An Overdue Response to the College Jacobins

Editor’s Note: This piece is in response to a recent petition addressed to the Dartmouth administration aimed at silencing The Dartmouth Review. The full text of the petition can be found here.

America is in the midst of a dire illiberal moment. It was only a matter of time before the crosshairs would be set on The Review, and in the typical fashion, it manifested in an attempt to stifle rational discourse by appealing to a higher power. It’s unfortunate that this type of intellectual cowardice has come about on campus, and I would argue that it is antithetical to the pursuits of liberal institutions such as our own wherein debate ought to be fundamental in the search for higher truth. I guess in the post-modern age, truth no longer matters much. Go figure. 

Luckily, in this case, the petitioners forgot to do their homework. In fact, one of the demands that they enumerate in their letter isn’t even applicable, the second has already been tried and adjudicated in court, and the third has been twice abandoned by the College as the case was deemed untenable. Nor is this history any sort of secret; former Review staffers James Panero, Executive Editor of The New Criterion, and Stefan Beck quite literally compiled and edited an entire book about it. Regardless, the petitioners’ listed their demands as follows: “to decisively and publicly dissociate [the College] from the Dartmouth Review,” “to hold student staffers accountable for their bigotry,” and to “compel this publication to cease and desist from using the Dartmouth name as part of its brand.” In each of these cases, precedent offers clarity on a number of misconceptions about The Review, its history, and its controversies, and as such, I aim to address each individually:

In this case, the petitioners forgot to do their homework. In fact, one of the demands that they enumerate in their letter isn’t even applicable, the second has already been tried and adjudicated in court, and the third has been twice abandoned by the College as the case was deemed untenable.

Dissociate the College from the Review. The Review was founded in 1980 with the specific intent of operating as an independent newspaper that wasn’t subject to the whims of the College administration. The first meetings took place in the living room of English professor Jefferey Hart before eventually moving to an off-campus office. The Review is independently incorporated as a nonprofit organization and is funded entirely by donors, alumni, and subscribers across the country. In other words, this demand is patently ridiculous; the paper has never been associated with the College in any official capacity.

Hold student staffers accountable for their bigotry. The precedent in this case conveniently concerns The Review’s long and tumultuous history with African-American professor Bill Cole, which the petition cites as an instance of racial “harassment.” To give a short summary, in 1983, The Review published a critique of Professor Cole’s Music 2 class, questioning its rigor and scholarship as the content was principally interpretive and oftentimes more about politics than music. At the end of the review, the author concluded: “Bill Cole is not, by a long shot, your typical Ivy League Professor or department head. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with that; in fact, it can jazz things up quite a bit.” Nonetheless, Cole was outraged at the article and proceeded to visit the author’s dorm room and bang on her door profusely before waking up much of the floor. He then continued to profanely criticize The Review and its editors in class, called his own students “ignorant” and complicit, and then sued The Review for libel, a $2.4 million lawsuit which he proceeded to drop after receiving no damages. Throughout these escapades, the editors offered to let him enumerate his concerns with the original article by penning a piece of his own, which he chose consistently to decline.

Throughout these escapades, the editors offered to let [Cole] enumerate his concerns with the original article by penning a piece of his own, which he chose consistently to decline.

In 1988, The Review published complaints about the academic quality of two courses. The first of which was immediately amended, and the second was Professor Cole’s class, which had remained principally unchanged since the original article. Members of the editorial staff then approached Professor Cole for comment and were met subsequently with an outpouring of profanity and unfounded accusations before he managed to break a reporter’s camera. President James Freedman—who then contended that The Review was “poisoning” campus’ “intellectual environment”—brought down the Committee on Standards on the two students involved, suspending them each for six terms on charges of disorderly conduct and harassment. The New Hampshire Superior Court later ruled that the two students be reinstated immediately, principally on the grounds that Standards had magnificently botched the case. If this may serve as any precedent, phantom accusations of “bigotry” would certainly fare no better. In short, the College has already tried to “hold students accountable” in the name of social justice, and it resulted in nothing less than a public relations fiasco and a humiliating legal defeat.

Cease and desist from using the Dartmouth name. The College has already twice threatened such an action, once in 1980 and again in 1988. The first case occurred right after The Review published its first issue, though the administration backed down when it realized the potential consequences of such litigation. The College claimed initially to hold an exclusive copyright on the name before it was pointed out that about two dozen unaffiliated businesses in Hanover alone had Dartmouth in their title, and opting not to wreak havoc on the townspeople, the administration decided to drop the effort. The second attempt occurred eight years later at a faculty meeting, during which the College’s professors voted to publicly condemn Professor Hart for a previous statement in support of The Review. As a part of their deliberations against the paper, they considered suing over the Dartmouth name, though the motion was eventually tabled indefinitely. Given the ferocity of the administrative opposition to The Review under the Freedman presidency, it seems as though the College missed its golden hour. Otherwise, perhaps they just came to the same realization that such a court case would set ridiculous precedents.

Not only are the accusations mostly baseless, but the premise of the criticisms themselves is faulty, and the demands have already been addressed! This petition holds up to scrutiny in not a single one of its intents.

With respect to the other allegations that these descriptions have not addressed, they are for the better part premised largely on faulty or misconceived rumors about The Review and its history. For instance, on the charges of antisemitism, right after the incident in question, both the Anti-Defamation League and the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission defended The Review and directly contradicted the accusations made by President Freedman at the time. Similarly, the attacks on the weathervane logo are unfounded, especially considering its prominence as a College symbol until only a month ago, and The Review has achieved a recent renaissance spearheaded by our first gay-identifying (now emeritus) editor-in-chief. Nonetheless, the idea that the paper ought to be judged and sentenced by its past—which even our own editors have sometimes passed criticism upon—is absurd. Not only are the accusations mostly baseless, but the premise of the criticisms themselves is faulty, and the demands have already been addressed! This petition holds up to scrutiny in not a single one of its intents.

Notably, the petitioners also botched the College’s mission statement, strategically editing “the vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community marked by mutual respect,” to specifically exclude “vigorous and open debate.”

Notably, the petitioners also botched the College’s mission statement, strategically editing “the vigorous and open debate of ideas within a community marked by mutual respect,” to specifically exclude “vigorous and open debate,” but this frankly isn’t markedly surprising. Considering the signees are principally graduate students and alumni, I would take pleasure in sparing the undergraduate experience from accusations of illiberalism, yet unfortunately the petition attracted the attention of several faculty members. Without having experienced their teaching, it would be unjust to criticize their quality as educators. Still, being so close-minded to intellectual discourse to the extent of seeking administrative repercussions against dissenting opinions is immensely communicative, and for the sake of those students who seek liberal discussion in the classroom, the names of the contributing professors (taken from the public list of signees) are as follows:

Mary Desjardins, Eng-Beng Lim, Mark Williams, Mary Coffey, Jodie Mack, Annabel Martín, Katie Hornstein, Kristin O’Rourke, Desiree Garcia, Melissa Zeiger, Christopher MacEvitt, Peter Hackett, Leslie Sonder

Note: Much of the historical information found in this article is attributable to James Panero and Stefan Beck’s 2006 book The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent and Dinesh D’Souza’s 2002 book Letters to a Young Conservative.