White laminate cabinets are topped by Corian countertops and a center cook island is covered in navy-blue tiles. Her love of navy blue is evident in one wall painted in that shade, as well as a few tiles in navy placed among the predominantly white ceramic tile floor. Lee Katz's photographs, mostly affixed to corkboard, adorn walls in every room. His subjects vary from landscapes and portraits to buildings, architecture being of particular interest to him. The marble-floored center hallway opens onto a living room on the home's west side and a dining room on the east side.
Covered porches were attached to both rooms at one time. Now, the porch off the living room is a long, narrow den that shares a two-sided fireplace that warms both rooms. The living room's pine floors and white built-in cabinetry and trim work contrast with walls painted navy. Round mahogany tables and covered radiators hold framed family portraits. Above the fireplace is a portrait of Lee Katz's great-great-grandfather, painted in The room also contains a Chagall lithograph. We needed the money. An academic job would not have paid as well: But now came thai phone call, and Sam Schweber wanted to know if I would be interested in joining the physics faculty at Brandeis.
Well, it's only one course. I thought, what have I got to lose? And so it happened that the next September found me lecturing to a few graduate students on Methods of Mathematical Physics. What later would be named the Kalman Science Building had just opened its doors, and was, in fact, not quite finished. But I was actually thrilled to have the opportunity. I had not lectured a1 M. Schweber s oiler to join the department was repeated foj the following year, and this lime I did nol hesitate. I joined the faculty lull-time the following fall, and I am hound to say thai I have never, ever regretted it.
It was a grand time to be at Brandeis. Everything and anything seemed possible, and often turned out to be possible, fhere was a tremendous enthusiasm: Somebody gave funds lo build a dormitory? We knew ahoiil that, loo. Il fell like the whole campus was under construction all the time, and you could never escape the noise and clamor ol il. You just tune it out and go on doing whatever il is you need lo do. I oiler an example ol w hat il was like lo live in an atmosphere of opportunity. And then I discovered that the rool was riot meant to he walked on; one's foot would drive hits of gravel through the rool membrane, and cause leaks, which would of course be intolerable.
So I went to see Dr. He looked at me carefully while I offered a short description of what I wanted. Then he smiled, rather sadly, I thought. I resigned myself to disappointment. But then he said. Go hack, and think about more money. Why not a small observatory, I thought? With a real telescope, permanently mounted? I began to salivate. Students in science class, circa I went back to Dr. He nodded and smiled, and said. I received a phone call. And so we acquired a inch telescope and the Grunebaum Observatory was horn.
It was constructed with a steel dome, because the then head of buildings and grounds was a former Navy submariner, and believed only in steel, never plastic. As I recall, the whole thing cost, telescope, dome and all. The sense of opportunity that was there for physicists was there also, perhaps in other ways, for chemists, mathematicians, and biologists, and, a little later on. II was doubtless also true lor anthropologists and for sociologists and for writers and poets.
II someone had a good idea — provided il really was a 31 50th Vnniversa good idea — then il was encouraged, and we came to believe that Alie Sachar would somewhere find the donor who would make it possible. And, most of the time, lie did. I suppose we did not fullv appreciate at the time the miracles that were being made to happen in Wallham almost every day. To some degree, certainly, they were part of the great explosion in creativity that followed a terrible war.
The academic enterprise was, to be sure, prospering everywhere. But for these miracles to happen at a university not yet 10 years old — for laboratories to appear, for libraries to grow, for scholars and research scientists, main ol them young and approaching the peak of their productivity, to visit and decide to stay, alongside other, well- established scholars who were finding lor themselves a new home — it was heady stuff.
But we were young and ambitious, and had not yet come to realize that somewhere, beyond whatever horizon we could see. For us, there seemed to be none. We understood, most ol us. The early profile of the School if Science was simple, but was bound to evolve. At the beginning, a conscious decision had to be made concerning the role of research. Could a small university — something less than hall ol its present size, which is generally understood to be quite small — maintain a first-class research effort? Some years later, when the University was about 25 years old, and reasonably well established, we brought to campus a recentlj retired scientific administrator from Washington.
