Dartblog

The final installment of Peter Robinson’s interview with novelist Tom Wolfe has been posted at National Review. Hear Mr. Wolfe’s thoughts on America and her multifarious whiners.

About 40 professors showed up for a meeting on the Dartmouth presidential search with Board of Trustee Chairman Ed Haldeman ‘70 and Trustee Al Mulley ‘70.

Among the criteria enumerated by various professors for choosing the next president were an academic background, the ability to express a clear vision consistent with the desires of Dartmouth, setting a good tone for Dartmouth’s academia, and retaining the highest quality faculty. One professor commented that the next president should not just be a Jim Wright replacement.

One particularly insightful line of commentary came from Professor Ivy Schweitzer of the English and Women and Gender Studies Departments, who spoke about the need for the next president to articulate a vision for Dartmouth. “We have the ability to be the top in liberal arts and the humanities,” Schweitzer said, and it is this superior liberal arts education that is what makes Dartmouth special and this vision that the next president should proudly articulate.

Professor Kevin Reinhart of the Religion Department spoke about considering whether the next president him or herself had an undergraduate liberal arts education, which Professor Reinhart said could be a decisive factor in understanding what the goals are here at Dartmouth. Reinhart also spoke in support of going outside of Dartmouth to hire the next president to gain a fresh pair of eyes, and that this candidate should be in the mold of a president like John Sloan Dickey in promoting an understanding of the world.

Professors also spoke about the need to create a climate the encourages, in the words of Colin Calloway of the Native American Studies Department, “true diversity.” He talked about the need to push candidates under consideration on the issue of diversity and the ability to consider how to treat free speech that might be insensitive to others. Following up Al Mulley responded that “Diversity that can be quantified is not enough” but that we must be “sensitive to the differences that can be understood.”

Computer Science professor Scott Drysdale began his remarks by saying that “the elephant in the room” is the trustee battles and election. The next president needs to put this to rest and get everyone to agree on what the mission for Dartmouth should be. Elaborating on this mission, Drysdale spoke about upholding the unique balance Dartmouth has struck between teaching and research, and that as much as we do not want to become a second-rate Harvard we also do not want to become a second-rate Williams.

Another professor spoke about “intellectual sustainability” and cultivating “superior effort, growth, and opportunity” towards the kind of liberal arts education that can play a role on the national academic stage. Another spoke about the need for “intellectual leadership” from the next president that does not interfere with particular departments (i.e. academic freedom) but has a broader idea of where the institution should go, perhaps a former faculty member or academic.

One distinguished alumnus, class of ‘67, put the ongoing Association of Alumni election in perfect perspective:

I hope those of us with the brains to vote against being disenfranchised in the current AofA election end up in the majority.

That is exactly what this election comes down to, will Dartmouth alumni vote to preserve their right to elect 50% of the Board of Trustees (Parity) or will they vote for the slate that would dilute that long-standing democratic right (Board-packing).

On Monday, Dartmouth’s Office of Institutional Research (where eager dirt-diggers can find many a fascinating document, by the way) released its report of Dartmouth’s results from the 2006 “Senior Survey.” The Survey is a detailed questionnaire administered annually by an outside group, the Higher Education Research Institute, to graduating seniors at participating American colleges and universities. The questionnaire examines student opinion on a wide variety of aspects of instruction, administrative services, student life, etc. Dartmouth participates in the Survey every other year. This is the first time that one of these reports, which Dartmouth’s bureaucrats presumably prepare biannually each year Dartmouth participates in the Survey, has been made public.

The report—there it is in all its 19-page pdf glory—contains a surprisingly detailed and technical analysis of the collected data. I was mildly impressed—the bureaucrats put a lot of time and effort into this.

The report compares Dartmouth on a variety of dimensions to three “peer groups.” Peer 1 is “highly selective, co-ed liberal arts colleges,” so Amherst, Swarthmore, Williams, Rice, Oberlin, etc. Peer 2 is “highly selective, private institutions in Northeast,” which would seem to overlap greatly with Peer 1, unless you assume that by the word “institutions” the bureaucrats mean “research universities,” in which case we have the rest of the Ivy League, MIT, NYU, etc. Peer 3 is “highly selective, private institutions beyond Northeast,” which also seems to overlap with Peer 1, but I’m assuming the bureaucrats mean Stanford, Caltech, Wash. U, U Chicago, Northwestern, etc.

