Brandeis University appointed historian Flora Cassen its inaugural Lavine family director of its Center for Jewish Studies and director of its Sarnat Center for the Study of Anti-Jewishness. She is to start on Jan. 1.

In her new role, Cassen, an associate professor of history and of Jewish, Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Washington University in St. Louis, will coordinate Brandeis’s Jewish studies programs and institutes and amplify their public impact. (She is also a senior faculty member at the Shalom Hartman Institute of North America, where she will remain as a senior fellow.)

“In many ways, I see my role as the conductor in an orchestra,” she told JNS. “Each instrumental section has its own score, but what I can do is improve coordination so that when they play together, they

See Full Page