Lee C. Bollinger : University, A Reckoning

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This event will be held in English.

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At a moment of acute tension between political power and academic institutions, Lee C. Bollinger, President Emeritus of Columbia University and one of the foremost legal scholars of free expression in the United States, returns to Paris to discuss his latest book, University: A Reckoning, in conversation with Luis Vassy, Director of Sciences Po Paris.

Drawing on more than two decades leading one of the world's most prominent research universities, Bollinger offers a sweeping reappraisal of the American university's role in democratic society, not merely as an engine of economic or scientific progress, but as a constitutionally grounded institution whose structural independence is inseparable from the freedoms enshrined in the First Amendment.

As authoritarian pressures mount and the autonomy of higher education comes under unprecedented assault, Bollinger makes a forceful case: to defend the university is to defend the democratic experiment itself.

Lee C. Bollinger is the president emeritus of Columbia University, which he led from 2002 to 2023—the longest tenure of an Ivy League president in the modern era. Throughout that time, he remained a respected, persistent public advocate for both freedom of expression and diversity in higher education. Bollinger is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the University and a member of the Columbia Law School faculty. Throughout his presidency, he continued to teach a popular undergraduate course, Freedom of Speech and Press, a version of which he continues to teach at the Law School. His latest of many books is , which describes how the structure of modern universities contributes to their success but also leaves them vulnerable. Bollinger makes the case that, if American universities are to continue to fulfill their critical role in society, academic freedom must be viewed to be as essential under the First Amendment as freedom of the press.

Luis Vassy is a French high-ranking civil servant and diplomat, currently serving as director of Sciences Po Paris. A graduate of Sciences Po, ENS Paris-Saclay, and ENA, he began his diplomatic career in 2004 at the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, before serving at the French Embassy in Washington D.C. as Press Adviser and Spokesperson from 2008. He then joined the cabinet of Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian in 2012, following him to the Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs in 2017 as Deputy Chief of Staff. In 2019, he was appointed Ambassador of France to the Netherlands and Permanent Representative to the OPCW, before becoming Chief of Staff to Ministers Catherine Colonna and then Stéphane Séjourné from July 2022 until the government's resignation in July 2024. He was appointed Director of Sciences Po Paris and Administrator of the FNSP in September 2024, taking up his functions in October of that year for a five-year term.

From perhaps the most important university leader of the twenty-first century, an account of the university in the age of authoritarianism and a new case for its place in the American system.

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 structure of the university contributes to the success of the American system―because it provides 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 Constitution, specifically the First Amendment, the basis of our political and social life. The university helps realize the First Amendment; the First Amendment helps make the university.

Bollinger argues that, in a challenging era for the business of journalism, the university remains an essential source of truth-seeking for those who still believe in democracy. The stakes are self-evident: The university must be defended if the American experiment is to continue.

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This event will take place in Reid Hall’s Grande Salle Ginsberg-LeClerc, built in 1912 and extensively renovated in 2023 thanks to the generous support of Judith Ginsberg and Paul LeClerc.

Reid Hall, the Columbia Global Paris Center, and the Institute for Ideas and Imagination are not responsible for the views and opinions expressed by their speakers and guests.

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