简介

Richard Charles Levin (born April 7, 1947) is an economist and academic administrator. From 1993 to 2013, he was the 22nd President of Yale University. From March 2014 to June 2017, he was Chief Executive Officer of Coursera.

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 Merton College, Oxford.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 had been rumored as a possible replacement for Larry Summers as Director of the White House National Economic Council until Gene Sperling was selected instead.

Levin stepped down as president of Yale on June 30, 2013. Shortly before his retirement as President of Yale University, he published a book, The Worth of the University,a sequel to his previous work, The Work of the University.He was succeeded by Peter Salovey.

As President of Yale, Levin studied and helped to some extent to guide what he called "the rise of Asia's universities". Yale's role in Asia is briefly set out below. In 2013, Levin agreed to serve on the Advisory Board for the newly created Schwarzman Scholars - fellowships that will take students from many countries for post-graduate study together at Tsinghua University in Beijing, with the aim of promoting international understanding.

In March 2014, Levin became Chief Executive Officer of Coursera. In June 2017, Coursera announced that Levin was being replaced by Jeff Maggioncalda.

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