In an escalating row with Brandeis University, President Ron Liebowitz released a statement on Tuesday announcing that he would not accept an offer from the university’s Board of Trustees for a one-year contract. The dispute appears to be over missed fundraising targets over the past year. Liebowitz, who joined Brandeis in 2016 after serving as president at Middlebury, is currently six months from the end of his term, and in a statement to the press called the new contract offer “a dead end.” In his statement, Liebowitz said that the Board’s reasoning for a one-year contract came down to a feeling “that fundraising has been insufficient.” Liebowitz also disputed this, claiming that “fundraising had turned a corner,” and that 2020 had actually been one of the most profitable fundraising years for Brandeis since 2010, even despite the pandemic.