Furstenberg Out, Football In

By Boris V. Vabson | Monday, July 16, 2007

Dartmouth’s Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid, Karl M. Furstenberg, announced his impending retirement last week. He will depart in June, after seventeen years at admissions’ helm. Furstenberg has presided over the admission of approximately a third of currently living Dartmouth alumni. The Dean thus leaves a prominent legacy; ultimately however, this legacy may well prove destructive in nature. Granted, a good many of his admits have embodied the College’s finest ideals. Yet, these admits serve merely as foils to Furstenberg himself. For many years, he has been largely hidden from judgment by McNutt’s thick brick façade and admissions’ lack of transparency, an opacity that he incidentally helped create. But while brick walls might mask the truth, they cannot permanently conceal it. Furstenberg, in fact, has become a metaphor for all that is flawed in admissions and College bureaucracy, at Dartmouth and across the land.

Some of Furstenberg’s accomplishments as Dean make fine fodder for Dartmouth PR and are praise-worthy in their own right. Through the course of his tenure applications to Dartmouth increased by 76% and, beginning with the Class of 2007, Dartmouth has achieved gender-parity for the first time in her history; furthermore, annual financial aid offerings have nearly doubled to $44 million, opening the door to Dartmouth for untold thousands of applicants who previously would have been unable to attend the College on the Hill.

However, Furstenberg will best be remembered for a letter he composed in December of 2000 [See TDR 1/31/05]. The letter constituted a gross betrayal of Dartmouth on his part and of the very duties that were included under his job description. It caused profound hurt among students and alumni and brought widespread controversy to the College. The whole sordid affair began with Swarthmore College’s elimination of its football team, to which Furstenberg felt compelled to respond. To this end, Furstenberg penned a letter to Swarthmore’s President Bloom, whom he has called ‘a close personal friend.’ The Dean offered support for Bloom’s decision and revealed a distaste for elements of college athletics, particularly football. Furstenberg wrote that “football, and the culture that surrounds it” was “antithetical” to the “academic mission of colleges such as ours.” Furstenberg also claimed there were other teams, “for which the same phenomenon was apparent.” In expressing support for Swarthmore’s football elimination, the Dean conveyed the impression that Dartmouth would proceed likewise, if it could. (Incidentally, the football team was among the first members of the Dartmouth community to learn of Furstenberg’s departure, having received word at the end of practice, hours before the news was made public.)

Furstenberg later defended the correspondence as “a private letter to a friend.” Curiously, however, the composition was printed on official Dartmouth letterhead. Included, furthermore, were no inquiries regarding family or well-being. Rather, only business was touched upon, particularly the business of what Furstenberg felt was the bane of college campuses—football. Inside sources say such was by design. The letter, it seems, was never intended for private purposes. It was geared, instead, for use by Swarthmore’s president, for presentation before Swarthmore’s board. There, the letter’s contents were to be cited, in helping defend that college’s football cut. Furstenberg had thus assisted a friend in need. However, Furstenberg provided only this assistance through gross abuse of the powers of his office. The dean presumably assumed that the aggrieved party, Dartmouth, would never get wind of his betrayal. However, Furstenberg’s hopes proved misguided, as one of the members of Swarthmore’s board also happened to be a Dartmouth alumnus. This alum promptly notified James Wright of Furstenberg’s misdeeds. To Wright, the extent of Furstenberg’s abuse of power should have been apparent, and doubts should have surfaced about the Dean’s impartiality. Furstenberg’s offenses, to Wright, should have represented acts of insubordination. Furstenberg, after all, had been given responsibility, solely for carrying out policy, and not for crafting, nor for unilaterally questioning it. Yet, Furstenberg’s letter, having been printed on College letterhead, served only to question Dartmouth’s policies—before another institution’s president at that. The letter did so—more significantly—as part of the Dean’s official Dartmouth capacity (vis-a-vis the letterhead.) Yet, Wright tolerated this abuse of power, potential lack of impartiality, and insubordination on the part of the Dean. The President initiated no disciplinary action and did not issue the response that Furstenberg’s behavior deserved: termination. As a result, Wright had harmed not only the College, but made himself a complicit party to Furstenberg’s acts. Furstenberg, a man who had called significant percentages of Dartmouth students and alumni ‘antithetical’ to the College ‘mission’, thus remained at his post.

