The Daily Beast has an exclusive interview with Brandeis COO, who says that the university’s deficit may be as high as $79 million.
But in an exclusive interview, Peter French, Brandeis’s chief operating officer, explained that the university’s situation is far more dire than it appeared in news accounts, which extrapolated the $10 million figure from published documents. He objected to the word “bankrupt,” but what would you call an institution with a projected deficit of $79 million over the next six years, a tapped-out reserve fund, a shrunken endowment and “quite a number” of big donors hit hard by the Madoff scandal?
Brandeis has already cut expenses and staff this year and last, and raised tuition and fees. French said the alternative now was either a drastic shrinking of the university or selling the art. Faced with the prospect of closing 40 percent of the university’s buildings, reducing staff by an additional 30 percent, or firing 200 of its 360 faculty members—any of which, French said, would drastically change the university’s mission and essentially cripple it—“We’d rather use Rose.”
Before finalizing the decision, French explained, the university made an emergency appeal to donors, only to confront the Madoff losses. Earlier this month, Brandeis President Jehuda Reinharz noted in a fund-raising letter that Madoff’s victims included many “staunch and generous” donors to the school. Among the biggest donors are the philanthropist Carl Shapiro and his wife, Ruth; their family foundation lost an estimated $545 million in Madoff’s alleged Ponzi scheme, according to The Boston Globe.
