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Lee C. Bollinger was named President of Columbia University in June 2002. He is also on the faculty of Columbia’s Law School. From November 1996 to 2002, he was the President of the University of Michigan. He also served as Provost, and Professor of Government, at Dartmouth College from 1994 to 1996; and from 1987 to 1994 he was the Dean of the University of Michigan Law School.
A leading scholar on free speech and First Amendment issues, he is the author of numerous books, articles and essays on these subjects, and he teaches an undergraduate course, Freedom of Speech and Press, at Columbia each year. Bollinger is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the American Philosophical Society. He is a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, a trustee of the Kresge Foundation and a Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company of Great Britain.
Bollinger was the named defendant in the twin Supreme Court cases Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) which respectively affirmed and clarified diversity as a compelling justification for affirmative action. For this leadership, he 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. He 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.
Since graduating from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, where he was an Articles Editor of the Law Review, he has earned several honorary degrees. After serving as law clerk for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and the Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court, he joined the University of Michigan Law School faculty in 1973.
Bollinger was born in Santa Rosa, California, and raised there and in Baker, Oregon. He is married to artist Jean Magnano Bollinger, and they have two children. | 