Dartmouth Election Forum

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

The biographies and personal statements of all candidates for Alumni Trustee and Association of Alumni Executive Committee positions can be found by clicking here or by going to www.voxthevote.org.

Candidates, voters, and other interested persons are invited to use Comments to this post as a forum for expression of views concerning this important election.

Voting begins on March 10, 2010.

View the Association of Alumni Nominated Candidates web site HERE.

View the Petition Nominated Candidates web site HERE.

139 Comments:

It is interesting that all comments appearing here, including those by oppositional petition candidates, must be reviewed in advance by the blog author before being posted. Interesting because the blog author is himself a candidate.

Prior questions have asked why blog moderation has been enabled, when prior policy was to allow posts directly. Those questions were themselves never posted, nor responded to. Will they be?

Will previously-submitted responses to Mr. Hutchinson's comments on another thread ever be posted?

My questions are related to openness among alumni and transparency in our governance processes. While they may make some uncomfortable, it is not unconstructive that they be made known and addressed.

Why the censure? If you feel this author is an idiot, then put up my words and let other alumni conclude the same.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/04/2010 12:31 PM
Our Unity Slate strongly believes that civility, collegiality, and persuasion are the best way to make the case to the Board of Trustees for increasing the number of elected trustees. Since our election two years ago, we have made enormous progress in repairing the damage done by our predecessors and the lawsuit they filed, without alumni approval, against Dartmouth and the Board. We have succeeded in persuading 82%of voting alumni to pass a constitutional amendment reforming election procedures, and we have initiated efforts to determine whether a controlling consensus of politically active alumni will support the kind of election campaign finance reform that will stop wasteful spending on alumni politics and make additional trustee elections more acceptable to the Board. We have had several meetings with Board Chair Ed Haldeman and others regarding the prospect of increasing the number of elected trustees, and we are optimistic about making further progress.

Unlike our petition slate opponents in this election, we reject confrontation and demands about "parity" as appropriate means for communicating alumni interests to the Board. As a practical matter, the second lawsuit filed by the Hanover Institute, sponsor of our petition slate opponents in this election, casts a cold dark cloud over the ability of anyone to discuss the prospect of increasing the number of elected trustees with the Board. The recklessly confrontational conduct of the Hanover Institute and its chief executive officer (former Dartmouth Review publisher John MacGovern) over the past several years has done lasting damage to the cause of alumni interested in parity and has done nothing constructive for our College.

We know that our superb new President Jim Yong Kim shares our belief in civility, collegiality, and persuasion. We are committed to working closely with him to bring all alumni together in focused support of the finest undergraduate college anywhere.

By John Mathias, at 3/05/2010 7:08 PM
One thing the Mathias slate apparently does not believe in... free expression of alumni on their Association's discussion forum.

John: No matter how critical you may be of your predecessors on the executive committee, we did support unfettered speech. As the principal blog moderator, I watched as alums posted comments, even those critical of my own actions. Further, we even initiated new threads at the request of our critics. Why have you failed to post various comments, without even commenting, with the clever result that alumni are not even aware of the censorship?

This question is relevant to the topic of this thread, as it seeks to inform alumni about the actions of a candidate for the presidency, and how his prior actions may impact alumni and their ability to communicate in the future.

I believe you to be an honorable man. Please demonstrate this by responding, and by posting those prior comments. If I am a radical in the minority as you believe, you have nothing to fear by such honest openness.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/06/2010 9:00 AM
John, several claims in your post of 3/5 deserve response, but this morning I just want to address this statement you make:

"We have had several meetings with Board Chair Ed Haldeman and others regarding the prospect of increasing the number of elected trustees, and we are optimistic about making further progress."

For the last few years, the Minutes of all A of A EC meetings have been published on the OAR A of A page. The Minutes of all meetings during your first year in office -- 2008-2009 -- HAVE ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION of any meetings with Chairman Haldeman "and others." Likewise, the Minutes of meetings in this, your second year in office, have no mention until just recently, when for the first time you described a meeting with Mr. Haldeman on December 15, 2009. One week later you announced that you were nominating almost all of your Committee for relection to a third year in office.

The issue of the number of alumni-elected members on the Board -- "Parity" -- has become the most significant event affecting Dartmouth alumni in many years. You and your colleagues have had TWO YEARS to fulfill your campaign promises and you have nothing to show for it. It time to step down and let another Executive Committee -- one, most certainly, that is more dedicated to parity than you are -- have an opportunity to accomplish something.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/06/2010 12:30 PM
Many thanks and profuse apologies to Tim Dreisbach, one of the most consistent and prolific contributors to this blog, for calling attention to the fact that the "blog moderation" function had been enabled (without my knowledge), thereby giving the understandable appearance that someone (like me) was censoring comments from interested persons. The problem, which occurred for reasons unknown to me, has now been corrected and is being investigated to make sure it does not reoccur. I am not currently an administrator of this blog and have no access to this "blog moderation" function, which appears to have been enabled automatically with a recent upgrade in the Blogger platform.

I assure you that I have never censored any contributor to this blog, nor would I ever do such a thing. Tim Dreisbach's administration of this blog during his tenure on the AoA Executive Committee allowed me to voice my views as an at home alumnus about what I then perceived to be serious issues, and I remain grateful to him for that.

Mr. Dreisbach's comments, as well as those of all interested alumni/ae regarding the candidates and issues in this improtant forthcoming election, are most welcome on this blog.

By John Mathias, at 3/08/2010 4:38 PM
John, my second comment on your 3/5 post:

You write, "the Hanover Institute, sponsor of our petition slate opponents in this election..."

This is rank B.S. Our Dartmouth United slate is not "sponsored" by anyone except ourselves -- eleven men and women who think that after two years in office you and your colleagues have made no effort to restore parity and who now ask alumni to give us a chance.

Did I ask John MacGovern to help me find candidates to run on our slate? Of course I did -- John is a good friend and in his work he knows thousands of alumni who are eager to improve things at Dartmouth. And while the need to get the petition signatures is not a great burden, the short time limit available to us made his assistance very helpful (we did not decide to run until you announced that you had re-nominated your slate for a third term.)

Why do you try to demonize The Hanover Institute, and attempt to use it as a "guilt by association" weapon? We don't demonize your parallel organization, "Dartmouth Undying", which has copied John's approach and obtained IRS 501(c)(3) status. They solicit tax deductible contributions to support causes that they believe in -- like your candidacy. We have our political disagreements, of course, but we don't try to say they are bad people.

[By the way, before you go off on another "anonymous outside financial sources" ride, please know that any assistance to our slate from The Hanover Institute will be from Dartmouth sources only. As John explained in the major Dartmouth Alumni Magazine article on him and The Hanover Institute, 99% of his contributors have always been Dartmouth people.

To sum up: John is a friend, he is a loyal Dartmouth alumnus, and he has been helpful. But neither he or The Hanover Institute is the "sponsor" of the Dartmouth United slate of candidates in this election.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/08/2010 7:28 PM
John, this is my third comment on your 3/5 post.

