UO Alum Lee Bollinger Takes Top Job at Columbia

Lee Bollinger (BA ’68) has come a long way since his days as an undergraduate political science major at the University of Oregon. This fall, the former president of the University of Michigan will assume a new post as president of New York’s Columbia University, one of the country’s most prestigious research institutions. Bollinger is used to the limelight. He led a highly public defense of the University of Michigan’s affirmative action policy in admissions in response to lawsuits charging that the policy discriminates against Whites in favor of less qualified minorities. A first amendment scholar and law professor, Bollinger plans to continue that fight as president of Columbia, both as a defendant in the Michigan case and on principle. “I think this is one of the most important cases of our time,” says Bollinger, who has rallied support for Michigan’s case from other universities and major corporations. If the University of Michigan battle reaches the U.S. Supreme Court, as many predict it will, justices may have to reconsider the 1978 landmark ruling, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, which allows colleges and graduate schools to use race as one factor in selecting students. Bollinger is also known for being passionate about the arts and life sciences. At Michigan, he spearheaded the Life Sciences Initiative, which included creation of a $100 million life sciences institute staffed by 20 to 30 world-class research teams. At Columbia, Bollinger will continue to forge ties between the university and New York’s thriving arts community by, for example, hiring accomplished artists as instructors. Columbia already boasts such luminaries as two-time Academy Award-winning film director Milos Forman and painter Archie Rand, who has had more than 80 solo exhibitions. A committed educator, Bollinger believes that “nurturing young people has to be a basic principle of any university.” At Michigan, he taught an undergraduate course on freedom of speech, a practice he will continue at Columbia. Bollinger traces his intellectual development back to his undergraduate days at the UO. “College had a profound effect on me. I recall it as a remarkably serious intellectual experience when I felt deeply the quality of the education available to me.” As a student in the politically turbulent 1960s, Bollinger initially became involved in student government but later realized he was an academic at heart. “My senior year was one of the best years of my life,” he recalls. “I lived alone and read — it was a wonderful opportunity to digest an incredible array of novels, philosophy and social theory, and to be around great intellectuals.” He still thinks fondly of two former UO professors — Stanley Pierson (history) and James Klonoski (political science) — with “deepest respect for their commitment to intellectual life and teaching students.” As a freshman, he met his future wife, Jean Magnano Bollinger, a graduate of the UO and Columbia, and now an established artist. They have two children — Lee and Carey — both of whom followed in their father’s footsteps into law school. While the job of a university president has become increasingly concerned with fundraising, Bollinger doesn’t lose sight of his broader role as an intellectual leader. “Ultimately, the job of a university president is to enhance the academic life of the institution,” he says. “I believe strongly in continuously working on building the best intellectual life you can.”

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