Brandeis University Receives Phi Beta Kappa Charter
On this day in 1961, Brandeis University received good news. Less than a decade after accepting its first students, the school had been given approval to start a chapter of the prestigious national honor society, Phi Beta Kappa. To this day, Brandeis holds the record for achieving this goal in the shortest time. Founded in 1947 on a campus inherited from the former Middlesex University in Waltham, the college was named for the late Louis D. Brandeis, the first Jewish justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Its identity would rest, as former university president Jehuda Reinharz said in 1995, "on four solid pillars: dedication to academic excellence, non sectarianism, a commitment to social action, and continuous sponsorship by the Jewish community."