Exclusive: Brandeis sacks string quartet
NewsBrandeis University, facing a sharp drop in donations and student enrolment, has sacked the Lydian String Quartet in a cost-cutting measure. All four musicians – Professor Joshua Gordon, cellist, Prof. Julia Glenn and Prof. Clara Lyon, violins and Prof. Mark Berger, viola – will lose their jobs at the end of the current academic year.
The Lydian String Quartet has been a fixture at Brandeis for 44 years. With its removal, the music department will lose one-third of its teaching staff.
Brandeis has been a noted hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-semitic agitation in the past year. It has dropped in U.S. News and World Report rankings from 35 to 63rd place. Brandeis’s president resigned last month.
University Provost Carol Fierke urged the faculty to help, saying the most helpful thing they can do is to ‘recruit or retain one student.’ Desperate times, desperate measures.
UPDATE: Joshua Gordon has been in touch to say the quartet is not disbanding.
Astonishing that a university so closely linked with the Jewish faith and with such a high percentage of Jewish students should be a “noted hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-semitic agitation.” It is, after all, named for a Jewish Supreme Court Justice, and was founded specifically to make university a free and happy experience for Jewish students, whose welcome was not always warm elsewhere.
But the young and small, though deservedly well-respected university has financial problems of a monumental sort. And being young, they do not have generations of alumni to invest in them. Being small, the post-Covid shortfall in enrolment hits them very hard. They have tended to spend on their research programmes, and are currently facing infrastructure problems that could become critical.
There is considerable resistance within their community to the closure of the Lydian Quartet, though other aspects of their music programme have also suffered.
Brandeis is very vulnerable financially; the controversy over how they handled protests over the last year has not done anything for its reputation; the change in leadership leaves an aura of uncertainty around its general image. From the point of view of those who run the place, I would imagine the loss of a string quartet is among the least of their concerns.
It’s a shame. It is an institution well worth saving.
>> such a high percentage of Jewish students
a common belief not entirely accurate … less than a third, they say (down from perhaps half when I was there, 57y ago), while a great many similar schools have 20-25% (and often those are Hillel counts, which miss a lot of kids)
The article’s statement that Brandeis is a “hotbed of anti-semetism” is completely false. Brandeis was one of very few schools to get an A grade in the Anti-Defamation League’s report card for campus antisemetism (https://www.adl.org/campus-antisemitism-report-card).
One small quibble, by a disappointed Brandeis alumnus, with V. Lind’s otherwise incisive analysis: referring to “the Jewish faith” implies that identifying with or hating Jews has something to do with a system of beliefs and rules, to which many — if not most — Jews don’t adhere. Judaism is, rather, a nationality or perhaps an ethnicity; some would say, following Mordecai Kaplan, a “civilization.”
Isn’t Brandeis a “jewish” university? Now is anti Israel? I am bit puzzled..
A lot of Jewish liberals oppose Israeli policies and actions in the last year. And while there is anti-Semitism on all too many campuses (and one is too many), there IS a distinction between what is sneeringly referred to around here as “pro-Pal” and anti-Semitism.
I get the impression that many of the newly pro-Palestinian faction are not very aware of any of the realities of the region but that they do see the size of the retaliation for October 7 (which they stubbornly seem to ignore) in Gaza.
This is sad. Clara JUST joined the quartet. Great group of people
https://www.thejustice.org/article/2024/10/faculty-express-dissatisfaction-as-budget-cuts-result-in-removal-of-lydian-string-quartet-and-receive-admissions-updates-brandeis
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) gives Brandeis a very positive (A) rating as a place for Jewish/Zionist students, so U think this “hotbed” characterization is hardly correct.
The head of the ADL embraced Al Sharpton. That’s all you need to know about that organization.
Methinks you are TOTALLY out of your depth. Duuh. LAG TIME. LAG TIME. LAG TIME. Such college rankings (says this former college lecturer of 26 years) are years behind the on-the ground reality. A small college might have gone through three regime changes, had a troubled individual run though all the cash and then mortgage the campus (!!!) which is a violation of the accreditation covenants, and the US Secretary of Education then declares that their student loans can no longer be insured… and… the usual magazine recommendation guides got published, without a clue. Perhaps in a year or three, the ADL might wake up. Sheesh.
Agreed. Brandeis was not even in the same league as place like anti semitic places such as Columbia, UCLA, NYU…
It is if one equates criticism of Israel with anti Semitism. Which I certainly don’t.
