We Have a Name: On the New Dartmouth President

By Benjamin Wallace-Wells | Wednesday, February 4, 1998

James Freedman was not a good President but the motives behind his hiring were noble.

In 1987, Dartmouth needed a President who would restore the College's prestige among the intellectual community. The College needed someone who would not only draw the full support of the faculty but who could recruit talented professors to Hanover. Dartmouth needed, in short, a consciously intellectual academic.

Freedman's Presidency was fundamentally flawed because, as popular as he was amongst the faculty, he absolutely refused to understand the culture, present or traditional, of Dartmouth's campus and so fundamentally misunderstood the p[ace and its people. Freedman may have been an adept administrator, but he was a lousy campus politician.

So Dartmouth gets another shot to pick a prominent academic. This time, they should pick one willing to understand Dartmouth on its own terms.

The name which has come forward as an early candidate for Dartmouth's Presidency has been that of Frances Ferguson,President of Vassar College. She is well regarded by the academic community. She has been widely praised for her administrative competence in helping to cement Vassar's transition to co-education. More facts will certainly come forward in the next few weeks.

It is too early to speculate with any degree of certainty about who will be Dartmouth's next President, or truly to assess the viability of Ferguson's candidacy, but the prominent mention of Ferguson's name as a candidate suggests that the College's Search Committee is on the right track.

Many feared that the College would attempt to lure a political figure (Robert Reich's name was bandied about) to the Presidency; the current implications of a focus on prominent academics seems therefore promising.

Dartmouth needs not a politician posing as an intellectual but a true intellectual who is willing to step down from his ivory tower to address the gritty problems of the ordinary operation of the campus. The rumored candidacy of Frances Ferguson therefore portends well for the rest of the search process.

We Have a Name: On the New Dartmouth President

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