President of Columbia University and a law professor, Lee C. Bollinger, will deliver the inaugural Assembly Series lecture at Washington University. Bollinger’s talk, “The Foundations of the Principle of Academic Freedom,” is the first of 14 lectures to be featured this fall. Bollinger’s talk is also the School of Law’s Sesquicentennial Lecture. His lecture will take place at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, September 10 in Graham Chapel, located just north of Mallinckrodt Center (6445 Forsyth Blvd.) on the Washington University campus. Assembly Series lectures are free and open to the public.
Bollinger is a graduate of the University of Oregon and Columbia University Law School. He served as a law clerk for Judge Wilfred Feinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for the second circuit and also for Chief Justice Warren Burger on the United States Supreme Court. His teaching career began at the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, and he became the dean of the school in 1987. He joined Dartmouth College as provost and was also appointed a professor of government in 1994. In November 1996, Bollinger was named the twelfth president of the University of Michigan. In June 2002, Bollinger became the nineteenth president of Columbia University.
Bollinger focuses primarily on free speech and First Amendment issues. He has published numerous articles, essays, reviews and books. His contributions to First Amendment writings include three highly acclaimed books – Eternally Vigilant: Free Speech in the Modern Era (2001), Images of a Free Press (1991), and The Tolerant Society: Freedom of Speech and Extremist Speech in America (1986). A defendant of affirmative action in higher education, he was the respondent in the recent Supreme Court cases, Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger.
For more information, call (314) 935-4620 or visit the Assembly Series web page (http://wupa.wustl.edu/assembly).