Dartblog

I too attended Friday’s meeting for faculty with Board Chairman Ed Haldeman ‘70 and Presidential Search Committee Chairman Al Mulley ‘70, concerning criteria for the selection of Dartmouth’s next president. See Zak’s comments below.

My views on the next president are here.

Three professors’ comments towards the end of the meeting stood out to me as particularly insightful.

John Winn of the Chemistry Department expressed measured praise for the current administration for keeping the “lines of communication” open between faculty and the senior administration. But then, as a counterpoint to that, he expressed desire that the next president would be able to restructure the College’s sprawling bureaucracy in a more efficient manner. It’s good to know I’m not alone in my views as I harp on about Dartmouth’s ridiculous bureaucracy.

Prof. Winn then expressed a strong desire that Dartmouth’s next president will have the courage and audacity to be a major player on the national higher education stage, rather than merely follow Harvard’s lead on policy, as the current president has done. I could not agree more.

John Watanabe of the Anthropology Department, the penultimate speaker, wants a president who will articulate a broad-strokes vision for Dartmouth but who will nonetheless allow individual departments the autonomy to manage and grow themselves, with no meddling. Was this also a comment on the current administration?

Prof. Watanabe then expressed desire that the next president have experience serving on a faculty, and who thus “understands the peculiar dynamics of academic politics.” Notably, he did not say he wants a president whose only prior work experience is as an academic.

To the academic politics point, Trustee Mulley had an uncharacteristically funny response: “I often wonder whether Woodrow Wilson didn’t leave Princeton, and go on to become Governor of New Jersey and then President, in order to get out of politics.”

Finally Susan Ackerman of Religion, the last to speak, made perhaps the most important point of the night. She simply wanted to “throw out the adjective ‘smart’”—by which she meant both politically savvy, she explained, and smart “just in terms of raw brainpower.” She said she wanted a president as smart as the professors, or, “ideally,” smarter. (At this, an incredulous wave of muttering swept through the room.) She added that a smart president would be confident enough to appoint “other smart people” to senior administrative posts—and at that, Provost Barry Scherr, who was on stage as moderator, bucked up in his seat.

As Steve Jobs says, “A people hire A people; B people hire C people.”

Why would a professor specifically request a “smart” president? And it’s not just one professor—Trustee Mulley, in his reply to Prof. Ackerman, specifically stated that he has received “many” comments echoing her sentiment.

Why is there all of a sudden a groundswell of voices clamoring for someone “smart”—a characteristic that should be a given for an Ivy League president? How could that make sense? Only if there is a widespread fear that the trustees will appoint someone who lacks that characteristic.

And why would such a fear exist? It must be because many people feel that the current president lacks the characteristic.