Lee Bollinger on Universities and the Trump Administration

Over the past year, the Trump administration has rewritten the playbook for how Washington interacts with higher education, especially elite universities.

How should universities respond to the Trump administration’s efforts? Have the Trump administration’s actions been legal? And how can universities better serve the American public?

On this episode of The Report Card, Nat Malkus discusses these questions and more with Lee Bollinger. Nat and Lee discuss the purpose of large university endowments, the meaning of the Ivy League today, university hiring, whether elite universities should double their undergraduate enrollments, the scholarly temperament, whether there is a tension between serving the public and the research missions of universities, the relationship between Washington and universities in the pre-Trump era, how universities can better convey their value to the American people, and the best evidence in favor of affirmative action.

Lee Bollinger is the Seth Low Professor at Columbia University and the author of University: A Reckoning. Previously, he was President of Columbia University and President of the University of Michigan.