Rutgers Announces Death Of Ruth Mandel, Former Eagleton Director

NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ — Rutgers University announced that Ruth Mandel, who escaped the Holocaust with her family and devoted her life to promoting democracy and civic engagement including through 24 years as director of Rutgers University’s Eagleton Institute of Politics, died Saturday.

Her death at age 81 was caused by ovarian cancer.

The following is from a Rutgers press release about her death:

Mandel was a Board of Governors Professor of Politics at Rutgers University-New Brunswick and a Senior Scholar at Eagleton’s Center for American Women and Politics. She stepped down in August as director of Eagleton after more than two decades of distinguished leadership. Before that, from 1971-1984, she was a founder and director of the Center for American Women and Politics.

“This is very sad news at a difficult time,” said John J. Farmer Jr., director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics. “The loss of Ruth will be felt not just by Eagleton, by Rutgers and by the U.S. Holocaust Museum, but by the thousands of students, colleagues and friends whose lives she has touched in her inimitable, deeply caring way."

Mandel was born in Vienna, Austria. Her parents, Mechel and Lea Blumenstock, fled Nazi Germany with their infant daughter in 1939 on the USS St. Louis, which left from Germany carrying more than 900 Jews away from Nazi terror. Denied entry to both Cuba and the United States, the St. Louis returned its passengers back to Europe months before the onset of World War II.

Many were eventually murdered in Holocaust death camps, but Mandel’s family was among those fortunate enough to be accepted into England. The family moved to the United States in 1947. Ruth attended Brooklyn College, earning a B.A. in English, and earned her Ph.D. in English and American literature in 1969 from the University of Connecticut. Before coming to Rutgers in 1971, she taught at the University of Pittsburgh and Rider College.

During her tenure as Eagleton’s director, the institute launched new research and education initiatives in youth political engagement, governors and state executive leadership, science and politics, immigrant political behavior and ethics in government. The institute’s education programs for Rutgers graduate and undergraduate students expanded in size and scope, attracting support from new state and private resources.

In honor of its 60th anniversary in 2016, Eagleton launched the Rutgers-Eagleton Washington Internship Program, providing summer stipends to support undergraduates enrolled on any Rutgers campus. The institute expanded its state and national outreach and service with visible public programs and social media communications under Mandel’s leadership.

Mandel’s work at the institute was informed by her own government service as an appointee to both federal and state bodies. She was appointed by President George H.W. Bush to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, the governing body for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and reappointed and designated vice chair of the board by President Bill Clinton; her service to the museum extended from 1991-2005. She was the founding chair of the Museum’s Committee on Conscience. More recently, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy appointed her to the New Jersey Council for the Humanities.

As Eagleton’s director, Mandel focused nearly a quarter century on shaping a distinctive, path-breaking institution, widely known and respected as the Rutgers “Place for Politics.”