Lee Bollinger is the 19th and current president of Columbia University. He is a noted legal scholar of the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

Lee Bollinger graduated from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, after which he served as a clerk for a Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Bollinger went on to join the faculty of the University of Michigan Law School in 1973, becoming dean of the school in 1987. He became provost of Dartmouth College in 1994 before returning to Michigan in 1996 as president. Bollinger assumed his current position as president of Columbia University in June 2002.

In addition to his academic and administrative positions, Bollinger has authored many articles and books on the subject of free speech, including The Tolerant Society and Images of a Free Press.

In 2003, Bollinger made headlines as defendant in the Supreme Court cases Grutter v. Bollinger and Gratz v. Bollinger. In the Grutter case, the Court found by a 5-4 margin that the affirmative action policies of the University of Michigan Law School were Constitutional. But at the same time, they found by a 6-3 margin in the Gratz case that the undergraduate admissions policies of Michigan were not narrowly tailored to a compelling interest in diversity, and thus that they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.