The Wright Retrospective

By A. S. Erickson | Sunday, June 8, 2008

Editor’s Note: James Wright recently announced his intention to step down as President of the College. The following is a short retrospective of the major events and controversies of his presidency.

Freedman Before Dartmouth

Any retrospective of the Wright Presidency must begin with a look back at the tenure of his predecessor, James Freedman. Freedman was raised in Manchester, New Hampshire. His father was a high school English teacher; his mother was a self-hating Jew. Freedman’s mother was a wildly ambitious woman who drummed her own ambition into her son from early on in his childhood; this included an almost cult-like worship of Harvard. From Manchester, Freedman graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School. After a clerkship with Thurgood Marshall he settled into a professorial appointment at Penn Law School, where he remained for eighteen years.

At Penn, Freedman regularly taught classes and published extensively as he climbed up through the ranks of the school’s administration. By the end of his stay at the University of Pennsylvania, he had been made the Dean of the law school. He left Penn for the Presidency of the University of Iowa, where he oversaw the expansion of that school’s graduate programs. He left Iowa for Dartmouth in 1987. Shortly before he left, however, he convinced the Iowa legislature to finance a laser center that he claimed would bring 12,000 jobs to the state. Iowa legislators subsequently claimed that Freedman purposely misled them, but by that time he was gone.

Freedman at Dartmouth

When Freedman telephoned his mother with the news that he had been named the President of Dartmouth, his mother consoled him by saying, “That’s okay, next time it will be Harvard.” It is in this vein that Freedman oversaw Dartmouth during his tenure: it was a poor imitation of its southerly sister, Harvard. His disdain for Dartmouth tradition was palpable.

It was Freedman’s emphasis on campus expansion, however, that engendered most of the alumni antipathy he encountered. For instance, the size of the administration grew from 400 administrators to 650 between 1985 and 1995. In addition, a matrix was uncovered in the early nineties that examined three sizes in campus capacity and enrollment: undergraduate levels at 5,500 students, 7,900 students, and 9,000 students.

Furthermore, Freedman’s vision for the College ran in direct opposition to the course the College traditionally took. This became clear in his inaugural address:

We must strengthen our attraction for those singular students whose greatest pleasures may come not from the camaraderie of classmates, but from the lonely acts of writing poetry or mastering the cello or solving mathematical riddles or translating Catullus. We must make Dartmouth a hospitable environment for students who march to a different drummer—for those creative loners and daring dreamers whose commitment to the intellectual and artistic life is so compelling that they appreciate, as Prospero reminded Shakespeare’s audiences, that for certain persons a library is ‘dukedom large enough.

Unsurprisingly, the kind of peace and solace Freedman sought out for his students was not found in the basement of the College’s notorious fraternities: like his successor James Wright, Freedman would lose the support of alumni and students by instituting measures that made the daily operations of Greek organizations very difficult. An unprecedented number of fraternities were placed under probation during Freedman’s tenure as president; he pushed rush back to sophomore fall; and, for a time, he banned kegs at fraternities altogether.

Freedman’s aspirations for career advancement were dashed, in part, by this newspaper. Two events in particular attracted national media attention. The first was Freedman’s continual denunciations of The Dartmouth Review in 1988. That spring, the paper had printed a transcript of Professor Bill Cole’s music class, in which it was revealed Cole talked about many things (often using expletive-laced descriptions)—but he spoke very little about music. The Wall Street Journal called Freedman the Bull Conner of academia when Freedman came to the defense of Cole by labeling the Review a “racist” publication (Cole was black) and by suspending three editors and placing a fourth on probation.

The second event was the sabotage of the Review’s masthead quote—traditionally a quote from Theodore Roosevelt, it had been replaced with a quote from Mein Kampf by a disgruntled staffer. The paper was cleared of any wrongdoing by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai Birth. It was largely rumored at the time that Freedman’s pitiless hectoring of his own students in these two incidents persuaded the Corporation of Harvard not to hire him to fill the recently vacated President’s office there.

Wright Under Freedman

James Wright has been at Dartmouth since 1969 when he was hired as an assistant professor in the History Department. He came to the College straight from the University of Wisconsin where he earned his Ph.D. Wright had close professional ties to Freedman; it was Freedman who made him Dean of the Faculty in 1987. When Freedman took a sabbatical in 1995, it was Wright who was acting president. Later on, when Freedman promoted Wright to Provost without a formal search committee, the faculty rebelled, forcing Wright to tender a letter of resignation.

— Freedman and Wright —

The controversy had more to do with Freedman than objections to Wright as the new provost. In the late eighties, the Provost’s Office was redefined by Freedman so that the Dean of the Faculty as well as the deans of the professional schools reported to it. In exchange for the increased power placed in the provost position, the faculty required Freedman to establish a formal search committee for each new provost. Faculty members would compose a majority of the committee.

