Dr. Jehuda Reinharz to Become New President of the Mandel Foundation

Dr. Jehuda Reinharz, who will become president of the Mandel Foundation when he completes his tenure as president of Brandeis University in the coming year, is distinguished for his ability to address and integrate the general needs of humanity and the specific concerns of the Jewish world. During 16 years as president of the only Jewish-sponsored nonsectarian university in the United States, Dr. Reinharz raised $1.2 billion and tripled the Brandeis endowment, ran a building campaign unrivaled since the 1960s, and cultivated an academic environment that attracts increasingly accomplished students.

Dr. Jehuda Reinharz

His efforts have been supported by major donations from the Mandel Foundation, which shares his focus on universal and Jewish matters. The Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education was initiated in 2002; the new Mandel Center for the Humanities will open this autumn. The foundation also supports fellowships in English and American literature and faculty chairs in Jewish education.

Dr. Reinharz says he welcomes the opportunity to work with the Mandel Board because "the work of the Mandel Foundation coincides perfectly with my values and concerns.” Among major projects undertaken at Brandeis under the leadership of Dr. Reinharz are construction of the Carl J. Shapiro Science Center and renewal of the science complex; creation of the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life; creation of the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, and construction and development of the Shapiro Campus Center.

Projects of special interest to the Jewish world include creation of the new Brandeis Genesis Institute for Russian Jewry, the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and the Steinhardt Social Research Institute.

Dr. Reinharz is author or editor of more than two dozen books. He currently is working on the third volume of his acclaimed biography of Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel.

His documentary history “The Jew in the Modern World,” co-edited with Dr. Paul R. Mendes-Flohr of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, is one of the most widely used college texts on modern Jewish history.

“Glorious, Accursed Europe,” an extensive study of how Jews imagined Europe from the Enlightenment to the present, was recently released in English. The book, co-authored by Dr. Reinharz and Yaacov Shavit, was initially published in Hebrew in 2008. “Darwin and His Kind,” which also was co-authored with Shavit, was published in Hebrew last year.

Dr.  Reinharz is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science and the Council on Foreign Relations, and is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society. He was appointed by President Bill Clinton to the Presidential Advisory Commission on Holocaust Assets in the United States and also served as a member of the Citizens Commission on Holocaust Assets.

Dr. Reinharz received concurrent bachelor degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, a master's degree from Harvard and a doctorate from Brandeis University.  He was the first professor of Jewish history at the University of Michigan, where he established the program in Judaic studies.

He is married to Dr. Shulamit Reinharz, professor of sociology at Brandeis and director of the university’s Women’s Studies Research Center and the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute. They have two daughters, Yael and Naomi.