Non Sufficit Orbis

Friday, August 26, 2005

For over-worked corporate lawyers, congressmen, and Dartmouth students alike, summer is traditionally a time of vacation. And vacation means peripatetic travel. In this issue, you'll find stories of Review staffers' travels around New England (see page twelve for a review of a few local culinary delights) and around the world. From Belarus to Morocco to Hong Kong (where Review alumnus Hugo Restall '92 edits the Far Eastern Economic Review), our writers have truly traveled plus ultra throughout their careers.

It's not just Review writers, though, who are well-traveled. In the exploring spirit of John Ledyard 1776 [see TDR 4/22/2005], 14 percent of undergraduates went abroad last year through Dartmouth-sponsored programs, and even more travel independently. Anthropology students can study the Maori tribes in New Zealand, scholars of religion can study theology at the University of Edinburgh, and budding biologists can study the rainforests of Costa Rica. For all the troubles the D-Plan creates in personal relationships and extracurricular activities, its flexibility in scheduling allows Dartmouth students to easily roam 'round the girdled Earth.

But at the same time, Dartmouth's students seem not to be absorbing the world around them. An unscientific poll that The Dartmouth Review conducted this past May showed that just 38 percent of undergraduates could name the dominant sect of Islam in Iran (Shi'a) and that only 16 percent could identify half of the justices on the Supreme Court. When newspapers are filled with stories about our soldiers fighting in Iraq and John Roberts's nomination, such ignorance is astounding. It is difficult to believe that Dartmouth's graduates, who themselves represent the pinnacle of the American educational system, are prepared to face today's global challenges. Dartmouth used to be the training ground of the nation's leaders. Not just Daniel Webster 1801, though he ranks high among them, but Salmon P. Chase, 1826, Paul Tsongas '62, and Rob Portman '78, all of whom went on to public service after leaving the Hanover Plain: Chase becoming chief justice of the Supreme Court, Tsongas serving in the US House and Senate, and Portman in the House and now as President Bush's Trade Representative. The tap, however, seems to have run conspicuously dry since then, as more and more graduates are content to throw their energies towards investment banking, consulting, and litigation. Sacrificing salary to serve one's country is most definitely passé.

Of course, there are also the ubiquitous do-gooders raising money through some mildly clever fundraising device for a cause overseas. The campus seems perpetually overrun by fresh-faced idealists selling wristbands you can wear to help clothe shivering moppets overseas and baked goods you can consume to stop genocide in some godforsaken corner of the world. Then there are the cicada-like campaigns to divest the College's investments from a brutally dictatorial government (mind you, only racist dictatorships qualify—Marxists or other darlings of the Left can still sleep easily) that re-emerge every seventeen years or so. One would think that the College would have learned its lesson by now and keep the endowment invested only in organic farms and solar-powered cars, so as to avoid these kinds of problems in the future. These efforts are all certainly noble, and some of them have led to real changes for the better, for example, Rebecca Heller '05's efforts to aid the resistance to Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe [see TDR 6/2/05]. Heller's project was successful in large part because it focused on changing conditions in Zimbabwe, rather than nebulous student 'awareness.' But by and large, the small groups of activists who ply their trade on campus do not succeed in educating students about the problems of the world: most undergraduates would be hard-pressed to tell you where Darfur is, let alone what's happening there. Save, of course, that it requires action.

So we arrive at a curious paradox: Dartmouth students see the world, but understand less and less of it. The College's administration used to take matters into its own hands, as seniors were required to take a "Great Issues" course prior to graduation. A pet project of President John Sloan Dickey, who himself had been a close adviser of Dean Acheson and Director of the State Department's Office of Public Affairs, the course was designed to expose undergraduates to the national and international problems that confronted the United States in the heady days of the Cold War. Dickey was also notable for his insistence that the College offer Russian language instruction, a key component of the training course for the nation's next leaders. The Great Issues course was abolished in the mid-1960s, though, as students and faculty complained that the program amounted to anti-Communist brainwashing. Despite the efforts of Dickey to replace the mandatory course with a lecture series, the program faded away amidst the protests of the Vietnam War. Today, undergraduates can pass through all of their degree requirements with nary a mention of the world outside of academia (which, to the constant surprise of many on the faculty, does exist).

So where does that leave us today? A re-introduction of the "Great Issues" course would be a good start, and would certainly help produce graduates who are ready to become future leaders of their country. But even that would not be sufficient. Just as Dickey ensured that Dartmouth taught Russian, the crucial foreign language of the era, so too should more resources be devoted to the study of Arabic, Hindi, Urdu, Turkish, and a multitude of other foreign languages. Dartmouth is the only school in the Ivy League that does not offer Hindi or any other South Asian language courses (even Princeton, which lacks a department of Asian Studies, has a student-initiated seminar teaching the Hindi language). Of course, Dartmouth remains the smallest of these institutions and the only one of them without graduate programs in the humanities, but the fact remains that these languages are only becoming more, not less, important in today's world.

The ROTC program, also once a key element in preparing Dartmouth men for the world after graduation, has also wallowed in the administration's neglect. Close to half the student body was enrolled in either Army or Navy ROTC during the early 1950s, today, Dartmouth's ROTC program has just five members. In part, at least, this decline can be attributed to a lack of administration support—unlike their peers at other Ivy League schools, Dartmouth cadets are ineligible for full $128,000 scholarships. In the Army's eyes, the College's administration does not fully back the program. Soon enough, Dartmouth ROTC might be a poster child for Army recruiting advertisements: an army of one.

None of these problems, however, will likely be solved any time soon. After all, it is summer and institutional culture is a difficult thing to change. But hopefully, Dartmouth's graduates in the coming years will have an understanding of the world around them that reflects more than just the stamps in their passports.

Non Sufficit Orbis

Article Tools

Related Articles