Columbia SIPA Leadership Dinner

Lee C. Bollinger became Columbia University’s 19th president in 2002 and is the longest serving Ivy League president. He is Columbia’s first Seth Low Professor of the University, a member of the Law School faculty, and one of the nation’s preeminent First Amendment scholars. With frequent collaborator Geoffrey R. Stone, Bollinger is the co-author of A Legacy of Discrimination: The Essential Constitutionality of Affirmative Action (2023) and co-editor of Social Media, Freedom of Speech, and the Future of our Democracy (2022), National Security, Leaks and Freedom of the Press: The Pentagon Papers Fifty Years On (2021), and The Free Speech Century (2018). With Agnès Callamard he co-edited Regardless of Frontiers: Global Freedom of Expression in a Troubled World (2021).

In 2017, Bollinger founded Columbia World Projects, an initiative that mobilizes the University’s researchers and scholars to work with governments, organizations, businesses, and communities to tackle global challenges. In 2021 he launched the Columbia Climate School, the first new School at the University in 25 years. Bollinger serves on the Pulitzer Prize Board, and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2007 to 2012, he was a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where he also served as Chair from 2010 to 2012. He also served as a director of Graham Holdings Company (formerly The Washington Post Company), concluding his term in 2021. 

As president of the University of Michigan from 1996-2002, Bollinger led the school’s landmark civil rights litigation in Grutter v. Bollinger, a Supreme Court decision that for the first time upheld the constitutional right of colleges and universities to engage in affirmative action to advance diversity in higher education. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, Bollinger is also the recipient of multiple honorary degrees from universities in the United States and abroad.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has spent over five decades in public service as an advocate, attorney, First Lady, U.S. Senator, U.S. Secretary of State, and presidential candidate. As 67th U.S. Secretary of State, her "smart power" approach to foreign policy repositioned American diplomacy and development for the 21st century. Clinton played a central role in restoring America’s standing in the world, reasserting the United States as a Pacific power, imposing crippling sanctions on Iran and North Korea, responding to the Arab Awakening, and negotiating a ceasefire in the Middle East.  Earlier, as First Lady and Senator for New York, she traveled to more than 80 countries as a champion of human rights, democracy, and opportunities for women and girls. She also worked to provide health care to millions of children, create jobs and opportunity, and support first responders who risked their lives at Ground Zero. In her historic 2016 campaign for President of the United States, Clinton won 66 million votes. She is the author of ten best-selling books, host of the podcast You and Me Both, and founder of the global production studio HiddenLight Productions. She is married to former U.S. President Bill Clinton, has one daughter Chelsea, and three grandchildren: Charlotte, Aidan, and Jasper.

Claire Shipman MIA '94, '86CC is a journalist, author, and public speaker. An expert on confidence and women’s leadership, she’s written four New York Times bestselling books, The Confidence Code, The Confidence Code for Girls, Living the Confidence Code and Womenomics. She has a new book coming out in June focused on women and power—The Power Code. Her co-author on all five has been the BBC's Katty Kay.

Shipman spent 15 years at ABC News, reporting on politics, international affairs to social issues. Before moving to ABC, she covered the White House and the Clinton administration for NBC news. Shipman also spent a decade at CNN, where she covered the White House, and five years at CNN’s Moscow bureau covering the collapse of the Soviet Union. She’s received numerous awards for her reporting, including a Peabody, a DuPont, and an Emmy.  Shipman holds a graduate degree in international affairs from the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University and a Bachelor of Arts in Russian Studies from Columbia College.

Keren Yarhi-Milo is the dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs and the Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations. An expert in international security, crisis decision making, and political psychology, Yarhi-Milo is an award-winning scholar whose work is grounded in an ongoing dialogue with policymakers. As a scholar and teacher, Yarhi-Milo bridges the academic and policy worlds, focusing predominantly on how leaders make foreign-policy decisions regarding the use of force. She is known for coining selective attention theory and was a student of Robert Jervis, who became a deep personal mentor to her.

In 2022, Yarhi-Milo won the International Studies Association’s Emerging Scholar Award, which recognizes “scholars who have made through their body of publications the most significant contribution to the field of security studies.” Her most recent book, Who Fights for Reputation? The Psychology of Leaders in International Conflict (Princeton, 2018) was recognized by the American Political Science Association as best book in foreign policy and by the ISA as the biennial outstanding book in foreign policy.

Yarhi-Milo joined the Columbia faculty in 2019 after a decade at Princeton University. Before becoming dean in July 2022, Yarhi-Milo served for two years as director of SIPA’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies and as Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies. She earned her PhD at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA, summa cum laude, from Columbia University in 2003.