The next president of Stanford University will be Jonathan Levin, an economist who currently serves as dean of the Graduate School of Business, and whose involvement with Stanford dates back to his undergraduate days in the 1990s.
Dr. Levine's selection, announced Thursday, was based in part on his deep understanding of the university's culture, the school said.
The move comes as Stanford University faces turmoil caused by protests over the Israel-Hamas war and controversy surrounding its predecessor, Marc Tessier-Lavigne, who resigned last summer amid questions about the quality of his scientific research. , his appointment is also seen as a stabilizing force. Research conducted in the laboratory he supervised.
Jerry Yang, a technology entrepreneur who chairs Stanford's Board of Trustees, said the selection committee chose Dr. Levin, 51, as someone who could guide the university in a politically difficult time. said.
The trustees held dozens of listening sessions, Yang said. “People were looking for someone with a very strong academic record, someone who was very familiar with Stanford and understood the ethos and culture of Stanford,” he said Thursday. “And they were looking for people with deep integrity.”
In choosing Dr. Levine to serve on the White House's Advisory Council on Science and Technology, Stanford University's 20-member search committee also selected someone steeped in academia.
Dr. Levin holds multiple degrees, has been on the Stanford faculty since 2000, and is the son of former Yale University President Richard Levin.
Dr. Levin earned a bachelor's degree in mathematics and English from Stanford University, a master's degree from Oxford University, and then a Ph.D. He is from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He previously served as dean of the economics department at Stanford University and became dean of the business school in 2016.
His research is wide-ranging and covers topics such as early admissions to selective universities, subprime lending, and the impact of financial incentives on medical and health care delivery. As dean, Dr. Levine has promoted the education of entrepreneurs in developing countries through a program called Stanford Seed.
Dr. Levine did not comment directly on the Dr. Tessier-Lavigne scandal in an interview Thursday, shortly after his selection was made public, but he did not comment directly on the Dr. Tessier-Lavigne scandal, but he did address another controversial topic on the Palo Alto, Calif., campus: speech. mentioned the freedom of .
Dr. Levine reiterated his comments that universities should “step back from speaking out about current events,” referring to his speech at this year's Faculty Senate hearing. Instead, “the focus should be on encouraging students to listen to different perspectives, interact, and form their own opinions,” he said.
After protests erupted on campus over the Israel-Hamas war, the university's interim president Richard Saller said in January that he would refrain from speaking out about domestic and international affairs unless it directly affected the university and its mission. Ta. But the organization's declaration of neutrality did not quell campus controversy.
Just this week, the university was named a defendant in a lawsuit brought by Ameer Hasan Loggins, a black and Muslim former lecturer. The lawsuit accuses Stanford University of discrimination in firing Loggins for a lecture on colonialism days after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel.
Even before the campus protests erupted, the university was in trouble when student demonstrators taunted Stuart Kyle Duncan, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, who had come to meet with the university's chapter of the Federalist Society. It was the focus of a free speech battle. .
Dr. Levine will become Stanford University's 13th president in August, replacing Dr. Saller, a Roman historian who began serving as interim president last September following the resignation of neuroscientist Dr. Tessier Lavigne.
Dr. Tessier-Lavigne resigned last summer after a university report found flaws in research he oversaw dating back decades.
But the investigation, conducted by an outside panel of scientists, was the subject of an investigation into an important 2009 Alzheimer's disease study that found false data that Dr. Tessier-Lavigne allegedly covered up. refuted the most serious claims about his research.