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Orthodox Jewish students at Brandeis University slammed the institution’s administrators for placing an advertisement in The New York Times Magazine that called the institution “anything but orthodox,” the Times of Israel reported.
The Sunday advertisement read, “Brandeis was founded by Jews. But, it’s anything but orthodox.” The text was in a two-page spread as part of a marketing campaign promoting the university. Brandeis was founded by Jewish community members in the Boston area in 1948 as a nonsectarian research university at a time when Ivy League universities in the Northeast were limiting admissions of Jewish students. The institution is named after Louis Brandeis, the first Jewish justice on the U.S. Supreme Court.
Leaders of the Brandeis Orthodox Organization, a student group, sent an email to members on Tuesday saying that they were “hurt and disappointed” by the ad. They said they contacted the administration to prevent this kind of messaging in the future.
A statement from Brandeis in response affirmed that the university is “deeply committed to our Orthodox community members” and that “the ad was intended not to offend, but to underscore both the diversity of our community and our unusual origin story.”
“We know that for decades, Brandeis has provided Orthodox Jewish students like ourselves a place where they could comfortably grow and succeed,” wrote Matt Shapiro and Shoshana Solomon, the president and vice president of the Brandeis Orthodox Organization. “However, the statement that was made in this advertisement was unacceptable and antithetical to Brandeis’ values.”
The statement from the university described the ad as “a play on words meant to highlight Brandeis’ unique story and history of innovation—as do the other ads in the campaign.”