Some 15 years ago Brandeis tried to close its art museum and sell off its important collection.
The famous event was that some works were sold off over 30y ago, though not all of what the president proposed. Then yes, 15y ago closure was planned but eventually thwarted.
Since when is anti-Israel the same thing as antisemitic? Norman, I think I hear an axe grinding. I thought this was strictly a music magazine, but since you raise the issue, have you never considered that anti-Palestinian might just be antisemitic? Take some time to consider the history. Give it some well-deserved thought, Norman. Then give it a little more.
Emotionally driven drivel drives the bus. Mr. Nichols needs a dime.
Pure facts, Mr. Garbitsch. Food for thought:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Semite
It’s antisemitic when you tell Israel it doesn’t have the right to defend itself, forcing it to be “proportionate”, thereby guaranteeing regular wars.
Hi, Sue. Isn’t it awfully antisemitic to tell the Palestinians they have no right to defend themselves, no right to their homes, no right to food and medicine, no right to life itself, as they, the land’s indigenous population, are most definitively semitic people?
“so _I_ think…”, not “u”, of course.
This is sad and shocking. For decades, the Lydian Quartet was one of the leading quartets in Boston and in the United States. It was founded (if I am not mistaken) as an all-women quartet, with Rhonda Rider, the late Mary Ruth Ray, Wilma Smith and Judith Eissenberg.
I think he meant “noted target of anti-Israel and anti-semitic agitation” . See for example, https://www.brandeis.edu/magazine/2024/summer/featured-stories/antisemitism.html
But according to this article it is among the least troubled of surveyed campuses by anti-Semitic agitation. And of the Jewish students surveyed, “Virtually all the students surveyed expressed favorable opinions about the Israeli people and said they felt highly connected to Israel, but only 56% felt that way toward the Israeli government. “They also expressed deep concerns about the human cost on both sides of the conflict,” Saxe writes in the study.”
This is tragic…
>> noted hotbed of anti-Israel and anti-semitic agitation in the past year
Huh? More than others similar? Probably clumsily phrased in any case, as someone notes elsewhere
All Universities’ solution? Hire more high-paid administrators while cutting faculty and programs. From their recent faculty meeting: “In order to solve some of these concerns, the University is creating a division of Enrollment Management. President Levine will lead a new division of Enrollment Marketing.”
In a world where left-wing institutions are becoming increasingly anti-Semitic, Brandeis would be well advised to move to the right in its program offerings.
This means keeping departments that concern the positive legacy of Western civilization [e.g. art history, music] and eliminating departments that concern the negative legacy of Western civilization [e.g. African Studies, Anthropology, East Asian Studies, Health Studies, Hispanic Studies, International Studies, Latin American Studies, Women’s Studies].
I’m not saying that African Studies, etc. don’t deserve to be studied. I’m saying that those subjects can be studied at places other than Brandeis.
I think if the legacy of the West, principally from this list America, is negative in Africa, East Asia, Latin America and among the Hispanic communities, women and essentially the developed and undeveloped world (international and anthropological) it’s high time the West, principally America, started to learn about it and face up to it.
It was an American philosopher, George Santayana, who said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I very much suggest American universities start reading Edward Gibbon. It CAN happen here, and it will.
Brandeis’ administration, particularly the Provost, has been targeting the Music Department for quite a while (read previous news about Brandeis PhD programs, etc). This is the latest in Provost Fierke’s anti-music campaign. She should not be quoted in this article as someone who is “urging faculty to help.” The Lydian Quartet is a Brandeis institution and beloved by students. Brandeis is making a huge mistake.
I am a Brandeis alum, and this is sadly not shocking. They’ve been trying to do away with the quartet for at least twenty five years because somebody in administration sees it as an expensive line on a spreadsheet and when they’re told to cut costs, it sticks out.
Being Jewish and being Zionist are also not the same thing. It is very possible to be one and not the other.
Coming upon the heels of the Brandeis Music Department’s decision to eviscerate its graduate program, this is depressing beyond belief.
What nonsense that Brandeis is “a hotbed of anti-Israel and antisemitic agitation”. Even the rabid ADL thinks Brandeis is a great place to study; as BTW do I, though anti-Israel ). This is a Jewish University and it kept taking full page ads in the NY Times (God knows how much that costs) asking Jewish students who feel “unsafe” at Columbia or elsewhere to transfer to Brandeis where they will be safe. I guess the world of automatic support for Israel is no longer routine even for Jews.