He had been a research biologist in his day. But you don't have that. Just modest-sized laboratories, good equipment, to be sure, but mainly with some very smart people in them. I suppose I could end this piece right here, for that remark pretty well sums up the School ol Science. We have built more buildings, ol course; there were Center ol Excellence grants in seven digits from the National Science Foundation to the Departments ol Physics and Chemistry, enabling the construction ol buildings to house those departments.
A biochemistry wing was added in In addition to the original lour departments and the Department ol Biochemistry, the University has added a Department ol Computer Science, the Henry and Lois Foster animal facility, and two major Students in science class, circa research institutes: Each department, and each research center, is housed in its own building. In spite of those impressive numbers.
Brandeis is still a small university, and its rows of lathes still do not disappear over the horizon. The School of Science has more offices and libraries and laboratories, to be sure, but they are still generally modest-sized. But the University has held fast to its tradition: Goldstein is professor emeritus of astrophysics. I low we do and teach science today at Brandeis I niversit result from an amalgam of influences. Todaj Brandeis I niversity lias six science departments: There are approximately facult members who do research and leach in these departments.
We have a stead -state population of to graduate students studying in 10 graduate programs: There are about KM postdoctoral fellows obtaining advancer! The organization oi the academic departments here al Brandeis preserves our history, while the organization of our graduate programs evolves continuousl to reflect the ever-changing emergence of new disciplines at the interlace' between established fields. When Brandeis was founded, biochemistrj was a new. Therefore, many of our graduate programs were designed explicitly to provide new training at the boundaries oi traditional disciplines, with faculty from many departments involved.
Thus Brandeis has a long tradition in its short lifetime of close interactions between the phvsics department and the structural biologists who work on the detailed structure of biological molecules. The precedent of the biophysics program made it relative! As educators of the scientists of the future, we face a conundrum. How do we train our students to be experts in the science of yesterday and today and yet equip them to do the science of the future?
Volen National Center for Complex Systems who was a theoretical physicist before his reincarnation as a computational neuroscientist and 1 trained as an experimental neuroscientist sometimes tell our postdocs that we are training them to do as one person what it takes two of us to do. The danger of strong disciplinary training is narrowness; the danger of interdisciplinary training is superficiality. The onlv comfort I take with me as we send our students into the future is the knowledge that scientists onl create knowledge when the learn, so thai if we have done our job correctly, our students will learn what they need to know whether or no!
The Segue from Basic Science to Clinical Applications The Brandeis ethos has always been the pursuit of knowledge in its purist form, without regard to potential practical implications, and most of us are unabashedly basic scientists. Nonetheless, the last five years have seen the beginning of an era in which every week describes a new translocation of the findings of basic science into medicine, either lor diagnosis or therapeutics.
This change is due to the tremendous explosion in molecular techniques that have allowed us to identify and sequence genes at a dizzying pace. The exponential explosion In sequence data available has allowed us to make totall unexpected connections between enormously diverse research avenues. Recent years are replete with slories of scientists studying completely unrelated topics who discover that they have been studying complementary parts of the same problem. There are specific examples close to home at Brandeis from the field of ion channels.
Ion channels are membrane proteins that open and close, either in response to the voltage across a membrane voltage-gated ion channels or the binding ol a chemical neurotransmitter molecule ligand-gated ion channels. The voltage-gated ion channels are responsible for electrical signaling in the nervous system, and in other excitable tissues such as the heart.
The ligand-gated ion channels are those that mediate communication among nerve cells and from the nervous system to muscles and other tissues of the body. Until recently, researchers studying ion channels measured the currents flowing through them, and could be seen as constructing abstruse biophysical descriptions, understandable by few and of no obvious utility except to those constructing them.
However, arcane biophysics attained direct clinical significance when scientists studying ion channels started sequencing the genes for ion channels. For example, Gary Yellen, a former Brandeis postdoctoral researcher now on the faculty at the Harvard Medical School, discovered a link between a mutant human potassium channel and a syndrome called long QT that increases the likelihood of ventricular fibrillation and sudden death. Indeed, there are now more than 60 diseases called channelopathies ranging from cardiac abnormalities, to periodic paralyses, to certain kinds of epilepsies, that are known to be results ol mutations in the genes that code for ion channels.
