President Bollinger on Diversity in Education

As president of the University of Michigan, Bollinger led the school’s landmark civil rights litigation in Grutter v. Bollinger, a Supreme Court decision that for the first time upheld the constitutional right of colleges and universities to engage in affirmative action to advance diversity in higher education. He speaks and writes frequently about the value of racial, cultural, and socioeconomic diversity to American society through opinion columns, media interviews, and public appearances around the country. His book with Professor Geoffrey Stone, A Legacy of Discrimination: The Essential Constitutionality of Affirmative Action, was published in early 2023.

President Bollinger reflects on the 60th Anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.

Opinion

The End Of Affirmative Action Would Be A Disaster

The Atlantic, October 31, 2022

Affirmative Action Isn’t Just a Legal Issue. It’s Also a Historical One.

The New York Times, June 24, 2016

What Once Was Lost Must Now Be Found: Rediscovering an Affirmative Action Jurisprudence Informed by the Reality of Race in America

Harvard Law Review Forum, April 12, 2016

Reversing Affirmative Action Would Send Us Backwards on Race

Time, December 7, 2015

Sixty Years Later, We Need a New Brown

The New Yorker, May 16, 2014

Archive

"We urgently need a more serious, realistic, and open discussion about race in the United States today. Along with it, we need a new movement like the one that led to Brown—before it is too late, and the issue vanishes beneath another cycle of inattention."

Lee C. Bollinger, "Sixty Years Later, We Need a New Brown," The New Yorker, 2016