Brandeis University announced yesterday that it has received a $22.5 million donation, among the largest in the Waltham college's history, from a Cleveland foundation to build an interdisciplinary humanities center.
School officials said the gift from the Mandel Foundation will establish a world-class center they hope will serve as a national model.
"Brandeis intends to create a truly visionary place that will highlight the relevance and importance of the humanities," Jehuda Reinharz, president of Brandeis, said in a telephone interview. "This is transformative and comes at a critical time."
The Mandel Center for the Humanities will offer new courses and research internships for undergraduates, host conferences and events, and serve as a hub for interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and teaching. It should be completed in two years, he said.
It will be home to classrooms and faculty offices and eventually connect several free-standing humanities buildings on a quad.
Previous foundation gifts to Brandeis have established the Mandel Center for Studies in Jewish Education five years ago and graduate fellowships in English, American literature, and the humanities.
"They have a long history with the university," Reinharz said. "With this gift, they wanted to make a statement that this is a field that needs support. They wanted to set an example."
The philanthropic foundation donates generously to higher and Jewish education. Brandeis is in the middle of a successful fund-raising campaign that has nearly reached its goal of $800 million over the past six years.
Leslie Berlowitz, chief executive of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, said the donation was a highly generous sum for the humanities, which has had disproportionately less philanthropic support in recent years in comparison with the sciences.
"It's an extraordinary, significant gift for the humanities, and it's very significant for higher education," she said.
Peter Schworm can be reached at schworm@globe.com.