For four years, the Dartmouth public remained blissfully unaware of Furstenberg’s letter, and of its nefarious contents. That changed in December of 2004, when the Valley News was leaked a copy of the dean’s composition. Afterwards, information spread rapidly, as major American newspapers picked up the story. The Dartmouth PR office responded with massive damage control. Rejoinders were issued by Furstenberg calling the letter “private,” and thus in his mind, irrelevant. However, as the facts on the ground emerged, alumni began reaching a different conclusion. The letter’s subject matter, the letterhead on which it was printed, and the abuse of power it represented, all seemed to present this correspondence as more than just a “private” concern. Many called for Furstenberg’s immediate resignation. For her part, Athletics Director Josie Harper reserved judgment, sensing that an immediate dismissal would create a clear case of the “the tail wagging the dog,” in which it would be perceived that Dartmouth placed athletics above the priorities of the greater College community [see TDR 5/5/06].

Although the letter ultimately resulted in an outpouring of support, both financial and moral, for Dartmouth’s teams, alumni still wondered how Furstenberg’s views, or at least those espoused in his letter, manifested themselves at Dartmouth. Along with other administration officials, Furstenberg was suspected of steering the College away from the ideals of breadth and balance; it was thought he promoted narrowness. Furstenberg had felt, after all, that sports such as football were irreconcilable with the College and its aims. He did not see sufficient benefit from certain teams’ presence, and considered priorities such as ‘diversity’ to be more pressing. Furstenberg’s letter also underscored a change in the composition of Dartmouth’s administration. A body once made up, largely, of alumni and friends of Dartmouth, had given way to a group of career-administrators. Like in Furstenberg’s case, it is difficult to maintain that their only loyalties were directed solely towards the college.

This change in Dartmouth’s leadership, as well as direction, has carried obvious costs. Among the victims the football team, of course, stands prominent. Seven particular years of Furstenberg’s tenure saw Dartmouth football endure its six worst seasons since 1950. Other Dartmouth sports have also struggled, in ways that represent significant departures from the past. The extent of Furstenberg’s involvement in crippling football and other athletic teams nonetheless remains unclear. The negative consequences, however, of the undoing of these vital and treasured Dartmouth institutions are apparent. The football team alone, for instance, counts among its alumni many of Dartmouth’s most notable and esteemed graduates. Included on this list are Hank Paulson, current US Treasury Secretary and former CEO of Goldman Sachs; Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric; as well as TJ Rodgers, CEO and Founder of Cypress Semiconductor. But regardless of the Dean’s past impact, or lack of it, he will wield influence on College athletics long into the future. The perception he has helped create, of a Dartmouth antagonistic to athletics, will hinder recruiting efforts for the foreseeable future.

Furstenberg’s flaws, unfortunately, manifest themselves not only in correspondence; for instance, with his blessings the admissions office has lacked transparency and been disconnected from the rest of campus. There, without any oversight, he is known to present himself as the all-knowing admissions demi-god. According to sources, Furstenberg purports to be extremely attentive to academic and extra-curricular excellence. He claims to posses an ability to identify applications crafted by independent, professional college counselors. Finally, Furstenberg does not shy away from ‘sensing’ hidden potential. He claims to see what is seemingly indiscernible. The Dean, it is said, holds his admissions skills in the highest of regard.

Unfortunately, Furstenberg’s contemporaries at the admissions office tend to resemble him in mindset. Michelle Hernandez, former Assistant Dean of Admissions at the College, provides confirmation in her tome on Dartmouth admissions. There, she concedes that most admissions officers—Furstenberg presumably among them—are “not exactly the Nobel Prize Panel.” In her work, she also notes that they are “out of touch,” and have a “harder time” recognizing even “truly great applicants.” Such characterizations make a strict, numbers-based admissions system appear almost appealing, as it wouldn’t rely on such officers. Yet, bringing more accomplished individuals into admissions, particularly to fill Furstenberg’s shoes, seems far more promising. These individuals could identify achievement, as a consequence of having achieved something themselves. Dartmouth could thus retain a holistic admissions approach, utilizing criteria in addition to SAT scores, while not accepting the undeserving. Given the importance of admissions activities, funds to increase salaries and to allow the hiring of more qualified staff would certainly be well allocated. Such are the lessons we should take away from Furstenberg’s tenure. Perhaps we’ll never manage to do away with career administrators, like Furstenberg, who harbor questionable loyalties towards the institutions that they represent. We have the ability, however, to make admissions outcomes more just, more rewarding of achievement, and more in line with Dartmouth’s interests. Otherwise, the old truism will likely remain justified: admissions is both unpredictable and irrational.

Furstenberg Out, Football In

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