Brandeis University ( /ˈbrændaɪs/) is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles (14 km) west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it was ranked by the U.S. News and World Report as the number 31 national university in the United States.Forbes listed Brandeis University as number 57 among all national universities and liberal arts colleges combined in 2010.

Brandeis was founded in 1948 as a nonsectarian Jewish-sponsored coeducational institution on the site of the former Middlesex University. The university is named for Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), the first Jewish Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

Names associated with the conception of Brandeis include Israel Goldstein, George Alpert, C. Ruggles Smith, Albert Einstein, and Abram L. Sachar.

C. Ruggles Smith was the son of Dr. John Hall Smith, founder of Middlesex University, who had died in 1944. In 1946, the university was on the brink of financial collapse. At the time, it was one of the few medical schools in the U. S. that did not impose a Jewish quota; but it had never been able to secure AMA accreditation—in part, its founder believed, due to institutional antisemitism in the AMA—and, as a result, Massachusetts had all but shut it down.

Barbra Joan Streisand (/ˈstraɪsænd/; born April 24, 1942) is an American singer, actress, writer, film producer and director. She has won two Academy Awards, eight Grammy Awards, five Emmy Awards including one Daytime Emmy, a Special Tony Award, an American Film Institute award, a Peabody Award, and is one of the few entertainers who have won an Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony Award.

She is one of the most commercially and critically successful entertainers in modern entertainment history, with more than 71.5 million albums shipped in the United States and 140 million albums sold worldwide. She is the best-selling female artist on the Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) Top Selling Artists list, the only female recording artist in the top ten, and the only artist outside of the rock and roll genre. Along with Frank Sinatra, Cher, and Shirley Jones, she shares the distinction of being awarded an acting Oscar and also recording a number-one single on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Sarah Kate Silverman (born December 1, 1970) is an American comedienne, writer, actress, singer and musician. Her satirical comedy addresses social taboos and controversial topics such as racism, sexism, and religion.

Silverman first gained notice as a writer and occasional performer on Saturday Night Live. She starred in and produced The Sarah Silverman Program, which ran from 2007 to 2010, on Comedy Central. She often performs her act mocking bigotry and stereotypes of ethnic groups and religious denominations by having her comic character endorse them in an ironic fashion.

Sarah Silverman, the youngest of four daughters, was born in Manchester, New Hampshire. Her mother, Beth Ann Halpin, was George McGovern's personal campaign photographer and founded the theater company New Thalian Players. Her father, Donald Silverman, was a social worker by training who ran the discount clothing store Crazy Sophie's Outlet. She was raised without religion, though she is ethnically Jewish.

She appeared in community theater at age 12, most notably with Community Players of Concord, New Hampshire in Annie and also appeared on a local television show in the Boston area called Community Auditions at age 15. At seventeen, she performed stand-up comedy in a restaurant, singing a song she called "Mammaries."