Beilock From Barnard: A Consideration of the President-Elect

On July 21, 2022, Dartmouth College announced that the Board of Trustees had elected a new president: Sian Leah Beilock, currently President of Barnard College. Ms. Beilock will assume office on July 1, 2023, when current President Phil Hanlon will step down after a ten-year term. Following President Hanlon’s announcement in January of this year that he would step down in the summer of 2023, Dartmouth formed a Presidential Search Committee to seek out suitable candidates for the position. 

The Committee released in March a “Search Statement” outlining the criteria it would use to evaluate candidates. Finally, the Committee and the Board of Trustees, after considering several individuals, arrived at the conclusion that Ms. Beilock was best suited for the role. Ms. Beilock will be the first woman to hold the position of president on a full-time basis, though Dartmouth saw its first female leader with the election of Interim President Carol Folt in 2012, before Mr. Hanlon took office in 2013.

Ms. Beilock has held her current position as President of Barnard, a small, women-only liberal arts college, since 2017. During her time at Barnard, Ms. Beilock expanded access to STEM programs, including through Barnard’s 2021-2022 Year of Science which spotlighted Barnard’s STEM-related collaborations with Columbia as well as its own liberal arts curriculum. Ms. Beilock also augmented Barnard’s ties with Columbia in non-STEM fields, expanded the number of annual applicants to the college, and was instrumental in increased fundraising, which helped finance expanded student aid and multiple new buildings across campus. As Barnard is similar to Dartmouth in both its liberal arts orientation and its size (Barnard’s undergraduate student body numbers roughly 3,000), Ms. Beilock will have a very different—and, one hopes, easier—transition than did Phil Hanlon, who was the Provost of the University of Michigan (which has 45,000 students) before being tapped as Dartmouth’s president-elect in 2013.

Prior to serving as President of Barnard, Ms. Beilock was a member of the faculty of the University of Chicago from 2005 to 2017. She was named Stella M. Rowley Professor of Psychology in 2016, and she served as Executive Vice Provost of the University for about a year until she departed for Barnard. Before her time at Chicago, Ms. Beilock began her career as Assistant Professor of Psychology at Miami University in Ohio after receiving her Ph.D. in Kinesiology and Psychology from Michigan State University. She had previously earned her B.S. in Cognitive Science from the University of California, San Diego.

As Barnard is similar to Dartmouth in both its liberal arts orientation and its size (Barnard’s undergraduate student body numbers roughly 3,000), Ms. Beilock will have a very different—and, one hopes, easier—transition than did Phil Hanlon, who was the Provost of the University of Michigan (which has 45,000 students) before being tapped as Dartmouth’s president-elect in 2013.

Outside of her roles within academia, Ms. Beilock is an accomplished author and public speaker, having written multiple books on Cognitive Science and its role in performance under pressure (Choke, published in 2011, and How The Body Knows Its Mind, published in 2015). A TED talk that she delivered on the science of choking under pressure has been viewed over two and a half million times. Ms. Beilock is also a member of the Operating Board of Directors of Bridgewater Associates, Ray Dalio’s investment management firm. 

Overall, the reaction to Ms. Beilock’s election as president was positive. Both Dartmouth’s current administration and Ms. Beilock’s former colleagues praised her as an academic and as an administrator, with Daniel Diermeir, the former Provost of the University of Chicago, stating that Ms. Beilock “built broad consensus through the unusual combination of clear vision, transparent decision processes, and a deep respect for shared governance and academic freedom.” A Review source at Barnard described her reputation on campus as approachable and caring, with most students seeing her as being very involved in events on campus and attentive to the needs of the community. However, the same source voiced some criticism towards so-called performative actions: making statements on important issues without concrete action to back them up.

How Ms. Beilock adapts to her new role as Dartmouth’s president remains to be seen. Having previously served at institutions with little-to-no Greek Life, it may be a challenge for her to transition to a school where fraternities and sororities are such a large part of the campus cultural fabric. This challenge may be amplified further due to the fact that she is not an alumnus of the College and is thus unfamiliar with the workings of Dartmouth-specific Greek Life. While relations between Greek organizations and Dartmouth’s administration seem to have improved in recent months, it was not that long ago that the abolition (or forced gender integration) of Greek Life was an open question on campus, and tensions from the administration’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic continue to linger. Given that the Office of Greek Life also has a new leader (Josh Gamse, who took office in May 2022), Ms. Beilock’s administration may have to build new relationships with the Greek community from the ground up.

Ms. Beilock’s arrival at Dartmouth will also continue a more general trend of administrative turnover. Since this writer’s matriculation in September of 2020, Dartmouth has seen the departure of Provost Joseph Helble, who left to become President of Lehigh University, and the resignation of Dean of the College Kathryn Lively. Mr. Helble was replaced by David Kotz, who served as Interim Provost from July 2021 to February 2022 before taking on the position full-time, while Ms. Lively was replaced by Interim Dean Scott C. Brown. Several other high-level administrative positions are also currently vacant, filled by an interim official, or have only been filled within the past two years. Ms. Beilock’s arrival in June 2023 will continue the efforts of the College to overhaul the administration and rebuild the student-administration relationship following the challenging years of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While relations between Greek organizations and Dartmouth’s administration seem to have improved in recent months, it was not that long ago that the abolition (or forced gender integration) of Greek Life was an open question on campus, and tensions from the administration’s actions during the COVID-19 pandemic continue to linger. Given that the Office of Greek Life also has a new leader (Josh Gamse, who took office in May 2022), Ms. Beilock’s administration may have to build new relationships with the Greek community from the ground up.

Ms. Beilock’s background as president of a liberal arts college is a notable departure from precedent. Many of Ms. Beilock’s predecessors, including Mr. Hanlon, Jim Yong Kim,* and James O. Freedman,** came to Dartmouth from larger, research-oriented institutions. Under their administrations, Dartmouth underwent a controversial campaign to build up its research capabilities and post-graduate facilities, a project that many (including The Review) have criticized on the grounds that it has detracted from the College’s roots as a small, undergraduate-focused liberal arts school. It may be that Ms. Beilock, coming from a similar institution, may better understand the value of Dartmouth’s unique blend of high-powered academic capabilities and its small, undergraduate-oriented nature.

Overall, we at The Review think that Ms. Beilock’s election was a good decision on the part of the Presidential Search Committee and the Trustees. While we generally dislike empty virtue signaling, the significance of Dartmouth’s first female president taking office soon after the 50th anniversary of coeducation is hard to ignore, and her track record makes it clear that the Trustees have not elected her just for the sake of having a female president. We believe that Ms. Beilock’s background in the liberal arts, success in both academia and the real world, history of transparent and effective governance, and high regard for academic freedom make her a strong choice for Dartmouth’s next president. We wish her the best as she prepares to take office next year.

* Mr. Kim had previously served as Chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School.

**  Mr. Freedman graduated from Harvard College and, before coming to Dartmouth, served as Dean of the Law School at the University of Pennsylvania and President of the University of Iowa. While President of Dartmouth, he was particularly well known, and controversial, among students and alumni for his efforts to “Harvardize” the College.