The spring issue of the Brandeis University alumni magazine has a piece headlined "Taking On Wall Street: The behind-the-scenes tale of how two Brandeis graduates challenged financial powerhouse Goldman Sachs in a historic legal showdown." It offers some background about two SEC officials, Lorin Reisner and Kenneth Lench, who, the article says, have had careers that were "deeply influenced by their time on the Brandeis campus in the early 1980s."
From the article:
Influenced by Brandeis' climate of activism, Reisner became involved in politics on campus, running for and winning a seat on the student senate. When a favorite Spanish professor who had opened Reisner's eyes to what he saw as faulty U.S. policy in Latin America was denied tenure, Reisner organized student opposition....
During his sophomore year, when plans were announced for a paid speech by G. Gordon Liddy, the convicted ringleader of the Watergate break-in, Reisner organized a boycott. "He was a crook, a scoundrel," Reisner recalls. "There seemed better ways to spend the money."
Hundreds of students turned out to protest the speech, but it went ahead, nonetheless.
Lench...became involved in a number of hot-button issues on campus...volunteered for Alan Cranston's presidential campaign in 1984....
"We focus on leveling the playing field between the most powerful people in society and the less powerful," Lench says.
