Gerhard Casper, president emeritus of Stanford and a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, has been appointed president of the American Academy in Berlin.

Casper's appointment was announced Wednesday by the academy board of trustees. He will assume his duties in Berlin in July 2015. He will be the first president-in-residence in the academy's history. In an email to Stanford friends and colleagues, Casper said his appointment "will be limited in time."

Among those making the announcement was former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a founding chairman of the American Academy, who said, "Gerhard Casper, whose leadership at Stanford University I greatly admired, is an inspired choice."

The academy was founded under the leadership of Kissinger; the late Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and to Germany; and Richard von Weizsäcker, former president of the Federal Republic of Germany. Casper served on the academy board from 2000 to 2009.

The American Academy in Berlin, established in 1994, is a center for advanced study and, according to Casper, "has become a significant contributor to intellectual exchange between the United States and Germany."

Casper said, "The institution makes it possible for American scholars from various disciplines and for artists to spend time in Berlin to pursue their work. At the same time, the Academy has come to play a noticeable role in public life, especially as concerns U.S.-German relations."

Casper served as Stanford's ninth president from 1992 to 2000. He joined Stanford after having served as provost and dean of the Law School at the University of Chicago.

Casper grew up in Hamburg, Germany, and studied law at the
 universities of Freiburg and Hamburg. He attended Yale Law School, where he obtained his Master of Laws degree in 1962. He returned to Freiburg, where he earned his doctorate in 1964. In the fall of 1964, he immigrated to the United States, and spent two years as an assistant professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley, before joining the Chicago faculty.