You wrote: "Unlike our petition slate opponents in this election, we reject confrontation and demands about "parity" as appropriate means for communicating alumni interests to the Board."

Our Dartmouth United slate does not believe that we have done or said anything that could be construed as a threat to provoke "confrontation" or make "demands." Could you please let us know which particular statements or actions on our part that you believe could be understood in that manner?

If you cannot, please refrain from such serious mischaracterizations of our campaign.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/08/2010 8:21 PM
John: Thank you for your note above regarding the elimination of blog moderation, restoring the ability of alumni to have their comments posted without review. As you and all readers of these various discussion threads can see, the suppression of comments over the last 5+ weeks has led to considerable and increading levels of frustration, apparent now that the comments have been retro-actively publicized. Thank you for setting things right.

I understand that you are not the technical blog administrator. However, I do recall from my committee days that all members of the exec committee, especially blog initiators/authors, were empowered with comment control capabilities, in addition to the overall administrator. Perhaps this is no longer the case. I find it surprising that no member of the executive committee, over a period over a month long, was aware that blog moderation had been enabled, and that comments under their control were not appearing, even after repeated comments were made to this effect by more than one person in the on-line D, another venue for alumni interaction.

Several questions remain open:

How do we alumni go about dealing with the constitutionally-created problem that the officer chairing the ballot rules for trustee elections also chairs the setting of rules for his own re-election?

Given the on-line nature of comments on the D, is this forum still of value to alumni? And if not, could changes be made so that it is?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/08/2010 9:58 PM
A Question for John Mathias and Mike Murphy:

Would you please give us voters some insights into your views regarding the independence of the Association of Alumni you wish to lead, and how you propose leading your slates, if elected, in handling the relationship between the Association and the College administration? Specifically do you believe that the Association should begin its own maintainenance of hard-mail and email address lists of its members, which can be done in cooperation with the Offce of Alumni Relations, but without being under OAR control? Should the Association look to means for financial independence from the Administration, at least to the point of having its elected officials be able to communicate to those they represent independently of administrative vetting?

Some background to the question: Unlike the Alumni Council, a forum for coordinating alumni in their social interactions and in their collective efforts to serve Dartmouth, the Association exists primarily as the organizational vehicle by which alumni participate in the governance of Dartmouth. In that, and the related election of trustee nominees, the Association represents the collective wisdom of all alumni regarding the long-term best interests of Dartmouth, the institution. The positives of a healthy working relationship between alumni and the college administration are many. That said, a relationship is strongest when two partners are complementary and one not sub-servient to the other. When dealing in questions of governance, we must distinguish between Dartmouth the institution and the collection of administrative employees who manage her on a daily basis. Hopefully, most of the times all constituencies will have a common view. But certainly there will also be times (as experience has shown) when the alumni collectively and administrative staff have a different opinion as to what is in the institution's best interest. In such cases, can the leadership of the Association which represents alumni in governance be effective when under the financial and communication constraints imposed by administrative staff? Would not the institution overall be better served by alumni involvement in matters of governance without the conflicts made inevitable by financial dependence?

Would a financially-independent Association, not dependent upon the College, the Hanover Institute, or any other organization, be a much more constructive participant in leading alumni in College governance matters? If the answer to this final question is YES, how do we alumni go about it, and how committed will our elected leaders be to working through the challenges? Will the administration support such a move by having confidence in alumni, or will it fear that such independence will result in a loss of power and control over alumni affairs? How do we proceed if the sentiment of alumni favors independence, yet the Alumni Relations staff resists? If not full financial independence, can we at least start with minimal-cost email communication and mail list maintenance independent of the OAR?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/09/2010 6:41 PM
Tim, I have just ordered 10 acres of pinewoods to be cut to make the paper needed to draft answers these very thoughtful and quite significant questions. However the voting starts tomorrow and our petition slate is still pedaling as fast as we can to keep up with the professional campaign management of the Mathias slate. So my answer may take a while.

I should point out one thing, however. Because you and John Mathias have both served in the Association leadership you have a significant advantage over me, who has not had that experience. After a year or two on the Executive Committee I imagine that one's perceptions can certainly change.

Finally, as you know the A of A Executive Committee works on a group basis in the Association leadership. Right now I'm not sure how all our candidates feel about your questions, but I will -- when time allows -- discuss this with them. In any event I will give you my opinions.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/09/2010 7:02 PM
Regarding Mike Murphy’s statement that John McGovern is a “loyal Dartmouth alumnus”, what evidence is there to support that statement? There is no indication that McGovern gives anything to the College – not to the Dartmouth College Fund, not to the Friends of Football, not to the Hopkins Center, not to the Dartmouth Outing Club, not to the Tucker Foundation, not to the Friends of the Library. NOTHING, NADA, ZILCH!
This is a man who literally makes a living criticizing and denigrating Dartmouth College. He is President of the Hanover Institute, and draws an annual salary from the funds he raises for the Institute. What does he do to earn that salary? Apparently he writes several letters a year castigating the College and asking for contributions. He writes a bunch of emails each year informing his supporters that Dartmouth is a terrible institution, and asking for support. He organizes, and raises funds to support, lawsuits filed against Dartmouth College. He states that 99% of his contributors are Dartmouth alumni, but pointedly refuses to say what percentage of his total contributions come from Dartmouth alumni.
Several years ago when the Dartmouth Review was having some problems with the IRS, McGovern volunteered to help them deal with the situation. When he was finished with his help, he tried to charge The Review for his services and then stole their mailing list.
He has characterized the current AoA Executive Committee as “Quislings”, thereby implying that they are no better than Nazi collaborators.
John McGovern may be many things, but one thing that he is NOT is a “loyal Dartmouth alumnus”.

By John Engelman, at 3/09/2010 7:54 PM
Mike: Thx for the timely response. I understand the constraints you mention. How about a simpler question; ditto for John Mathias:

As AoA president, when there is a difference of opinion, despite all sincere attempts to find common ground, between the alumni that you represent (however you determine that collective opinion to be) and the officials of the College responsible for managing alumni relations, with which group will your loyalties and responsibilities lie?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/09/2010 8:45 PM
John E: Clearly John MacGovern is a motivated man who contributes many hours on matters related to our alma mater. If he is not motivated by loyalty to his vision of Dartmouth (each of us has our own of course, which others may agree or disagree with), then what is his motivation? Surely not money.

He may have principled reasons regarding what he does not want his money to be spent on. Has anyone of late ever asked for his contribution, sincerely, in other ways?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/09/2010 8:55 PM
Mr. Murphy:

Thank you for acknowledging that you have sought and obtained the agreement of the Hanover Institute and its President, John MacGovern, to finance, gather the requisite petition signature support, and otherwise assist your slate’s campaign in this election. That is exactly what I mean when I say the Hanover Institute is your slate’s sponsor. Our alumni/ae have a right to know this. Some may be confused by your statement published in an interview in the Dartmouth that: "I wouldn't say [the petition slate] is backed by the Hanover Institute.”

