Dartblog

Well, I was dead wrong. President Kim’s report to faculty was rich in generalities, but specifics were quite entirely absent. No decisions have been made on budget cuts, search committees to fill senior administrative slots, new programs and initiatives, etc. Alumni Hall was almost completely full; the largest turnout of faculty in some time.

The essential message was that Kim takes co-governance of the institution seriously and he will be talking to the faculty a lot as he continues his “ethnography” of the College. I’ll leave it to other outlets to run through the details of his speech, but herewith a few generalizations:

- The faculty kicked up its heels and protested the unfairness of Jim Wright’s cuts earlier this year. That the burden of the cuts fell on the most vulnerable was expressed by at least three faculty questioners, and they did so in no uncertain terms and to general applause.

- Kim seemed to know the names of most questioners. That familiarity will pay off. Clearly he is good at establishing rapport.

- Kim repeated the hoary encomium that Jim Wright and Carol Folt increased the size of the faculty from 380 to 439 members (a 15.5% increase) and they had improved the student-faculty ratio from 10:1 to 8:1 (a 25% improvement). The audience did not react to this time-worn, internally inconsistent chestnut.

- The Great Issues course is on the way back, but in a form undecided. Kim asked for the faculty’s help, but did not offer further details.

- The financial situation seems grave. No matter what assumptions are built into the College’s forecasts, even with a compound annual growth rate of the endowment of 8% (the trend over the last couple of decades), the College is facing structural deficits for many years into the future. In response to questions about budget reduction, Kim stated that “we have to be honest with ourselves and put everything on the table,” though he felt that a reexamination of need-blind admissions would only come if the College were in a truly serious crisis. The faculty powerfully applauded this latter remark.

- My sense is that Kim did not sufficiently emphasize the gravity of Dartmouth”s financial situation, nor the severity of the cuts to come. He recited the numbers somewhat dryly (in fact, he is less good at delivering prepared remarks than he is at Q&A). In response to a question, he tried to lay out the inherent conflict between generosity to the staff (the College’s “culture of caring”) and fulfilling the College’s “greatest values.”

- To his credit, Kim stated that he would not simply be making across-the-board cuts. Real decisions would be made in a manner that fulfilled his vision of the College. In short, there will be winners and losers down the road. Bravo!

- Finally, in a theme that seems to be dear to Kim, he sought to return the meaning of diversity to its origins, as a matter of combating racial injustice. Diversity was not just people of different color walking around the campus, he said, or bureaucrats taking courses in cultural competency. It meant actually overcoming race-oriented attitudes and making real-world decisions that are race blind.

All in all, bold leadership was left for another day, perhaps when the faculty has bought into determinations that have yet to be made. We’ll be waiting… though I hope not for too long.