Brandeis right now, you are surrounded by professors who are prestigious. Get them on board. E-mail other people out there who are the heads of entrepreneurial endeavors who are academics in the field you're interested in and get them on your advisory board," Slack says."Lay out your vision. Talk about it with friends. No idea is perfect. An idea can always get better. But no idea is wrong, either," he says.
(04/20/10 4:00am)
Last Thursday, the former governor of Vermont, presidential candidate and chairman of the Democratic National Committee Dr. Howard Dean visited campus. The event took place in the Levin Ballroom and was organized by Brandeis Democrats Vice President Justin Backal-Balik '10. The event was sponsored by the Brandeis Democrats, Democracy For America, Gen Ed Now and the Activist Resource Center. "As the former chair of Students for Obama, I wanted to bring Dean to emphasize that the election of 2008 was only a beginning," said Backal-Balik in an e-mail to the Justice after the event. Dean dedicated the majority of his time to speaking about young people and comparing their experiences to both the achievements and mistakes of his own generation."Your generation is the first multicultural generation in the history of America," said Dean in his speech. "Your generation grew up with lots of different kinds of people. We believed in a different world, but we didn't live in a different world. You live in the world that we envisioned."In an interview with the Justice before his speech, Dean said he and his campaign supporters learned Internet strategies "by watching you do all those things." Dean explained in his speech that technologies like Meetup, as well as modern tools like YouTube and Facebook, were not originally created for politics but were later adapted for campaigns. Differences between cultures matter to the youth of today, according to Dean. "Differences matter more to us than they do to you ... You are truly a multicultural generation. You have friends who are openly gay. . In fact, LGBT issues is actually the civil- rights issue of your generation." Dean dedicated time to speak about the problems he thought his conservative Republican friends faced, saying, "As long as the Republican M.O. is to point fingers at immigrants, Hispanics, people of color, gay people, those are your friends, those are you. And if somebody's pointing a finger at your friend trying to demonize him in order to win, you are never going to vote for him. They have no chance."Dean also discussed parent-child relationships in his speech, saying, "There's not the confrontation, there's sort of a mutual agreement. I think our kids are more willing to listen to us, and I think the reason for that's because we're more willing to listen to our kids. And respect is reciprocal." In the interview before the event, Dean rated Obama's performance so far. "I think the last six or seven weeks before the health care debate, he was fantastic. The first year was pretty rocky: There were a lot of mistakes that were made, a lot of assumptions, but in the end of the day he got what he had to get done." When asked by the Justice why there are so many doctors in Congress, Dean responded "I wouldn't know." He went on to point out that "Most of the doctors in Congress, unfortunately, are right-wing Republicans, so I think they function and think differently than people like me." Throughout his speech, Dean stressed to students the importance of being politically active. "We can't tune out, as Gov. Dean said," noted Backal-Balik in an e-mail to the Justice, "and with the midterm elections approaching, I think that's a message that needs to be heard, not just on this campus but across the country.
(04/13/10 4:00am)
The modern-day world runs on oil. It fuels our cars, heats our homes and takes a large chunk out of most Americans' wallets each day. Groups like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries possess bargaining power over even international superpowers like the United States, greatly affecting the positions our leaders take in foreign policy. According to the Web site NationMaster.com, which compares statistics between countries, the U.S. alone consumed 20,680,000 barrels of oil in 2007 per day. Now imagine a world without oil. No longer would people depend on foreign organizations like OPEC for how much they could afford to drive or where they could take their cars. Money paid for these and other needs might be transferred to United States companies and not overseas corporations. Better Place is trying to do just this.Better Place, a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif. with a presence around the globe, is trying to build an infrastructure to allow for the mass adoption of electric cars. On March 23, the Brandeis International Business School gave the 2010 Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship to Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, and Michael Granoff, its first investor. The event took place in the IBS Thomas H. Lee Lecture Hall. Granoff, who is humble and possesses a calm demeanor, spoke at the event about the importance of Better Place in the environmental world. Agassi