Frederick M. Lawrence

Frederick M. Lawrence
8th President of Brandeis University
Incumbent
Assumed office January 2011
Preceded by	Jehuda Reinharz
Personal details
Born	1955
Spouse(s)	Kathy Lawrence
Children	Miriam and Noah
Residence	Waltham, MA
Profession	Attorney
Religion	Jewish
Website	www.brandeis.edu/president/bio.html

Frederick M. Lawrence is an American legal scholar and the President of Brandeis University. He was named President on July 8, 2010 and took office on Jan. 1, 2011.^[1] Lawrence is an expert on civil rights.^[1]

Early Life

He is the third and youngest child of Brooklyn College sweethearts Joseph and Bea Lawrence (both deceased). His father was a chemical engineer and his mother an educator. Lawrence attended Flower Hill Elementary School, Carrie Palmer Weber Junior High School and Paul D. Schreiber High School, all in Port Washington, New York. He was valedictorian of his 1973 high school class.

Lawrence holds a B.A. from Williams College and a J.D. from Yale Law School.

Career

He began his legal career in 1980 as clerk to Judge Amalya Lyle Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Later, Lawrence served as an assistant U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, where he became chief of the Civil Rights Unit.

In 1988, he joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Law where he taught courses on civil rights enforcement, criminal law, and civil procedure.

From 2005 through 2010, Lawrence was Dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School.^[2]

An accomplished scholar, teacher and attorney, Lawrence is one of the nation’s leading experts on civil rights, free expression and bias crimes. Lawrence has written, lectured and testified widely on civil rights crimes and is the author of “Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law” (Harvard University Press, 1999), which examines bias-motivated violence and how such crimes are dealt with in the United States. He has authored and edited numerous books and articles examining bias-motivated crimes, free expression, and constitutional law and has written, lectured, and testified widely on civil rights crimes. At Brandeis, he teaches an undergraduate seminar on punishment and crime.

Since becoming president of Brandeis, Lawrence has strengthened ties between the university and its alumni and focused on sustaining the university’s historical commitment to educational access through financial aid. Shortly after taking office he launched a broad strategic planning process that engaged the entire university community. The plan, “Fulfilling the Promise,” was endorsed by the Brandeis Board of Trustees in May 2013 and is being implemented by a broad range of participatory working groups.

As president, Lawrence has supported student innovation including bVIEW (Brandeis Visions for Israel in an Evolving World), a conference by and for college students focused on future-oriented programming that depolarizes campus conversations about Israel, and ’Deis Impact, Brandeis’ annual student-run festival of social justice. He is in frequent attendance at both arts and athletics events at Brandeis and holds monthly student office hours.

Prior to Brandeis, Lawrence was dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School from 2005 to 2010. During his tenure there, Lawrence brought in the strongest five classes in the law school's history and led five of its most effective years of fundraising, despite historically challenging economic conditions.

Lawrence, a native of Long Island, N.Y., received a bachelor’s degree in 1977 from Williams College and a law degree in 1980 from Yale Law School. He began his legal career in 1980 as clerk to Judge Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Later, Lawrence was named an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he became chief of the Civil Rights Unit.

In 1988, he joined the faculty of the Boston University School of Law and taught courses on civil rights enforcement and civil rights crimes, criminal law, and civil procedure. He also served as the school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1996 to 1999. Lawrence received BU’s Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, the university’s highest teaching honor, in 1996.

Lawrence has been a senior visiting research fellow with the University College London Faculty of Law and has studied bias crimes law in the United Kingdom through a Ford Foundation grant.

Lawrence was a trustee of William College and serves on the board of directors of the Anti-Defamation League and the Association of Independent Colleges & Universities in Massachusetts (AICUM), and the board of trustees of WGBH.

Lawrence is married to Kathy Lawrence, an academic who specializes in 19th-century American literature. They have two children, Miriam and Noah.

2014 Commencement Controversy

On April 9, 2014, Brandeis University withdrew its Commencement invitation for awarding an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a famed critic of Islam and a staunch supporter of women's rights who speaks against the practice of honor killings, female genital mutilation, child marriage and various applications of Sharia Law that justify mistreatment of Muslim women by their men. 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".^[3]

In an open letter written to Fred Lawrence by award winning writer and historian Jeffrey Herf, who received his PhD from Brandeis, he criticizes Lawrence's decision as "an act of cowardice and appeasement ... and it has done deep and long-lasting damage to a university".^[4] In another open letter by Lawrence J. Haas, the former communications director and press secretary for Vice President Al Gore, he maintains that Lawrence has "succumbed to political correctness and interest group pressure in deciding that Islam is beyond the pale of legitimate inquiry ... that such a decision is particularly appalling for a university president, for a campus is precisely the place to encourage free discussion even on controversial matters".^[5]

It was later revealed that while Ali was not granted her honorary degree, she was in fact invited to Brandeis’ campus in order to speak with the student body “in a dialogue about these important issues,”^[6] however, she did not accept the invitation. On April 17th, 2014, the Times of Israel wrote that “In declaring that honoring Ali would negate Brandeis’ inclusivist values, university President Fred Lawrence has provided Muslims and Jews with an essential teaching moment” ^[7] declaring that the issue wasn’t about free speech, but instead was about one community not lauding the renegades of another.

Other critics viewed the reaction as misguided, too. On April 13, 2014, Isaac Chotiner of the New Republic wrote that “this controversy isn't about shunning someone from polite society. It is about giving a person an honorary degree.” Chotiner would go on to write that “I certainly don't think she was deserving of a degree in the first place, so, as Gharib argues,^[8] once the university realized its mistake, correcting it was reasonable.”^[9]

Books

• Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law,

References

External links

• University biography