He was president of Brigham Young University (BYU) from 1951 to 1971, simultaneously overseeing the entire LDS Church Educational System (CES).

Prior to his career in education, he was a lawyer in Washington, D.C. and New York City, his most well-known and lucrative case being a $32 million settlement from the U.S. government for the Ute Indian Tribes.

Robert Wilkinson was a Scottish immigrant who arrived in the United States as a young boy, later married Annie Anderson, and worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad for 25 years,[2] where he supported the union; according to family, he once ran for mayor of Ogden as a Socialist candidate.

He became involved in cockfighting, buying a few cocks with the money he made from delivering the Deseret News, but stopped after police started arresting offenders.

[5] He attributed his success to what he learned at Weber Academy and became interested in the idea of offering a religiously-affiliated education to more LDS youth.

[6] After the war, he became a regular student at BYU and, among other things, edited the weekly newspaper White and Blue, and was president of his senior class.

Alice was elected vice president of the student body with Wilkinson as her campaign manager and had studied drama at BYU.

Even though five years of teaching were prerequisite for entering in the doctoral program, he was granted exception from Dean Roscoe Pound of the law school due to his academics at George Washington University.

[11] One case involved a young, American soldier in Japan who was sentenced to death for accidentally killing a child in a motorcycle accident.

[14] He served as attorney for the Ute Indian Tribes in their suit to be compensated for land never paid for by the U.S. government as part of the Treaty of 1880.

In 1950, this suit was upheld by the United States Court of Claims and as a result, the Ute tribes were awarded $32 million.

This opened up more claims to be filed and prosecuted by Wilkinson, making his firm the most active in the country for tribal cases.

Wilkinson's share of the Ute Indian settlement as the plaintiff's attorney made him independently wealthy and allowed him to give up his law practice to pursue his interests in education.

Though his law career had taught him how to navigate federal bureaucracy, he did not feel that he had the skills to win a congressional race.

[20] Several times during the 1950s and 1960s, Wilkinson approached church president David O. McKay for his permission to run for public office.

[22] In 1964, Wilkinson won the Republican Party nomination for the United States Senate, defeating Sherman P. Lloyd.

Within a month after his defeat, Wilkinson returned to BYU, but members of the Board of Trustees maintained that Harvey Taylor remain chancellor.

[20] Wilkinson refused to be paid a salary, which attracted church officials in the aftermath of tense financial negotiations with previous president, McDonald.

[32] After this expansion of CES and thus Wilkinson's duties, he appointed Edwards and Berrett as vice presidents of the LDS Department of Education.

[42] Wilkinson improved the salaries of faculty in order to recruit more talented professors and staff members to BYU.

Considered a fairly temporary solution, the complex was named Wyview Village and was intended to accommodate married students.

[61] A number of other smaller, miscellaneous buildings were built in the 1950s, including a ticket office for the football stadium and a poultry laboratory for the Animal Science Department.

Shortly before the dedication, the board of trustees revealed they intended to name the building the Ernest L. Wilkinson Student Center.

[67] Wilkinson felt that his job was to prevent the decay of moral values of the students and increase administrative control of the BYU Honor Code.

Upon protestation, female students achieved a small victory when they were permitted to wear slacks at the university's bowling alley.

[68] Extremely conservative and anti-communist, Wilkinson was not bashful in expressing his political philosophy to BYU students and faculty.

[70] Wilkinson gave a lengthy May 1965 commencement address in which he attributed the beginning of moral decay of American values to Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal as well as criticizing the current president Lyndon B. Johnson's views of social security.

On April 21, 1966, Wilkinson gave an address to the student body of BYU, entitled "The Changing Nature of American Government from a Constitutional Republic to a Welfare State".

[76] Sensing a lack of support among the church leaders, Wilkinson resigned from his position as BYU president in mid-1970 and was released at the beginning of 1971.

Even though he was no longer president, Wilkinson hoped to be involved in the establishment of the J. Reuben Clark Law School.