Ex-Student Schmidt to Go Back to Yale, as President

Yale University today named Benno C. Schmidt Jr., dean of the Columbia University Law School and a constitutional expert, as its 20th president.

Schmidt, 43, will succeed A. Bartlett Giamatti, who is stepping down June 30 as head of the nation’s third oldest university, founded in 1701.

Giamatti, at 40, was the youngest president of Yale when he was appointed in 1977, succeeding Kingman Brewster.

At a news conference, Giamatti sat back and smiled as reporters bombarded his successor with questions.

“You must confuse me with Ann Landers,” he said when asked what advice he would give Schmidt.

Schmidt was chosen by a search committee headed by former Secretary of State Cyrus R. Vance, a Yale alumnus.

There were 430 candidates for the job, including Vartan Gregorian, president of the New York Public Library, and Maxine F. Singer of the National Cancer Institute in Bethesda, Md.

Schmidt graduated from Philips Exeter Academy in 1959 and Yale College in 1963 and obtained his law degree from Yale in 1966.

At Columbia, he has taught constitutional law, First Amendment theory, the history of the Supreme Court, regulation of radio and television, law and literature, and legal education.

A Renaissance scholar, former Yale professor of comparative literature and unabashed baseball fan, Giamatti put the school’s financial house in order, but ran into a buzz saw of labor strife.