A whole generation of scientists who were drawn to the study of the basic properties of ion channels have found themselves much to their own surprise one suspects doing work of immediate and obvious medical importance. Program seven years ago there were a number of important diseases known to have strong genetic bases, and it didn't take much imagination to know that the number ol these would increase as the human genome project and other sequencing efforts continued. Nonetheless, the rapidity of the advances in understanding the genetic basis of disease has been trulv remarkable, and Brandeis's Genetic Counseling Program is still the only New England program in operation.
Today most research is done by groups ol people. Many of the most influential papers in science employ methodologies and conceptual frameworks from disparate components of the scientific community. For example, a recent paper describing ion channel structure in its relation to disease might emplo techniques and principles of molecular biology, genetics, biochemistry, biophysics, structural biology, neuroscience, and medicine.
We are at once faced with increasing volumes of research produced, with its pressure to focus narrowly, and the knowledge that many significant breakthroughs only come when we creatively use conceptual frameworks and methodologies developed in other areas. Brandeis scientists, like scientists elsewhere, have evolved a series of personal and institutional strategies to respond to these competing pressures.
There are numerous examples of long- standing collaborations among Brandeis laboratories: And indeed, the number of published paper-, w illi one or two authors is decreasing, and the number of papers with many authors is increasing, as the obvious benefits of collaboration are felt. However, collaboration brings the inherent potential for tension and conflict. Most scientists are stubborn, strong, and independent people, who while sharing a deep drive to understand the unknown, are also looking for honor, glory, and a good job.
Therefore the allocation and attribution of credit in a collaborative enterprise can often easih be a source of friction. There are no simple answers to these questions, just as there are no simple rules to guide parents as they hope to instill honesty, integrity, and a sense of purpose in their children. Our students face a fast-moving world in which they perceive a scarcity of honor and a difficult future. We ask them to compete in that difficult world, but somehow hope that their desire for the truth will protect them against their fears of being scooped or their concerns that they won't get a good job.
Brain leis faculty, like those at many other liberal arts institutions, placed high value on those who contributed to the pure pursuit of scholarship, and implicitly valued less those who applied that knowledge in the context ol the "real world. Today, we recognize that the translation ol the findings of academic research into medicine and technology provides enormous benefits not only to society but to those ol our students who creative! As we face the next 50 years, the mission of our scientific training must be to foster the pursuit of new knowledge and to ensure that our students are ideally positioned to plav critical roles in guaranteeing that new knowledge is understood by society and used for the benefit of humankind.
Leonard Bernstein, If von drive onto the Brandeis campus in late March or April, you will see brightly colored banners along the peripheral road. Their white squiggle denotes the Creative Arts Festival. Mosl ol the work is by students, but some stall and faculty also participate, as well as a lew outside artists: That time belongs to the Brandeis that had achieved legendarj status for just such programs.
The creative arts play a large part in the formation ol this legend. Brandeis's "significant deviation" was to add a fourth area to its core: The School of Music.
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Drama, and Fine Arts opened in I 1! All students, however, were required to lake some creative arts and according to Sachar. In most established universities, the arts were still struggling to attain respectabilit as an academic discipline. From the top down, the entire community understood the creative arts as integral to the I niversity's identity. Nothing better showed this support than the public lace of its first Commencement week in Sachar had secured the participation of Leonard Bernstein as a commuting facult member: Harold Shapero, who headed the electronics studio, [rving Fine, and Arthur Berger.
Aaron Copland got an honorarj degree and conducted a concert oi his own works. Well-known artists were brought to campus to give master classes or to he in-residence. Student artists were encouraged as well. Suzanne Hodes "60 remembers when her drawing teacher. Arthur Polonsky, suggested that. Hodes had no monej. He found a donoi famil and she went. Later a notable achievement award was added for exceptional work that transcends normal categories; awardees include Buckminster Fuller and John Cage.
