As an academic expert on issues of free speech and the First Amendment, College Provost Lee Bollinger is Dartmouth's very own Renaissance man.
Sitting in his office surrounded by volumes of political theory works, Bollinger reflected on his recently completed first year as second in command to College President James Freedman.
"The provost is the chief academic officer of the institution," Bollinger said. "He plays a role of course with shaping the intellectual direction of the institution."
Among his duties in his new job are meeting with various deans, sitting on search committees for administrative positions and working as the agenda officer of the College's Board of Trustees' Committee on Educational Affairs and Facilities.
Bollinger said that it has been a positive move coming from a law school to a smaller liberal arts college.
"It's been exciting, I've learned a tremendous amount in a year and I think very highly of Dartmouth as an institution," he said.
Bollinger said he believes Dartmouth's uniqueness and strengths lie in its students.
"I think the students are tremendously bright but it's really more than that," he said. "There's an eagerness to learn and to be challenged that I think is quite special".
Bollinger said he enjoys incorporating teaching on his field of expertise, free speech and the press law, into his busy schedule. Last fall he taught Government 60, a course dealing with the First Amendment.
"My own personal impression is that free speech is doing very well at Dartmouth," he said. "There's no speech code ... There is widespread opinions about matters on campus, and I think that's very healthy."
He said he became interested in First Amendment issues while he was working as a young law professor and because "my father was also a newspaper publisher, so I grew up around newspapers. I guess I've always had a keen interest in freedom of the press."
After graduating from the University of Oregon and Columbia Law School, he clerked for the federal court of appeals and on the Supreme Court for Justice Warren Burger.
He then took up a position teaching at the University of Michigan Law School, becoming the dean in 1987. Bollinger left the law school in July 1994 to take his post at Dartmouth.
Bollinger is currently doing research on cultural institutions, such as museums and the National Endowment for the Arts, and the public policy issues surrounding them.
He is also working on Congress's National Commission on Cryptology Policy to examine a proposal for a computer chip that would encrypt communications. He will speak in September before top justices from the U.S. and Europe on free speech issues.
