Joseph Weiler from NYU to EUI (as President)

The European University Institute announced yesterday that network member Joseph Weiler will be leaving NYU and returning to EUI as President.  This brings someone of major intellectual stature with a proven record of institution building to the office.  The EUI press release can be found here; it reads:

The EUI High Council has announced that Professor Joseph Weiler, formerly a law professor at the Institute, will become the EUI’s new president.

Professor Weiler, currently Joseph Straus Professor of Law at New York University, will begin his term as president on 1 September 2013. President ad interim Marise Cremona will return to her full-time role as professor of European law at the EUI.

Responding to the news, Professor Weiler said: "I am humbled yet gratified to return as president to my alma mater at a time of both great challenge and great promise in Europe."

The NYU professor was chosen by a selection committee and approved by the EUI High Council, made up of representatives of the Institute’s member states, on 7 December.

After completing his Ph.D. at the EUI, Professor Weiler worked as a professor in the Institute’s Department of Law from 1978 to 1985. Although he then moved to the US, he maintained strong ties with the EUI and in 1990 co-founded the Institute’s Academy of European Law.

Vello Pettai, president of the High Council, said: “Joseph Weiler will bring great intellectual stature and leadership skills to the EUI. In addition to being a world-renowned scholar and policy advisor, Professor Weiler has had specific experience in the development of doctoral training and of research centres. He will bolster all of the major areas of the EUI.”