Dartmouth Vader
Just about three years ago, this blog and several others you may read participated in a palace coup at my alma mater Dartmouth College…. Okay, I’m funning. What I really mean is we helped do something that almost never happens in Ivy League institutions — get two graduates (Peter Robinson and Todd Zywicki) actually democratically elected by the alumni to the Board of Trustees. This did, I guess, actually amount to a palace coup on college terms because, as many of you know, our universities, especially in the humanities and social sciences, are no longer exactly bastions of free thought — unless you consider free thought to be cultural relativist tripe of the sort that leads the Harvard gym to schedule special hours for Islamic women. The university has become a more or less stultified institution where the failed Marxist dreams of my generation (and, yes, I dreamed them) are spoon fed to our children with an unremitting regularity that would cause even the strongest stomach to regurgitate. Witness that at Dartmouth recently a group of students was so obviously fed up with their professor’s hooey that the offended prof (now teaching elsewhere) is suing them for restricting her speech. (Go figure.)
Fortunately or unfortunately, at Dartmouth and our other “distinguished” institutions the faculty and the administration are not nearly as smart as the students. Also they are more threatened by a real diversity of views (meaning… gasp!… a few actual conservatives in the mix of myriad liberals). So what did they do when Robinson and Zywicki got elected?
Yes…. you’re right…. they tried to raise the bar. And how are they doing that? As the very Peter Robinson wrote on The Corner:
Ever since the Agreement of 1891, the Board of Trustees has been composed of equal numbers of elected and unelected trustees. Displeased with recent elections, last September the Board of Trustees voted to end this longstanding parity. If the Board’s plan goes into effect, the number of charter trustees-that is, the unelected, self-perpetuating trustees-will double. And after possessing equal standing for more than a century, alumni trustees-that is, the trustees elected by graduates of Dartmouth College, the Tuck School of Business, the Thayer School of Engineering, and the Dartmouth Medical School-these alumni trustees will find themselves outnumbered two to one.
Keep your friends close and your enemies closer, as they say. But failing that–dilute them. Peter, being far more of a gentleman than I am (I think we would both agree), offers readers the chance to go to websites supporting both sides of the Dartmouth controversy. I say pish-tosh and offer only the link against the Board-packing plan. Hey, as many know, I supported the War in Iraq because I’m pro-democracy, not because of the WMDs. (Don’t understand that analogy? I’m not sure I do either, but it has something to do with democracy, which I’m sure you’re for.) So, if you’re a Dartmouth alum, go ye to the link and vote accordingly. Otherwise they’ll never teach G. K. Chesterton at Dartmouth again. (I’m not kidding.)
But seriously, I doubt there’s anything more important for our future than returning free discourse to our universities. And it’s not just to protect that endangered academic species conservatives. It’s for all of us. Another blogging Dartmouth man Joe Malchow sent me a pdf of a statement on the controversy from Daniel King, Dartmouth ‘02. The first two graphs are worth a read:
I am an openly gay man, a teacher, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party, the ACLU, and the Human Rights Campaign. Heck, I even voted for Bill Bradley in the 2000 New Hampshire primary, Howard Dean in 2004, and am currently one of those “Obamaniacs.” To call me anything near a conservative would be a gross misnomer.I don’t really think my political leanings should have anything to do with how I vote in the current Association of Alumni elections, nor should it have determined how I voted in the past four alumni Trustee elections. But, according to the slate of candidates supporting theTrustees‚Äô Board-packing plan, it does.
I’m voting against the plan with Daniel King. Anybody from the class of ‘02 who is still proclaiming his sexual orientation deserves to be listened to! [It's not that '02, doofus.-ed. Oh, sorry.] Don’t let the empire strike back!
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5 Comments
1. David Thomson:The MSM is quickly being marginalized. The Ivy League schools are next on the list. They are often not worthy of respect—outside of their hard science departments. Roger L. Simon and other graduates of these corrupted institutions are naively trying to reverse their inevitable collapse. The odds are strongly against them. Tenure protects the crazy and reactionary professors. Most parents also don’t really care about the long term destruction. They worry only about the here and now. What is the present and near future value of the credentials granted to their near adult children? That is the only thing that concerns them.
