Robert Pollack (biologist)

Graduating with a PhD in Biology from Brandeis University in 1966, he spent sixteen years as a research scientist, completing postdoctoral work at both N.Y.U. Medical Center and the Weizmann Institute in Israel, serving as a senior scientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory from 1971 to 1975, becoming an Associate Professor of Biology at Stonybrook University from 1975 to 1978, and finally running his own laboratory as a full Professor of Biology at Columbia University.[4]

Pollack served as Dean of Columbia College from 1982 to 1989.[20] At the time of his appointment, the College was firmly within the Sovern era, facing a severe financial crisis, student protests related to South African divestment and concerns regarding the quality of student life, following the institution of co-education and subsequently rising admissions rates.[21]

Pollack oversaw the admission of the first female-inclusive class in 1983,[22][23] appointing a co-education coordinator to facilitate the transition.[24][25][26]

Pollack forwarded initiatives to ensure guaranteed housing for all students.[27] A contemporary editorial by the Managing Board of the Columbia Daily Spectator noted that: "College Dean Robert Pollack is clinging to his guarantee of housing for all freshmen like a mother bear to its threatened cub."[28] In addition to the acquisition of the Carlton Arms dormitory, he pushed for the construction of a new dorm on 115th street,[29] which eventually became Schapiro Hall.[30]

In the face of significant financial constraints,[31][32][33] Pollack vigourously and successfully defended Columbia College's need-blind admissions policy with alumni donations.[34][35][36] He engineered a merger between the athletics programs of Barnard College and Columbia College.[37] A focus within his tenure was to support a more racially and ethnically diverse student body.[38][39]

In response to increasing student activism related to divestment from South Africa, the Columbia University Senate voted on March 25, 1983, to recommend total divestment, which was in turn rejected by the Trustees of the University.[40] In response, the University Senate appointed Pollack, alongside Louis Henkin and then-student Barbara Ransby, to a seven-member committee, charged with researching university divestment and reporting their results to the trustees.[41] Pollack was selected to chair the committee.[42] Due to opposition from Ransby, the report could not be presented to the University Senate by the end of the 1984 academic year.[43][44] In response, Pollack directly requested that Columbia University President Michael Sovern recommend that the trustees freeze investments in South Africa,[45] a principal recommendation of the report, which thereafter became known as the Pollack Report.[46][47][48] The trustees responded favorably to Pollack's request, instituting a freeze on new investments in June, 1984.[49] The committee, containing a new student representative,[50] approved the report on November 15, 1984,[51] followed by ratification in December, 1984 by the University Senate.[52] In addition to a freeze on investments, the report recommended the formation of a consortium of universities to organize against apartheid, the continuous monitoring of current South African investments by a standing committee, and the funding of educational programs to study social politics in South Africa.[53] Although Pollack strongly defended the committee's work,[54] student activists continued to push for total divestment, organizing a fast[55] and protest simultaneously,[56] blockading the entrance to Hamilton Hall for three weeks.[57][58][59] While the trustees accepted only three proposals from the Pollack Report, choosing to maintain the temporary investment freeze agreed to with Pollack in 1984,[60] a worsening human rights situation in South Africa led to Pollack and other university administrators to also push for total divestment.[61] The trustees thereafter accepted a two-year divestment plan in October, 1985, making Columbia University the first private institution to move toward total divestment.[62][63][64] In order to fund the educational programs recommended by the Pollack Report, the University received a one million dollar grant in 1986 from the Ford Foundation to fund interdisciplinary courses in human rights.[65]

Near the end of his term as Dean and afterwards, Pollack was considered for a wide variety of academic at other universities, including as provost at University of Pennsylvania,[66][67] as president of University of Vermont,[68][69] as president of Bowdoin College,[70] and as president of Brandeis University.[71] He ultimately continued as Professor of Biological Sciences at Columbia University, becoming the Co-Chair of the Jewish Campus Life Fund.[14] In this role, he convinced Robert Kraft to donate the necessary funds to establish the Robert K. Kraft Family Center for Jewish Student Life at Columbia, which opened in 2000.[72][73][74][75][76] He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 to write a book on the definition of disease.[77][78] From these efforts arose Pollack's first book geared for the general public, entitled Signs of Life: the Language and Meanings of DNA (1994).[79]