The overall sense one gets from the comparative section of the report is that Peer 1 students are happier than Dartmouth students, who are happier than the students in Peers 2 and 3. (Figures for the peer groups are not given school by school, but as aggregate numbers—presumably averages across the schools in each group, but possibly medians or some other central tendency measure.) That finding doesn’t surprise me at all—overall student satisfaction appears negatively correlated with the size of the school.

There are two particular variables of interest. First, in “pre-major advising,” Dartmouth stinks. We are far worse than all three of the peer groups, and on a four-point scale of “Very dissatisfied,” “Generally dissatisfied,” “Generally satisfied,” and “Very satisfied,” fully 65 percent were “very” or “generally” dissatisfied. Only six percent were “very satisfied.” And “satisfied” is a far cry from pleased.

Second, and I feel like a broken record here, Dartmouth is worse than all three peer groups in “Administration’s responsiveness to students.” Dartmouth students rated that item as the third-worst aspect of Dartmouth. One has to wonder how the bureaucrats preparing the report felt when they wrote that.

The end of the report contains some interesting summary graphs that examine which aspects of Dartmouth are important “drivers” of student satisfaction. These graphs plot the “importance” to students of each item on the vertical axis, against student satisfaction with that item on the horizontal axis. Thus, the upper right-hand sector contains “key strengths,” aspects of Dartmouth students like and find important; the upper left-hand sector “key weaknesses,” aspects of Dartmouth students dislike but find important; the lower right-hand sector peripheral strengths, and the lower left-hand sector peripheral weaknesses. Here are two of these graphs, the first for academics and instruction, the second for campus life.

There are a few points of interest here, particularly in the campus life graph. First, notice the high rating students give to “Social life.” With this in mind, the administration’s simmering distaste with Greek-letter organizations and the recent campus obsession with finding “alternative social spaces” look a lot less useful, and a lot more like ideologically-driven social engineering.

Second, notice the position of the item “Diversity of campus.” It’s in the peripheral weakness sector. Students apparently find the level of diversity on campus unsatisfying, but don’t particularly care. Is that not the exact opposite of the standard line from the propaganda apparatus at 7 Lebanon Street?

As a final note, one has to wonder to what extent, if at all, the figures in the report were spun. As the report was not initially prepared for public viewing, but rather by Dartmouth bureaucrats for Dartmouth bureaucrats, there was presumably not much of an incentive to smear away from the truth. And as I have discussed, there are elements of the report that paint an unflattering picture. But it is a question nonetheless.

You might wonder how a number can be spun—a number is a number. With a little clever presentation, it’s not hard. Take for instance the graphs above. The impression a reader takes away isn’t based on the numbers behind the graphs, but on the graphs themselves—where the data points are located with respect to the four strength/weakness sectors. But realize that if you were constructing one of those graphs, you could place a given data point anywhere you pleased—it’s just a matter of choosing intelligent axis scaling. For example, if the horizontal axis scale extended up to 4.0 instead of 3.9, all the data points would shift to the left—and students would appear less satisfied.

With this in mind, notice that there is not a single data point in the “key weaknesses” sector of the academics and instruction graph, but that “Course availability” is extremely close. I would not be surprised if the bureaucrat who created that graph fiddled with axis scaling for half an hour to find just the right numbers.

For your amusement. I was recently forwarded the following blitz:

– Forwarded message from granitebrain@gmail.com ––––––––––––––––––-

In honor of senior spring, and because you can only get
away with this kind of shit in college, I am going to try to
organize the largest mass streaking event in Dartmouth history.
My goal is to get over 100 people. I have no idea if this will,
in fact, be the largest, but it’s a good number to shoot for.

Here’s what I need from you:

1) If you are interested in participating in what will
hopefully be a momentous, historic event blitz me at
granitebrain@gmail.com with the subject line “Streak”

2) If you are involved in any sports, clubs, or CFS
organizations, please blitz them. Tell them if they want to
participate, to blitz granitebrain@gmail.com with the subject
line “Streak”

3) Though this is a mass event, I want to try to keep it as
much on the DL as possible (due to its illegal nature, and
because this will be all the better if its a surprise). Please
do not tell anyone who is organizing this — only refer them to
the e-mail address: I think an air of mystery will help this
build.

If we get enough people, I will blitz those participating with
more details. If you’ve never streaked before, this is the
perfect opportunity to try, retaining a certain degree of
anonymity, and being part of something (hopefully) big. Spread
the word.

-******

– End of forwarded text –

Certainly intelligent of the streaker to use a non-Dartmouth e-mail address.

“Fairness, idealism and other atrocities.”

Is how Democratic strategist Paul Begala described Barack Obama’s base of supporters, saying that the party could not win with that constituency alone.

