Thursday, September 27, 2007

Dartmouth Best Professors

They walk in truth and light.

Dartmouth's Worst Professors

He once claimed that the spread of the Third Reich was like “a spider web with octopus tentacles.”

Courses of Note

Editor’s Note: None of the following courses has a prerequisite. We provide here course reviews of a few of the introductory courses you are likely to consider, and a few smaller, upper-level courses that have met with consistently excellent reviews over the past few years. They are truly some of Dartmouth’s best.

What is a College Education?

There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that it is possible, yes possible, to get a college education at Dartmouth. The bad news is that the institutional Dartmouth will not tell you how to go about it.

Don't Get Converted. Stay.

Now, I think the College itself has given you one thing of importance I’d like to speak of. It’s given you, slowly, gradually, the means to deal with that sort of thing, not only in college but the rest of your life. The formula would be something like this: always politely accept the other man’s premises. Don’t contradict anybody.

A Western Culture Primer

You’d expect to read such books here at Dartmouth, and indeed you probably will. Yet a great number of very good books, non-fiction in particular, do not find their way into college syllabi. They simply do not square with the reigning ideologies of the day, and indeed may be downright hostile to them (as many of the books listed here in fact are). For that reason alone they are worth reading.

A Dictionary of Received Ideas

Gustave Flaubert’s Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues was a compilation of clichés current in nineteenth-century bourgeois society. Jacques Barzun’s translated the work in 1954 as The Dictionary of Accepted Ideas.

A Cautionary Tale

After “pre-gaming” in such an aggressive manner, I found myself wandering the campus as I am often wont to do after thoroughly impairing myself. I seemed to lose track of time, and the next thing I knew I was being pulled out of a snow bank by a fellow freshman.

The Greeks Shall Inherit the Earth: Pen-Portraits of College Social Life

Presented here for your consideration and enjoyment are brief pen-portraits of Dartmouth’s venerable fraternites and sororities. Some might accuse us of trafficking in generalities; to our defense, we hope that these sketches will serve as fine, humorous introductions to the true hardword of the College.

The Storied History of Dartmouth College: The Wheelock Succession

Webster’s lip quivered and his voice choked as he delivered the final words. Justice Marshall’s eyes were reportedly moist with tears. A decision was postponed for a year as some of the justices pondered the case. During the interim, Webster, aware of public sentiment’s influence on court decisions, circulated widely the printed copies of his argument.

Cutting the Baby in Two: A Trustee Primer

Out of deference for and the benefit of the newly arrived freshmen, the long and droll history of alumni governance to follow will be condensed so as to put the following catalogue of shenanigans in context.

Symposium: "What Is To Be Done?"

In the wake of the trustees’ decision to decrease the proportion of alumni trustees on the board, those who opposed the decision wondered what to do next. Should the decision be fought in court? Ought alumni to withhold donations? To mount another press campaign? The Dartmouth Review asked several vocal figures in alumni governance as well as journalists who have written about the alumni trustee matter at Dartmouth to offer comment.