Richard C. Levin, who led Yale University as president for 20 years, is the current chief executive of Coursera, a company that has won powerful allies in higher education by persuading them that it plans to behave more like a university than an investor-backed Silicon Valley company.

Levin, an economist who stepped down from his position at Yale in 2013, spent the later years of his presidency cultivating relationships overseas, notably with China and its universities. Mr. Levin also led a controversial effort to create a liberal-arts college in Singapore, Yale-NUS College.

Coursera, which rose to prominence as a provider of massive open online courses, has been trying to expand in China. The company’s international efforts have been complicated by politics. Some observers have speculated that Coursera’s reliance on such foreign infrastructure could make it possible for foreign governments to censor courses. Meanwhile, the U.S. government has blocked learners from viewing Coursera courses in countries that are subject to U.S. sanctions.

Levin is a member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, a group that has recently taken an interest in MOOCs. He is a board member of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and at American Express.

Levin was the longest serving Ivy League president and has been recognized as one of the leaders of American higher education. Prior to assuming the presidency in 1993, he was Dean of Yale’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. A distinguished economist, he has served as Chair of Yale’s Economics Department and has been a member of Yale’s faculty since 1974.

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