Colin S. Diver

Member, Academic Excellence & Economic Development Committee

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Colin S. Diver is the President of Reed College in Portland, Oregon.  He assumed office as Reed’s fourteenth president on July 1, 2002.  From 1999 to 2002, Diver held the Charles A. Heimbold Jr. Professorship of Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania. 

Diver served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School for the period 1989-1999.  During his tenure, the Penn Law School expanded its faculty by a third, doubled its physical plant, tripled its endowment, doubled the size of its international programs, and added new programs in public service, interdisciplinary teaching and research, and clinical legal education.  Before coming to Penn, Diver was a member of the faculty at Boston University School of Law, where he served as Associate Dean and Dean.  He has served as a visiting professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and has held joint appointments in public policy at Wharton School and the Boston University School of Management. An expert in administrative law and regulation, President Diver is the co-author of a leading textbook in administrative law and has written numerous articles and reviews dealing with issues of regulatory law and policy.  He has taught courses in administrative law, tort law, biotechnology regulation and policy, public management, and public policy.

Diver received his B.A. degree, summa cum laude, from Amherst College, and his LL.B. degree, magna cum laude, from the Harvard Law School.  After Law School, he worked as a Special Counsel for Boston’s Mayor Kevin White and also served in the administration of Massachusetts Governor Francis Sargent.  His family’s experiences living and working in Boston during its school segregation controversy have been chronicled in the Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Common Ground, by J. Anthony Lukas.

Diver’s extensive civic and charitable activities include service as Trustee of Amherst College, Vice Chair of the Oregon Independent Colleges Foundation, member of the Executive Committee of the Annapolis Group, Director of the Opera Company of Philadelphia, Trustee of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Chairman of the Massachusetts State Ethics Commission, and Member of the Visiting Committee of Harvard Law School.