The debacle included an interdepartmental clash as different departments either pushed for Wright’s resignation or protested with a petition for his reinstatement. The History and hard science departments were particularly vocal in their support for Wright—who had earlier chaired the curriculum committee that changed the core requirements to allegedly favor the hard and social sciences. For instance, tenured professors in the Chemistry and Biology departments sent letters to the untenured professors; the letters strongly ‘urged’ junior faculty to sign the petition for Wright’s reinstatement.

A Research University in All but Name

The professional trust Freedman placed in Wright was significant, and when it came time to find a replacement for Freedman, Wright was the natural choice. The selection of Wright was announced on April 6, 1998. On that day he addressed the Dartmouth community in Alumni Hall, in which he made clear his initial priorities. He announced that his “vision of Dartmouth is of a research community that is committed to attracting and retaining the very best faculty and recruiting and engaging the very best students.” He went on to say, “Dartmouth is a research university in all but name, and we are not going to be deflected from our purposes.”

In a short interview Wright told the New York Times that he expected “to continue to expand Dartmouth’s strengths as a research institution.”
During the spring he repeatedly emphasized increasing the graduate programs without sacrificing the quality of undergraduate education. A favorite line of argument he deployed was pointing to the existence of the professional schools, while brushing over differences between Ph.D. programs—which utilize the same professors that teach undergraduates—and professional schools, which have separate pools of educators. Over that summer, alumni roundly criticized him for moving Dartmouth away from a liberal arts college tradition. Sensitive to the controversy, Wright attempted in his inaugural address to put his position into context:

When I spoke to the Dartmouth community last spring upon the announcement of my election as president, I reiterated what my predecessors in the Wheelock Succession had earlier acknowledged: that Dartmouth College is a university in all but name. What was true in President Dickey’s day is even more true today. If neither of the descriptive labels — college or university — fits us easily, that is eminently acceptable, because we are comfortable with what we are and with what we aspire to be. Typically, colleges are primarily concerned with undergraduate education and teaching. Universities are primarily engaged in graduate education and also place a greater emphasis on faculty research. We at Dartmouth are proud to call ourselves a College, recognizing that Dartmouth is a college that has many of the best characteristics of a university. We are a university in terms of our activities and our programs, but one that remains a college in name and in its basic values and purposes. In this paradox, in this tension, lies our identity and our strength.

[…]

What does it mean for us as faculty members that Dartmouth is both a college and a university? It means that we share institutional obligations, even as we remain active participants in the worldwide community of scholars within our disciplines. It means that our small size can be an advantage, because of the flexibility it affords. Cooperative endeavors and shared ambitions often bear more and better fruit than can result from individuals working alone. Cross-disciplinary collaborations in many fields not only enhance the teaching and research enterprises, but they also contribute to personal and professional satisfactions. Being a faculty member at Dartmouth provides the opportunity to teach and to work closely with some of the finest undergraduate students in the country, in a residential community that encourages and supports research.

What does it mean for you as undergraduate students that Dartmouth is both a college and a university? It means a size and scale and aspiration sufficient to afford a rich curriculum, but within a community that one can stroll across in 10 minutes and meet friends along the way. It means an unsurpassed range of off-campus opportunities second to none and arts programs that are incredibly rich and accessible. It means the opportunity to study with faculty who are committed both to teaching and to scholarship. Perhaps most important, being a student at Dartmouth means being encouraged to take one’s self seriously as a young scholar—a person of promise who has a rare and valuable opportunity to learn and grow. It means that here students are not merely passive recipients of information, but are active participants in their own learning process. It means also that the out-of-classroom experience complements and supports the central mission of the College. Whether it is in athletic competition or recreational sports or artistic pursuits, or in conversations at the residence halls or dining tables, we recognize that learning here has never been—nor should it be—limited to the classroom.

The most significant move Wright has made during his time as President in this direction is in campus buildings. Many have focused on the residential buildings: in Fahey/McLane and the McLaughlin Cluster, the campus has eight new dorms with hundreds of beds, and a significant part of Wright’s northward expansion away from the Green is wrapped up in the McLaughlin Cluster. More understated is the College’s choice of which departments to give new buildings to. Of the three most prominent new academic buildings (Moore, Haldeman, and Kemeny), two are for departments that have graduate programs: Psychological and Brain Sciences, and Mathematics.

Student Life Initiative

Wright’s emphasis on graduate education was quickly overshadowed by a statement he issued in conjunction with the Board of Trustees on February 9, 1999. In the statement he announced the creation of the “Student Life Initiative” (S.L.I.). The Initiative was to be guided by the following five principles: (1) “There should be greater choice and continuity in residential living and improved residential space.” (2) “There should be additional and improved social spaces controlled by students.” (3) “The system should be substantially coeducational and provide opportunities for greater interaction among all Dartmouth students.” (4) “The number of students living off campus should be reduced.” (5) “The abuse and unsafe use of alcohol should be eliminated.”

