In , he accepted the post of provost at Yale, serving from to After the death of Yale's president, A. Whitney Griswold, despite the fact that Brewster was considered Griswold's logical successor, Yale conducted a lengthy, open, and agonizing search for Brewster that lasted five months. On October 11, , the Yale Corporation offered him the presidency by a vote of ; the opposition came from two senior members of the Corporation who feared that the liberal Republican would push too hard for change in their beloved institution.
He served as president of Yale University from to Brewster was known for the improvements he made to Yale's faculty, curriculum, and admissions policies. He was president of the University when Yale began admitting women. Academic programs in various disciplines were expanded. He was also president when the faculty voted to terminate academic credit for the Reserve Officers Training Corps R.
Alumni relations grew testy at times, yet fundraising increased throughout his tenure. Brewster's appointment of liberal theologian Rev. In , along with Dr. Benjamin Spock, Yale , he organized a mass protest in Boston, Massachusetts and then sent hundreds of draft cards back to the U. Justice Department in Washington, D.
When Brewster defended Rev. Coffin, who was arrested in together with Dr. Benjamin Spock for encouraging draft resistance, he did so citing academic freedom. This action only complicated his dealings with an increasingly wary alumni association. In , Brewster, who knew Hanna Holborn Gray from her service on the Yale board, named her Yale's first woman provost. In , when Kingman Brewster became U. She served as acting President of Yale University for fourteen months. He was a member of the President's Commission on Selective Service in and and of the President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice from to During his Harvard years he was the author of ''Antitrust and American Business Abroad,'' published in , and the co-author, with Mr.
That year, Mr. Brewster returned to Yale at the invitation of its then president, A. Whitney Griswold, who had taught at Yale when Mr. Brewster was an undergraduate. Both had spent many summers at Martha's Vineyard.
From to Mr. Brewster was a professor of law at Yale as well as provost-designate and later provost -then the second highest officer of the university. Griswold died in April , and Mr. Brewster assumed the duties of president as well as provost until late in the year he was formally elected president by Yale's trustees, who had deliberated for months.
That period, he later recalled wryly, was ''a very itchy time. As president, he weathered a succession of controversies, rejecting calls to dismiss the university chaplain, the Rev.
William Sloane Coffin Jr. Staughton Lynd, of the history department, who traveled to Hanoi. Inspired Doonesbury Character. One student at Yale during the Brewster era was Gary Trudeau, the creator of the ''Doonesbury'' comic strip. Brewster became the inspiration for one Doonesbury character - the archetype of the activist college administrator - called President King. It was President Jimmy Carter who called Mr. Brewster and asked him to take the Ambassador's post as the successor to Anne Armstrong, a Texas Republican who had been appointed by President Gerald R.
Brewster accepted and was succeeded as Yale's president by Mr. Giamatti, a Yale professor of English and comparative literature with a bachelor's degree and doctorate from Yale. As Ambassador, Mr. Brewster took - and voiced - a mellow, sophisticated, somewhat skeptical view of British-American relations. In one speech he summed it up tactfully in these words: ''It is the natural desire of each nation to use the other as an instrument of its own purposes and policies.
By dint of our mutual dependence, your influence is amplified by our power. Our power is made more responsible and more effective by your influence. After stepping down as Ambassador, Mr. Brewster became for several years the chairman of the English Speaking Union of the United States, a cultural and historical group.
He also was awarded many honorary degrees. During this time the percentage of students who were children of alumni dropped from 30 to The number of public high school graduates entering Yale grew to outnumber the private high school graduates who entered by a ratio of two to one. His critics accused him of not sharing decision-making, yet he met problems head-on, making him extremely vulnerable to personal attack and thus shielding the university. During the s, Brewster also served as an advisor on several Presidential Committees.
From to he served on the President's Commission on Selective Service. Despite his lack of diplomatic experience, the British press was pleased with the appointment, calling Brewster potentially the best ambassador since David Bruce. They described him as "New England Patrician" and expressed delight at his gold ring with his family motto in Norman French.
Ambassador Brewster wasted no time in beginning his new responsibilities. He reveled in the "good life" of London opportunity and took advantage of the range of social occasions from dinner with Queen Elizabeth to quaffing a pint of ale in a working class pub, saying, "Becoming aware of the richness and variety here is a lot of fun.
After four years Kingman Brewster resigned the ambassadorship and returned to New Haven to live in his home just a block from the Yale campus. He took a part-time position with a New York law firm and devoted the rest of his time to writing a book on what he called the "Volunteer Society", which was never published.
On November 8, , Brewster died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Numerous institutions conferred honorary degrees upon Brewster, and he received several awards, including the Award of Excellence in Human Relations from the New York Council of Churches in He was made an officer in the Legion of Honor in
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