Said Hillary Clinton in a USA Today interview:

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on.” As evidence, Clinton cited an Associated Press article “that found how Sen. Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

“There’s a pattern emerging here.”

Meanwhile in Washington D.C., a number of ‘persons of spurious intellectual pretensions,’ out of touch with real-life concerns, denounced the comments and reaffirmed their support for Obama.

In the daily student newspaper, The Dartmouth, Joe Asch ‘79 censures Dartmouth’s imperious trustees—exception the four petition candidates, of course—for running the presidential search in just the way they have, before the era of petition candidates, run the College: from a long, long distance.

If you have not been watching Peter Robinson’s Uncommon Knowledge in its new, non-PBS incarnation, you have made a grave error. This week Peter has been talking to novelist Tom Wolfe about the state of literature, language, and rationality. There is no better interview program around.

60 years ago today according to the Hebrew calendar, the State of Israel declared its independence. I think it is still a point of pride that it only took the United States 11 minutes before we became the first country to formally recognize Israel, and that today we remain one of Israel’s strongest allies.

Even 60 years later Israel’s principles of independence are inspirational:

Eretz Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books….

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland….

[The State of Israel] will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex….

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land….

Mazal Tov, or good fortune and congratulations to the the tiny state of Israel, 60 years later still under attack but still committed to the same righteous principles of her founding.

The full Declaration of Independence can be read here and below is a rendition of Hatikvah, the Israeli National Anthem.

In his column in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, the Board-packing candidate for president of the Association of Alumni John Mathias ‘69, makes a number of statements well off the mark.

Mr. Mathias begins his column, admirably, by talking about the need to “focus on undergraduate education” and “administer highly complex operations wisely and efficiently” with “institutional vision and dynamic personality.” Mr. Mathias almost seemed to be running on the ideas of recently elected Trustee Stephen Smith ‘88.

In any event the opinion piece quickly went south. Mathias started up with the old refrain that the lawsuit is frivolous and divisive, the same position he evidently takes on Trustee elections. Frivolous? A New Hampshire Superior Court Judge has ruled that the lawsuit has merit on 3 separate counts? Divisive? What is divisive about supporting the right of alumni to vote? See here for how the Association of Alumni lawsuit can be brought to an end in 9 seconds.

Next, Mathias attempts to polarize the issue by contending that somehow The Dartmouth Review is linked with the lawsuit. This is a deliberate obfuscation of the issue, and not a very good one at that. Firstly the Review was hardly around in 1891 when the contract for Parity was made. More importantly, the democratic right of alumni to vote for 50% of the Board of Trustees is not in any respect a partisan issue.

Then Mathias turns to the cost of the lawsuit, which even according to his assuredly partisan figures, costs significantly less than the hair that occupied the library last spring and summer.

Finally Mathias attempts to promote the diversity of his slate, a woefully inadequate claim. There is simply no getting around the fact that opposition to democracy is an inherent affront to diversity. Democracy, which is to say the right of alumni to elect members of the Board of Trustees (or the A of A for that matter), means the ability to consider persons with all types of ideas and opinions and backgrounds for the positions. It is decidedly regressive to believe that diversity might come from a handful of trustees handpicking (or packing as the case might be) their successors in a smoke-filled backroom.

Mathias calls for unity, but if Dartmouth unified in his direction we would have serious problems. In addition to being unified, it is also probably a good idea to be right. And what better way to ascertain rightness than to have free and fair elections? That is exactly what this debate is about. The Board-packing slate wants all the trustees to think alike, to think like them. The Pro-parity slate wants to preserve the right of all Dartmouth alumni to give their input and opinions and suggestions and criticism through the democratic ballot box.

Further reading:

A breakdown of the lawsuit

Some thoughts in support of the lawsuit

An analysis of Parity

A little Board-packing satire

I will publish a full review of John Mathias’s ‘69 misleading opinion column in today’s issue of The Dartmouth, but for now I just wanted to make a comment on the Association of Alumni lawsuit against the Board of Trustees.

The lawsuit could be stopped in 9 seconds! I timed it. All it would take is a phone call from Board of Trustees chairman Ed Haldeman to the Association of Alumni that said: “We are going to honor the 1891 contract giving alumni the right to elect 50% of the Board:Parity. We are going to stop the Board-packing scheme.”

The current Association of Alumni election has the Board-packers on one side led by John Mathias versus the Independent Pro-parity slate led by J. Michael Murphy ‘61.

