Gerhard Casper

Gerhard Casper served as the seventh Provost of the University of Chicago. Casper was born in December 1937 in Germany. He received his first law degree from the University of Hamburg (1961), received his L.L.M. from Yale University (1962), and obtained his doctorate from the University of Freiburg (1964). After immigrating to the United States in 1964, Casper spent two years as an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of California in Berkeley before joining the faculty at the University of Chicago’s Law School in 1966. During his tenure at the University he was named the Max Pam Professor (1976), the Dean of the Law School (1979-87), the William B. Graham Professor of Law (1980), and the William B. Graham Distinguished Service Professor of Law (1987) before being appointed Provost in 1989.

In 1992, Stanford University recruited Casper to become their ninth President. He served in this capacity until 2000 when he stepped down. Casper is currently a Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, serves as the chairman of the Board of the Terra Foundation for American Art, and he is a member of international advisory councils at the Israel Democracy Institute (Chairman since 2014), the European University at St. Petersburg, and Koç University, Istanbul. Among his many honors, Casper received the American Law Institute’s Distinguished Service Award in 2014 and has been elected to the American Law Institute, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the International Academy of Comparative Law, the Order Pour le Mérite for the Sciences and Arts, and the American Philosophical Society.