The Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections Department at Brandeis University has contributed three collections to Project Stand, documenting a wide spectrum of concerns and protest activities of the Brandeis community. In the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, the occupation of Ford Hall and the organization of the National Strike Center were seminal moments in the history of student activism at Brandeis, which are documented in The Gordon Fallman Papers. Another series documents the student and faculty attempts to force the University to divest its endowment of stock in companies that were active in South Africa during the 1980s.
The Student Activism at Brandeis Collection includes the most thorough documentation on the activism of Brandeis students and community. Topics in this collection cover on and off campus activism on issues such as nuclear disarmament, civil rights, the Vietnam War, apartheid in South Africa, and more. This collection was originally assembled for the exhibit “Be Realistic…Demand the Impossible: Brandeis Student Activism 1948-2000”, in coordination with the mini-conference, “Student Protests 1969-1970: Brandeis and America” which took place April 12, 2000. The collection was subsequently expanded to include activism materials collected and produced after the 2000 conference and exhibit.
A third Brandeis collection contribution is The Transitional Year Program Collection. Established in 1968, the Brandeis’ Transitional Year Program was designed as a post-secondary educational bridge for academically promising students who have had limited pre-college academic opportunities. The collection reflects the program’s involvement with a wide variety of student issues including health, financial aid, and housing, and also contains material on affirmative action programs and the recruitment of talented minority students, as well as attempts to bring qualified staff to the program. Also included in the collection is documentation on minority student activism which helped to create the African and African American Studies Department and in making changes to the TYP Program.
Primary contact: Maggie McNeely (bio)