Columbia University President Lee Bollinger became a national figure when he invited Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at the university and then introduced him as “a cruel and petty dictator.” More recently, Bollinger’s plan to expand Columbia’s campus has garnered local headlines, in part because New York City is using eminent domain to take the land from its current owners in order to give it to Columbia.
Now the campus expansion has come to the federal level. Columbia U on April 17 hired a K Street lobbying firm, K&L Gates, to lobby for federal funding for the expansion.