Though the principles were rather vague, Wright made the focus of the S.L.I. eminently clear in an interview with the Daily Dartmouth: the Greek system. In the interview he stated that the Initiative would put an end to the Greek system “as we know it.” An editorial in the Valley News stated, “College President James Wright has unequivocally stated that single-sex Greek organizations are doomed.” We know now, of course, that some of the less controversial principles were accomplished (i.e. the new dormitories), while the most controversial principle—making fraternity and sorority houses coeducational—was less successfully implemented.

It is difficult in today’s campus climate to imagine the outrage. When the Review ran its controversial “Natives” issue in the fall of 2006, about three hundred people gathered in front of Dartmouth Hall to either protest or watch the protest. In comparison, after the S.L.I. was announced over one thousand students marched to the President’s mansion, where they sang the Alma Mater three times before dispersing. Not content with marches, the students also cancelled that year’s Winter Carnival in protest. The S.L.I., a broad reform initiative, had instantly become a narrow referendum on the Greek System.

The S.L.I., then, was mostly a public relations disaster. Yes, it did spawn other smaller disasters like the college funded “Kick @$$ Party” in 2002, but it also provided the initial impetus toward things like better residential buildings, more campus dining areas, 24-hour study areas, and other things. Wright has probably shouldered an unfair amount of blame for the S.L.I., whose roots reach back to the late ‘80s and Freedman; but, if nothing else, it was his job to sell the Initiative to the Dartmouth Community. On that account he failed. In the winter of 1999 two thousand undergraduates were surveyed: eighty-three percent favored single-sex Greek houses.

— Wright on a fundraising trip to Japan in 1997 —

Wright and Governance

Disgruntled alumni began to voice their dicontent through the petition mechanism in trustee elections. T.J. Rodgers ’70 became the second petition candidate to successfully run for the Board of Trustees in 2004; the first since John Steel ‘54 won in 1980. Rodgers’ campaign focused on free speech, criticizing a letter of President Wright’s in the wake of Zeta Psi’s derecognition that stated, “[I]t is hard to understand why some want still to insist that their ‘right’ to do what they want trumps the rights, feelings, and considerations of others. We need to recognize that speech has consequences for which we must account.” Zete was derecognized for printing a lewd pamphlet.

Peter Robinson ’79 and Todd Zywicki ’88 followed in Rodger’s footsteps, when they successfully ran as petition candidates in 2005. The College responded by attempting to change the constitution that governed the trustee elections. In favor of the changes were President Wright, the Alumni Council, and the Dartmouth Alumni for Common Sense, which was headed by Susan Dentzer ’77, a former trustee and co-chair of the S.L.I. committee. Various machinations were used to increase the likelihood of the constitution’s success—including a dubious vote that lowered the threshold needed for approval from three-quarters to two-thirds—yet a majority of alumni voted down the constitution in the fall of 2006. That next spring Stephen Smith ’88 was elected, the fourth petition candidate in a row.

Realizing that alumni did not want a radical change in the College’s character, the Board and Wright decided that it would be impossible to achieve the changes they wanted democratically. In the fall of 2007 they announced that they were adding eight additional charter (appointed) trustee seats on the Board and zero alumni (elected) trustee seats. If allowed to proceed, the Board’s plan would significantly change the balance of power: from a fifty-fifty split between charter and alumni trustees to a two-thirds majority in favor of the charter trustees, minus ex officio trustees (the President of the College, and Governor of New Hampshire). The governance changes on the Board have brought about protest from alumni, a lawsuit, and meddling from the New Hampshire House of Representatives within the last year.

After the lawsuit was brought to New Hampshire’s Grafton Country, Wright and the Board attempted to get the motion dismissed. The motion to dismiss was denied in court on February 1, 2008. On the morning of February 4, Wright declared his intentions to resign in June 2009.

Wright and the Marines

President Wright’s support of wounded veterans has been the most distinctive mark of his tenure. Wright, himself a Marine, conceived of and helped gather $300,000 in seed money for an educational counseling service for wounded soldiers returning from the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the last year the program has worked with about 250 veterans. Dartmouth has since accepted veterans as new students both through the counseling program and separate from it. Wright has also lobbied for increased government financial aid for returning veterans.

Wright’s legacy is a mixed bag. Those who wish to remember the good will look to the impressive number of new buildings and programs like the veteran counseling service. Critics will undoubtedly remember him mostly for his assault on the Greek system and alumni governance. The truth is President Wright has made some massive miscalculations, but he has also been an impressive fundraiser and a president who competently kept Dartmouth competitive with the greatest schools in the country. If Freedman’s disastrous vision for the College nearly took the College and its traditions down, then Wright’s lack of vision at least kept the College afloat.

The Wright Retrospective

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