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Levin Joins Intellligentsia
March/April 2004

On February 6, Yale president Rick Levin ’74PhD was appointed by President George W. Bush '68 to the Commission on Intelligence Capabilities. Although Levin said he could not speculate on the commission’s direction or discuss intelligence issues in general, he talked with the Yale Alumni Magazine about the panel.

Y: Why do you think you were appointed?

L: I think President Bush was looking to combine those with intelligence experience with others who would bring a fresh perspective. I have some experience dealing with the processing of information in a complex organization, and I also have no strong preconceptions. More generally, I think the president was looking to appoint several individuals who had credibility and good judgment and who would act in a nonpartisan way. These characteristics certainly describe the other two Yale graduates on the panel, Lloyd Cutler ['36, '39LLB, '83HON] and Patricia Wald ['51LLB, '01HON].

Y: There has been controversy over whether this panel can be truly independent of the administration.

L: I made thorough inquiries before I joined, and I’m satisfied that the panel will be independent. I wouldn’t be participating otherwise.

Y: Many people have asked what an economist will do on a panel about intelligence.

L: In all of my prior engagements in public service, I’ve found that my experience as an economist has been valuable. Economists proceed by structuring problems logically, formulating testable hypotheses, and analyzing data rigorously. This mode of thinking, combined with psychological insight about people and their motives, serves well in almost any kind of problem-solving, including my daily work at Yale.

Y: How will you run the university while you’re on the panel? You’re a hands-on president who actually answers your e-mail, and your involvement is important on campus.

L: For each of the past several years, I’ve had at least one major extracurricular activity. I served on the Blue Ribbon Panel on the Economics of Baseball with Paul Volcker and George Will, on the presidential advisory committee that reviewed the U.S. Postal Service, and on a major National Academy of Sciences study concerning the reform of patent law. So I’ve learned to balance inside and outside activities. Still, I expect that the intelligence commission will have a heavier workload than any of my previous outside engagements, and no doubt I’ll have to rely on my officer team to cover some work I would normally do myself. Fortunately, we have the strongest group of officers in higher education, including John Pepper ['60], the retired CEO of Procter and Gamble, who just took over as vice president for finance and administration.

Y: What was your approach on the postal commission? Did you play a particular role or oversee a particular area of inquiry?

L: As an economist, I’ve done a good deal of work on regulated industries. For the postal commission I led the subcommittee that designed a business model for a reformed postal service. We resisted the vogue of privatization—recognizing the efficiencies, at least for some years to come, of retaining a public monopoly over first class mail. At the same time, we proposed a new regulatory process that would give the postal service much more flexibility to change rates without delay and to tailor its services to the needs of its customers.

Y: For the intelligence commission, will you draw on Yale’s resources—the experts here in intelligence, government, and weapons?

L: I’ve had numerous offers of help from faculty with expertise and from students and recent graduates eager to serve on the commission’s staff. And I’m encouraging the commission’s co-chairs to draw on the impressive pool of talent associated with Yale.

Y: What is the symbolic role of an Ivy League president in a commission of this kind—in the eyes of the public and of the community?

L: I hope that my involvement with the commission will inspire all of our students to recognize that they, too, should make time for voluntary service. I hope it will inspire some of them to consider public service as a career. For the wider public, I hope that the appointment of a university president symbolizes that the academy has something important to contribute to public policy—the rigorous and disinterested scrutiny of the world that true scholars bring to all of their work.  

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