He graduated from Yale in 1941, where he was chairman of the Yale Daily News. His junior year, he turned down an offer of membership in Skull and Bones. In 1948, he received his law degree from Harvard Law School. After teaching at Harvard Law School from 1950 to 1960, he accepted the post of Provost at Yale, serving from 1960 to 1963. Upon the death of President A. Whitney Griswold, he was named President of Yale University, serving from 1963 to 1977.
He was known for the improvements he made to Yale's faculty, curriculum, and admissions policies, and for his skillful handling of student protests during the protests against the Vietnam War, which he himself opposed. His presidency was also marked by the Black Panther trial and the admission of women as undergraduates.
KingmanBrewsterJr., president of Yale from 1963 to 1977, also merits Karabel's praise for resisting pressure to admit more legacies and, notably, for offering greater opportunity for African-American students and improving race relations on campus.
Brewster's impact on Yale and its competitors in the Ivy League was considerable, but the changes to their admissions policies were hardly a tectonic shift in American higher education.
Brewster was not setting a precedent by awarding an honorary doctorate to King, who had earned a doctorate nine years earlier from BU, open to African-Americans from its founding in 1839.
Brewster was being brought to new insights by heading a great university in the midst of social turmoil, partly because one of the instigators of the turmoil worked on his own campus.
Brewster prepared for the Corporation meeting on Coffin partly by asking Coffin's faculty deacons, through historian Harry Rudin '19, '31PhD, whether Coffin "was fulfilling his obligations as chaplain." The other chaplains, Rudin reported, "explained to me that he was a tremendous power in the religious life of the campus.
Brewster's biographer argues persuasively that he had undertaken to "redefine the purpose of first-rank national institutions like Yale." (As Brewster once put it, "I do not intend to preside over a finishing school on Long Island Sound.") Coffin figured prominently in these thoughts.
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