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Richard Charles Levin (b. 1947) is a professor and American economist, who has served as president of Yale University since 1993. He is currently the longest serving Ivy League president still in office.

Born in San Francisco, California to Jewish-American parents, Levin graduated from Lowell High School in San Francisco in 1964. At Lowell, he was a member of the Lowell Forensic Society and debated in high school debate tournaments regionally. He graduated from Stanford University in 1968 with a B.A. in history. He received a Bachelor of Letters in politics and philosophy from Oxford University. He earned his Ph.D. in economics from Yale in 1974. His academic specialties include industrial research and development, intellectual property, and productivity in manufacturing.

Levin became an Assistant Professor of Economics at Yale in 1974 and was elevated to Associate Professor in 1979. In 1982, he was promoted to Professor of Economics and Management at the Yale School of Management. In 1992, he was appointed Frederick William Beinecke Professor of Economics. Before becoming president, he served as chairman of the Economics Department and dean of Yale's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

On February 6, 2004, Levin was appointed to the Iraq Intelligence Commission, an independent panel convened to investigate U.S. intelligence surrounding the United States' 2003 invasion of Iraq and Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He had previously served on a government panel reviewing the U.S. Postal Service and an independent panel appointed by Major League Baseball to examine the sport's economics. Levin is a director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, American Express, and Satmetrix.

Although described in Who's Who as a Democrat, Levin was one of the first guests of President George W. Bush in the White House during his first term and the president stayed at Levin's house when he received an honorary degree from Yale in 2001.

Levin and his wife, Jane, a professor at Yale, reside in New Haven, Connecticut. They have four children and three grandchildren.

Since Levin's appointment, three of his provosts have gone on to head other universities: Judith Rodin as president of the University of Pennsylvania, Alison Richard as vice-chancellor of the University of Cambridge, and Susan Hockfield as president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, Richard Brodhead, the former dean of Yale College, left to become the president of Duke University.

Levin has been praised during his tenure for an unparalleled expansion of the University's endowment and for overseeing an ambitious renovation plan. Yale's admissions standards and academic prestige recovered from a significant lull in the early 1990s since Levin's appointment. Yale became the most selective undergraduate program in the Ivy League between 2004 and 2006 — although applications fell the next year, while they increased at Yale's competing institutions. Under Levin's leadership, Yale has been transforming itself into a truly global university, with a new flagship program for undergraduates in Beijing and a dramatic increase in international work/study programs. Closer to home, Levin's administration in 2003 negotiated unprecedented eight-year contracts with the university's unionized workers that provided free health care, extensive paid leave, and cumulative raises ranging from 32% to 43%.

Levin's tenure at Yale has not been without controversies. In 1994, he diverted a $20 million donation intended to fund an integrated Western Civilization program into other departments. After reading about this in the Wall Street Journal, the donor, Lee Bass, withdrew his donation. To placate alumni angered by the incident, Yale trustees José Cabranes and Henry Schacht were commissioned to investigate the Bass affair and publish their findings. In the spring of 1996, however, Levin suppressed the release of the Cabranes/Schacht report. (In fact, the report was not even shown to Bass.) As a result of the "Bass affair," Yale lost up to $500 million in potential donations from the Bass family.^[1][2]

1. ^ The $500 Million Cover-Up and What It Says About Higher Education
2. ^ Facts Concerning Levin Administration Representations about the Bass Affair

• Official Biography from the Office of the President of Yale University
• Article about Levin's 10th Anniversary As President

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