Learning on the Left: Political Profiles of Brandeis University

by Stephen Whitfield

Brandeis University is the United States’ only Jewish-sponsored nonsectarian university, and while only being established after World War II, it has risen to become one of the most respected universities in the nation. The faculty and alumni of the university have made exceptional contributions to myriad disciplines, but they have played a surprising formidable role in American politics.

Stephen J. Whitfield makes the case for the pertinence of Brandeis University in understanding the vicissitudes of American liberalism since the mid-twentieth century. Founded to serve as a refuge for qualified professors and students haunted by academic antisemitism, Brandeis University attracted those who generally envisioned the republic as worthy of betterment.  Whether as liberals or as radicals, figures associated with the university typically adopted a critical stance toward American society and sometimes acted upon their reformist or militant beliefs. This volume is not an institutional history, but instead shows how one university, over the course of seven decades, employed and taught remarkable men and women who belong in our accounts of the evolution of American politics, especially on the left. In vivid prose, Whitfield invites readers to appreciate a singular case of the linkage of political influence with the fate of a particular university in modern America.

400 pages, Hardcover

Published May 1, 2020

Reviews

[Eric London · Rating 5 out of 5]

Political and intellectual history of Brandeis University

Whitfield lays out the goal of the book in the acknowledgements: “[A] thank-you note, an effort to prevent aspects of the university’s unusual history from sinking into oblivion.” A wide ranging history that is written as a number of essays, including the basis of the university’s founding (as an non-denominational Jewish alternative in the age of anti-semitism in the academy) and a number of the highest-profile Brandeisians either as instructors (Marcuse, Ralph Milliband, John Roche, Robert Reich, Anita Hill) or attendees/graduates (Abbe Hoffman, Angela Davis, Tom Friedman, Marty Peretz). Opinionated and exhaustive, not exhausting. Highly recommended for any interested student or alum.

[Steven Volk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Much fun for a Brandeisian (class of 1968!). Margo Jefferson, one of our classmates, later wrote about Brandeis when we were there: "Intellectuals were respected, bohemians were respected, art was respected, serious angst was respected." If only the same were true today.