Illuminating the problematic history of Louis D. Brandeis

by Draken Garfinkel | 03/22/2022

Standing atop Fellows Garden with the sun to his back, a bronze Justice Louis D. Brandeis watches over the campus bearing his name. It is a heroic statue, triumphant even. The Justice withstands an adverse wind, his gaze fixed on the heavens like the statues of classical antiquity. It also resembles the numerous statues of the American South which depict Confederate icons in similarly honorific poses. Like them, Justice Brandeis helped advance caustic ideology tied to many of the 20th-century’s tragedies.