Lee C. Bollinger

Lee C. Bollinger is the President of Columbia University in New York City and a Member of the Faculty of the Law School. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Law Review. After serving as the Law Clerk of Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court, he joined the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1973. In 1987 he was named the Dean of the University of Michigan Law School, a position he held for seven years. He became Provost of Dartmouth College and Professor of Government in July 1994 and was named the twelfth President of the University of Michigan in November 1996.

His primary teaching and scholarly interests are focused on free speech and first amendment issues, and he has published numerous books, articles, and essays in scholarly journals on these and other subjects. Three highly acclaimed contributions to the first amendment literature include Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2001; Images of a Free Press, published by the University of Chicago Press in 1991; and The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America, published by Oxford University Press in 1986. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an Honorary Fellow of the Foundation, a Fellow of the Kresge Foundation, and a Fellow of the Royal Shakespeare Company of Great Britain. President Bollinger is the recipient of several awards for his strong defense of affirmative action in higher education, including the National Humanitarian Award from the National Conference on Community and Justice.