Being Lee Bollinger

LEE BOLLINGER, the recently installed president of Columbia University, is used to praise. Newsweek labeled him an exemplar of a “new, visionary breed of college presidents.” In The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann wrote that “if you were called upon to invent a perfect university president, you couldn’t do better” than Bollinger. And in an article entitled “A Renaissance Man at Columbia’s Helm,” the Christian Science Monitor cooed that beneath the college president’s “gentle voice and unassuming manner lies a powerful legal counterpuncher.”

All this should be enough to cause substantial heartache for conservatives, especially those who are familiar with Bollinger’s record. The 56-year-old graduate of the University of Oregon and Columbia Law has a history of associating the good of his students with whatever leftish cause is currently garnering national attention. The typical result of this campus crusade for political correctness is a diminution of the idea of liberal education. Nicholas Lemann has it wrong: By any traditional standard, Lee Bollinger is the worst college president in America.

About the Author

Matthew Continetti

Matthew Continetti is director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.

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LEE BOLLINGER, the recently installed president of Columbia University, is used to praise. Newsweek labeled him an exemplar of a “new, visionary breed of college presidents.” In The New Yorker, Nicholas Lemann wrote that “if you were called upon to invent a perfect university president, you couldn’t do better” than Bollinger. And in an article entitled “A Renaissance Man at Columbia’s Helm,” the Christian Science Monitor cooed that beneath the college president’s “gentle voice and unassuming manner lies a powerful legal counterpuncher.”

All this should be enough to cause substantial heartache for conservatives, especially those who are familiar with Bollinger’s record. The 56-year-old graduate of the University of Oregon and Columbia Law has a history of associating the good of his students with whatever leftish cause is currently garnering national attention. The typical result of this campus crusade for political correctness is a diminution of the idea of liberal education. Nicholas Lemann has it wrong: By any traditional standard, Lee Bollinger is the worst college president in America.

About the Author

Matthew Continetti

Matthew Continetti is director of domestic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute and author of The Right: The Hundred-Year War for American Conservatism.