<p>“It’s predominatley (sic) a jewish school such as Tufts.”</p>
<p>First, of course, BrownBear1 ignores the diversity that sulsk discusses above and the fact that Brandeis is less than 50% Jewish. Moreover, if BrownBear1 has a problem with significant Jewish populations in college, then that would rule out not only Tufts and Brandeis but also Penn, NYU, Harvard and many more. I trust this is not anti-semitism on BrownBear’s part.</p>
<p>The fact that Brandeis was founded by the Jewish community as a completely non-sectarian school and that the hallmark of its founding was non-discrimination makes these comments even more distastful. Perhaps it has been forgotten that our finest colleges were founded originally by religious groups. To paraphrase another poster on this site, Harvard and Yale were Puritan institutions, Brown was Baptist, Princeton was Presbyterian, Columbia–Anglican, Duke is Methodist, etc. etc. Brandeis is no different. It is not a religious institution (in contrast to many Catholic and Fundamentalist colleges and universities). It simply was and still is funded primarily by the Jewish community–originally to counter the quota system which systematically limited Jewish enrollment at other top schools. The incredible thing is how fast Brandeis has risen to the top ranks of academia. True, it is not yet equal to Harvard or Yale in most fields—and it is certainly far less rich than those institutions–but considering it is only 60 years old–it has done incredibly well.</p>