was not present at the event.Better Place, which was founded in 2007 and is the highest-funded green startup in history, produces services for electric cars. It is unique in its ability to produce the infrastructure and network necessary for mass electrical car adoption, and it allocates production of the cars themselves. The Asper Award is an honor awarded every year to "an entrepreneur who achieves outstanding success in the global marketplace through creative marketing and business strategies," according to the IBS Web site. Granoff talked about how, up until now, a major obstacle to the mass adoption of electric vehicles has been the amount of time it takes to recharge a car's batteries. But Better Place has developed a solution by creating a system that plants networks of charging stations throughout cities, allowing drivers to easily swap their old batteries for freshly-charged new ones without having to worry about recharging too often. It is no surprise that Brandeis has given this year's award to a startup focused on the environment. Brandeis' Students for Environmental Action, a student-run organization that promotes environmental sustainability on campus through initiatives that range from eating organic food to recycling and conserving energy, has done a lot of work for environmental issues to, like Granoff's company, make the world we live in a cleaner place. When asked about Better Place, President of SEA Hannah Saltman wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "It's great they are developing economically feasible options to solve the problem of oil dependency." Granoff had experience with energy and the environment prior to joining Better Place. He first became interested in energy security in 2004 after helping out on a political campaign. He then learned more about energy security from an organization called Securing America's Future Energy, where he serves on the board.He spoke at the event about a war game simulation SAFE created to see what would happen if world events caused oil prices to rise to extreme heights. "The moral of the story was," said Granoff, that "there are no short term fixes," especially in scenarios like the situation in which "you have a major disruption in supply." After that, Granoff "started delving deeper into this issue of oil and asking the question [of] what would realistically replace oil that could scale, be market-driven and did not involve a science project," he said.Other fuel sources like hydrogen require new technologies to be developed or complex mixtures of chemicals, and Granoff did not think hydrogen would be transformed into a fuel source. Ethanol, another alternative fuel source, has "huge water requirements [and] huge agricultural requirements," he said.Granoff also believes that oil companies could help those in favor of alternative energy to achieve the same goal of making electric-powered cars. He thinks the big oil companies are rooting for Better Place to succeed because the oil industry is now in what he calls a "boomerang scenario." A boomerang scenario occurs when the price of oil rises and decreases steeply, back and forth. This, explained Granoff, leads to super-spikes in the price of oil, which happened in 2008. Granoff believes the housing crisis occurred because of oil price spikes. People had to pay more to fuel their cars and heat their homes, which put a considerable strain on their abilities to manage their other finances like home loans. This entire boom-and-bust cycle, Granoff said, is not good for people in the oil business.Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said that for a company like Better Place, "A big issue is going to be to make sure it is economical and more effective to users over other options." According to Granoff, Better Place has done exactly that. In an invite-only talk immediately before the event, he explained how Better Place has used economics and business and not new technology or clever "science projects," as Granoff called it, to create something innovative and profitable. "[Better Place] took the next step and pushed forward to lay the groundwork for electric car adoption," said Saltman. However, Jaffe believes that the United States has to put in place policies that would make it profitable to be clean in order for Better Place and alternative energy to make a mark. "I think what has to happen [is] Congress needs to get its act together and pass legislation that would actually require or give incentives," said Jaffe, "something like the cap-and-trade bill the house passed last year." One improvement, said Saltman, would be, "if there was a gas tax for non-electric cars." Alternatively, there are other roads to take down Electric Avenue besides through legislation. "The U.S. needs to use other transportation besides cars," she said, "whether that means upgrading public transportation or becoming more of a 'bike culture.'" She adds that "ultimately, if it's more economically better for consumers, they'll adopt it." As Granoff points out, solving this issue and getting electric cars adopted in the U.S. is "really not for Better Place to do; it's for the United States government to do.