The Hanover Institute has been the most confrontational and counterproductive force in alumni relations with the Board and Administration in modern Dartmouth history. Its two consecutive lawsuits against the College, the second of which is still being pursued, have set the cause of “parity” back to the point where no one associated with the Hanover Institute can possibly have any credibility as an emissary of good will with the Board on this subject. Its President John MacGovern has consistently refused to disclose how much money he has received from non-Dartmouth sponsors, contending only that the vast majority of donors (by headcount, not the size or percentage of financial contributions) have been Dartmouth alumni. Mr. MacGovern has publicly likened me and other members of our current AoA Executive Committee to Nazi collaborators for our role in causing the dismissal of the first lawsuit.

It was your choice to ask for help and financial support from the Hanover Institute and John MacGovern, thereby obtaining what can certainly be termed its “sponsorship.” You were a staunch supporter of the first lawsuit brought by the Hanover Institute against the College. Although you are not a named plaintiff in the second lawsuit brought by the Hanover Institute against the College, you do sympathize with both Mr. MacGovern and the named plaintiffs. If this is not the case, then I call on you now to publicly condemn this lawsuit and implore Mr. MacGovern to cause its immediate dismissal.

Over the past two years, our AoA Executive Committee has achieved significant progress in making a case to Board Chair Haldeman and others about the prospect of increasing the number of elected trustees. Our methods are very different from the confrontational approach taken by the Hanover Institute and its supporters. We believe that civility, collegiality, and persuasion are the best way to advance our cause. We have succeeded in passing a key constitutional amendment reforming election procedures to make them simpler and fairer. I am confident the Board took note of this achievement and has become much more receptive to our case than before. We now must move on to solve the problem of campaign finance reform both to curb wasteful spending on alumni politics and to ensure that the outcome of alumni elections does not depend upon the amount of money spent campaigning.

Our alumni/ae deserve more and better from their leadership than constant bickering over parity. Our Unity Slate is determined to work with President Kim to involve Dartmouth alumni/ae in the great issues affecting our world today while continuing to seek an increase in the number of elected trustees through civility, collegiality, and persuasion--not lawsuits and confrontation.

By John Mathias, at 3/10/2010 8:21 AM
The "99%" figure might have applied to general Institute contributions before the lawsuits, but we can't assume it applies to the lawsuit fundraising.

MacGovern claims not to have known who was contributing to the lawsuits through anonymous funds at Donors' Trust and CEHE, which now seems to have folded, so he couldn't have known how many donors there were or which were alumni.

In addition, the Bradley Foundation gave $200,000 specifically to the lawsuit in 2008. That one outside donor covered a significant portion of the legal fees (although it probably was not more than 1% of donors).

I don't know how he decides on his salary, but if I were him I would set it at a percentage of funds raised, as I think he did when he was with the Review. Then I would find issues that inspire outside foundations to donate, such as litigation to reform higher-education governance or fight political correctness in the academy or protect donor intent. The more you claim that the Board is a national model and its expansion creates a test case for governance, the more money you should be able to raise. Even if those claims are not accurate.

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/10/2010 10:47 AM
John M: In your comments to Mike M, you note the work of your current administration interacting with the Board to increase the number of alumni-selected trustees. I take it that means adding a few more seats without raising the level to "parity", which you are on record as opposing. I recall that when you did so, your reasons were less about the ratio itself than about contentious elections, party-backed campaigns, and the petition process leading to unqualified trustees. It seems the problem is that you lack faith in the ability of alumni to be discerning and wish to implement mechanisms to restrict the turbulent nature inherent in open elections.

How do you do this without crossing the line to "managing" elections by controlling election processes? Frankly your words about campaign reform are troubling, coming from someone who also receives support from a political party, Dartmouth UnDying, which is spending undisclosed funds on your behalf.

We are still awaiting your thoughts as to how we deal with a constitutional provision in which you chair the committee responsible for not only the rules of the trustee election, but also your own re-election.

And I am curious as to your opinion, being a candidate for the alumni association presidency, regarding the issue of its independence. Let's try one more time with a specific question:

The Association of Alumni is totally dependent on the Office of Alumni Relations in maintaining the physical and email addresses of its members, and for any expenses to be incurred in communicating with those members. When we alumni have elected leaders to represent us in matters related to College governance, and the alumni's role in such governance, is it healthy to have those leaders totally dependent upon any organization outside the Association, most especially when such a controlling group is the paid administration of the institution itself?

I believe you will say there will always be a way for reasonable people to find common ground. Surely this is desirable. My question pertains to what happens when reasonable people agree to disagree. Is the status quo of Association officers being under the control of the Alumni Relations administration (due to a total dependence on those resources) healthy for our association, for alumni, and ultimately for Dartmouth?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/10/2010 6:59 PM
John, once again your latest post (3/10) requires several responses. This is the first of these.

I think you know the difference between the terms "sponsor" and "support." There is no doubt that The Hanover Institue has and will give SUPPORT to the Dartmouth United slate of candidates in the Association election, just as your parallel organization, Dartmouth Undying, gives support to your slate. In an email message today John Daukas -- certainly no stranger to these issues -- referred to Hanover Institute "support" for our slate.

You continue to insist, however, that The Hanover Institute is THE (not "a") sponsor of our slate. (Mathias statement at http://www.voxthevote.org/aoa/bio_mathias.htm. As the person who assembled the slate, who created a candidate financial pool to pay for many of our expenses, who personally gathered a number of required petition signatures in the Central Florida area, I have to tell you one last time that you are WRONG.

Is it so uncomfortable to accept that there are many Dartmouth alumni out there who are willing to make the sacrifices necessary to stand in this election -- who think you and your colleagues have not represented alumni very well and hope our fellow alumni will install us in your place? It must be, unless you do know that quite well, and keep trying to beat our slate with guilt be association attacks as a cynical and dishonest campaign strategy.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/10/2010 7:58 PM
John, this is my second response to your post of 3/10/10.

This concerns your statement that John MacGovern and others have publicly likened you and your colleagues "to Nazi collaborators for our role in causing the dismissal of the first lawsuit."

This is dishonest, and WRONG.

In your campaign for the 2008-2009 Association presidency, you made extremely clear that if elected you would act immediately to terminate the litigation filed by the Association against the trustees over their abrogation of the 1891 Agreement. You won the election and immediately set out to carry out that campaign promise. Thus far, fair enough.

No one ever called you names for doing that -- not John MacGovern, and not me. You are called a Quisling today, however, because of the way you went about ending the litigation, and because of the onerous EXTRA provision that you threw into the process. Let me explain.

Never once in your campaign did you say a word about anything other than ending the lawsuit. To do that, all you would have had to do would have been to have the Association's attorney file a voluntary dismissal. This is what EVERYONE expected, because there had never been the slightest suggestion that you would do anything else.

But you did so much more. You acted to take away the legal rights of any future Association of Alumni leadership to object to any further trustee diminuition of alumni rights with regard to election of alumni trustees. Because of this, at their next meeting the trustees could, if they so wished, decide TO ELIMINATE ALL ALUMNI-ELECTED TRUSTEES and return Dartmouth the situation prior to 1891, when all trustees were self selected.