An editorial in the Washington Post recently discussed the qualities of students at Ivy League universities. Drawing on her experiences at Princeton University as an undergraduate and an additonal year at Yale Law School, Amelia Rawls generalized to students at all top notch schools. She stated that though she found the students to be inspirational, they lacked compassion. In other words, they weren’t very “nice”. While acknowledging the many accomplishments of Ivy League students, she also described them as hypocrites:

“Sometimes some of these students will denounce world hunger but be unfriendly to the homeless. They will debate environmental policy but never offer to take out the trash. They will believe vehemently in many causes but roll their eyes when reminded to be humble, to be generous and to “do what is right.”

I am glad to report that I’ve never felt that way about students at Dartmouth. They are incredibly motivated to do good in the world. While many do follow the path of corporate recruiting and investment banking, many others work for non-profit organizations. Every year, a significant number of students choose to join the Peace Corps or work for Teach for America.

A friend from Dartmouth wrote this reply to the editorial:

Amelia Rawls was far off the mark in her May 1 op-ed, “Best and Brightest, but Not the Nicest.”

In my experience at Dartmouth College, in the icy north where you’d expect people to be, well, cold, I have found more classmates than I can name who are caring, conscientious, compassionate and downright nice. And it isn’t unexpected, or impossible, that they are also strong-willed, ambitious and astonishingly talented.

I have every confidence that my peers will do a lot of good in this world. I’m sorry that Ms. Rawls doesn’t feel the same.

MAURA PENNINGTON

I’m glad to see that my experience is not unusual. The education at Dartmouth is not only stellar, but the students are wonderful as well. Perhaps the uncaring students of whom Ms. Rawls speaks are found in Trenton and New Haven, but I think most would agree (we’ll leave Ms. Venkatesan out of this) that here in Hanover, one finds students with not only intelligence, but a great deal of kindness.

ZAK adds: I just wanted to ‘correct’ or reinterpret one of Jenn’s implications. Jenn wrote that “students at Dartmouth. They are incredibly motivated to do good in the world. While many do follow the path of corporate recruiting and investment banking, many others work for non-profit organizations.” This, I think, implies that work for corporations or investment firms is somehow not in line with doing good in the world. I would amend the statement to read: “In seeking to do good, many follow the path of private corporations and others the non-profit sector…”

Of all three candidates for president I can’t decide whose position on the proposed gas tax cut bothers me the most. The plan in question originated when John McCain, “the presumptive Republican presidential nominee called for a hiatus in the 18.4 cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from Memorial Day until Labor Day - the period when vacationing Americans spend the most time on the road.”

Probably the most palatable stance is Barack Obama’s, because it is clear that Obama simply doesn’t get the logic behind allowing people to keep more of their own money. Hillary Clinton on the other hand supports this particular measure but, as evidenced by proposals like her mandate for socialized healthcare, it is not because she believes that people have the capacity to make intelligent, autonomous decisions that affect their own lives. McCain’s stance is somewhat lacking as well, especially because he understands that people have a right to (more of) their own money. This makes me think “he knows better” and to expect more from him generally. Instead of cutting taxes on gas, the revenue of which goes to funding legitimate highway projects, wouldn’t it be more prudent to cut taxes on, say, income? Income taxes go to fund a whole range of ridiculous programs and projects, and there is no reason (as far as I can tell) to disincentivize earning money.

What the gas tax episode reveals to me, above all, is how detached these politicians are in many ways. There is probably no compelling reason not to cut taxes on gas, and giving people more of their money back should presumptively be considered good. But at the same time, it seems to me like politicians should be doing a lot more (or rather stopping the many bad things that they try to do) to help people. See Thomas Sowell: “There is nothing so bad that politics cannot make it worse” or Ronald Reagan: “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are, ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’”

Just twenty minutes south of campus in Hartland, Vermont, another legal battle is taking place. In Hartland, a 130 acre farm with mountain views and rolling meadows sits waiting for a new family to arive. Michel Guite signed an option to buy the farm in December on one condition: he wants to move a family graveyard on the property in order to build his house and barn.

The graveyard includes the three graves officially registered with the town: Noah Aldrich, a war of 1812 veteran who died on January 15, 1848 and two of his grandchildren who died in 1850. Historians say that others are buried in this graveyard as well, including Aldrich’s wife, and the parents of Jerome King of Hanover, N.H. who owned the farm until the 1980s. Relatives of the Kings still visit the graves several times a year.