Do you really want to know how we got to this point? If so, I strongly recommend that you read Donald Alexander Downs’ CORNELL ‘69 Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University. This books reveals the cowardice of Cornell’s leaders. Their surrender to the radical Left significantly lowered that university’s academic standard. It has only gotten much worse since then.
May 20, 2008 - 10:18 pm 2. shockcorridor:“I am an openly gay man, a teacher, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Party, the ACLU, and the Human Rights Campaign…and am currently one of those “Obamaniacs.” To call me anything near a conservative would be a gross misnomer.”
May 21, 2008 - 12:58 pm 3. cranquer:I don’t think “conservative” is quite the moniker that most people would slap on someone proudly touting a resume like this one.
Mr. Simon, I am not sure why you think that Robinson, who was nominated by a poll among alumni of an Ivy League institution and elected to a small nonprofit board by its members, was “democratically elected.” I wonder whether your definition of “democracy” would be shared by many others.
I also wonder about your definition of “university,” since you do not appear to be able to distinguish the classroom and the corporation that owns it. Democracy unquestionably has a place in the university as an intellectual enterprise, but it deserves no more consideration inside that university’s boardroom than it does in the boardroom of the Coca-Cola Corporation. Private boards meet in closed rooms and discuss their own matters under their own rules, and anyone who thinks that an educational nonprofit corporation such as Dartmouth’s should become a public place for “free discourse” needs to go back to school. Capitalism and free enterprise depend on property rights that are selfishly private, not in any way “free” or “democratic.” In this country, we don’t generally ask the courts to take rights away from others and give them to us, even though that surely would seem more “democratic.”
Your understanding of the law is seriously deficient if you think that a personal desire for “free discourse” is any kind of reason to support a suit against the Board of Trustees. Instead of accepting the propaganda put forth by anti-Dartmouth organizations with an uncritical ear, you should at least permit the Board, which includes the four petition trustees, all of whom voted on the expansion, to continue to make its own decisions by majority vote. You should do this even if your vast experience running an Ivy League institution (?) leads you to think that the Board’s decision was the wrong one. People disagree with institutional decisions all the time and learn to live with it. The possession of a certain level of anger, especially when it is misguided and based on ignorance and propaganda, will always fail to justify litigation.
May 22, 2008 - 12:22 pm 4. Blogengeezer:Roger nothing surprises me in these times. While working on a recent film project here in NM, I had the chance to talk with the young tenured professor teaching a class of 200 per semester. European History is his forte at the University of New Mexico. I came away from the one sided (he is a professor) discussion with the definite impression that this young tenured professor teaches ‘Bush is Hitler’. We never got to my questions about who Vladimir Putin or Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez was in relevence to history. This young tenured professor apparently believes that the Executive branch of our US government should be done away with? At least until a ‘worthy’ figure is installed in power? All of these revelations from a tenured professor of European History? Now I know where all of this new-think originates in our society. I believe he needs to study a little more ‘World’ history?
May 23, 2008 - 3:11 pm 5. Blogengeezer:Roger nothing surprises me in these times. While working on a recent film project here in NM, I had the chance to talk with the young tenured professor teaching a class of 200 per semester. European History is his forte at the University of New Mexico. I came away from the one sided (he is a professor) discussion with the definite impression that this young tenured professor teaches ‘Bush is Hitler’. We never got to my questions about who Vladimir Putin or Ahmadinejad or Hugo Chavez was in relevence to history. This young tenured professor apparently believes that the Executive branch of our US government should be done away with? At least until a ‘worthy’ figure is installed in power? All of these revelations from a tenured professor of European History? Now I know where all of this new-think originates in our society. I believe he needs to study a little more ‘World’ history?
May 23, 2008 - 3:12 pm