Post Co. Nominates Bollinger as Director

The Washington Post Co. has nominated Columbia University President Lee C. Bollinger to the company's board of directors to replace longtime director George W. Wilson, who will retire at the May 10 board meeting.

Bollinger, 60, is a First Amendment lawyer, a past president of the University of Michigan and a director of the New York Federal Reserve. He clerked for Warren Burger when Burger was chief justice of the Supreme Court.

Rima Calderon, a spokeswoman for the Post, said Bollinger brings expertise on a combination of free speech and education issues. The largest revenue-generator in The Post Co. is the Kaplan education company, which markets a range of products, from test prep courses to higher education classes.

As president at Michigan, Bollinger was named as a defendant in separate Supreme Court suits against the undergraduate and law schools. The court ruled that the law school's affirmative-action admissions policies were constitutional but that the undergraduate school's were not. It held that both schools sought laudable goals through its policies.

At Columbia in 2005, a group of students called for Bollinger's resignation, saying he failed to protect Jewish students from verbal abuse by pro-Palestinian professors. A committee formed by Bollinger found no evidence of anti-Semitism among the accused faculty.

Other members of The Post Co.'s board of directors include Internet mogul Barry Diller, investor Warren E. Buffett and Melinda F. Gates, wife of Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.