Guite stated that he did not want to see a graveyard near where his children are playing, but his request to move the graveyard is insensitive. It is true that graveyards have an aura of sadness, but they also have great emotional significance and historical value. On 130 acres, I would suspect that there is more than one suitable location for a house and barn. While graveyards have occasionally been moved through eminent domain for public buildings, I hardly think that a man’s personal preference for the location of his house justifies such disrespect for the dead.

Bridgewater American Legion member Jim Bulmer also opposes the move. “You’ve got a veteran in there from the war of 1812, who has come to his final resting place and let the poor guy rest in peace. He served his country. Why do we need to move cemeteries to accommodate an individual who has a particular agenda?” said Bulmer. I could not agree more. While personal property rights are very important to me, I find the idea of disturbing graves for such a silly reason to be objectionable.

Historical graveyards are part of what makes this region of New England unique. In Southern California, cemeteries are very large and less personal, spread over sprawling hills filled with strangers from all around the area. Graveyards here, including the one on campus, are steeped in history and filled with people who once knew each other or who share a connection through the town and the land. I can only hope that Guite will reconsider and appreciate that this graveyard has sat on that spot for at least 160 years and is as much a part of that property as the trees and meadows he loves.

In the latest New Criterion, Bob Paquette, professor of history, tells the whole story of the Alexander Hamilton Center at Hamilton College.

A specially relevant extract:

Truth be known, I work on a beautiful campus with a critical mass of colleagues who are truly outstanding teachers and scholars. As an insider, I told a friend recently, whose high-school-age daughter was considering college, I could shepherd the student through an educational experience hard to beat anywhere else since I know the players and would insist that she take courses by professor, not by subject. That said, however, the story of the rise, fall, and rebirth of the AHC as the independent Alexander Hamilton Institute for the Study of Western Civilization (AHI) should serve as a cautionary tale for those seeking to sanitize the dark precincts and arcane corridors of the academy. Most trustees understand them dimly. They spend little time on campus. They visit perhaps three or four times a year. They have tight schedules and shepherded experiences that leave little room for information-gathering on their own. Detachment and arrogance tend not to breed discriminating judgment. Since successful businessmen predominate on most boards, crises tend to become a managerial problem resolved by thickening layers of the bureaucracy and by resort to public relations departments with little platoons of information managers who, along with some trustees, sincerely believe that image is reality.

My friend Joe Rago picks up the Priya beat in this morning’s Wall Street Journal. A “hostile” environment? Hardly, Joe writes. “[A]t …putatively superior schools, students are spoiled for choice when it comes to professors who share ideologies like Ms. Venkatesan’s. The main result is to make coursework pathetically easy. Like filling in a Mad Libs, just patch something together about ‘interrogating heteronormativity,’ or whatever, and wait for the returns to start rolling in.”

I’ve interrogated heteronormativity; it held up rather well.

The Dartmouth administration, meanwhile, is on a tear about the bad press all of this student and alumni activism is hoisting upon it. Four independent reform trustees, elected? An attempt to rig the trustee-election rules, sunk? A second, more ribald, attempt at same being fought in court? Reduce all the din to its elements and one finds a series of considered criticisms of the actual, real, material quality of instruction and administration at the College. Eliminate those errs and perhaps all the “bad press” will go away. Or are we to blame democratic trustee elections for Priya Venkatesan, too?

So saith Mrs. Clinton on one of this Sunday’s earnest political discussion shows. “Elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantages the vast majority of Americans,” she continued. Leave it to an unprincipled fickler like Hillary Clinton to side with the elites of every warped description except that one segment of elites which does have hard answers.

I’ve posted before about Obama’s Words We Can’t Believe In, and a number of posts about guns and gun rights, and this afternoon I found a nice little amalgam of the two. The image below, courtesy of Politico, is a Clinton campaign mailer going out to the ostensibly “bitter” folks in Indiana ahead of this weeks primary.

For my part, I don’t see this as Kerryesque flip-flopping. It does not seem to me that Obama is actually changing his mind, I think this is just a case of good old-fashioned pandering, as the mailer implies. A case of Obama telling people what he thinks they want to hear. It is not a coincidence that Obama’s derogatory remarks about gun-owners and people of faith were made before a San Francisco audience or that he is suddenly a staunch 2nd Amendment advocate in rural areas.

Winning strategy for the Clinton campaign: Keep Obama talking. The more information that comes out, the more it will become clear that Obama is a politician as usual, which is to say not a very good one. Even on this college campus I think that Obama’s messianic glow is slowly dissipating into a bureaucratic fog.

Nabokov’s final novel, contrary to the man’s dying wish, shall be published. And sons, it seems, are not what they used to be.