Touro honors Robert Goldschmidt, Lander dean

Touro College conferred an honorary doctorate of political science degree on Robert Goldschmidt, dean of its Lander College of Arts and Sciences and Touro’s vice president for planning and assessment, at Touro’s 39th commencement exercises on May 26 at Avery Fisher Hall in Lincoln Center. More than 2,000 guests were in attendance.

“You have touched — and quite often transformed — the lives of multiple generations of students,” said Dr. Alan Kadish, president and CEO of the Touro College and University System, while conferring the degree. “You seek hidden potential in all students, motivating them to develop their talents and analytical research skills. Yours is an extraordinary resume of accomplishment and achievement.”

In his role as Touro’s liaison to the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, Dean Goldschmidt has been instrumental in securing accreditation for the college in New York, successfully leading it through five major reviews. He is also responsible for leading the accreditation process for Touro’s branch campuses in Berlin, California, Florida, Moscow, Nevada and Paris, and has obtained approvals for the opening of the Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine and the College of Pharmacy, both in New York.

Now in his 39th year with Touro, Dean Goldschmidt is the architect and founding dean of the Lander College of Arts and Sciences in Flatbush, which serves more than 2,500 men and women in separate schools over three semesters annually.

“You are committed to providing an avenue for professional advancement for yeshiva and seminary students while enabling them to retain, without compromise, their identity and adherence to the highest standards of Torah learning and observance,” said Rabbi Moshe Krupka, Touro’s executive vice president.

“At Touro, all of your talents were able to find full expression. It was here at Touro that you realized your great potential. As a Torah scholar and an academic, you are an articulate communicator in the sacred and the scholarly.”

Schooled in Paris and at the Yeshiva Chachmei Tzorfas in Aix-les-Bains, France, Dean Goldschmidt mastered Talmudic tractates and French literature, as well as six languages: French, German, Hungarian, Romanian, Hebrew and Yiddish.

At age 16 he and his family immigrated to the United States where he enrolled in Yeshivat Torah Vodaath in Brooklyn. He immediately exhibited proficiency in English—his seventh language—and studied at the yeshiva until he received his smicha from renowned Torah sage HaGaon HaRav Gedaliah Schorr, zt”l.

Dean Goldschmidt graduated from Brooklyn College as a member of Phi Beta Kappa, and completed his master’s and coursework for a doctorate in political science at New York University where he was a National Defense Education Scholarship recipient, and a research fellow for two years at the NYU Center for International Studies.