After law school, his judicial clerkships, and positions at two law firms, Young joined the State Department where he held three posts during the administration of President George H.W. Bush: Deputy Legal Adviser, Deputy Under Secretary for Economic and Agricultural Affairs, and Ambassador for Trade and Environmental Affairs. Among many other international agreements, Young worked extensively on the treaties related to German unification, as well as the North American Free Trade Agreement and Uruguay Round negotiations leading to the World Trade Organization, and the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development. Following his State Department work, Young became a professor and administrator at Columbia University, from 1994 to 1998, and George Washington University, from 1998 to 2004. His academic positions there included Fuyo Professor of Japanese Law and Legal Institutions and Director of the Center for Japanese Legal Studies at Columbia, and Dean and Lobingier Professor of Comparative Law and Jurisprudence at GWU's law school. Young was president of the University of Utah from August 2004 to May 2011. From 2011 to 2015 Young was the president of the University of Washington. He became president of Texas A&M University in May 2015. Young also served on the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom for eight years, from 1998 to 2005, including serving as its chair on two separate occasions during that period. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a fellow of the American Bar Foundation.
Personal life
He served as president of the New YorkStake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1985 to 1989. Young married fellow BYU alumna Suzan Stewart and they are the parents of three children. They divorced in 2010. On June 3, 2011, he married Marti Denkers. Young's relationship with Denkers was the subject of some controversy: Denkers was a student at the University of Utah during the time Young presided over it, and she was formerly married to Steve Denkers, a member of the wealthy Eccles family that has given hundreds of millions of dollars to the University of Utah over the years.
