Freedman's Provost Problems

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Sunday, November 2, 1997

Last April, following the selection of Dartmouth's Provost, M. Lee Bollinger, to be the next President of the University of Michigan, President Freedman announced that his good friend Jim Wright, then Dean of the Faculty, would take over Bollinger's duties on a temporary basis. Freedman later declared his intention to institute Wright as the Provost on a permanent basis.

However, there was a slight problem. In 1988, shortly after taking over as President of the College, Freedman instituted a set of regulations for appointment of ranking Dartmouth administrators. The new rules required, in part, that each new Provost be subjected to a vote of the entire faculty, and be democratically approved by that body.

When he appointed Wright, Freedman completely ignored the regulations he himself had instituted nearly a decade earlier, and which had remained in practice ever since.

By asking Jim Wright to complete the Provost's traditional four-year term, Freedman risked permanently offending the faculty. In effect, Freedman's appointment of Wright to the Provost position on a permanent basis amounted to an end run around Dartmouth's professors.

Freedman's subversion of his own mandates did not entirely escape faculty notice. Alan Gustman, a tenured economics professor, circulated an open letter to the faculty over the summer expressing his disgust with the Wright situation, and urging the faculty to oppose Wright's selection.

Gustman's argument caught on, and the faculty clamor quickly grew loud enough to elicit some reaction from Parkhurst. Wright resigned (voluntarily, he claimed) and sent an open letter to the faculty. In his letter, Wright denied the validity of Gustman's argument while refusing to address its features.

'[S]ome members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have subsequently taken the position that the interests of the faculty have not been served by this appointment,' Wright wrote in his resignation letter, dated September 5, 1997.

'Some contend that, because of understandings reached in 1988 with the faculty regarding its role in Provost searches, the normal search requirement cannot be waived, even under special circumstances. While I do not agree with this interpretation, I recognize the unfortunate consequences of the debate that will ensue....[A]ccordingly, I request that you [President Freedman] initiate a search for Provost.'

Wright's letter, which acknowledged no wrongdoing on the part of President Freedman, stood in direct and stark contrast to another open letter to the general faculty, circulated by Freedman himself on September 8.

'I regret very much that on this occasion I did not consult with the faculty in an effort to convince them, as I am convinced, that this was one of the rare instances in which an extended and formal search was not in Dartmouth's best interest,' President Freedman wrote. 'I deeply regret this outcome.'

The bitter tone of Wright's letter clearly clashed with President Freedman's apologetic meter throughout.

Both Wright and Freedman ignored repeated requests by this newspaper for interviews as did Professor Gustman.

Wright retained substantial within factions of the faculty, particularly in the History Department where Wright has taught for 28 years and among the faculty in the science departments.

Wright had also built up substantial political support during his several years as the Dean of the Faculty. In that position, Wright held substantial sway in determining departmental budgets. In addition, Wright was instrumental in pushing through the new core requirements, which favor some departments (particularly the sciences and social sciences) at the expense of others.

Consequently, pro- and anti- Wright factions had a natural basis for formation; his tenure as Dean of the Faculty had made him political allies and opponents.

Hans Penner, the veteran chair of the Religion department, circulated a petition amongst faculty members urging them to lend their support to a campaign to reinstate Wright as Provost, citing his history of loyal and productive work with the faculty.

Unconfirmed reports claim that junior members of the Chemistry and Biology departments, among others, received blitzes from tenured professors of those departments urging them to sign Penner's petition. Since senior professors sit on the committees that decide whether or not junior assistant professors receive full tenure, the implied professional pressure from the tenured professors is self-evident.

These reports remain unconfirmed.

When Aaron Klein '98 published a column in The Daily Dartmouth expressing his outrage at Freedman's willful circumvention of his own rules, however, the extent to which the faculty and administration were willing to go to suppress student opinion on the matter and circle their intellectual and professional wagons was brought into full relief.

The current Dean of the Faculty, Edward Berger, wrote a letter to The Daily Dartmouth (published on October 16) in which he not only accused Klein of character assassination (and in so doing, ironically, convicted himself of it) but sought to suppress Klein's point.

'Jim Wright was a loyal and effective Dean and was the creative force behind the new curriculum,' Berger wrote. 'He did double duty as acting Provost and acting President [during President Freedman's illness], and sacrificed much of his personal and academic life to maintain administrative stability at the College.'

Nowhere in his letter does Berger address the central issue of both Klein's column and the whole issue: Freedman's deliberate ignorance of the College's rules.

French Professor John Rassias, in a separate letter to the Daily Dartmouth published the same day, echoed Berger's tactic, resorting to affirmations of Wright's personal integrity.

'Professor Wright's credentials are impeccable,' Rassias writes, 'and the conduct of his office has always been above reproach.' Rassias, like Berger, refuses throughout his letter to address the issue's central point: the legitimacy of the opposing claims of Gustman and Wright.

The Dartmouth also published a letter from June Sweeney, an administrative assistant to Wright, affirming the Professor's personal goodness. Sweeney also failed to discuss the nature of the allegations which brought down her former boss.

Karen Blum, an administrator in the Department of Capital Giving, in a letter published in The Daily Dartmouth on October 20, issued a personal attack on Klein, claiming that his journalistic vigilance did damage to Dartmouth's institutional reputation, and called the choice of The Daily Dartmouth's editorial staff to publish Klein's column a 'huge mistake.'

Noticeably absent, too, from Blum's letter was any pretense of addressing the issue that provoked Klein's column.

An issue of perhaps more immediate distress to the Dartmouth community is the dire paucity of administrators the Wright fiasco leaves the College with. With President Freedman's impending retirement, the College now finds itself without a President, Provost, or Dean of the Medical School.

It remains highly unlikely that any administrators will accept the subordinate positions of Medical School Dean or Provost until the position of President is filled, at which point the new President will wield a heavy hand in the selection of the new Provost and Medical School Dean. The situation also is dangerous for Dartmouth's reputation. The absence of permanent administrators recalls the situation of the Tuck School of Business a few years back, whose national rankings fell substantially when the position of Dean was left open for several months.

Freedman's Provost Problems

Article Tools

Related Articles