After I resigned from the appointment of Dean of CVPA College of Visual and Performing Arts in 1981, I applied for a twelve-month (two semester) leave of absence for the following year from SMU to assist President Bernstein of Brandeis University to upgrade the design of their total program of official university publications.
I looked forward to this assignment. It was very challenging, in many ways made difficult by the tremendous amount of work, limited production budgets and an inexperienced staff, that lost its naivety very quickly to function in relationship to the highest professional standards. I could not have worked with a more committed and dedicated group.
In the sixties I had designed a very personal project with Hebrew lettering for Evelyn Simha, the wife of Robert O. Simha, who was chief planning officer at MIT. In the late seventies she became the executive assistant to the forth president of Brandeis University, Marver Hillel Bernstein. She was also on the faculty, teaching French Literature, and a governor of the Brandeis University Press. Jacqueline Casey, my office design colleague from MIT days had advised Evelyn Simha to contact me. Brandeis proposed for me to redesign all publications for the year 1982 within the same production budget of the previous year. Everything fell into this bucket. I accepted with the caveat that only Marver Bernstein could overrule any of my design decisions. This seemed to satisfy my needs after my more than bizarre WGBH experience.
In all my professional design experience, Brandeis stands out, because not only was my work appreciated, but I was included in the Brandeis Family, even though as a German, with a heavy accent, and an even heavier burdening German history, it would have been easy to isolate me. But I could not have been treated any kinder or respectful or more considerately. It would have been quite easy to separate me from any of the cathartic discussions between executives following the 1982 Lebanon War, when Israel invaded Lebanon for the purpose of attacking the Palestine Liberation Organization. The Israeli army laid siege to Beirut and during this conflict many civilians lost their lives, which became a very daunting challenge to Jewish ethics and morals, as well as integrity.
Looking back at Brandeis, this university offered me one of my most unique and rewarding experiences. I grew up in post WW II years and in Germany the Jewish community was so devastated that one almost never met anyone of Jewish origin. I can’t recall any person during my schooling or in my family’s circle of friends. What I learned came from newspaper accounts, books and documentaries. Brandeis allowed me to experience first-hand the reality of daily life, living and interacting with persons with differing ethnic identities. I learned so much about Jewish life, Hebrew customs and liturgy. It was also one of the few places that insisted on the freedom of speech. Very different from SMU, where President Donald Walker insisted on “Peace at any Price”, interrupting any intellectual confrontation between faculty, Brandeis was a caldron for dynamic explorations of sometimes uncomfortable ideas. I loved that at lunch in the cafeteria one could observe amazing physically animated discussions, which from the distance could have been interpreted as hostile and confrontative, just to overhear: “Let’s continue the discussion over lunch next time. Have a great day.” At SMU, over the years, “devil’s advocacy” had been lost and with it the question of “What If?” Instead all critical inquiry or commentary was interpreted as personal. There, when one of my colleagues disagreed, he have me the Nazi salute, even though the discussion was about every-day maintenance issues, rather than politics, religion or worldview. I swear that would have never happened at Brandeis.
One of my favorite persons at the university was Professor Abram L. Sachar, a scholar of history and the founding president of the institution. I had met him when I worked at WGBH, where he appeared in a weekly educational television show “The Course of Our Times”, presenting analyses of problems in contemporary history. He provided me with the key for understanding the institution and for an identity for Brandeis. He had authored “Brandeis University: A Host at Last”. His ideas were very clear. He said: “For centuries we have been hosted by many of the leading institutions all over the globe. Now Brandeis reciprocates, by welcoming students and scholars from all walks of life to explore and celebrate the Jewish identity, thought and contribution. This seemed to me most genuine and provided a solid foundation for the exploration of an institutional identity. It became the leading spirit and framework for the design efforts.
Enjoying the support from Abram Sachar, Evelyn Handler and Marver Bernstein, I also enjoyed the input from Professor David Steinberg, who always thought of Brandeis as a place that transformed America for the next generations. He was of my age, an enthusiast, very open-minded, positive about the future, and very aware of the human struggle to survive in a continuously alienating world. When Marver Bernstein left the presidency in 1982, I had rooted for him to become the next president. He became a very revered administrator of Long Island University, leading the institution for nearly thirty years, which I consider proof of his leadership ability as well as his sense for the best human relationship.
