The Author Events Series presents Lee Bollinger | University: A Reckoning
In Conversation with Ali Velshi
The American university—one of the most successful institutions in human history—is facing an unprecedented assault from the President of the United States. Experts on authoritarianism have drawn comparisons to Turkey and Hungary, where strongmen subdued universities as part of their power grabs. Yet as former Columbia president Lee C. Bollinger points out in his powerful account of the university’s significance, in such dire times one has no choice but to state clearly and forcefully what one stands for.
Defenses of the university usually emphasize the practical benefits it offers to society: highly skilled graduates who can thrive in an information-saturated world; scientific research that leads to important advances in health; technological breakthroughs that contribute to the American economy being the envy of the world. Bollinger offers a more original, and more sweeping, account. He reveals how the seemingly unwieldy structure of the university actually contributes to the success of the American system— providing those who study and work within it a degree of creative freedom hard to find elsewhere—and why that structure is both impossible to re-create and vulnerable to outside attack. The fundamental mission of the university is to enhance knowledge, but this is not merely a high-minded idea. It is, as Bollinger demonstrates, a notion rooted deeply in the Enlightenment ideas of the nation’s founding documents, specifically the First Amendment to the Constitution, the basis of our political and civic life. The university helps realize the First Amendment; the First Amendment helps make the university.
Bollinger argues that, in a challenging era for journalism, it is more essential than ever that the university stands strong as an essential source of truth-seeking for those who still believe in democracy. The stakes are self-evident: The university, like the press, must be defended if the American experiment is to continue.
Lee C. Bollinger is a renowned legal scholar of the First Amendment and freedom of speech and press who served as the nineteenth president of Columbia University, from 2002 to 2023. He is currently president emeritus and the Seth Low Professor of the University. He was president of the University of Michigan from 1997 to 2002, where he led the seminal Supreme Court cases that first upheld the constitutional right of colleges and universities to consider race in admissions to build a more diverse learning community—a well-established and repeatedly affirmed precedent that the current Supreme Court reversed in 2023.
Ali Velshi is an award winning journalist, host of “Velshi” and Chief Correspondent for MS NOW, and a weekly economics contributor to NPR’s “Here And Now.” He has covered multiple U.S. Midterm and Presidential elections and significant news stories around the globe, including extensive reporting from Israel during the war with Israel and Hamas, Ukraine and across Central and Eastern Europe during the Russian invasion, the Syrian refugee crisis from Turkey and Jordan, and the Iran Nuclear Deal in Tehran. He hosts the “Velshi Banned Book Club” on MS NOW, and the “Velshi Banned Book Club” podcast. He additionally co-hosts the weekly livestream “It’s Happening with Velshi and Ruhle.” Velshi is known for his immersive on-the-ground reporting and his interactive discussions with small groups, which form part of his ongoing series, Velshi Across America. He previously worked as an anchor and correspondent for Al Jazeera America and CNN. He has been nominated for multiple Emmy Awards, and is the recipient of two National Headliner Awards and a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award.
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