Benno C. Schmidt, Jr.

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Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. is a former president of Yale University, where he served from 1986 to 1992 as the university's sixteenth president. He came to the Yale presidency from Columbia Law School, where he had been dean since 1984 and where he was Harlan Fiske Stone Professor of Constitutional Law. He is the current chairman of the City University of New York Board of Trustees. He is also President of Edison Schools, a for-profit corporation that operates public schools in several districts that have been unable to run schools well on their own.

Benno Schmidt's father was Benno Schmidt, Sr., who coined the term "venture capital." With John "Jock" Hay Whitney, Schmidt, Sr. started, in 1946, what became the first venture capital firm in the U.S., J.H. Whitney & Co. His son, Benno C. Schmidt, Jr. attended Phillips Exeter Academy, then was an undergraduate at Yale. At Yale, he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon like both his father (University of Texas Chapter) and Jock Whitney (Yale Chapter), and Wolf's Head Society.

Jock Whitney served as Senior Fellow of the Yale Corporation. In part owing to this fact, Whitney lobbied and succeeded in gaining the support of Corporation members in appointing Schmidt, Jr. to the presidency.

Schmidt raised over a billion dollars for Yale, but despite his success some members of the faculty, both then and now, complained that he was seldom on campus. Placards stood outside Woodbridge Hall reading, "Where's Benno?" As part of his agreement to serve, he had maintained a primary residence in New York City where his wife, a documentary filmmaker, was based. There are many faculty-members today, however, who were present during the Schmidt years and who would disagree with this perception and who remember President Schmidt as a very accessible president. Not unlike President Summers of Harvard University, Schmidt provoked controversy during his tenure, in part for questioning the existence of certain academic programs at Yale.

Controversy aside, Schmidt left a formidable legacy. Answering faculty reports of poor writing abilities among incoming freshman, Schmidt convened a committee to review the problem and, reflecting the committee's recommendations, subsequently added significant writing programs at Yale (such as the residential college writing tutor that remains a fixture at each college today). Schmidt also established the EP&E program (Ethics, Politics & Philosophy), which was modeled on Oxford's PP&E program. Today, EP&E is one of the most popular majors at Yale. Schmidt, moreover, anticipated the need to repair the physical plant, which had fallen into a state of disrepair. Ultimately, his successor, Rick Levin, lead this widespread renovation, but it was Schmidt who orignially focused Yale's attention to the looming problem. Finally, under Schmidt, the Yale endowment grew faster than at any previous time in Yale's history.

He used well his fundraising skill chairing a recent capital campaign for Wolf's Head Society. The campaign was the largest on behalf of a society.

Preceded by: A. Bartlett Giamatti

Presidents of Yale

Succeeded by: Howard R. Lamar