Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Brandeis extends transfer deadline, appealing to Jewish students distressed by campus anti-Israel unrest

President Ron Liebowitz announced the extension as encampment protests spread from Columbia University to other schools

(JTA) — Brandeis University, the historically Jewish school outside Boston, has extended its transfer application deadline in a bid to appeal to students who are unhappy with their own schools’ responses to campus anti-Israel protests.

The university announced the decision on Monday, as encampment protests spread from Columbia University to campuses across the United States. The protests, which take aim at the schools’ ties to Israel, are spurred by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and have in some places included rhetoric that veers into antisemitism. Jewish groups and some Jewish students say the protests have left Jewish and pro-Israel students unsafe and unable to take part in campus activities.

“As a university founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community to counter antisemitism and quotas on Jewish enrollment in higher education, Brandeis has been committed to protecting the safety of all its students, and, in the current atmosphere, we are proud of the supports we have in place to allow Jewish students to thrive,” Brandeis President Ron Liebowitz wrote in an email to the community. “Due to the current climate on many campuses around the world, we are now expanding the opportunity for students to seek the learning environment of our campus by extending the transfer application deadline to May 31.”

Brandeis made headlines shortly after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and triggered the war, when a portion of its student government failed to pass a resolution condemning Hamas. But the broader student government soon reversed course, and in November, the school became the first to ban its chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, saying that the group “openly supports Hamas” — a departure from other schools that have since suspended the group for technical offenses against protest policies.

About a third of students at Brandeis, which is nonsectarian, identify as Jewish, according to Hillel International.

“Students elsewhere should know we welcome all — Jews and students from every background — who seek an excellent undergraduate education and an environment striving to be free of harassment and Jew-hatred to apply,” Liebowitz wrote.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.