Courtesy Dartmouth College
—President Wright tells alumni how it isn't.—
Original Article: http://dartreview.com/archives/2005/04/22/factcheck_james_wright.php
Friday, April 22, 2005
Editor's Note: In recent weeks, College President James Wright has criss-crossed the country, speaking to alumni in an attempt to bolster the view that Dartmouth has done well under his administration. He has also used these speeches to indirectly campaign against alumni Trustee petition candidates Peter Robinson '79 and Todd Zywicki '88, seeking to undermine their charges of administrative mismanagement.
Below, Mr. Ward fact-checks elements of Wright's recent speech to New York City alumni.
Courtesy Dartmouth College
—President Wright tells alumni how it isn't.—
Wright's Allegation: "As president, I have worked hard to make Dartmouth a campus that is welcoming to all students. We assuredly do not have speech codes. We do have a diverse and complicated community that mirrors the world in which we live. Some of the differences that mark that world play out in our own discussions."
The Truth: Wright is absolutely correct when he says Dartmouth has no speech codes. What Dartmouth has is actually worse. The College punishes fraternities whose members use politically incorrect words in jest; the College punishes fraternities whose members publish satirical stories; the College punishes students who attend sporting events and critique the opposing team; the College keeps student publications like The Dartmouth Review from distributing to students' rooms.
Absent any formal policy regulating or permitting free expression, we can look only to the views of the administrators who arbitrarily enforce these rules, as laid out in writing in May 2001. If the administration is committed to free speech, why did President Wright say in his letter that "speech has consequences for which we must account" and that he does not believe free speech is more important than the "rights, feelings, and considerations of others?" Why did Dean of the College James Larimore say that "the rules and standards of our community" are more important than the right to "expressive conduct?" Why did he write that unregulated free expression would be "corrosive of [sic] the very idea of a residential college?"
Wright's Allegation: "While we want our campus to be open and welcoming to all students, it should not be the case that our students can work their way through their education without having their ideas challenged, their assumptions tested, and their intellects stretched to encompass new ways of thinking. At some points in their Dartmouth career, they need to be made intellectually uncomfortable and challenged."
The Truth: President Wright's insistence that students are intellectually challenged while at Dartmouth, while noble, isn't entirely true. In reality, liberal students are too often unchallenged and their assumptions untested. Many of the College's professors subscribe to a liberal orthodoxy and often deride or exclude conservatives. These professors (92 percent of whom are Democrats) teach an already liberal student body—their views are hardly challenged at all. This is hardly President Wright's fault, but his assertion is false.
Wright's Allegation: "This week, The Ford Foundation announced a new initiative called "Difficult Dialogues: Promoting Pluralism and Academic Freedom on Campus" that will attempt to address this issue nationally. They invited fifteen College and University presidents and higher education leaders to join them in encouraging this debate. I was honored to be asked to join the group and pleased to agree to do so. Many institutions—not just Columbia, Harvard, or the University of Colorado—are struggling with these issues."
The Truth: While President Wright's rhetorical commitment to freedom of speech is commendable, the program he endorsed hardly presents new ideas.In fact, the Ford Foundation's program simply reinforces existing leftist campus orthodoxy. The "Difficult Dialogues" grants, from the arch-liberal Ford Foundation, will support colleges that "address the potentially chilling effect of the 9/11 attacks, the Iraq war, and violence in the Middle East on academic dialogue." Wright is not so much endorsing dialogue but a specific point of view.
Wright's Allegation: "Certainly, I do not find it very helpful to use the categories of liberal and conservative with regard to curricular issues—the range of viewpoints is so much broader than this binary view would suggest. Is the predominant orthodoxy in chemistry, philosophy, or even economics liberal? Is it liberal to focus on brain sciences over social psychology? Is it liberal to assign texts on Marxist thought? I don't think so. But I certainly agree that faculty should not use the classroom or their relationship with students to proselytize."
The Truth: Wright may claim that classrooms should not be used to "proselytize" to students, but he has yet to enforce this dictum. English Professor Shelby Grantham, for example, continues to baffle and exasperate her introductory English classes with extreme left-wing identity politics and bizarre anecdotes. Meanwhile, computer science professors give students exercises condemning the Bush administration, while earth sciences professors launch into harangues about conservatives.
Wright's Allegation: "I fully share the view of my friend and former Dartmouth colleague [Columbia President Lee Bollinger]. As colleges and universities we face a heavy responsibility to ensure that open debate is protected not only on campus but also within the classroom. This was in fact the focus of my comments this past September at Convocation for the Class of 2008. I said then:
"'An academic community—indeed a free society—rests on the freedom to think and to speak out. The free expression of ideas is a bedrock principle, even though not all that is thought or said is equally valid or true. The corollary of the freedom of speech is the freedom to criticize that which is said. And sometimes this freedom to disagree becomes an obligation. If politeness and civility and mutual respect form the basis of our community, so too do engagement and debate and, assuredly, disagreement. Academic communities at their best are places that challenge more than they reinforce.'"
The Truth: Wright did indeed say these words at Convocation, and they proved a breath of fresh air compared to what he had said before. At the same time, he closed his speech with the caveat that the need for dissent must be balanced against "the principle of community." Unfortunately, practice has shown that it is College administrators, not students, who both determine what the principle entails and how it is enforced.
Wright's Allegation: "The criticism that Dartmouth has a 'speech code' derives from the position taken by the interest group FIRE, which bases its 'red light' designation on a single letter I wrote following the Zeta Psi incident four years ago. The Dean derecognized the fraternity because of the repeated publication of a newsletter that cruelly demeaned specific women on campus. This incident was about behavior not speech—the organization published articles describing the supposed sexual exploits of two undergraduate women who were identified by name. I am comfortable with my position on this. As president I have an obligation to speak out on matters of importance to our community. I only regret that this continues to be an issue for some."
The Truth: The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, a group advocating the oh-so-narrow interest of "free expression," has long given the College a poor rating because of President Wright's letter. Because the College lacks any formal declaration of students' speech rights, FIRE can only use the written statement of the College's chief administrator. What's more, the College has since that letter continued to apply the same rules, making "community" more important than individual rights. The letter may be from 2001, but since President Wright has repeatedly reiterated his commitment to its contents we can only assume that the policies contained therein remain in force (see Page 14).
The behavior President Wright speaks of is the publication of a comical newsletter that parodied, and perhaps insulted, the female friends of several Zeta Psi brothers. But the newsletter, known as the Sigma Report, was an internal document intended for brothers only. Melissa Heaton '02 would never have seen the document had she not rooted through the fraternity's dumpster to scrounge up a copy. Wright, though, says he stands by his belief that the College should punish students if they offend one another in private. This is hardly the openness and freedom to dissent that Wright spoke of in his Convocation speech.