Stanford Names Business School Dean Jonathan Levin Its New President

Stanford GSB Dean Jon Levin last week when an in-person event was canceled and he had to do it online

Stanford University today (April 4) announced that the dean of its business school will become president of the university on Aug. 1. With quiet self-confidence and a deep well of humility, economist Jonathan Levin has successfully led Stanford Graduate School of Business over the past eight years.

He was named Dean of the Year by Poets&Quants in 2022 for his success in bringing stability to a school that had been wracked by scandal. But more importantly, Levin has put Stanford in the lead of all business schools on diversity and inclusion, making the GSB the first major institution to publish an annual report on its diversity progress. With the advantage of having one of the world’s best academic brands and the resources behind it, Levin has been able to recruit and retain the best faculty scholars on the market and to lead them in confronting many of the world’s biggest challenges. And no school–not even Harvard Business School–can lay claim to annually enrolling what is arguably the best and brightest MBA candidates year after year.

“As I look to Stanford’s future, I’m excited to strengthen our commitment to academic excellence and freedom; to foster the principles of openness, curiosity, and mutual respect; and to lead our faculty and students as they advance knowledge and seek to contribute in meaningful ways to the world,” the 51-year-old Levin said in a statement.

‘JON HAS A FRESH POINT OF VIEW & EXTENSIVE KNOWLEDGE OF THE UNIVERSITY

Stanford Graduate School of Business Dean Jonathan Levin will become Stanford University’s President on Aug. 1

Levin, who chaired the university’s economics department before becoming dean of its business school,  succeeds Levin interim President Richard Saller. His appointment concludes a seven-month search process for Stanford’s 13th President following the resignation of Marc Tessier-Lavigne last summer. Tessier-Lavigne gave up the job after allegations of misconduct reported by the Stanford campus newspaper. The story sparked a months-long investigation into his research work, a probe that concluded that Tessier-Lavigne did not falsify data but failed to correct mistakes.

Levin was chosen after a 20-member presidential search committee reviewed more than 800 nominations for the job. The panel held more than 50 listening sessions on campus. Committee Co-Chairs Bonnie Maldonado M.D. ’81, Lily Sarafan ’03 and Gene Sykes MBA ’84 wrote in an announcement that the committee was “thoroughly impressed by Jon’s personal qualities of integrity, humility, thoughtfulness, and optimism. We are confident that he is the right person not only to envision where Stanford can go, but to take us there.”

His leadership of the business school had to put him high up on the list of successors from the start. For much of its history, Stanford’s business school had been slightly behind Harvard in enrolling its admitted applicants. But under Levin, the school pulled ahead of its East Coast rival, persuading 96% of the students it admits to come to its bucolic campus in the heart of Silicon Valley. The GSB’s yield rate is now ten points higher than Harvard’s. The school, moreover, has an acceptance rate of just 6.2%, half that of the Harvard Business School. No less meaningful, Stanford has been solidly winning dual-admit candidates over HBS and outperforming the school in MBA rankings in recent years.