Dickey’s Beloved Example

By Emily Esfahani-Smith | Sunday, November 16, 2008

Every institution has its great presidents. For the United States, those men include George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. For Dartmouth College, one president stands out above the rest: the College’s twelfth president, John Sloan Dickey. Like Washington, Dickey was a man of state; humility was a warm spot in both Lincoln and Dickey’s characters; and finally, both Roosevelt and Dickey displayed their remarkable powers of leadership by steering their respective institutions through the most difficult of times: Roosevelt, through the harsh realities of World War II; Dickey, through the unsure post-war world.

In this past national presidential election, the nation was searching for a new president, just as the College is currently searching for its own. Both national presidential candidates, Senators Barack Obama and John McCain, fashioned themselves after the great presidents of the past in order to win popular support—Obama, after John F. Kennedy; McCain, after Theodore Roosevelt. Both men realized the importance of the past and the importance of looking to successful predecessors as examples for their own presidencies.

As Dartmouth’s Presidential Search Committee continues interviewing and vetting candidates for the job here in Hanover, the Committee should take a page out of Obama and McCain’s presidential campaign handbooks and use the past to help shape the future. The new Dartmouth president, specifically, should model himself after Dartmouth’s former president, John Sloan Dickey.

To this effect, it is nothing less than shocking that the Committee’s Leadership Statement included extended sections on expanding the graduate programs—with prose littered on the one hand with business jargon and on the other with post-modern gook—while no discussion was given of a model past president of the College, whom the new president should aspire to emulate in leadership, character, and grace.

Dickey was known, as explained on pages 8 and 9, as the Dartmouth president who revitalized the College into what it is today: a liberating arts college, as he would say, with an emphasis on developing the spirit, character, and conscience of its students. While some of these qualities have certainly waned under the presidential administrations following Dickey’s, under a new president these qualities could be refound and reemphasized for one very simple reason: Dickey did not engineer a college culture from some grand vision he conjured in his first days as president; he merely discovered the College’s essence, and reminded the faculty and students of it. It was his imaginative leadership that made this possible.

But there is more to leadership than effecting institutional change, and Dickey knew that. When he first arrived at Dartmouth as an undergraduate in the fall of 1925, the six-foot-three giant was too clumsy to make the basketball team. Instead of leaving the team, Dickey stayed on the squad as a quasi-coach, encouraging his peers and helping them improve their skills.

Years later in 1982, after suffering a debilitating stroke that impaired his ability to communicate in the normal manner of speaking and writing, a retired Dickey attended an early-fall football practice at Dartmouth College with then-president David McLaughlin. At the end of practice, the entire team approached Dickey, who sat in his wheelchair, with a green blanket covering his lap. The team captain told the two presidents that he wanted to present them with a gift. At that point, the football team began singing “Men of Dartmouth.” McLaughlin recalls, “Mr. Dickey looked at me accusingly, but as the team broke into the singing of ‘Men of Dartmouth,’ he reached up, removed the well-used 1929 reunion cap that he was wearing, and with tears in his eyes, placed it over his heart.”

In the same way that children can be remarkably perceptive and honest, young adults and college students can intuitively know the makings of a good leader. The members of the football team, on that fall day in 1982, certainly knew a good leader when they saw him, and paid tribute accordingly.

While on pages 10 and 11 of this issue, some possible candidates for Dartmouth’s president are highlighted, one that is not mentioned bears some similarities to Dickey. That man is Robert Gates, the current Secretary of Defense, and the former president of Texas A&M University. At Texas A&M, Gates became renowned for turning the university around into a premier public institution of higher learning: he recruited top faculty members, energized the liberal arts program, and reduced the supremacy of the power-hungry administration.

Beyond that, he was universally beloved: Gates was regularly seen attending the University’s sports games and practices, encouraging students and cheering them on. He left his office regularly to turn up around campus, attending student planned events, and the like. On several occasions, he even arrived, sometimes unannounced, at the Army Corps’ practices, and went on long runs with the Corps’ men. On his final day at Texas A&M, Gates was leaving his office for the very last time only to be greeted by thousands of students who knew that they were losing a great leader.

Both Gates and Dickey loved their students and loved the institutions which they led. Their love was and still is felt, which is why they both go down in history as leaders of character and conscience.

At his quiet, brief inauguration to Dartmouth’s presidency, Dickey was characteristically uncomfortable as tribute was conferred upon him. As the ceremony came to a close, Dickey made a brief speech, a part of which included: “Standing in the shadow of predecessors who gave this College life and strength, and in the presence of men who daily serve its cause, I have no great words of pledge or promise to stack beside their deeds and proved devotion. I do pray God, and ask each man’s help, that my all shall never be less than the cause of Dartmouth, under whatever circumstance or chance, shall require.”

Dickey’s vision for the College was not messianic or grand by any stretch of the imagination. He did not seek to undo the history and traditions of the College; nor did he want the College to stagnate into a sleepy stasis, an intellectual stalemate. He simply understood three things—the nature of man, the nature of Dartmouth, and the nature of the world—and he brought them into a dynamic interplay here at the College. In doing so, he lifted Dartmouth, its spirit, and the spirit of those attending to an elevated ground, as each met his very high expectations. Whoever the next president of the College may be, he or she would be wise to lead by Dickey’s beloved example.

Dickey’s Beloved Example

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