How did this happen? The record shows that immediately after your election on June 10, 2008 you met with the College counsel and conspired to file with him a voluntary dismissal WITH PREJUDICE. You worked at lightning speed -- the Joint Sipulation was signed by counsel on June 20 -- just 10 days after your election. Of course none of this was disclosed to alumni. From conversations I've had, I'm not even sure that all members of your Executive Committee understood what you were doing at the time. The College kept it completely under wraps. And of course the Minutes of your Executive Committee meetings -- which for the 2007-2008 EC meetings had been detailed and meticulous -- bear not a hint of what you were doing. And it has subsequently been discovered that one of the notes from your meetings with the College officials read, "End 1891 Agreement forever!"

Now to the appropriateness of the characterization of "Quisling." Your comment looks the wrong way -- to the Germans with whom Vidkun Quisling collaborated. As the way the word is understood today, however, it refers to behavior related to one's actions with regard to the people one is supposed to represent. As president of the Association of Alumni, you were elected to represent the interests of Dartmouth alumni. You WERE NOT elected to represent the interests of the administration or the trustees.

What possible benefit to our alumni was your conspiring with the College to eliminate the alumni right, at some future time, to act to protect whatever was left of the agreement on the election of alumni trustees? There was no benefit -- your action was indefensible. You betrayed the alumni who elected you.

This was the action that generated the characterization of "Quisling" -- NOT the simple act of ending the lawsuit. Fellow alumni will have to judge whether your conduct matches the betrayals of his fellow Norwegians by Vidkun Quisling. The minute the Germans left Norway Quisling was arrested, tried, and executed by firing squad. That's a bit severe in our case, however -- we just hope that alumni will vote to retire you and your colleagues and let a new Executive Committee take office -- a Committee whose unqualified loyalty will be kept with the alumni whom the Association officers are entrusted to represent.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/10/2010 10:07 PM
Dear Mr. Murphy:

Your comparison of Dartmouth's Board of Trustees to Nazis and our AoA Executive Committee to treasonous Nazi collaborators executed by our countrymen does little to advance reasoned discussion of alumni rights and responsibilities.

When we first ran in 2008, we did indeed pledge to act immediately to terminate the litigation filed against Dartmouth without alumni approval by the previous Executive Committee. We were elected by 60% of those voting. In our first meeting convened the same day we took office, our 11 person Executive Committee met by phone to discuss the manner of terminating the lawsuit so as to be certain that John MacGovern and the Hanover Institute would not be able to undo the election results by filing a second lawsuit against Dartmouth. We had pledged to terminate the lawsuit--not suspend it for a little while until Mr. MacGovern and his cohorts could regroup and refinance a second suit. Our Executive Committee authorized me to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice for just this reason.

Terminating means ending, not suspending. The furious reaction of your friend and financier Mr. MacGovern to the realization that we had indeed terminated the lawsuit rather than suspended it was to compare us to the invidious Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling, an analogy which you now defend and apparently reassert with renewed fury.

Mr. Murphy, our Unity Slate stands against you, Mr. MacGovern, and the Hanover Institute in this election. Our methods and temperament are different from those you espouse and demonstrate. The choice for our alumni/ae could not be clearer. Thank you for clarifying things.

Our alumni/ae deserve more and better from elected leadership than constant bickering about parity. We are determined to work with our superb new President Jim Yong Kim to involve our alumni/ae in the great issues affecting our world today while continuing to use civility, collegiality, and persuasion as our methods for making the case to the Board for increasing the number of elected Alumni trustees.

By John Mathias, at 3/11/2010 8:29 AM
Mr. Murphy is going way overboard when he says a voluntary dismissal "is what EVERYONE expected, because there had never been the slightest suggestion that you would do anything else."

I don't know why he cares about the expectation of alumni on dismissal when the previous committee FILED A LAWSUIT AGAINST DARTMOUTH COLLEGE without once taking an alumni vote or even asking alumni for their opinion on the project.

I know, it's not fair to judge a quality administration by the acts of a poor predecessor, but still Mr. Murphy has to ask whether the dismissal with prejudice is far, far closer to the mandate of the voters than anything undertaken by the prior committee. Did that committee ever give us a chance to vote on the lawsuit, or the payment of AoA funds to Frank Gado, or the formation of a secret caucus to make committee decisions, or the secret meetings with the Hanover Institute, or the initially-secret acceptance of funds from the Institute, or Gado's secret and covered-up funneling of an AoA mailing contract to his own corporation? What about the misleading claim that Gado did not know who was writing the checks? Did we ever authorize that obfuscation? Or the appointment of the Institute's secretary as the AoA's legal liaison? I must have missed the vote on that one. What about the positions the committee took in support of (or specifically not in objection to) Trustee Zywicki and the anti-Dartmouth Mooney Bill? I'd bet that the committee's votes failed to represent alumni sentiment on those as well.

This might be the most important reason Mr. Murphy's offense at the dismissal with prejudice is groundless: when the plaintiff filed the lawsuit, it did so with the accurate expectation that the suit could be dismissed with prejudice. People disagreed about the chances of that happening (as they did about the chances that the suit would succeed), but everyone knew that dismissal with prejudice was one of the realistic possible outcomes. The plaintiff agreed to take the good with the bad when it submitted its "dispute" to the jurisdiction of the court. If the AoA had truly wanted to avoid any possibility of dismissal with prejudice, it could have done so by not filing the lawsuit.

Mr. Murphy is making an unwarranted legal judgment when he says "You acted to take away the legal rights of any future Association of Alumni leadership to object to any further trustee diminuition of alumni rights with regard to election of alumni trustees." Who is Mr. Murphy to say that the AoA is legally prevented from ever suing again? If "alumni rights" and alumni "election" of trustees weren't myths, who's to say they wouldn't be violated the moment the board elects a trustee to a seat supposedly reserved for alumni nomination?

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/11/2010 8:57 AM
John: Please document when the executive committee authorized you to withdraw the lawsuit with prejudice... the minutes of your 8-minute long meeting do not even reflect that it was discussed.

Scott: Members of the prior administration believed (and still do) that maintaining parity was the desire of a material majority of alumni. I believe the Board of Trustees is on record that even they understand this to be the case. As we have explained many times before, there was no time between the Board's announcement and their planned November appointments for us to re-survey alumni. Did we act against the wishes of the majority... as we learned in the following spring's election, yes. Did we forever limit alumni into the future, as today's incumbents did... no! Being dismissed with prejudice at the request of those representing the plaintiffs is very different than a with-prejudice ruling made indepenently by the court.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/11/2010 1:55 PM
Mr. Mathias:

Please explain to me fully and immediately the details behind the following communications from your slate and its sponsors and the actions that were in part responsible for them:

1. Your association through the Dartmouth Undying cabal with the nasty and inappropriate comments about the petition slate that were just sent to us in a letter from that organization. They have definitely thrown the first stone...