The decision was made to leave the task to evolve a signet, standing in for the university, to the end of the project, gathering as much information as possible. Up to then was considered a learning experience about the institution. However, Marvin Bernstein left the presidency and so the exploration of a new signet began not with him, but with the preparation for inaugurating Evelyn Handler as fifth president in 1983.
I hired Darlene, one of the senior students of my senior design class, because it would prove my ability to educate young designers or not. She was an amazing asset to the success of this one-year project.
Also, I facilitated the appointment of Shirley Maymaris to administrative assistant, heading production, and through her we received a new secretary. With that small staff, we were able to produce nearly six-hundred publications, ranging in complexity from simple official invitations to the university course catalogue, program brochures and posters for events. The fact was, that nearly every day three projects had to complete the production cycle. This could not have been done without the help of this dedicated staff.
Shirley Maymaris had worked for Brandeis for a long time, knew the various players, and was able to provide quick character sketches of many of the clients to the new office. She mingled with other members of the community, therefore became the most important component alarm bell on how to stay out of trouble. She gavlll giving advice on how to handle this person or the other. So, if over lunch a departmental secretary would talk about an invited lecturer, we already had an inkling of the complexity of the problem, which helped all of us to never be in a last minute panic mode.
I would come in about 7:00 am each day and leave about 7:00 pm or much later. Darlene travelled from Rhode Island. I became aware and of the fact that everyone, but the secretary came in earlier and earlier, and left later and later, even though the office hours were the typical 9:00 to 5:00. They never were asked to spend more of their time. However, they did. They were astonishingly dedicated.
If faculty or chairs were dissatisfied with our solutions, we heard little about it. This may have had to do that every complaint had to be mediated by the president’s office and that must have been considered too cumbersome. So very few complaints raised their heads. However, there was one major project that required a quick assembly of a review board. During 1981 Brandeis launched or continued a very smart academic freshman foundation program. Students were able to choose specific tracks in relationship to their interests, math or science, law or social services, medicine or biological research. All students were introduced to the same various texts, but filtered the information through their discipline’s major intellectual frameworks. At the conclusion of he course all students joined a major seminar, in which the disciplinary differences were review. I loved the concept and I wished that a course like this had been available during my schooling.
I had no problems with the contents, but with the text presentation in the extensive course brochure. It seemed to favor a male audience, and only in reference to times of emancipation allowed the mention of female authors. For historical reasons, each topic seemed to be connected to a male author. I decided to neutralize the language, adjusting all gender indicators from singular to plural. The authors of the brochure accused me off interfering with their rights to present information as they saw fit. Marver Bernstein sided with them to underscore their rights to freedom of speech in preparing the text.
His argument made a lot of sense to me, even if I did not agree with the outcome. In full control of the visual aspects, my decision was to include two-hundred images of women, as seen throughout centuries in the arts. This solved my problem to a certain extent.
When Marver Berstein vacated his position, Evelyn Handler was appointed as president to the university. She was the first female president. Form the day she came to the campus she served notice, that she was in charge. “ I don’t relent, I don’t give up,”she told the Boston media. “It’s more a strength than a weakness.”
Her interests were to shape a new institutional identity. She tried to ignore the heritage of the institution and impose her vision. Not consulting with the founders, like Sachar, she embarked on a collision course, prompting strong opposition to changes which were reversed. For me, the identity of Brandeis lay in what Sachar described as Brandeis, a jewish institution, welcoming everyone to cherish Jewish intellectual life, integrity, spirit, invention and thought.
Handler’s concepts were quite the opposite. Her goal was to change the university into a world research institution without reference to any ethnicity, tradition and historical events of the first half of the former century. However, she was very dictatorial. so we designed a brand new signet for the university and applied it for her inauguration to everything, flags and banners, trucks, library, catalogues and all university publications, eliminating the original school emblem of Emmet. There was a very bitter response from the group of founders and their offspring. They objected and nullified the amazing investment. Soon the handler signet vanished and was replaced with a fairly non-descript solution that satisfied the original philanthropists.
At the end of the year, I was offered a very lucrative assignment at Brandeis. However, I rejected it, because handler had begun to bar any outright references to the jewish life. It got so bizarre that her assistant would bar photos of men with skull caps or of profiles considered too physically ethnic. The year was over. I wrote a memo to her titled “Antisemitism from Within”, did not sign the contract, and left. Darlene took a permanent design position, which after she got married and moved to Florida, was occupied by Charles Dunham, a former student, who among other courses had taken my senior design course.