Students living in Ridgewood A may have faced a sort of identity crisis this weekend; they are now living in the Jehuda Reinharz Residence Hall-proclaimed by new lettering on the front of the building facing the Shapiro Campus Center.

The Board of Trustees voted in May to name the residence hall, which was built in the 2007-2008 academic year, after President Emeritus Jehuda Reinharz, the University's seventh president, for his three decades of service to Brandeis University.

"By any measure, Dr. Reinharz transformed the university," University President Frederick Lawrence said in a press release on Monday. "During his nearly 17-year tenure as president, he led an unprecedented campus-wide expansion including 36 endowed faculty and staff positions, 29 new or renovated campus buildings, and 17 new research centers and institutes."

Reinharz served as president of the University for over 16 years until he stepped down at the end of 2010. Before succeeding Samuel O. Thier as president in 1994, Reinharz served as provost starting 1991 after teaching as a professor of modern Jewish history.

"Ever since my graduate school days at Brandeis, beginning in 1968, I heard about the inadequacies of student residences," Reinharz said in a University press release acknowledging the honor. "Ridgewood was beloved, but needed major renovations, and we were able to raise the funds to create state-of-the-art residence halls there.

"I am proud to have my name attached to this residence hall," he said, "and I am grateful to President Lawrence and the Board of Trustees for honoring me in this way."

Under Reinharz, the university raised $1.2 billion dollars and its endowment increased by more than fourfold, according to a University press release, although the end of his tenure was mired in controversy over the proposed sale works from the Rose Art Museum.

"Jehuda was instrumental in getting Ridgewood built," said Dean of Student Life Rick Sawyer in an interview with the Justice. "His legacy includes several buildings on this campus, and I'm very pleased to hear that his name is going on one of the Ridgewood buildings."

Reinharz graduated from Brandeis with a Ph.D. in 1972. He then returned to Brandeis in 1982 as the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History after a short time as a professor at the University of Michigan.

Reinharz announced his resignation as president in September 2009 and formally relinquished the role when Lawrence began on January 1, 2011. He is currently a professor at the University, director of the Tauber Institute for the study of European Jewry and president of the Mandel Foundation in Ohio.

-Andrew Wingens