2. By the way, who are your mystical "sponsors" in that cabal, and how much have they paid to support your slate?

3. Precisely how did that mis-named, false-flag organization get my postal mailing address? I would like to know exactly where to send a formal "cease and desist" letter, as I had to do with Bill King years ago when he was making robo-calls to my unlisted number to sell the constitution change.

4. How did your Alumni Council-sponsored trustee get my postal and e-mail addresses?

5. Have you accorded the same mailing and e-mailing privileges (including the same lists) to your opponents?

6. Why have you done nothing tangible to implement your supposed plan to reinstate alumni parity on the board (your campaign plank last go-round)?

7. Were you personally in any way associated with David Spalding's "1891 Dead Forever!" scribbling in his office notes obtained under Court order recounting a conversation with you and others concerning the earlier law suit that you conveniently arranged to dismiss with prejudice, possibly ending the 1891 right to alumni trustee parity on Dartmouth's board of trustees?

8. I have pretty much concluded there is nothing civil in your demeanor or your discourse, merely the appearance of civility. Let us see if you can prove me wrong. If you can, I will admit to it, but the facts of you and your slate's non-action on behalf of alumni during your two-year tenure more than speak for themselves.

Your failure to accomplish anything on this matter shows no real love on your part for Dartmouth, and no respect whatsoever for the differing views of her alumni. All you have done is make it easier for the trustees to operate in their own selfish ways, believing they are now unfettered. Shame on you! and Shame on your slate!

Peter DeForth'63

By Peter DeForth '3, at 3/11/2010 2:02 PM
John M: I see from your postings above that you have time to read and respond to comments by others.

Alumni will be interested in your opinions on the questions raised above related to the independence of their Association. Independence from outside organizations goes without saying; independence from the College administration goes to the heart of the Association and its representation of alumni regarding their collective duty to participate in College governance.

So where do you stand? Your silence can only mean 1. that you do not believe this is a serious issue, or 2. that it is important but you have no opinion that you wish to share, or 3. that it is important but you are simply too busy to deal with Association affairs.

Voters considering your re-election deserve to know before voting. We are still waiting.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/11/2010 2:05 PM
Come on, John – I did NOT compare the Dartmouth Board of Trustees to Nazis. I quite clearly observed that “Quisling”--which has entered the language as a lower-case, genetic noun--refers to a betrayal of a group one is supposed to protect or at least faithfully represent. It’s not important to identify or describe the third party with whom a quisling collaborates, which changes in every different act of betrayal. It is the quisling’s behavior with respect to his own group – in your case, present and future Dartmouth alumni – that informs the long term use of this term as a synonym for faithlessness.

Are you SURE that all other members of your Executive Committee knowingly authorized you to file a dismissal with prejudice? You write that “our 11 person Executive Committee met by phone…” The Minutes, however, show that four of your eleven EC members were NOT PRESENT, and a fifth was “on briefly, but had to drop off.” The entire meeting was only eight minutes long. If you can explain the legal implications of “with prejudice” and “without prejudice” in eight minutes (minus the time it took for the other business on that meeting’s agenda) then I’m nominating you for Law Professor of the Year.

Regardless, the idea that the 60% of the voting alumni who elected you understood and approved of the consequences of this action is ridiculous. I’ve talked to too many of them who have been stunned at this little detail. I’m happy that you do not contradict my claim that this was never reported – not by you, not by Dartmouth, and not by your Association Executive Committee.

Instead, you claim that the choice was between “terminating” the litigation versus “suspending” it. As an attorney, you know that is incorrect. A dismissal without prejudice would have terminated the litigation – period. Since the plaintiff in the suit was the Association of Alumni, and since you were in control of the Association, there was no chance that the Association suit would have been re-filed during your term. Could a future Executive Committee have filed a new suit? Yes, but as you know, it would have less chance of success with a lapse of time. More important, it is most likely that any prospective future suit would have been subject to a referendum--exactly the sort of vote that your Secretary-Treasurer, who is also the College's Vice President for Alumni Relations effectively, made impossible by denying the 2007-2008 Association access to the mailing lists for its own membership.

The result of your action went far beyond termination of the lawsuit--as your note, "KILL the 1891 Agreement," shows was deliberate. You changed the nature and role of the Association in what was tantamount to an illegal constitutional amendment. If, at some future date – especially if there were further erosion of alumni rights with regard to trustee elections – another Association Executive Committee might feel that court action would be an appropriate remedy, it could no longer pursue that course, even though an overwhelming number of alumni might agree with them. Your secretive actions in June 2008 took away that legal right, and removed that possibility. You were not elected to do this; you betrayed the alumni.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/11/2010 2:59 PM
People, the Hanover Institute and its slates have been talking exaggeratedly about the "death" ("destruction," "termination," "abrogation," etc.) of the 1891 agreement for several years. Why not pick on them?

In a discussion about public relations and the expected reaction of the opposition, Spalding's comment, if he even said it at all, was probably his prediction of what MacGovern would howl. And he was pretty close to the mark.

A single note written by Spalding -- not even a complete sentence -- and taken out of context (why not complain about that as well?) does not constitute a plan to end the agreement.

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/11/2010 3:14 PM
I'm having a hard time avoiding skepticism in reading all of Mr. Deforth's huffing and puffing. I mean, come on, nobody can promise to "reinstate alumni parity."

Wouldn't the questions for Dartmouth Undying be better directed at... Dartmouth Undying? Its contact page is at http://www.dartmouthundying.org/contact

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/11/2010 3:32 PM
Questions to Dartmouth UnDying go unanswered. Such questions are raised here because more alumni should be asking them.

Scott: You have blogged strenuously about the role of the Hanover Institute. You may not believe me, but it was difficult for some of us to accept HI support, which we did only after having resource requests denied by David Spalding and after receiving assurances there were no controlling strings attached. While we are waiting for John Mathias to reply, where do you stand on the issue of our Association also being independent of the controls held by the Office of Alumni Relations?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/11/2010 3:49 PM
Scott Meacham asks some questions:

"Mr. Murphy is making an unwarranted legal judgment when he says "You acted to take away the legal rights of any future Association of Alumni leadership to object to any further trustee diminuition of alumni rights with regard to election of alumni trustees." Who is Mr. Murphy to say that the AoA is legally prevented from ever suing again? If "alumni rights" and alumni "election" of trustees weren't myths, who's to say they wouldn't be violated the moment the board elects a trustee to a seat supposedly reserved for alumni nomination?

ANSWER: Please ask an attorney to explain, given the facts of this case, the meaning of the dismissal
WITH PREJUDICE. Or better yet, ask John Mathias -- he's qualified to answer. Any of these will tell you that mine is not "an unwarranted legal assumption." It's the sad evidence of a secretive betrayal of Dartmouth alumni interests.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/11/2010 5:00 PM
Some people now say the EC requires specific authority from the electorate regarding precisely the type of request the AoA may make to a court. (How specific and what requests, they haven't said, but apparently they know it when they see it...).

