Brandeis University: The Pledge

Abram L. Sachar was the first president of Brandeis University, a position that followed his original vocation as a historian. Born in New York City to immigrant parents, he became director of the National Hillel Foundation while teaching at the University of Illinois. At Brandeis, he was a visionary with grandiose plans—he had an “edifice complex,” some noted—who devoted two decades to expanding the campus, faculty, and student body. All the while, he produced a steady flow of highly admired scholarship.