Kim’s Credentials Questioned

The Economist, in a recent article, challenged President Obama’s nomination of Jim Yong Kim as future World Bank President by backing another candidate, Nigeria’s Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala.  In case you haven’t read it, here’s a link to the article.  The Economist, citing Okonjo-Iweala’s ample experience as Nigeria’s finance minister, highlighted Kim’s lack of familiarity with economics, emphasizing the disparity between the two figures, one holding ample acquaintance with financial development in the third world, the other another ill-prepared selection by the US to keep the World Bank’s power system domestic.

            While its criticisms of Kim were fair, what The Economist did not have to do was hurt our feelings.  During the article, it referred to Kim as the “head of a university in New England”.  A university?  Dartmouth has kept its name as a College despite being home to many graduate schools.  But The Economist wouldn’t know that.  Wait yes they would; they ranked The Tuck School of Business number one in their list of top 2011 Full Time MBA schools. It would have been just as easy to refer to us as Dartmouth College.  We’ve suffered enough slander from Rolling Stone; we don’t need it as well from an actually reputable publication. 

 —Mike Haughey