Dartblog

Don’t you just love bad puns? The worse the better.

In any case, for those who haven’t yet heard, Dartmouth College President James Wright announced Monday that he will step down as president in June of 2009. His announcement came just on the heels of Friday’s word from the Grafton County Superior Court that the College’s motion to dismiss a landmark lawsuit—brought against the College by the Dartmouth Association of Alumni to defend the tradition of democracy in Dartmouth’s governance—has been denied on all counts.

(Both Wright and Board Chairman Ed Haldeman have categorically denied that there is any relationship between these two events, but you can draw your own conclusions. Having repeatedly scorned the suit as “without merit,” Wright must feel somewhat burned at the court’s decision. And on top of six consecutive alumni-wide votes of no confidence—Rodgers, Robinson, Zywicki, the Constitution, the Association Executive Council, Smith—well, at some point, enough is enough.)

So the search is on. What kind of person are we looking for? Here are a few ideas.

1. Starting simple, the future president must hold a Ph.D. Though not strictly necessary, Dartmouth is an academic institution; it should be led by a real academic. Furthermore, the person’s field of study must represent a direction of growth for the institution. So we’re looking at the hard sciences, mathematics, economics, political science, and the like. No English majors, please.

2. The future president must be a strong leader. The person is adept at bringing together diverse and often antagonistic constituencies to work for common progress—an activity at which the current president utterly fails.

3. The future president must have a bold, creative vision for Dartmouth’s future that is consistent with its present values. The person has specific and thoroughly considered plans for how to improve Dartmouth’s academic environment, given those values.

4. The future president must have the energy and commitment to enact this vision. To this end, the person is dynamic, charismatic, a skilled public speaker and, preferably, young.

5. The future president must have executive experience outside of academia. This could come from government, the private sector, or the not-for-profit sector, but it is an absolute must. Beyond the ivory tower, in the real economy where dollars are on the line with every decision, executive leadership is hard. A good record there means a hundred times more than a corresponding record within academia. The very last kind of person we want is a stale career academic-bureaucrat.

6. The future president must be a quantitative thinker. This is a requirement to effectively manage any complex institution. The person makes decisions based on straightforward economic reasoning, conceives of problems in terms of statistics and variables, and thinks probabilistically. (This is another reason the person’s academic background should be in a quantitative field.)

7. The future president must be media-savvy. One of the person’s major goals should be to raise the institution’s national profile and start it on the road towards international recognition; a press-savvy leader is absolutely necessary in this regard.

8. The future president must have some teaching experience. Not necessarily much—in fact, the teaching required by the person’s Ph.D. program is probably enough—but the person must be able to relate to students from the perspective of a professor.

9. The future president must be not too close to Dartmouth already. Some affiliation is all right; an affiliation far in the past might even be preferable. But a long stint at Dartmouth in the present or recent past would detract from the objectivity necessary to form a bold and creative vision for the institution.

Finally, if the person who best fits the above requirements happens to be a woman and/or a racial minority, that would be great for Dartmouth’s image. But it is not a priority.

Do you know of anybody who fits the above conditions? You might just know the (W)right replacement.