These are the same people who once claimed that an unauthorized and unpopular lawsuit was actually legitimate. They knew at the outset that the lawsuit could be dismissed with prejudice for any of a hundred reasons, resulting in the permanent loss (so they say) of whatever rights they claimed were in jeopardy.

Somehow, in the minds of these people, an association that is entitled to file a lawsuit with permanent and potentially substantial legal consequences is not also entitled to have that lawsuit dismissed with prejudice. Even though the first action lacked electoral support and the second had it. Do these people believe that the dismissal with prejudice was prohibited at the beginning (by some unspoken code, perhaps)? Did they think the decision to sue would bind all future ECs? Or are they simply asking for a do-over because they don't like the result?

When Mr. Murphy says "You changed the nature and role of the Association in what was tantamount to an illegal constitutional amendment," I don't understand what he's trying to say. The voters voted, and the EC acted, which is a lot more than you can say for any of the legal filings up to that point.

No wonder the Hanover Institute sat out the election that followed the dismissal -- he probably knew that the "with prejudice" distinction didn't bother alumni that much, and that the electorate wasn't inclined to give the Institute a second chance.

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/11/2010 5:31 PM
Mr. Murphy writes "Please ask an attorney to explain, given the facts of this case, the meaning of the dismissal WITH PREJUDICE."

I will take that to mean that Mr. Murphy doesn't know himself.

That's probably why he admits that a future EC "could" file a new suit with some possibility of success, and yet also claims that the dismissal "took away that legal right, and removed that possibility." In the same post.

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/11/2010 5:41 PM
Thank you Scott for your insight. That said, I expect alumni are more interested in John Mathias' response to Mr. Murphy.

Alumni will also be interested in a response to my questions above regarding the independence of our association, which I addressed separately to both you and John. Surely you have some opinion on it. Hopefully John does as well. His is naturally of more interest given that he is a candidate for re-election as our leader.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/11/2010 6:45 PM
Scott Meacham:

You have to pay closer attention. My remark that a future EC "could" have filed a new court action was in response to John Mathias' claim that he HAD to file a dismissal with prejudice because if he merely dismissed the case without prejudice, a future EC could file a new action. In other words, I was admitting that this COULD happen (and, under some circumstances could have had wide alumni support and been justified.) However, because Mr. Mathias and the College counsel had the case dismissed with prejudice, this possibility became moot, and Dartmouth alumni lost their right for any future legal redress over their rights under the 1891 Agreement. Got it?

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/11/2010 6:51 PM
Golly, Scott, you surely do love to assert things without doing any research to back them up. Is this what you learned to do in English Comp? Wouldn't surprise me, as whatever we older alums did to support the college doesn't seem to matter much to your faculty and your student generation--and I am being kind.

If it is too hard for you to check on what the current slate campaigned on before, why don't you ask John Mathias??? He should know, shouldn't he? And it is reasonable to expect that he would have copies of those campaign promises, isn't it?

Oh, sorry I forgot, John doesn't seem to answer questions directly. He certainly didn't answer any of my specific and pointed questions above. The answers would probably prove to be too embarassing to him and his slate. A seasoned politician, obviously; John rejects direct confrontation, tries to divert honestly-asked questions or ignore them completely, but leaves all the false and vicious personal attacks to the mis-named attack group who call themselves "Dartmouth Undying."

It is a real shame that such a batch of really nasty people can get away with having a name like that, especially because it is such a beautiful and evocative song for many of us (but obviously, not you guys and gals). One would think the college lawyers would protest that kind of misuse of Dartmouth intellectual property on copyright grounds, as they do when someone tries to sing the old (now forbidden) college songs to recall the good old days.

But, I forgot again, those guys are under David Spalding's and the trustees' thumbs and direction; they can get away with that kind of stuff, but we who respectfully disagree can't display any such politically incorrect, maudlin sentiments publicly.

Perhaps David would like to answer why he penned that phrase...! And in whose company? But that isn't David's style, now, is it?

Peter DeForth '63

By Peter DeForth '3, at 3/11/2010 9:03 PM
Too many interwoven threads here:

John.. why not initiate several new discussions to run in parallel:

1. A continuation of the personal dialog between our two presidential contenders. Alumni voters will find this informative.

2. A thread related to the issue of an Association not dependent upon the OAR and by implication under its control. Open this one with your own opinions as presidential candidate, please.

3. A third for Peter/Scott/others to question and comment as they please.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/11/2010 9:28 PM
Mr. DeForth is being willfully obtuse. When I wrote nobody can promise to "reinstate alumni parity," quoting Mr. DeForth, I was saying that nobody can honestly promise to do something he is incapable of doing. The number of alumni nominees on the board is established by the board. The most any AoA candidate can promise to do is discuss it.

Mr. DeForth: if you have questions (insults, really) for Dartmouth Undying then you should send them to that organization using the link I provided above. And really, the DU folks are the "nasty people"? I hope you have not forgotten the efforts the anti-Dartmouth people put into firing up the base during the lawsuit.

You should take your conspiracy theories regarding Spalding and Dartmouth songs elsewhere. [For example, there are no college songs that are "forbidden." In fact the College Press promotes the pre-coeducation version of the songbook. It's just that American youth don't sing much any more. Dartmouth does not use copyright law to stop anyone singing an old song, and I don't know what to think of someone who would make up this kind of tale. ]

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/12/2010 6:15 AM
I wonder whether Mr. Murphy fabricated the quotation he attributes to Mathias: "KILL the 1891 Agreement"

Again, I wonder why Mr. Murphy believes the EC lacked the authority to have the suit dismissed with prejudice. I don't see how he can make up this rule out of thin air and yet still think the EC was authorized to file the lawsuit, and that the EC didn't expect the possibility of a dismissal with prejudice.

So Mr. Murphy is still incorrect to say (1) that alumni necessarily lost their right for any future legal redress over their rights under the 1891 Agreement (this is a legal question of preclusion he still hasn't explained or, evidently, understood); (2) that if the alumni did lose their right, this was somehow unauthorized (after all, the prior EC filed the entire lawsuit without authority, and he found that acceptable for some reason); (3) that if the alumni did lose their right, this was somehow unexpected (after all, the prior EC knew a dismissal with prejuduce could result from their lawsuit); and (4) that alumni have any legal rights regarding the board, or that the 1891 agreement is legally enforceable (the people who created the 1891 agreement said it created only a moral -- not legal -- right to seat a specific number of alumni trustees, not a proportion).

Scott Meacham '95

By Scott, at 3/12/2010 6:38 AM
John Mathias says he is not the overall blog administrator and did not initiate blog moderation. Fair enough. But he has served as the blog author of these threads, and as I recall from my own EC days in that capacity, the thread author also had the ability to control thread postings. Comments were suspended from Feb 4 thru Mar 8. If John was powerless during this period, how did his own comment of March 5 get put up during the blackout?

