Lee Bollinger

Lee Bollinger, the president of Columbia University, knew from the get-go that in order to expand, he had to win over Harlem. He and his aides went to great lengths to get neighborhood leaders to see what a new campus could do for them.

Somehow, months or even years later, Harlem, or at least a vocal portion of it, is still not convinced. At a Dec. 12 City Council hearing, Mr.  read more »

It all came out alright in the end. After days of tabloid fury and protests on-and-off campus about the visit of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Columbia University, the event itself was an unexpected success.

That outcome had much less to do with the remarks of the Iranian leader than with the contribution of Columbia president Lee Bollinger.

Mr. Bollinger introduced Mr. Ahmadinejad by both excoriating him and defending the right of the university to invite him to speak.  read more »

The atmosphere was somewhere between that of a political protest and a carnival on the Columbia campus as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech drew closer.

Opponents and supporters of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s right to speak stood check by jowl on the steps of Columbia’s library as they waited for his scheduled 1:30 address, as a crowd of several hundred Columbia students gathered before a large truck-mounted video screen.

An NYPD helicopter hovered overhead.

Eitan Ben David, wearing a Hillel t-shirt bearing the Edmund Burke quote, “All that is required for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing,” said, “We should be marginalizing him, we should be isolating him.”  read more »

Here’s a video from YouTube: a tape of Columbia President Lee Bollinger’s testimony at the Aug. 15 public hearing before the West Harlem community board. “There are so many benefits that will come from this, including 6,000 jobs,” he says at one point, and there are snippets of “affordable housing,” and “debated in a serious way and thought through”--but the real star of the show, as it were, is the crowd booing and heckling the chief executive of the nation’s fifth-oldest university.

Surely, two of the most memorable minutes of Mr. Bollinger's life.

A paid consultant to Columbia University has been working to form a grass-roots coalition to come out vocally in support of the school’s plan to build a campus in West Harlem.

Bill Lynch, a former deputy mayor and well-known Harlem figure, said he has been working for about eight months to get elected officials, community organizations and minority-owned businesses to go public with their support for the new campus, which is expected to employ 6,000 people once it is fully built out 25 or 30 years from now.  read more »

Judith Rodin transformed the relationship between the University of Pennsylvania and its Philadelphia neighborhood. What can she teach Lee Bollinger about Columbia and Harlem?  read more »

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger has let the world know that the city has certified the university's rezoning application for its expansion into Manhattanville. What's that mean? The official public review process and comment period for the expansion is under way.  read more »

>>Read the full text of the Mayor's speech here.  read more »

Pamela Lippe was excited. On Sunday afternoon, the green consultant and executive director of Earth Day New York for 17 years was sitting in one of the hundreds of white and blue chairs lining the American Museum of Natural History's Millstein Hall of Ocean Life, anxious to hear Mayor Michael Bloomberg's speech revealing PlaNYC, the city's 127 new initiatives that are supposed to make New York City "greener" and "greater" by 2030.  read more »

In a press conference in a faculty room at the Low Memorial Library, it was just announced that John W. Kluge has pledged $400 million to Columbia University, his alma mater (Class of '37). It will be a gift from his estate, half of which will go to the college. Mr. Kluge—who was in attendance along with unviersity Preisdent Lee Bollinger—said that the money is too be used to make the university more international.

"The reason that I'm doing this is because I believe in it," said the 92-year-old Mr. Kluge. Mr. Kluge has already donated over $100 million to the unversity to help with financial aid. This gift will continue this work, but with a focus on foreign students. "I look forward to Columbia having more global students. And what better city than the city of New York?"

Mr. Bollinger, whose expansion plans have been attacked recently, made it clear that this money is not in any way tied to his proposed Manhattanville expansion—although it could be used for that down the line.

"The gift will go towards the globalization and internationalization of the university" said Mr. Bollinger. "I'm not interested in buildings. I'm interested in minds."

It was more than two years ago, over a couple of beers at the West End in Morningside Heights, that  read more »

The Jack Sprat Law    read more »

The Jack Sprat Law  read more »

Jess reported the other day that Bill Weld's salary at Decker College was said to be $750,000; today in the Times, Weld pegs it at $700,000.

In either case, that would make Weld among America's best-paid college presidents, earning more than Columbia's Lee Bollinger ($638,250). An executive who makes $724,604 is the president of the enormous University of Michigan, which has a $4.6 billion budget and 39,000 students on its main campus.  read more »

And the 3,800-student Decker, which Weld described as serving a "tremendous purpose for a lot of low-income people trying to improve themselves," wasn't exactly Ann Arbor. Much of the reporting in Louisville has focused not on the fraud allegations but on the raw deal students seem to have gotten.

The Louisville Courier-Journal summed up its reporting on students with "worthless" training as electricians in an editorial (pay link) headlined "Training to go nowhere."

To the Editor:  read more »

To the Editor:    read more »

When Lee C.  read more »

When Lee C.  read more »

The Plaza as a "transient hotel"?

Matthew Schuerman finds out it's you who'll pay if the landlords who lost their property on Eighth Avenue when the state took it for the Times (eminent domain!) get awarded more money.  read more »

A pair of houses on the same leafy East 64th Street block get more than $20 M. S'Wonderful!

Lee Bollinger's expanding Columbia's campus--but not the programming he means to put there.

It should be obvious by now that rancher-President George W.  read more »

Last week, Columbia University president Lee Bollinger announced that he had hired Nicholas Lemann,  read more »

As the conflict in the Middle East continues to boil, there's disturbing evidence of rising anti-Sem  read more »

Paging Quincy Jones!  read more »

After more than four decades at New York University, Neil Postman is preparing to step down as chair  read more »