(04/13/10 4:00am)
Patricia Cornwell is one of the most popular crime writers in the world, but until recently no one had ever adapted any of her works to film. That is, until Emmy award-winning Brandeis alumnus Stan Brooks '79 and his partner Jim Head took a stab at it with Cornwell's novel The Front. A screening of The Front in Wasserman Cinemateque was sponsored by the interdisciplinary program in Film, Television and Interactive Media with the Edie and Lew Wasserman Fund and coordinated and organized by Prof. Alice Kelikian (HIST).According to Kelikian, "Patricia Cornwell stands as the 21st-century heir to the tradition of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. That Brandeis is hosting the first screen adaptation of her work, a film produced by a distinguished Emmy-winning alumnus, gives the event tonight a particular importance." The Front follows the story of Massachusetts State Police Investigator Win Garano (Daniel Sunjata), a smooth, strapping veteran cop in Boston, a perfect setting given the location of the screening. Garano is reluctantly recruited by District Attorney Monique Lamon (Andie MacDowell) to solve a 20-year-old cold case. Partnered with fiery personality Sykes (Annabeth Gish), the two officers join forces when another murder occurs, this one an exact copycat of the cold case. Pursuing a murderer who always appears to be two steps ahead of the detectives, Win and Monique have to figure out who the murderer is, what he is after and who will be his next target.The Front succeeded in creating powerful effect without big explosions or excessive violence. (There was plenty of romance, though.) Conflict and tension excited the contrasts and traits of the characters, and the movie moved at a quick pace with a few cliffhangers that even Dan Brown would be proud of. Although the plot tended to jump too quickly between steps in the story, the film climaxed without error. The film always risked becoming predictable at times, and at at least two points throughout the film characters performed actions that did not seem believable given the traits they were originally endowed with. Despite this, the movie built up logically, and ultimately its powerful performances overcame any unbelievable qualities.One of Cornwell's inspirations for a character named "Nana" in The Front was in the audience. This reporter had the privilege of meeting with this curious character, a woman that bore an incredibly strong resemblance to the character named after her. She grabbed my hand, mulled over something in her mind, and then proceeded to produce a prophecy for me, saying that everything I needed to accomplish "would be in six years." She then prophesized it would have something to do with the event's guests, most notably Stan Brooks' co-producer Jim Head, who was sitting close by us. One question that filled many people's minds was, "why the long wait?" As Patricia Cornwell puts it, there were many times prior to The Front where producers had optioned her book and tried to adapt it into a movie. But this was the first successful adaptation. Cornwell's books are known for their impeccable research and excruciatingly accurate details. The author is a self-made literatus who learned about crime the hard way. She covered the police beat for the Charlotte Observer. She also worked as a computer analyst and technical writer at the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond, Va. And she did all of this before becoming a published author. In an interview with the Justice, Cornwell advised aspiring novelists and other people to "go out and experience things." When asked for advice for writers, her response was simply to tell them to write. Cornwell herself says she never plans her stories and does not always know how they will end. Cornwell is a model not only for her forensic knowledge and writing accomplishments, but because she does not take "no" for an answer. She told the Justice when she first started out at The Charlotte Observer, they had her updating their television logs. So what did she do? "I would go in every morning at 4 a.m., and by noon I would be finished with my eight hours of updating the TV magazine, and then I'd spend the rest of the afternoon going to every newsdesk begging for stories nobody wanted to write."Equally notable is Brooks' advice. When speaking to the Justice, he emphasized the importance of a broad liberal arts education and how it helped him succeed. Brooks spoke about his work as head of student programs as being the "perfect training" for working in the film industry. Back then, said Brooks, the closest thing Brandeis had for students interested in film was American Studies. Brooks' partner, Jim Head, is a screenwriter and said that how "content will always be king," and the story is ultimately what makes a project success.When asked how it felt to have her book made into a movie, Cornwell responded, "it's really an overwhelming experience; it's surreal. It's so strange when you see something you did, and suddenly it's acted out in front of you and it makes it so big.
