Yale Law School Announces Visiting Professorship

Yale Law School announced the creation of the Michael Doyle ’62 and Bunny Winter Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law. The professorship is made possible thanks to a generous gift from Michael Doyle ’62 and Bunny Winter. To train the next generation of leaders to take part in discourse across political divides and to include voices from across the intellectual spectrum, the visiting professorship brings in faculty from a wide range of perspectives for semester-long visits, all with an eye to enlarge our community’s intellectual horizons.

“We are honored to have the Doyle’s support to enhance the intellectual life of our School through the visiting professorship,” says Dean Heather K. Gerken. “The chair perfectly captures their remarkable commitments while reinforcing values that are central to all academic institutions.”

Doyle and Winter are passionate about building bridges and conducting robust dialogue across political and intellectual divides. “Too often, conversations where we disagree are not respectful. This frustrates our ability to progress, for the benefit of us all,” said Doyle and Winter. “We want to assist people of opposing views to sit down together, and where they disagree, to do so amicably with mutual respect, and thereby to learn from each other.”

Edward J. Larson was the inaugural Michael Doyle ’62 and Bunny Winter Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law during the fall 2021 term. He co-taught “George Washington and the Constitution” with Sterling Professor of Law Akhil Reed Amar ’84. Larson visited Yale Law from Pepperdine University where he sits as the Hugh and Hazel Darling Chair in Law and University Professor of History. He is the author of 13 books and numerous scholarly papers that span subjects of law, history, science and religion.