Twenty years after Interim President Derek C. Bok named the first director of the Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard, he had that choice to make again.

Bok tapped Frederick Schauer, the Stanton professor of the First Amendment at the Kennedy School, to be the new leader of the center yesterday.

Schauer will replace the center’s current director and founder, Dennis F. Thompson, who is stepping down after 20 years at the helm.

“Twenty years seems like a natural time to leave. Also, both symbolically and practically, it worked to have Bok, who appointed me initially, come back and appoint my successor,” said Thompson, who is also the Whitehead professor of political philosophy.

The Safra Center is dedicated to the multidisciplinary study of how people resolve the ethical conflicts faced in public and professional life, according to the center’s Web site.

A 1972 graduate of Harvard Law School, Schauer has been teaching at Harvard since 1990 and was academic dean of the Kennedy School from 1997 to 2002. Schauer teaches courses at the Law School and has received both a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Radcliffe Fellowship. Thompson added that because the Safra Center was Harvard’s first major inter-faculty initiative, “it is important for the director to have connections and interests that cut across the boundaries that make up Harvard.”

In a statement, Schauer said it was an honor to succeed Thompson.

“I hope to justify his and Derek Bok’s confidence in me by trying to reinforce such a successful foundation and to help the Center move into some number of new activities and directions,” he said.

During the next academic year, Schauer will be the Eastman visiting professor at Oxford University and a professorial fellow of Balliol College. Arthur I. Applbaum, a professor of ethics and public policy at the Kennedy school, will serve as the interim director of the center until July 1, 2008.

Schauer’s interests include constitutional law, freedom of expression, and the legal components of international development.

“One of the wonderful things about Fred,” Applbaum said, “is that he does not only normative work, but he also has a strong interest in the empirical aspects of public policy and law.”

Schauer could not be reached for comment yesterday.