Speeches

2019 Commencement Address

"Some might argue that all these verbal attacks on the press and universities, as well as all the other daily falsehoods that accompany them, are harmless—only a superficial attack without lasting consequence.  For us, however, in a university, where truth is everything, we cannot accept that characterization."

President Bollinger in Conversation with Hillary Clinton

On May 13, 2019, Bollinger and Clinton conducted a wide-ranging discussion in a student-focused event at The Forum building on Columbia's Manhattanville campus. 

Lee Bollinger and Geoffrey Stone discuss their book, The Free Speech Century

On February 5, 2019, President Bollinger and University of Chicago Professor Geoffrey Stone discussed their recent book, The Free Speech Century, at the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs.

Inauguration of Teachers College President Thomas Bailey

December 7, 2018

"Today, as we welcome President Bailey, I am here on behalf of Columbia University to reaffirm that bond."

Remarks at the Launch of the Institute for Ideas and Imagination

November 12, 2018

"What we have launched today will, we hope, be seen one hundred years from now as having helped to direct and re-direct the never-finished search for understanding and knowledge."

The Tanner Lectures

November 5-6, 2018

"If anything defines my life’s scholarly work, it is this—trying always to understand this extraordinary human and social development, through the prism of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution."