Lee C. Bollinger is an American lawyer and educator who is currently serving as the 19th president of Columbia University. Formerly the president of the University of Michigan, he is a noted legal scholar of the First Amendment and freedom of speech. He was at the center of two notable United States Supreme Court cases regarding the use of affirmative action in admissions processes.
As president (known affectionately as Prezbo), Bollinger has attempted to expand the international scope of the University, taking frequent trips abroad and inviting world leaders to its campus.
Lee C. Bollinger, Columbia’s president, said he was worried about another admissions issue. “I’m becoming more pessimistic about the survival of affirmative action in this country,” said Bollinger, who in his previous position as president of the University of Michigan led that institution’s fight to the Supreme Court to affirm the right of colleges to consider race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.
He represents a new type of university president, one whose notoriety stems not from his work as a public intellectual or even his prowess as a fundraiser, but from the left-wing causes with which he is associated.
The 56-year-old graduate of the University of Oregon and Columbia Law has a history of associating the good of his students with whatever leftish cause is currently garnering national attention.
A clerk for Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1970s, Bollinger made his debut on the national political scene during Robert Bork’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1987. Having recently been appointed dean of the University of Michigan Law School, Bollinger — the author of several books on free speech — argued before the Senate that Bork’s interpretation of the First Amendment could lead to an eventual rollback of legal precedent. Bollinger’s testimony was one of the many blows that defeated Bork’s nomination. And one thing became clear after Bollinger’s testimony: He did not hold scholarship to be more sacred than politics.
You see, Bollinger himself knows a thing or two about restricting free speech. A year after his testimony against Bork, the University of Michigan became mired in controversy when its governing body adopted a stringent speech code, which stipulated that speech offensive to an individual on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, gender, etc. was a punishable offense. The code was in effect for only 15 months — it was struck down as unconstitutional by a federal court — but a number of students were nonetheless penalized for offensive speech. As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby has reported, one student was punished simply “for saying that ‘he had heard that minorities had a difficult time in [a] course and . . . were not treated fairly.’“
Where was Bollinger during all this? As dean of the law school, he was in a perfect position to speak out against the code. But throughout the code’s short, unhappy life, Bollinger said nary a word about it. “The failure of the dean of a law school, especially one with an expertise in the First Amendment, to speak up against a patently unconstitutional speech code is a blight on his record that should be mentioned until he explains himself,” says William Rice of the American Academy for Liberal Education. “It does raise the question of what he’s been willing to tolerate.”
What was the cold war term? Oh yes, “Pinko.” Held in contempt by both sides, but useful idiots for one side.
“A clerk for Chief Justice Warren Burger in the 1970s, Bollinger made his debut on the national political scene during Robert Bork’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings in 1987.”
There is nothing more to be said: PROTEST!!