Dartblog

I couldn’t blog about this all last week due to some confusion at The Dartmouth about posting the following letter online, but here it is now, anyway. The letter was printed Monday the 5th.

Former trustee David Shipler ‘64, who authored the letter, has no idea what he is talking about. He doesn’t even really attempt to hide that fact. He just appropriates the tired “vast, right-wing conspiracy” rhetoric and stamps it, with no apparent analysis or thought whatsoever, on the Parity slate in the current Association of Alumni election.

Here’s the letter:

To the Editor:

The election in the Association of Alumni, which began this week, is critical to impeding the radical right’s long-term campaign to control Dartmouth. The new “unity” slate led by John Mathias ‘69 would end a lawsuit against the College. That suit seeks “parity” in trustee selection to allow inroads by a highly politicized and pervasively ideological brand of conservatism. Don’t be fooled into thinking that this is about Dartmouth alone. Higher education remains one of the last institutions beyond conservative domination, and Dartmouth is merely a convenient target in a larger strategy.

Otherwise, why would people who claim to love the College invite the courts and the legislature to interfere in running it? Why would conservative champions of “judicial restraint” apply the principle only when it gives the result that they like? What is it that the conservatives want to conserve? Not the exceptional diversity and global engagement of 21st-century Dartmouth, apparently, but some throwback, frozen in amber, that could never maintain its excellence in modern times.

The answer to Mr. Shipler’s first rhetorical question in the second paragraph is that those of us in favor of Parity firmly believe that Parity on the Board of Trustees is what pulled Dartmouth out of the gutter at the end of the nineteenth century, and what has kept it great ever since. The full argument is here—and I would encourage Mr. Shipler to read it before writing another letter on a topic about which he very clearly knows nothing.

I haven’t even responded to the many lies in the letter, such as the propaganda about the “radical right’s long term campaign to control Dartmouth,” and the lie that anyone “invited” any legislature to “interfere” at Dartmouth, ever.

Mr. Shipler’s letter is a disgrace to honest, good-faith discourse. That’s all there is to say.

Is this really the best the Board-Packers can do? If I were an alum, I would want to vote Parity just out of fear of association with this kind of anti-intellectual drivel.