An Interview With Trustee T. J. Rodgers

By Nathaniel Ward | Friday, June 11, 2004

Dr. T. J. Rodgers, a member of the class of 1970 and the CEO of Cypress Semiconductor, was recently elected by petition to the Board of Trustees at the College. He ran against three establishment candidates on very public planks: that Dartmouth was experiencing an acute leadership crisis; that Dartmouth needed to recommit to undergraduate teaching and writing; that Dartmouth must exercise fiscal prudence; that Dartmouth should reevaluate its admissions policies; and that Dartmouth would do well to increase alumni involvement in its affairs. Dr. Rodgers won in a landslide.

— Trustee T. J. Rodgers '70 —

Presented here, in part, is a recent interview between The Dartmouth Review and Dr. Rodgers.

The Dartmouth Review: You are only the second ever candidate to win on a petition ballot after John Steele in 1980. What inspired you to make the attempt?

T. J. Rodgers: I was cruising along like about 75 percent of all alumni, living my life and ignoring the College when some alumni approached me and said that I should run for the Board of Trustees. My first reaction was "I'm an extremely busy guy, who serves on seven boards of directors, and I run a company in Silicon Valley. I couldn't do it." But they prevailed in shaming me—I think that's a reasonable phrase—into doing it. The argument was along the lines of, "Either you ought to take the time and do something or stop griping." I chose A, because I love the College.

TDR: What are your fondest memories of Dartmouth?

TJR: There are really two categories of memories that overwhelm the others.

One is the school itself, the teaching. At the time I was there I didn't know I was in Heaven, but later on when I went to Stanford I realized I had been in Heaven. I hadn't appreciated enough the small classes. I studied physics and chemistry. The typical class size after my freshman year was ten. The professor was the person who wrote the book, and the professor was in his office every afternoon. You didn't need to make an appointment: you just showed up. Personalized instructions from a faculty that cared about teaching and world-class faculty, that's what characterized Dartmouth. That, I think, is still alive and well at Dartmouth, and it needs to be preserved.

Second is the fellowship, the fraternity of students at Dartmouth. And by that I don't mean a fraternity in the sense of a Greek organization, but the fellowship of your mates, to use the Australian phrase. That, of course, is something I think everyone at Dartmouth takes away with them.

TDR: How does this compare to Dartmouth today?

TJR: I tried to keep my candidacy away from the Left-Right struggle because I believe the Left-Right struggle is at the wrong level; it's below the plane of where the debate should be. I deal with issues of freedom that transcend Left-Right politics.

One thing that I believe is distinctly different at Dartmouth today is the degradation of freedom of speech and the freedom of assembly—I'm deliberately using First Amendment language there—at the College today, by a lot, compared to when I was there. To me, any time that you lose the ability to be with whom you want, or to say what you want, then other bad things can happen. They happen by edict in the dead of night; they happen without announcement. You're in a precarious state when the freedom of speech is not robust.

TDR: Where do you see Dartmouth in ten years?

TJR: I'd rather answer that question about a year from today after I've seen how things work at the top.

If I have some success as a Trustee, in ten years, the communication between Dartmouth and its alumni will be much more open. There will be a lot of information flowing between the school and the alums. The alums will be closer to the administration in what they see as the correct vision for the College. I think the College will be a lot more well-coupled to its alumni body. The 62,000 of us do represent a very good sounding board and an incredible resource for the College that isn't being utilized right now.

Right now, when I talk to people, I infer that the alums are viewed as walking checkbooks, not intelligent human beings who have a lot to contribute to helping the College move to the next level.

TDR: You were a member of a fraternity—Gamma Delta Chi—while at Dartmouth. What did that experience mean for you?

TJR: When I was a sophomore it was a very important thing for me to do. In 1966, the freshman social life was rather bleak. In my sophomore and junior years I enjoyed the fraternity life and standard fraternity stuff. As I understand it, the basics of fraternities haven't changed much, except that the College has pretty much put a wet blanket over everything. I will talk directly and privately to fraternity members about their current environment. If they think their rights are being infringed upon, I will work with them. I believe the freedom of assembly is a right all Americans have.

TDR: As an alumnus and a fraternity member, what were your feelings when you first heard about the Student Life Initiative?

TJR: I've read about the Student Life Initiative, and I see it as an assault on the fraternities at Dartmouth, and I think it's abominable what's been done. If some of the stories I've heard are validated, some of the administration's tactics are a gross attack on rights of students, and I'm adamantly against it. I've read the attacks, I've read the political maneuvering that's been used to justify shutting them down. The concept that the school would demand that they be gender integrated…

TDR: The fraternities have resisted that at least, though it was implied in the wording of the original Initiative.

TJR: I've heard that you have to register a keg of beer to have it in a fraternity. I've heard that you need to have a College alcohol monitor at your parties. I don't like any of it. It sounds like I'm reading 1984; it smacks of Big Brother. I think they ought to be left alone.

TDR: The College recently combined the North American cultural distributive requirement with that for European culture. Do changes like this improve the quality of education here?

TJR: I know the angle you guys [at The Review] have on that topic, and I'm somewhat sympathetic toward it. I'm sympathetic toward the result you're trying to achieve. For me to sit here in Woodside, California, and pontificate about that change—I just don't feel competent to do that.