These meetings, according to Laurie Ledeen! The award ceremonies, held at the Guggenheim Museum, wen- a glamorous, prestigious event, reported on in society pages and In I ogue. To bring the program more in line with the I niversity's mission and prov tde more benefit to students. Actresses Mercedes Ruehl and Olympia Dukakis were among the first to be appointed. Like the Roman god Janus, the creative arts departments had and continue to hav e two laces: Unlike Janus, however, the faces look in the same direction.
Caldwell Titcomb, professoi emeritus of music, remembers his and Leonard Bernstein's class on writing musicals — Bernstein was writing Candide at the time and gave the students as then assignments the same problems he was struggling with. Mahler, the first course on Berlioz in an American university, a drama criticism course cross-listed with theater arts, and started the ethno-musicology program. But he credits the building of a stellar, early department to the presence of Eleanor Roosevelt and Marc Chagall, circa 1 1 v ing 1 me: He could do so man things and was in touch with the music scene around the whole country.
Terrible, terrible blow when he had a heart attack. Brandeis's first teacher ol sculpture and graphics. Todav we lend to idenlilv the creative arts areas bv the buildings: The art studios were in the gym where. In addition to Grippe. Before that, the honors students were given studios in Foul I lall or the lastle; Giuliano had a secret room oil the lauudiv where he painted murals ol heroic figures, heavil influenced b his stud nl the llliml. The strength of what he describes as a "unique program"' was its insistence on balancing art bistoiv and studio art: Among the first art historians was beloved, eclectic scholar Leo Bronstein, whose 37 ".
Until more art historians were hired, studio artists also taught art history. At times, relations between the artists and scholars were strained, often over issues of turf and space. Mazur recalls one department meeting when Ludovico Borgo was chair. Siporin had been delivering a lengthy monologue; Borgo interrupted and suggested that the painter allow the art historians to speak.
I will speak as an art historian. In music, for example, concentrators were required to reach a certain proficiency in basic piano, but Brandeis was "not a conservatory," and according to Caldwell Titcomb. In theater arts, the department struggled to find the right balance to accommodate graduate students training for the M.
Professor Emeritus Martin Halpern recalls that this issue occasioned very serious conflicts when Howard Bay was chair. But Halpern in his own career reflects the balance between academics and performance. A playwright himself, he taught playwriting to graduate students and academic courses in dramatic iterature that were taken by students rom many departments.
He has now written the music for an opera. The Satin Cloak, based on a play he also wrote. But before Spingold, one building that has come and gone was significant in the history of Brandeis creative arts. The Ullman Amphitheater was the ocus of academic and creative activities. Underneath the stage in the cramped wooden building were classrooms for music and theater; after a while the music department had to move to a house across South Street.
- Wish You Were Here!
- The Organ Music of Johannes Brahms.
- DREAM HOME.
Because the facilities were so limited, theatrical production in Ullman was hampered, but Shakespeare scholar Professor Alan Levitan claims the best play he ever saw at Brandeis was performed there: A new stage was initiated, figuratively and literally, with the building from to of the major homes of the creative arts departments. Slosberg, the music center, was the first, thanks to the profound involvement and generosity of Sam and Helen Slosberg, lovers of music and art.
Their involvement with the University and their willing and generous support of the arts was crucial at this period, and in the Jacob and Bessie Slosberg Music Center, named for their parents, was completed. Performing at the building's dedication was the Juilliard Siring Quartet, including violinist Robert Koff. The following year, Koff joined the Brandeis faculty as the director of performing activities in music.
When Brandeis was an "intimate, small, way-out school. Today, the performance tradition continues with more than 30 concerts per semester. Among the performances are those by the acclaimed Lydian String Quartet in residence and the Contemporary Chandaer Players; in the "New Music" series, graduate students in composition can have their work performed by professionals: In the mid-sixties, pianist and harpsichordist Rosalind Koff joined her husband as artist-in-residence.
As well as concertizing, she taught piano and assisted Robert in classes, where they always played live music.
