The Department of Judaic Studies at the University at Albany has announced that Dr. Jehuda Reinharz, President of Brandeis University, will be the featured speaker at the Fourth Biennial Kappa Beta Lecture, scheduled for Tuesday evening, October 15. The lecture, scheduled for 7:30 pm in the Recital Hall of the Performing Arts Center, is free and open to the public. Dr. Reinharz' topic will be "Chaim Weizmann: Statesman without a State." The lecture is among campus events celebrating the Inauguration of Dr. Karen R. Hitchcock as the Sixteenth President of the University at Albany this November.

Dr. Reinharz, who was born in Israel, moved to the United States in 1961. He received concurrent bachelor's degrees from Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, a master's degree in medieval Jewish history from Harvard University, and the doctorate in modern Jewish history from Brandeis University. Between 1972 and 1982, Dr. Reinharz directed the program in Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan. He returned to Brandeis University as the Richard Koret Professor of Modern Jewish History in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies in 1982.

He was named the seventh President of Brandeis University in 1994. Dr. Reinharz is the author or editor of nineteen books and more than eighty articles. The first two volumes of his projected four volume biography of the Zionist leader and first President of Israel, Chaim Weizmann, have been published to widespread acclaim and have been awarded a number of prizes.