Lee Bollinger

Lee C. Bollinger is the President Emeritus of Columbia University, which he led for over two decades, from 2002 to 2023. Under his leadership, Columbia redefined what it means to be a great research university in the 21st century, distinguished by comprehensive academic excellence, an innovative and sustainable approach to global engagement, two of the largest capital campaigns in the history of higher education, and the institution’s most ambitious campus expansion in over a century.

Bollinger is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the university, a member of the Columbia Law School faculty, and one of the nation's foremost First Amendment scholars. Each fall semester, he teaches “Freedom of Speech and Press” to Columbia undergraduate students. He is widely published on legal and constitutional issues involving free speech and press. His latest books are A Legacy of Discrimination: The Essential Constitutionality of Affirmative Action, Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of our Democracy and National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On, all co-edited with Geoffrey R. Stone.

Bollinger has 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. Bollinger is a former director of Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company) and serves 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.