(03/23/10 4:00am)
The modern-day world runs on oil. It fuels our cars, heats our homes and takes a large chunk out of most Americans' wallets each day. Groups like the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries possess bargaining power over even international superpowers like the United States, greatly affecting the positions our leaders take in foreign policy. According to the Web site NationMaster.com, which compares statistics between countries, the U.S. alone consumed 20,680,000 barrels of oil in 2007 per day. Now imagine a world without oil. No longer would people depend on foreign organizations like OPEC for how much they could afford to drive or where they could take their cars. Money paid for these and other needs might be transferred to United States companies and not overseas corporations. Better Place is trying to do just this.Better Place, a startup based in Palo Alto, Calif. with a presence around the globe, is trying to build an infrastructure to allow for the mass adoption of electric cars. On March 23, the Brandeis International Business School gave the 2010 Asper Award for Global Entrepreneurship to Shai Agassi, founder of Better Place, and Michael Granoff, its first investor. The event took place in the IBS Thomas H. Lee Lecture Hall. Granoff, who is humble and possesses a calm demeanor, spoke at the event about the importance of Better Place in the environmental world. Agassi was not present at the event.Better Place, which was founded in 2007 and is the highest-funded green startup in history, produces services for electric cars. It is unique in its ability to produce the infrastructure and network necessary for mass electrical car adoption, and it allocates production of the cars themselves. The Asper Award is an honor awarded every year to "an entrepreneur who achieves outstanding success in the global marketplace through creative marketing and business strategies," according to the IBS Web site. Granoff talked about how, up until now, a major obstacle to the mass adoption of electric vehicles has been the amount of time it takes to recharge a car's batteries. But Better Place has developed a solution by creating a system that plants networks of charging stations throughout cities, allowing drivers to easily swap their old batteries for freshly-charged new ones without having to worry about recharging too often. It is no surprise that Brandeis has given this year's award to a startup focused on the environment. Brandeis' Students for Environmental Action, a student-run organization that promotes environmental sustainability on campus through initiatives that range from eating organic food to recycling and conserving energy, has done a lot of work for environmental issues to, like Granoff's company, make the world we live in a cleaner place. When asked about Better Place, President of SEA Hannah Saltman wrote in an e-mail to the Justice, "It's great they are developing economically feasible options to solve the problem of oil dependency." Granoff had experience with energy and the environment prior to joining Better Place. He first became interested in energy security in 2004 after helping out on a political campaign. He then learned more about energy security from an organization called Securing America's Future Energy, where he serves on the board.He spoke at the event about a war game simulation SAFE created to see what would happen if world events caused oil prices to rise to extreme heights. "The moral of the story was," said Granoff, that "there are no short term fixes," especially in scenarios like the situation in which "you have a major disruption in supply." After that, Granoff "started delving deeper into this issue of oil and asking the question [of] what would realistically replace oil that could scale, be market-driven and did not involve a science project," he said.Other fuel sources like hydrogen require new technologies to be developed or complex mixtures of chemicals, and Granoff did not think hydrogen would be transformed into a fuel source. Ethanol, another alternative fuel source, has "huge water requirements [and] huge agricultural requirements," he said.Granoff also believes that oil companies could help those in favor of alternative energy to achieve the same goal of making electric-powered cars. He thinks the big oil companies are rooting for Better Place to succeed because the oil industry is now in what he calls a "boomerang scenario." A boomerang scenario occurs when the price of oil rises and decreases steeply, back and forth. This, explained Granoff, leads to super-spikes in the price of oil, which happened in 2008. Granoff believes the housing crisis occurred because of oil price spikes. People had to pay more to fuel their cars and heat their homes, which put a considerable strain on their abilities to manage their other finances like home loans. This entire boom-and-bust cycle, Granoff said, is not good for people in the oil business.Dean of Arts and Sciences Adam Jaffe said that for a company like Better Place, "A big issue is going to be to make sure it is economical and more effective to users over other options." According to Granoff, Better Place has done exactly that. In an invite-only talk immediately before the event, he explained how Better Place has used economics and business and not new technology or clever "science projects," as Granoff called it, to create something innovative and profitable. "[Better Place] took the next step and pushed forward to lay the groundwork for electric car adoption," said Saltman. However, Jaffe believes that the United States has to put in place policies that would make it profitable to be clean in order for Better Place and alternative energy to make a mark. "I think what has to happen [is] Congress needs to get its act together and pass legislation that would actually require or give incentives," said Jaffe, "something like the cap-and-trade bill the house passed last year." One improvement, said Saltman, would be, "if there was a gas tax for non-electric cars." Alternatively, there are other roads to take down Electric Avenue besides through legislation. "The U.S. needs to use other transportation besides cars," she said, "whether that means upgrading public transportation or becoming more of a 'bike culture.'" She adds that "ultimately, if it's more economically better for consumers, they'll adopt it." As Granoff points out, solving this issue and getting electric cars adopted in the U.S. is "really not for Better Place to do; it's for the United States government to do.
