Suzanne Goldberg

Previously both a Law School professor and founder and director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law,  as well as President Bollinger’s Special Advisor on Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, Professor Suzanne Goldberg is taking on a brand new role as Executive Vice President for University Life. She will retain her Law School positions, but will end her advisory role.

The new role, according to an email from Robert Hornsby, entails working with the campus community at large to advance the academic and communal experiences of everyone at Columbia, including students, faculty and staff. The University Life office will “serve as a primary place of engagement for issues of campus-wide concern…,” among performing other functions.

Read PrezBo’s full email about the change below.

Dear fellow members of the Columbia community:

I am pleased to announce my appointment of Professor Suzanne B. Goldberg as Columbia’s first Executive Vice President for University Life. Suzanne is the Herbert and Doris Wechsler Clinical Professor of Law and director of the Law School’s Center for Gender and Sexuality Law. Over the past semester, Suzanne has served as my Special Advisor for Sexual Assault Prevention and Response. Her service to the institution in that role has been exemplary. She has helped strengthen the University’s gender-based misconduct policy, developed a groundbreaking prevention training protocol capable of being customized for the broad variety of students at Columbia, and thoughtfully and sensitively engaged virtually every member of the University in the process of better understanding and improving our ability to respond to these complex issues.

An extensive national search led to the obvious conclusion that Suzanne is precisely the right person to give shape to this new office at the University. The Office of University Life will serve as a focal point for University-wide student interests and as a primary place of engagement for issues of campus-wide concern, including through initiatives related to our collective intellectual life and community citizenship. This office will build on the exceptional legacy of care and concern for our students nurtured over generations by individual schools and faculty.

Suzanne’s career of public advocacy, scholarship, and teaching reflects a distinctive talent for honoring diverse points of view and replacing conflict with social progress. She is a nationally recognized expert on the subject of gender and sexuality law. For years, she has been an eloquent advocate for the rights of LGBT individuals, from her representation of the defendants prosecuted under the sodomy law struck down as unconstitutional in the Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, to her award-winning writing on procedural and substantive barriers to equality. In 2009, she received the Columbia Law School Willis L. M. Reese Award for Excellence in Teaching.

I personally want to express my gratitude to Suzanne for her willingness to take on this important responsibility amid a thriving career as a legal scholar and advocate. Please join me in welcoming Professor Suzanne B. Goldberg to her new role as Columbia’s first Executive Vice President for University Life.

Sincerely,

Lee C. Bollinger

Headshot courtesy of Columbia Law