From Grokipedia
Full articleLee C. Bollinger is an American legal scholar and former university president renowned for his expertise in First Amendment law and freedom of speech.
Bollinger served as dean of the University of Michigan Law School from 1987 to 1994, provost of Dartmouth College from 1994 to 1996, and president of the University of Michigan from 1996 to 2002. During his Michigan presidency, he defended the university's race-conscious admissions policies in the landmark Supreme Court cases Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the undergraduate point system was ruled unconstitutional while the law school's holistic approach was upheld as narrowly tailored to achieve diversity. From 2002 to 2023, he led Columbia University as its 19th president, overseeing significant expansions in global initiatives, research infrastructure, and enrollment while emphasizing the institution's role in fostering open inquiry.
A prolific author, Bollinger has advanced "tolerance theory," arguing that free speech protections require societal commitment to enduring offensive expression to sustain democratic discourse. His tenure at Columbia, however, faced scrutiny for uneven enforcement of free speech amid rising ideological conformity and incidents of antisemitism, with critics arguing that administrative responses prioritized certain viewpoints over impartial application of principles Bollinger long championed.
In brief
Bollinger came up as a lawyer who wrote about speech and the First Amendment. Administration followed scholarship: dean at Michigan Law, then president in Ann Arbor, then a long run at Columbia.
He also sat on the board of the New York Fed, a reminder that university presidents sometimes keep a hand in civic institutions beyond the quad.
Photographs
Hero photograph: Wikimedia Commons
