Richard Wall Lyman

Who was Richard Wall Lyman?

Richard Wall Lyman, the seventh president of Stanford University, was an American educator, historian, and professor.

He served as the provost of Stanford between 1967 and 1970. He then served as president of the university from 1970 to 1980. During his tenure as provost and president, he confronted campus dissidents involved in protests against the Vietnam war and other social issues of the 1960s. In the spring of 1969, he called in law enforcement authorities to evict and arrest students that were occupying campus buildings and removing administrative files. In referring to his leadership during his tenure, both of his immediate successors as president of the university have said that "Dick Lyman saved Stanford."

In 1983 he founded the Stanford Institute for International Studies and became its first director. He was the president of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1980–88.

Lyman earned his bachelor's degree from Swarthmore College and his master's degree and PhD from Harvard University. He was a Fulbright scholar at the London School of Economics from 1951 to 1952. He came to Stanford in 1958 as a professor in history.

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