Richard Levin

Richard Levin served as President of Yale University from 1993 to 2013 and as CEO of Coursera from 2014 to 2017. At Yale, he led a comprehensive rebuilding of the campus, redeveloped downtown New Haven, and strengthened the University’s science, engineering, and international programs. He co-founded Yale-NUS College, a pioneering experiment in liberal education in Asia. From 1974 to 1993, he taught economics and conducted research on the economics of technological change. He is the Frederick William Beinecke of Economics Emeritus.

Levin served on the President’s Council of Advisors for Science and Technology (PCAST) from 2009 to 2015, and he advised the White House COVID task force from 2021 to 2022. He served for twenty years as director of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and he is currently a director of the Yidan Prize Foundation.

Levin earned a B.A. in History at Stanford University, a B.Litt. in Politics at Oxford University, and a Ph.D. in Economics at Yale. He holds Honorary Doctorates from Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Oxford, Peking, and Tokyo Universities, and he is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.