David W. Leebron has served as Rice University's seventh president since 2004, a period of growth and transformation for the university. A native of Philadelphia, Leebron is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was elected president of the Harvard Law Review. Following a judicial clerkship on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, he taught at the UCLA School of Law in 1980. After two years practicing in an international law firm in New York City, he joined the faculty at the NYU School of Law in 1983. In 1989, Leebron joined the faculty of Columbia Law School, where in 1996, he was appointed dean and served in that position until coming to Rice. He is a member of the political science faculty at Rice and has written about international trade and investment, torts, privacy, corporate law, and human rights. Leebron has served as chair of the Association of American Universities, the Consortium on Financing in Higher Education (COFHE) and Internet2, and on the board of the NCAA. He has also been a visiting fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany, and a Jean Monnet Visiting Professor at Bielefeld University. Leebron is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Fulbright Canada Board. He is the recipient of an honorary degree from Nankai University in Tianjin, China, and is an honorary professor of law at Tianjin University. He has also been awarded Commandeur de l'Ordre National du Mérite by the government of France and the Encomienda de la Orden de Isabel La Católica by the government of Spain.