I think the concept that you're espousing is that a good education comes from the right courses, and that the right courses come partly from respecting and understanding the cultures that created us—the US democracy, and the European history that helped create that. If you study those cultures and their leaders, you will understand something valuable that is important for educated people to know. I would agree with that.

I don't want to come off, because I'm not that way, as having a hard doctrine on the curriculum because I'm not an expert. I am an expert on free speech. So are most Americans; we live in a free society. I do intend to be a champion of free speech and the other articles of the Bill of Rights, while at Dartmouth. That I will vigorously pursue. But on education and curriculum I have got to learn before I can make leadership statements.

TDR: How do you feel about the (generally) superheated political overtones in higher education these days?

TJR: I see both sides of the issue. I don't think we ought to prevent faculty members from connecting their teaching to the real world; the real world certainly includes political-philosophical views. On the other hand, if it's done to an extreme level that damages the course, then it is a problem.

I should say here again, just so I don't see a letter written about the man who's coming in to manipulate the curriculum at Dartmouth: that's not what I want to do. Trustees should deal at the level of vision and mission, not day-to-day management. It's not my job. As a Trustee, I see my job is to watch the process of how things are done, not to micromanage the details of some class that people don't like.

I don't intend to be, and I'm not qualified to be, John Wayne walking into town, looking for the bad guy, because that's not what I'm about.

TDR: You wrote in your candidate statement that you supported student diversity at Dartmouth, yet you implied that you favored a different system from that used now. How would you change the College's admissions policies?

TJR: The most straightforward answer is I don't know.

Admission should be on merit only; that would give us the best students. The second point, which I made in my letter [to the Daily Dartmouth] is that admission on merit only can provide very high levels of diversity. I know that because I run an organization that's like that. The problem is—again, I'm speculating, since I haven't gotten the facts yet—I believe the College makes exceptions for athletes and I believe the College makes exceptions for the children of alumni. Thus, if there's a policy at the College to admit people on something other than merit, admission policies designed to ensure diversity are reasonable.

You can't say whether you would you turn merit-only without looking at all the non-merit-only categories. The only one that gets written up and gets a lot of press is the minority issue. My vote would be merit-only, and that would be the end of it. It would include everybody. The football team would be however good the football team could be given that they could only matriculate students that met Dartmouth's standards fully.

...What I'm trying to provide—I've been very open with you—is the way I think about stuff, not a hard position on the topic. The minute you take something that should be a matter for free speech and open debate and turn it into an issue, you have polarized positions on the issue. The brain turns off and there are no discussions you can have very well. I'm not coming in with a hard position on the admissions issue; I'm coming in saying, "Let's have intelligent discussion on this issue." I don't believe we should let the 'screamers' on the extremes of any issue prevent us from having a meaningful dialogue. That is also an insidious mechanism of repressing free speech at Dartmouth. People who express opinions on taboo issues such as admissions are often tarred as bigots or racists, as was I by a history professor.

TDR: In recent years the College has seen some rough financial times. As a businessman, what do you see as the solution?

TJR: There's a newspaper in Vermont, the Valley News. One of their reporters is an ex-Brown trustee, a CFO type person. He's an expert on money and he's an expert on how colleges handle their money. His criticism of the College is that they overspent during the boom in 2000 and they got a hangover in 2001. I'd like to pontificate about how that's bad, but my company did the exact same thing. The difference between a company and a college is that a company is deigned to move quickly and react fast. Sometimes we lose money. For a college that's bad. A college needs to have the 100-year vision and the 40-year view of its operation; it cannot, to use Alan Greenspan's words, be "irrationally exuberant" during good times. There was a tactical financial mistake the College made during the dot-com boom of 2000. If the management process that caused that problem has been fixed, then it's over, the problem is gone, never to return. The concern I've got is that it hasn't been fixed.

My style is to put me and my company's failures on the cover of the annual report—literally—to go into depth about what I did wrong, and how I'm going to fix it. There's a saying that, when followed, is a big credibility builder: say what you will do, and then do what you said. We act that way. Cypress was number 11 out of 1600 Wall Street Journal Index companies in share price appreciation in 2003. A lot of that share price growth happened because we took responsibility for the problems we suffered during the dot-com bust, and then we fixed them.

I don't see any message that clear cut from the College. I don't see the sense of accountability that I think should be there. An organization that only gives you the happy-face version of events undermines its own credibility.

TDR: Why does the College keep its budget secret?

TJR: I've heard that Susan Dentzer, the retiring Chairman of the Board of Trustees, was quoted along the lines of "T.J. will be assimilated by the Board." One thing that I will say is that I'm a fairly indigestible person. I think that openness leads to credibility, and that the College today has a credibility problem with the alumni body—and the faculty, assuming the views in Professor Alverson's open letter on budget credibility are widely held.

Back to the idea of the alum as a walking checkbook, the 75 percent of alums that don't bother to participate anymore should be brought back in. The alums have not been treated well—except the ones that get wined and dined for the big check. I know I haven't been treated well. As just another alum, I only wanted to be able to give my opinion and at least be listened to.

Now, I will review the budget as a Trustee. I have no idea what those meetings are going to be like. I expect to be called naïve, but I?ve raised $1.6 billion in cash for an enterprise worth $2.6 billion.?I know how to review budgets.

An Interview With Trustee T. J. Rodgers

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