Robert Zimmer

On August 13, 2020, Zimmer announced that he would step down as president at the conclusion of the 2020-2021 academic year and that he would shift to the role of chancellor. Zimmer originally had planned to serve through 2022, but acknowledged that brain surgery he had undergone in May 2020 had accelerated his transition. On July 7, 2022, he stepped down from his role as chancellor to focus on his health.

Under Zimmer's guidance, the University of Chicago sent a letter to incoming freshmen in August 2016 telling them that “we do not support so-called trigger warnings, we do not cancel invited speakers because their topics might prove controversial, and we do not condone the creation of intellectual safe spaces where individuals can retreat from ideas and perspectives at odds with their own.”

In 2014, Zimmer formed the Committee on Freedom of Expression whose report came to be known as the Chicago principles — a set of guidelines intended to demonstrate The University of Chicago's commitment to freedom of speech. The Chicago Principles were adopted by more than 65 colleges and universities. As Zimmer noted in an address to the Chicago Humanities Festival in 2017, the work of faculty and students to confront new and different ideas through education and research "only happens at the highest level in an environment of rigor, questioning, and free and open discourse." Zimmer also spoke on the importance of these ideas in the keynote address at the University of Vienna's Academic Freedom in the Digital Age conference.

An Associated Press report found Zimmer to be the highest-paid college president in the United States in 2011, with total compensation of $3.4 million in that year.

He was married to Terese Schwartzman, former director of strategic initiatives for the university's Urban Education Institute, but they separated in September 2009 and later divorced. They have three grown sons. In October 2011, he married University of Chicago Classics professor Shadi Bartsch.

Under Zimmer's administration applications to the undergraduate College increased from under 10,000 in 2006 to over 32,000 in 2018. The University adopted a policy of meeting full financial need of its undergraduate students with no loan expectations, creating the capacity for them to graduate debt-free. Recent efforts to increase access to the University include UChicago Promise, which provides aid and college guidance to students in the city of Chicago; the Neubauer Family Adelante Programs, which offers financial support for students engaged in Hispanic/Latino communities; the UChicago Emerging Rural Leaders Program, which offers on-campus programming, mentoring, and financial aid for students from rural communities; and the Office for Military-Affiliated Communities, which supports programs and partnerships for recruitment, enrollment and other services for veterans and their dependents.

Zimmer graduated from New York's Stuyvesant High School in 1964. He matriculated to Brandeis University as an undergraduate, earning his B.A., summa cum laude, in 1968. He conducted his mathematics graduate study at Harvard University, receiving his master's degree in 1971 and his Ph.D. in 1975 under the supervision of George Mackey. Zimmer taught at the United States Naval Academy from 1975 to 1977, and moved to the mathematics department of the University of Chicago in 1977. From 1981 to 1983, Zimmer was a professor in the mathematics department of University of California, Berkeley. He was on the mathematics faculty and held several administrative positions at the University of Chicago, including Chairman of the Department of Mathematics, Deputy Provost, and Vice President for Research and Argonne National Laboratory before he moved to Brown University as provost in 2002. He returned to the University of Chicago as president in 2006.

Robert Jeffrey Zimmer (born November 5, 1947) is an American mathematician and academic administrator. From 2006 until 2021, he served as the 13th president of the University of Chicago and as the Chair of the Board for Argonne National Lab, Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, and the Marine Biological Laboratory. He then served as chancellor of the University of Chicago until July 2022. As a mathematician, Zimmer specializes in geometry, particularly ergodic theory, Lie groups, and differential geometry.