President, Brandeis University,

Frederick M. Lawrence took office as the eighth president of Brandeis University on January 1, 2011. An accomplished scholar, teacher and attorney, Lawrence is one of the nation's leading experts on civil rights, free expression and bias crimes.

Prior to Brandeis, Lawrence was dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law at George Washington University Law School from 2005 to 2010. During his tenure there, Lawrence brought in the strongest five classes in the law school's history and led five of its most effective years of fundraising, despite historically challenging economic conditions. He recruited an impressive number of new faculty members with expertise in a range of areas, from international courts and tribunals to environmental law. Lawrence also increased financial aid, expanded facilities, opened doors to faculty endowments and sought new programmatic possibilities nationally and internationally.

Lawrence received a bachelor's degree in 1977 from Williams College and a law degree in 1980 from Yale Law School. Lawrence was named an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he became chief of the Civil Rights Unit. Lawrence has written, lectured and testified widely on civil rights crimes and is the author of "Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law" (Harvard University Press, 1999), which examines bias-motivated violence and how such crimes are dealt with in the United States.

Lawrence is married and enjoys hiking, old movies, professional sports, and singing. He has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the New York Choral Society.