(03/09/10 5:00am)
Nate Westheimer is a model example of today's technological entrepreneur. He is the founder of the Web site BricaBox, LLC. He is executive vice president of Product and Technology at a startup company called AnyClip, which runs a Web site that indexes films and allows people to watch videos and search within them for information, scenes and actors that current data cannot find. He is also executive director of the NY Tech Meetup, an organization for tech startups in the New York area. Where did he go to school? Brandeis, Class of 2005. Although Brandeis is one of the most prestigious liberal arts schools in the country and has only recently launched its own Business major, it is a place where aspiring entrepreneurs can come to not only learn about business but also to discover passions that will fuel later entrepreneurial ventures. The Brandeis International Business School and its Asper Center for Entrepreneurship provide courses in entrepreneurship that are available to undergraduate students. Many Brandeis students have gone on to become entrepreneurs after graduating, but their personal traits all differ. "[Entrepreneurs have] almost every personality characteristic identified," says Prof. Charles Reed (IBS), co-director of the Asper Center for Entrepreneurship and former entrepreneur. Reed was a "global marketing exexecutive," as he thought of himself back then, and he managed companies and parts of companies. Westheimer describes entrepreneurs as "people who wake up every morning with a fire in their belly." "The people I know all have a burning desire to be excellent," says Westheimer. He tells the story of an entrepreneur named Kevin Ryan, who was then CEO of online advertising network DoubleClick and who now runs business incubator AlleyCorp, a firm that helps new business ventures develop into mature, profitable companies. Ryan went on to buy one of the countries he was managing.Ryan wanted to learn how to play Ping-Pong. To discipline himself to achieve a sense of excellence, this entrepreneur took lessons from a pro until he was not good at it, but excellent at it. Reed says that passion is an integral part of being an entrepreneur. "There are so many obstacles that if you don't have passion, you're just going to give up," says Reed. However, while Westheimer agrees that passion is a good thing, he cautions that passion requires a vetting process where the entrepreneur must play the role of venture capitalist, not visionary. The difference? A visionary looks at a business venture for factors like its possibilities and creativity; venture capitalists use a more realistic approach and judge the value of a business venture by whether there is a need for it and whether or not it can make money. Westheimer advocates this latter point of view. According to Westheimer, entrepreneurs must also practice their craft. Westheimer suggests that especially those students interested in tech entrepreneurship should start to "hack," meaning they need to come up with projects and experiment. Students can create coded Web sites or use a simplified content management system like Wordpress or Drupal to build their ideas into reality. Students need to scratch that entrepreneurial itch, as Westheimer calls it. Westheimer himself was very involved in Brandeis Television while at Brandeis. In fact, when he was trying to decide what career field to choose, people suggested film and video based on how much time he spent working at BTV. At BTV, he helped introduce video streaming and user-generated videos. The club also did a live webcast in December 2004. And this was before the concept of big video-sharing sites like YouTube, Westheimer points out. Now he works at AnyClip, a startup company that advances the way people use and interact with video. Mark Shirman '79 is what's called a serial entrepeneur, or a person that starts several companies, one after another. He started his first company, Innovative Information Systems, 2 1/2 years ago after getting his M.B.A. from American University. In August 2001 he started another business, GlassHouse Technologies, a consulting services company focused on data center operations. Shirman suggests that students should get used to learning from their mistakes, especially for tech entrepreneurship.Shirman says the next best thing after learning the technology on your own is to surround yourself with people who have that technical knowledge needed and whose skills will complement your own skills. Shirman also advises students to become more flexible and resilient because in businesses. Shirman says, aspiring entrepreneurs will face a lot of people saying "no" and will have to build up their resilience to succeed. Former IBS professor, CEO of Marketing Edge Consulting Group and author of The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Toolkit Beth Goldstein '85 also lends her advice on what it takes to be an entrepreneur. She says that while being an entrepreneur is exciting, it still involves a lot of risk-taking. "Entrepreneurs need to be good risk-takers," says Goldstein. Because of this, Goldstein thinks a liberal arts education is important to entrepreneurship."[Students] need to discover new things, which is why I think a liberal arts education is phenomenal: because it teaches you how to think. You learn how to ask really tough questions. That's how you get good at what you're doing. And the best entrepreneurs I've worked with are really effective at that," says Goldstein. Goldstein says the key for students is to learn new things.She says the teachers who gave her the most valuable advice were those who pushed her to think outside the box. What could it look like instead of what does it look like. Goldstein says that students should not just accept everything they learn as fact, but should learn to think for themselves.Correction appended: The first version of this article referred to the Asper Center for Entrepreneurship as the Aspen Center for Entrepreneurship.
