Office of the President

Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger in a blue suit on the room of the Jerome L. Greene Science Center — Photo credit Eileen Barroso

Lee C. Bollinger became Columbia University’s 19th president in 2002. Under his leadership, Columbia stands again at the very top rank of great research universities, distinguished by comprehensive academic excellence, an innovative and sustainable approach to global engagement, the institution’s most ambitious campus expansion in over a century, and what was, at the time, the largest capital campaign in Ivy League history.

Bollinger is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Law School faculty, and one of the country’s foremost First Amendment scholars. His latest book, The Free Speech Century, co-edited with Geoffrey R. Stone, was published in 2018. From 1996 to 2002, Bollinger was the President of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. About the President

Read more about President Bollinger's commitment to protecting the vote and his service as co-chair of the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine’s Committee on the Future of Voting.

"The period of the unfolding of this new campus in Manhattanville should be a time in which we demonstrate that courage and confidence in ourselves to re-evaluate what we take to be important and the roles we should assume in the world." President Bollinger on Manhattanville | Columbia's new Manhattanville Campus