If not John himself, someone was apparently manipulating our alumni forum. More was going on than just an automatic software upgrade. In the past, overall administration was handled by an outside volunteer alum. I have some reason to believe this responsibility has been transferred to personnel within the Office of Alumni Relations. So here we go... back to the independence question that people are so fearful of addressing.

A long long time ago, before either he or I were elected to the Association leadership, David Spalding wearing his College administrative employee hat told me that his office maintained the Association web pages and, importantly, address lists of its members, as "a courtesy to alumni". Later when we were both elected officials he refused the AoA leadership access to those lists, because in his opinion our desired communication to our members was redundant with his Administration's communications to the same people, their being College graduates.

Alumni participate in College governance but do not control the College. Similarly, the Administration should not be controlling our Association. As long as we are dependent upon them for all resources and administration with veto capability over elected-official requests, they by definition are in control.

The silence by the incumbents, supposedly our "representatives", on this issue is deafening.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 11:45 AM
Our Unity Slate is determined to work with our superb new President Jim Yong Kim to involve alumni/ae in addressing the great issues facing our world today so that we might join forces to make a difference. Our alumni/ae deserve more from their elected leadership than constant bickering about politics. We need to turn this page.

There are significant differences between the philosophies and methods of the two slates in this election. They should be apparent to anyone reading the comments in this election forum.

I owe an enormous debt to Dartmouth, and Dartmouth owes me nothing. I have no entitlements from Dartmouth. I will continue my volunteer service regardless of what happens in this election, just as I have since the day I graduated as a financial aid student in 1969.

I do not view the College, its administration, or its Board as adversaries but rather as colleagues. We have common interests and objectives which I want to help promote. I respect those generous alumni/ae whose philanthropy has so greatly enhanced our College over the years for the benefit of today's students and those for generations to come. I respect those tireless alumni/ae volunteers who give their time and service so selflessly in support of Dartmouth. They are my friends--not my enemies--and they have my sincere gratitude. I want to work with them, not against them.

I have great respect for Dartmouth parents, who care deeply about their children and Dartmouth today. They deserve our attention as much as anyone.

I would no more sue Dartmouth College than I would my own family.

By John Mathias, at 3/12/2010 12:24 PM
John: You complain about politics, but governance is at the heart of the Association you lead and wish to be re-elected to lead. You are not running to lead the College.

I never suggested you need to be prepared to sue the College. That was clearly rejected by alumni. That said, I find your comment interesting coming from someone whose career centers on suing people. Are all your opponents dastardly, or in some cases do you find your clients simply have an otherwise-unresolvable disagreement with respectable other parties?

I am not suggesting we want an adversarial relationship between the college and her alumni. In fact the opposite! But a positive one only comes by having a respectful relationship without either one dominating the other.

I am guessing you are going to let your comment above be an answer to my questions regarding independence. You liken your relationship to the College to family. Fair enough... there is not full independence between a man and wife, but certainly there needs to be a healthy interdependence. That is not what we have today in our Association... the dependence for financial and administrative support is total. Is that healthy?

Do you and your wife share a checking account, or is it in your name only and you support her "conveniences" with an annual allowance that you control? If you do the latter, will you consider any objection by her to be adversarial?

Alumni will appreciate a more direct answer to my specific questions above, rather than a talk-about. Shall I repeat them?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 12:54 PM
PS to John Mathias:

John... I respect you enough to have reread your last post. What I see is a failure in understanding the differences between the governance role of the Association and the service role of the Council. You are running for president of the wrong one.

Both are legitimate, but the purposes are very different. But do not feel bad... all those who supported the AGTF merger of the two also failed to understand the important distinction.

I once heard Joe Asch described as the parrot sitting on the shoulder of former College President Wright. You are either cursed or blessed to have me, as a little horned devil or a haloed-conscience, sitting on the shoulder of the President of the Association of ALUMNI. I want you as our leader to look out for our association interests, so that we individually and collectively can look out for the interests of the College we all have loved. Are you prepared, in this role, to put aside your personal interests in the College (admirable as they may be) and represent alumni interests in their association?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 1:20 PM
PPS To the final question above, it is OK to say no!!! One member of the prior executive committee was very engaged in the efforts to maintain parity. When left with no other recourse but the courts, that person felt there was a conflict between her love for the College and representing alumni interests in parity. She abstained and effectively resigned from her representational role. But she did not put her personal feelings ahead of her constituents' interests.

(Others of us, after considerable reflection, decided our representation of alumni interests were not in conflict but actually were in concert with the long-term best interests of the College.)

John: What say you?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 2:10 PM
This is mostly for Tim Dreisbach.

Tim, while I find much of what you write to be on-point, for whatever reason you cannot stop yourself from using the signature tools and debate modes which characterize the part of the political spectrum which I'll call (for lack of an accepted term) the Right. (Instead of Right vs. Left, perhaps the discussion should be re-cast as Ins vs. Outs.)

These tools include: clever sarcasm (such as you applied to John Mathias when you implied he does not know the difference between AoA and Alumni Council); self-victimization (such as the notion you've put out there, that the Right has been intentionally denied unfettered and uncensored access to this blog); and, demonization (such as implied by you and Mr. Murphy through the invocation of 'quisling' as characteristic of your opponents).

As careful as some of its members are -- and you are among the most careful -- the Right seemingly cannot help itself in using these tools and modes. Their presence in discourse is a signature. And when I see it, I 'turn off' my further attention.

The Right means to persuade; I'll give the Right the benefit of the doubt on that assumption. But, when people 'turn off' to its modes of discourse (I am not alone, you see), the Right tends to simply shout out more loudly, use the tools more stridently, until the effect is as of a fingernail on a slate board.

Tim, et al.: there is no smear, nor scheming behavior, in this blog thread, nor in Joe Asch's candidacy for Trustee. The Right is, simply, unpersuasive. I think the Right *could* become more persuasive. But the present tools and modes of discourse work against becoming so. For instance, John Mathias has said the matter of blog management was an accident. Reasonable people take him at his word. Had you done so, you would have seemed more reasonable. Instead, you choose to cast more aspersions on John on this issue; which weakens, not strengthens, your position.

Let me add there are plenty of areas of convergence between my own thoughts on Dartmouth, and some of the problems and solutions identified and proposed by the Right. But how can I discuss them, when every word I might write is parsed to the Nth degree, and sought out for the barest trace of Left bias? Following evidence of which, I am 'pigeon-holed', and made the object of the full toolset of the Right?

These are merely rhetorical questions, for your consideration (along with the perspectives which precede them).

By Al, at 3/12/2010 2:18 PM
I was not specific enough in my "What say you?" question to John.

Was the decision to insert "with prejudice" in concert with the best long-term interests of the alumni you represented as well as the College we all love?

If the answer is "no, but the College has a higher-level of my loyalty", should you have stepped aside?

If the answer is "yes, restricting alumni actions by whomever alumni may elect in the future is good for alumni", please explain.

Obviously I have had some time this p.m., but will now give you all a break. We still look forward to how your wife and partner does or does not have a say in finance, or at least why total association dependency is no problem.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 2:32 PM
Al: Thank you. I do not know who you are, but I believe your criticisms are constructive and I will try to do a better job taking them to heart.

