Law lecture highlights legal developments, Supreme Court rulings on higher education

Lee C. Bollinger served as Columbia University’s President from 2002 - 2023, the longest tenure of an Ivy League president in the modern era.  Throughout his 21-year leadership as President of Columbia University, he was an outspoken national voice on many of the major issues confronting higher education and society more broadly. Upon completing his term as university president, President Emeritus Bollinger remains at Columbia as its first Seth Low Professor of the University and as a member of the Columbia Law School faculty. As one of the country’s preeminent First Amendment scholars, Bollinger has published multiple books and many articles and spoken extensively about freedom of speech and of the press within and beyond the academy and the challenges that occur during these times of sharp debate.

Before coming to Columbia, Bollinger served as President of the University of Michigan from 1996-2002, after having previously served as the Dean of Michigan’s law school and then the Provost of Dartmouth College. As President of Michigan, he led that school’s litigation in the Supreme Court regarding affirmative action, resulting in the Court’s decision in Grutter v Bollinger, in which the Court for the first time upheld the constitutional right of colleges and universities to engage in affirmative action to advance diversity in higher education. While that decision has now been overturned by the Supreme Court, Bollinger continues to speak and write about his views regarding the value of racial and cultural diversity in higher education and in American society.

Bollinger is also a former director of Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) and served as a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (elected in 1992), and the American Philosophical Society (elected in 2004). From 2007 to 2012, he was director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he also served as chair from 2010 to 2012.

Bollinger received the National Humanitarian Award from the National Conference for Community and Justice and the National Equal Justice Award from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund for his leadership on affirmative action. He also received the Clark Kerr Award, the highest award conferred by the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, for his service to higher education, especially on matters of freedom of speech and diversity. He is the recipient of multiple honorary degrees from universities in this country and abroad.

Bollinger graduated from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Columbia Law Review. He served as law clerk for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and then for Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court.