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Robert Koff remembers that "in my large lecture course, in order to get into the spirit of Schubert's music. I felt one ingredient was critical if students were to appreciate [this music]: I brought bottles of white wine and they were sipping wine as we played Schubert. Following Bodky's lead he had founded the Friends ol Early Music. Goldman-Schwartz, housing studios, offices, and the slide library; Pollock, the teaching center: Art historian Cerald Bernstein insists that the whole' campus, in fact, constitutes a museum of modernist architecture: The first master plan was done by the internationally known architect Eero Saarinen and in the spring of , the Graham Foundation is sponsoring a symposium on a new master plan for a still-growing I niversity.
The museum, a gift of Edward and Bertha Rose, was built in According to its fourth director, Carl Belz, "the sixties were a great time for the Rose. But a financial crisis in resulted in the museum's staff heing cut from eight to four. By 1 when Belz assumed the directorship, a new wing with space for offices, storage. One of the pleasures of his term as director. Belz maintains, was the "opportunity to work and learn from my colleague and friend lor the past 15 years, our curator. Stoops leels that the "gradual inclusion of leading women artists.
Flora Natapoff was the first area artist Belz exhibited, a Frankenthaler painting was one of his first purchases. Stoops has curated several exhibitions including More than Minimal: Beginning in and continuing to he present, much-needed support came from Lois Foster, who organized the Patrons and Friends of the Rose Art Museum. Exhibiting and collecting are not the museum's only business, though. Objects from the collection are displayed in offices throughout the campus; faculty in several departments use the resources for their classes.
The museum's educational outreach programs include lectures and workshops: About Looking, for example, brings local grade-schoolers to the museum lor art- related activities. Like the Departments of Music and Fine Arts that began with a single facultv member, theater arts was initiated in by Louis kronenberger. In the early years, all the performances were student productions put on by the Drama Club, the Gilbert and Sullivan Society, and the Hi Charlie Review. Ullman Amphitheater was fine for outdoor productions, but left them at he mercv of the capricious New England weather; lack of adequate indoor space made those productions small and not advertised beyond the immediate Brandeis community.
Tin- addition of new faculty, the desire to have a theater that found wider audiences, and the ambition to have an M. Brandeis has always had theater patrons, among them David Merrick, who donated a share of the profits from his Broadway product ions. In 1 Host at Last, Sachar records that "Brandeis may have had the only college theater that was subsidized by the popular allure of a strip teaser" Gypsy based on the career of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee. A gift from Frances and Nate Spingold made possible a theater building, which, along with a large theater space, included two small theaters for experimental and student work: Scholarships and fellowships have been set up by Samuel Goldwyn and Louis Mayer, honorary degrees have been awarded to Steven Spielberg.
David Hardy, maker of films and TV documentaries, was hired in to build a film program within the theater arts department, but a car crash in ended his life, and the graduate program he had only just created survived lor but a few short years through his momentum and the persistence of its faculty. There is at least a place to show films. Thanks to the generosity of Lew Wasserman. Silver Auditorium in the Sachar International Center has been equipped lor screenings. Luliin Symposium, an annual event for the Women's Studies Program that this year featured short films by women, and for the Jewish Film Festival.
Professional actors were hired; an M. Does the Tiger Wear a Necktie? Interact, was held in the summer ol Brandeis theater hail achieved "national prominence. He 40 Brandeis Re feels that the strength of the current facult is extraordinarily impressive in terms ol professional credentials and commitment to the team concept: Two productions that he singled out for special merit were Machinal, an expressionist and woman-oriented drama by Sophie Treadwell and Hotel Paradi.
Pointing out that the department strives for productions that offer a contrast of styles from Shakespeare to musicals, he said we "stretch the young artists as much as we can. Last but not least of the areas, creative writing is not part of the School of Creative Arts: Brandeis's involvement with poets and fiction writers has been constant and strong.
