Brandeis is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity"[9] and is accredited by the New England Commission of Higher Education.

Alumni and faculty of the university have included Nobel Prize laureates Drew Weissman, Michael Rosbash, Jeffrey C. Hall, and Roderick MacKinnon, Fields Medalist Edward Witten, Turing Award Winner Leslie Lamport, and co-creators of the television show Friends David Crane and Marta Kauffman.

"[12] Goldstein agreed to accept Smith's offer, proceeding to recruit George Alpert, a Boston lawyer with fundraising experience as national co-chairman of the United Jewish Appeal.

The founding organization was announced in August and named The Albert Einstein Foundation for Higher Learning, Inc.[19] The new school would be a Jewish-sponsored secular university open to students and faculty of all races and religions.

[60] Dedicated on September 11, 1955, the Jewish chapel was named in memory of Mendel and Leah Berlin, parents of Boston surgeon David D.

[74] On the fourth day of the protest, the Middlesex Superior Court issued a temporary restraining order, requiring the students to leave Ford Hall.

[80][81][82] In January 2007, former President Jimmy Carter spoke at the university against the backdrop of controversy over his book Palestine:Peace Not Apartheid after being invited by students despite some campus opposition.

[91][92]In 2014, Brandeis announced it would offer an honorary doctorate to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, "a staunch supporter of women's rights",[94] and an outspoken campaigner against female genital mutilation, honor killing and Islamic extremism in general.

After complaints from the Council on American–Islamic Relations and internal consultation with faculty and students, Brandeis publicly withdrew the offer, citing that Ali's statements condemning Islam[95] were "inconsistent with the University's core values".

The university announced that the decision to withdraw the invitation was made after a discussion between Ayaan Ali and President Frederick Lawrence, stating that "She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women's rights ... but we cannot overlook certain of her past statements".

Brandeis is also a member of the Boston Library Consortium,[116] composed of 18 academic and research institutions in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire.

[citation needed] The schools of the university include: The College of Arts and Sciences comprises 24 departments and 22 interdepartmental programs, which, in total, offer 43 majors and 47 minors.

The global and experiential dimensions of education at Brandeis are carried out through international centers and institutes, which sponsor lectures and colloquia and add to the ranks of distinguished scholars on campus.

The family had three objectives: to further international understanding, to provide foreign students an opportunity to study in the United States, and to enrich the intellectual and cultural life at Brandeis.

In previous years, the students have visited the United Nations in New York City, and did relief work in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina.

Keck Institute for Cellular Visualization), and more than 50 laboratories[144] that investigate fundamental life processes ranging from the structure and function of individual macromolecules to the mechanisms that control the behavior of whole organisms.

Faculty, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students and undergraduates investigate areas such as neuronal development and plasticity, signal transduction, immunology, the molecular basis of genetic recombination, and the three-dimensional structure of macromolecular assemblies.

The program recruits, trains, and provides mentoring and other services for 10 inner-city Atlanta students each year who are interested in studying science at the undergraduate level.

This center supports interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary materials research and education that address fundamental problems in science and engineering that are important to society.

"[155] Brandeis became the first university to ban Students for Justice in Palestine from campus, occurring shortly after a vigil hosted by SJP relating to Palestinian lives lost in the Israel-Hamas War.

[161] Cholmondley's is named after a notoriously ill-tempered Basset hound that was the on-campus pet for Ralph Norman, the campus photographer during the first years of Brandeis.

After significant pushback from the student body and alumni alike, the administration determined to make the closure temporary while the space underwent renovations.

The university's accomplishments in the arena of sustainability include the creation of a student-organized on-campus Farmers' Market, the implementation of a single-stream recycling program, and the transition to GreenE certified wind power for 15% of the school's electricity needs.

[165] Student projects have included greening campus offices, running after-school environmental education programs for children in the Waltham schools, and cleaning up local streams and ponds.

[166] In addition, a student-led project in 2014 established a rooftop farm atop the Gerstenzang science building consisting of 1,500 potted milk crates.

[169] Security escort services are provided around the campus and into Waltham by the student-run "Branvan," which runs on a daily schedule from 4:00 pm to 2:30 am on weekdays and from noon to 2:30 am on weekends.

The university is 9 miles (14 km) west of Boston and is accessible through Brandeis/Roberts station on the Fitchburg Commuter Rail Line, a free shuttle that services Boston and Cambridge (Harvard Square) Thursday through Sunday,[170] the nearby Riverside subway station (above ground) on the Green Line, and the 553 MBTA bus.

Brandeis teams have earned 17 NCAA Division III Tournament berths and won eight Eastern Collegiate Athletic Association (ECAC) New England crowns in the last decade.

Among the better-known graduates are co-creators of the television show Friends David Crane and Marta Kauffman, political activists Abbie Hoffman and Angela Davis, journalists Thomas Friedman and Paul Solman, Congressman Stephen J. Solarz, physicist and Fields medalist Edward Witten, mathematician and Abel Prize recipient Karen Uhlenbeck, novelist Ha Jin, political theorist Michael Walzer, actresses Debra Messing and Loretta Devine, philosopher Michael Sandel, olympic silver medalist fencer Tim Morehouse, social and psychoanalytic theorist Nancy Chodorow, author Mitch Albom, filmmakers Debra Granik and Jonathan Newman, music producer Jon Landau,[180] and computer scientist Leslie Lamport.

Among the distinguished faculty, present and past, are mathematician Heisuke Hironaka, a Fields medalist, biologists and Nobel laureates Michael Rosbash and Jeffrey C. Hall, composers Arthur Berger, Leonard Bernstein, Martin Boykan, Eric Chasalow, Irving Fine, Donald Martino, David Rakowski, Harold Shapero, and Yehudi Wyner, social theorist Herbert Marcuse, psychologist Abraham Maslow, linguist James Pustejovsky, human rights activist Eleanor Roosevelt, Anita Hill, historian David Hackett Fischer, economist Thomas Sowell, chemist S Katharine Hammond, diplomat Dennis Ross, children's author Margret Rey, former United States Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, sociologist Morrie Schwartz, poets Olga Broumas and Adrienne Rich, author Stephen McCauley, virologist and author of Fields Virology Bernard N. Fields and Pulitzer Prize–winning columnist Eileen McNamara.