The David and Eva Gil Fellowship was created in 2022 in memory of David and Eva by their sons Daniel and Gideon. The fellowship supports a Heller master’s degree or PhD student who is interested in studying the structural roots of social and/or economic injustice and ways to achieve a just society, consistent with Professor Gil’s scholarship.
Professor Emeritus David Gil passed away in March 2021 at the age of 96. One of Heller’s most beloved and celebrated faculty members, he joined the Heller School a mere five years after its founding, and served on the faculty for 46 years. As an academic, Gil was lauded for his profound thinking on the theory of social change, the roots of violence and oppression, and developing policy strategies to respond to universal human needs. As a professor, he had a singular approach to democratic pedagogy and was known as a dedicated and caring mentor, chairing 85 dissertations and serving as a committee member on 47 more, and as the “conscience” of the Heller School. His life story was also remarkable: a child refugee from the Holocaust, he fled Austria at a tender age, emigrating to Sweden and then Palestine. Eventually he and his wife Eva (a therapist and teacher to whom he was married for nearly 66 years at the time of her passing in 2013) settled permanently in the United States with their twin sons, and their home became a welcoming retreat where generations of students gathered for vigorous discussions. To all, they were known for their passionate dedication to social justice and nonviolence.
How to Give
Contributions to the David and Eva Gil Fellowship Fund can be mailed to:
Heller School Donations
c/o Institutional Advancement, MS 126
Brandeis University
415 South Street
Waltham, MA 02453
(add a note in the memo line - David and Eva Gil Fellowship)
Online gifts can be made through the Heller online donation form.
Please select "Other/Write-in" and type “David and Eva Gil Fellowship" to make your gift.
If you have any questions, including other ways to donate such as international wires, please contact the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, helleralumni@brandeis.edu.