Over the years many distinguished writers have joined the faculty: Students are active writers and have published the literary magazines Kelher. Where the Children Play. Laurel Moon, and irtemis. Under Borofsky's direction, the museum became a studio, providing students with easels, canvases, and paints. Students, regardless of major, were invited to come throughout the day and into the night and paint their idea of God. The turnout was enormous and the diverse, rich results were hung in a show at the Rose at the end of Borofsky's residency.
Curator Susan Stoops spoke of how much she enjoyed the "opportunity to witness the intensity of non-artists making art: Morris Carnovsky in Valpone, Student response to The God Project, and support for the arts in general, is strong. Based on the attendance at concerts and openings and on the burgeoning Festival of the Arts, the Brandeis community wants even more arts.
According to Elaine Wong, the number of students, staff, and faculty presenting proposals for Festival of the Arts funding gets larger every year; the Festival now has events in both semesters. It behooves the University to ensure the arts a place of prominence befitting that interest. Charles Giuliano '63 reminds us that "in all of the arts from music to theater to visual arts to writing, the track record of this University compared with all others of its size stands apart. Brandeis was created by a generation of Jewish people who made a deep commitment to the idea of the preservation of art and culture.
Its two- year gestation period is a story in itself. These pieces were written by Arthur H. February 7, , was an unusually balmy degree winter day. The University would eventually be named Brandeis. Its founder and faithful leader was Dr. C Ruggles Smith, son of the founder, wrote that, "From its inception, Middlesex was ruthlessly attacked by the American Medical Association, which at that time was dedicated to restricting the production of physicians, and to maintaining an inflexible policy of discrimination in the admission of medical students.
Middlesex, alone among medical schools, selected its students on the basis of merit, and refused to establish any racial quotas. John Hall Smith grew ill in and died in without concluding the long struggle with the American Medical Association. Major moments of historical importance occur in several ways, but mainly they are either well-planned events or happen through sheer serendipity. The founding of Brandeis University happened almost by chance. Joseph Cheskis, a Lithuanian Jew. He had close ties to a number of national Jewish organizations.
Schlossberg informed Cheskis that he was aware of a NewYork committee of Jews seeking a campus to establish a Jewish- founded University. The committee was headed by Rabbi Israel Goldstein of NewYork, who had many years of experience organizing projects within the Jewish community. Israel Wechsler, professor of neurology at Columbia University; Dr. On January 7, , C. Ruggles Smith wrote to Goldstein about the opportunities that were possible in Waltham. It is obvious that without powerful backing or a substantial endowment the goal of approval cannot be won. TheTrustees would be very glad to turn over their responsibilities to any new group of trustees that might possess the apparent ability to reestablish the School of Medicine on an approved basis.
They believe that you might be in a position to secure the support of a group of trustees who would be interested in an educational institution which could offer college and professional education in the field of the healing arts on a democratic American basis, with the complete elimination of racial, religious, or social discrimination in the selection of students and faculty.
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The thought of having to turn immediately to the problem of the medical school is disconcerting. It was not the way to start to build the university I had in mind. According to my thinking, the Medical School should come only after a number of years would elapse following the inauguration of the College of Liberal Arts. What intrigued me most of all was the opportunity to secure a acre campus not far from New York, the premier Jewish community in the world, and only 10 miles from Boston, one of the important Jewish population centers, a campus situated in the environs of great educational institutions such as Harvard, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Wellesley, and others.
He was concerned about the physical condition of the campus, yet pleased in what he envisioned, "I was sure that this campus was intrinsically worthy of becoming the site of a great Jewish-sponsored university. Goldstein, Silver, and Smith agreed that, "steps for the consummation of the negotiations should go forward without delay.
Goldstein turned to Dr. Albert Einstein in late January and received Einstein's commitment on January 22, , to become part of the venture and "to help in creation and guidance of such an institute. Silver suggested that Mr. George Alpert, a Boston attorney, was the best person to take the Boston lead. They spoke to Alpert on January 24, , and he agreed to become a leading member of the enterprise, doing the necessary legal work for the transfers of charter and land.
