He received a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude in 1968, a Master of Philosophy in 1970, and continued at Yale for graduate school, earning a Ph.D. in English in 1972.

[10] In 2003, he was added as a defendant, along with Richard Levin and Linda Lorimer, to a 2001 lawsuit by Yale professor James Van de Velde, claiming damage of reputation, after being named an official suspect in the murder of his student, Suzanne Jovin; Brodhead had subsequently canceled his class, citing Van de Velde's presence as a "major distraction."

In 2007, a Connecticut judge permitted the reopening of Velde's lawsuit against the New Haven Police Department and Yale, which subsequently also included senior university officials;[11] the suit was settled in 2013.

Brodhead was also active in Durham, promoting K-12 public education, several new community health clinics, neighborhood revitalization through the Duke-Durham Neighborhood Partnership, and the future strategic direction of the Research Triangle Park Brodhead led the successful Financial Aid Initiative,[14] which raised $308.5 million for need-based scholarships at Duke at its conclusion in 2008.

[16] On April 28, 2016, Brodhead announced that he would end his tenure as Duke's president on June 30, 2017, then take a one-year sabbatical before returning to academia as a writer and instructor.

[7] That November, the Duke University Trinity College of Arts & Sciences visitors board established the annual undergraduate Brodhead Service Award in his name.

[18] That May, the Duke University board of trustees chose to name the West Union building as the Richard H. Brodhead Center for Campus Life.

[27] On April 11, 2007, the N.C. Attorney General's Office dropped all charges against the players, declared them innocent, and called them victims of a rogue prosecutor's "tragic rush to accuse".

He has served on the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s National Security Higher Education Advisory Board, and, since 2013, as a trustee of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.