Brandeis's first President Abram Sachar writes about Alpert, 'Alpert, a product of the Boston schools, was a fortunate choice. He was a sharp, hard-headed lawyer of unusual resourcefulness, especially effective in tough legal battles. His primary asset was a compelling elegance and fund-raising experience that had earned him the position of national vice president of the United Jewish Appeal. At that eventful meeting at the Harvard Club of February 7, , Dr. Israel Goldstein was elected as president of the Board ofTrustees, Julius Silver was elected secretary, George Alpert was elected treasurer.
The gestation period for developing Brandeis University had thus begun. Lisa Long wants them. How about a Brandeis 1 niversit dance card from the earl lillies or a tasseled dance program? Lisa wants those, too. Eastern Tide, or David? Lisa is itching to get hold of some of those. She will even take old Brandeis sweatshirts, as long as thev are not read to walk here by themselves.
Farber Universit Vrchives, a brand new place with a threefold mission. Oddly for a place with such a rich and unique beginning, and. Brandeis University has never had a formal archives. Until February ol I' '!! In no wa at all. In terms of records management, therefore, the first task ol the University Archives — and ol Long — is to actually go out and find those relevant materials among the various offices, departments, faculty members past and current, and administrators that document the routine proceedings thai will constitute the history of Brandeis University.
Records management on campus, alone, is a huge and continuous undertaking. The definition of the word 'archives" on campus is confusing. People think of an archives as a rank place with dust and mice, rather than an active place that's trying to accomplish things. I have a lot of work to do in educating people on campus and getting them to realize what the archives program can do for them.
Farber University Archives is a clean, well- lighted, temperature-controlled environment that seems to avow permanence and safekeeping. It is not a browsing collection — its clean rows of stacks filled with the acid-free boxes and folders that protect the collections are closed to the public — but when people come in. Equall antithetical to the image of an ancient and mold archivist is Long, herself, whose energy, experience, and background make her seemingly hand- crafted to lit Brandeis's needs.
And while they had had an archives program, all thai Mull was in storage and needed to he completeh reorganized. And I knew what it meant In move an entire collection into a new space'. So 1 had that experience. What kinds of projects have made use ol the Archives so far? Rut 1 did suggest another source: She was looking at specifics about how this University got where it has in 50 wars, fluctuations in the budget, students, how the interests have changed Eleanor Roosevelt ''Photographs are our bread and butter. Lots ol people want photographs for whatever reason. They'd had a workshop and brought in the records manager from Harvard to introduce these preservation ideas to the administrators and department heads of the Universit.
And the processing of the archives had been done a little over the years. Someone had come in to organize Ralph Norman's photograph negatives and done a beautiful job on that. Brandeis's photographer from until his retirement in We have the immigration papers of Larry Fuchs. Everything down to his credit cards. I know someone just went to his desk and just scraped il off into a box, so we have all his correspondence, his photographs, We have a suit of his.
We have the Commencement robes of [cofounder of the University] George Alpert. On the other hand, the newer building was designed to make use of natural light and sun radiation to provide heat during the winter, and has awning-type structures above windows that keep the building interior cool during other times of the year by blocking the intense summer sun. This week-long advanced course — on subjects such as environmental ethics, environmental law, and environmental economics — followed sustainability workshops that were compulsory for all Knesset employees. Samuel Chayen, sustainability coordinator for the Green Knesset Project.
According to Plot, not all the MKs are happy about the changes. It seems it will just take some time for them to get with the program, which includes everything from individual plastic water bottles being replaced by glass pitchers of water in committee rooms to the installation of toilet flushing systems with two volumes — three liters for liquid waste, and six liters for solid waste the old toilets used a standard nine-liter volume.
All lighting and air conditioning turns off automatically when a room becomes empty. Even computers left on, but not in use, are remotely turned off after a warning is given. At this point, 80 percent off all paper used in the Knesset comes from recycled sources, and all printing is double-sided. More significantly, paper is being replaced by electronic information delivery systems.
MKs have been given electronic tablets to use, and the computer screens at each seat in the Knesset plenum hall are being upgraded. It used to be that the only thing an MK could do with the screen was vote on proposed laws.