By the way, I am quite sincere stating that in my opinion, John does not understand the difference between the Association and the Council. I mean this without sarcasm. 99.999% of alumni do not understand the distinction. Of course, John is highly intelligent and most people understand the organizational ("legal" if you will) differences. I am referring to those differences inherent in their nature... you cannot have one organization responsible for both serving and governing another; anyone who lobbied for a merger of these two roles (e.g. the AGTF) did not understand their differences.

If I can alter my writing to be more persuasive, I will attempt to do so. I can take issue with a few of your other comments, but in the spirit you suggest, will not do so.

Tim D.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 2:50 PM
PS to Al (and then I really will depart)

I am curious as to where you come done on the issues of Association independence... from the Hanover Institute and from the Office of Alumni Relations... as a way to have a stronger organization and be a better partner to Dartmouth? There are some real hurdles... there is no (current) endowment to fund even minor expenses; members dues do not work when we want all alumni to be members; etc. Are they worth solving? (I obviously think so).

I will understand if you fear a response will be "parsed to death", versus "reasoned out". Please reply or not as you wish.

Now, g'bye for real/

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/12/2010 3:04 PM
Tim,

I don't do this much, so the first post shows up as 'Al'. Clicking on the name would've revealed my full identify, but regardless I've changed my profile to fix this issue.

I have opinions about Alumni Council vs. AoA. My main opinion is that the two should be joined. Too much overlap. Too much nitpicking and wasted energy about the differences, and how to 'fix' or 'correct' them.

A note: if '99.999%' of alumni don't 'get' your distinction, then logic suggests either the distinction is not worth making; or, that you haven’t yet been persuasive in clarifying the distinction, and why it matters.

My opinion of the Hanover Institute is that is does much harm, and little good. In part, this is because it is seen by (some, many, most?) alumni as a polarizing, not unifying, organization. My advice would be to shut it down, and try a different means of advocacy and persuasion which does not carry the same polarizing baggage. It's a free country, though, and Dartmouth, while a private corporation, retains certain democratic systems and procedures, so if some people want to proceed through the Hanover Institute, they will.

On 'parity': Board representation has never been 50-50, if the President, and the Governor of NH, are considered as Board members. The charter, in effect, empowers the Board with stewardship for the College, and grants it powers, among which is the power to determine its own constitution.

From my perspective the Board acted to change its size and selection processes only when the existing processes broke down. Whether or not one agrees with the Board’s action, one cannot dispute their right to do so. The lawsuit was doomed to fail. I’m no lawyer, but I can read critically, and my reading of the charter, the Dartmouth College case, the agreement of 1891, the lawsuit and appeals, and other documents, convinced me. At that point, I considered further disaffection-driven disruptions to be vain, and counter-productive.

1891 was a long time ago. Times have changed. Times will continue to change. It may happen again that the College needs extraordinary funds, and to get them the Board will cede certain powers to the alumni, or to others. Until that time happens, we've got what we've got. Deal with it, accept it, and get on with the work at hand.

Which is to make sure Dartmouth is the best undergraduate institution in the world, IMO. How to make it so is worthy of our effort, and of debate. But at the end of the day, we each are intelligent, thoughtful people, with highly individual views. We can't all be right 100% of the time.

We want our views to be heard; and if heard, accepted as right; and if so accepted, acted upon; and if acted upon, successful. But we cannot get what we want all the time. Well-integrated, mature adults (one desirable outcome of a Dartmouth degree, IMO) are those who are comfortable, or can come to terms, with either outcome. And who do not continue a conflict beyond its expiration date.

Anyway, that’s my perspective. FWIW.

By Al Henning '77, at 3/12/2010 4:37 PM
Tim,

I appreciate having an independent alumni body/org can be a desirable thing. However, has there been a problem with OAR somehow limiting the independent behavior of either AoA or Alumni Council? I've seen potshots directed at David Spaulding; but I don't know why they're being hurled; and the hurlers have also disparaged other administrators, some of whom are personal friends and have devoted their careers to Dartmouth; which makes me discount the objections to David.

By Al Henning '77, at 3/12/2010 5:57 PM
Tim,

And, while I understand your distinction between governing and serving, vis a vis AoA and Alumni Council: I think one organization can do both; and, being a sometimes obstreperous alum, I don't much feel 'governed' anyway, in the context of my relationship to Dartmouth...

By Al Henning '77, at 3/12/2010 6:03 PM
Scott Meacham:

On 3/12 you asked: "I wonder whether Mr. Murphy fabricated the quotation he attributes to Mathias: "KILL the 1891 Agreement"
I didn't make anything up, but you did send me back to the source document to improve my accuracy.

As part of a discovery demand the College produced notes taken in June 2008 by Diana Pearson, Vice President for Communications. It isn't completely clear to me who was in the meeting covered by the notes, other than David Spalding. From the notes it certainly appears that John Mathias was present, also -- if he wasn't, Ms. Pearson refers several times to statements he has made. The meeting was after the Association litigation had been dismissed with
prejudice and the attendees were discussing further steps.

One note is: "1891 dead forever -- John theory new to Sullivan and Cromwell -- only basis bec w/dr w/ prejudice."

There was also a discussion about possible changes to the Association of Alumni Constitution to modify or eliminate the 1891 Agreement between the Trustees and the Association. One note says, "So negotiate 1891 agreemt away" and another, "To change AoA rules/constitution -- as 1891 agreement calls for 2/3 majority of all alumni" and "This one got 60%."

While researching this quote I also looked at contemporary documents describing the information released in the wake of the dismissal. As I previously posted, NONE of these discloses that the dismissal was "with prejudice." Not the College's News Release of June 27, 2008 ("Statement on termination of lawsuit against Dartmouth College"), not the posting by Mr. Mathias on the Association of Alumni blog on the same day (Dismissal of Lawsuit Against the College"), and not in any subsequent alumni communications.

I apolgize for the slight misquoting of the "1891 dead forever" remark, but it does not affect the substance of my remarks.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/12/2010 6:10 PM
To Al Henning in two parts: I am responding to you to say thanks again for a civil dialog between us, even when we have opposing views. I also write hoping other alumni can gain some insight into the matters of communication and content that you have raised.

Where to begin? Let’s try a high voltage rail… Quisling! It is a great example on how two opposing camps talk past each other. Some “Outs” have used that word because it very accurately reflects the tremendous betrayal they (and I) felt when John Mathias not only withdrew the lawsuit, but also appended the “with prejudice” clause that limits the actions of new leaders alumni may wish to elect in the future. I know the Quisling name-invokers personally, and I firmly believe that sense of being betrayed by their association’s leader is their motivator; they were not equating their opponents to the worst of the Nazi’s. The “Ins” of course assume otherwise, which is naturally taken as a personal attack of the worst kind. The result… no common ground and a mutual feeling of divisiveness. (A final note on this one, not meant to stir things up between us… your note incorrectly states that I was one of the Quisling invokers. Where did you get this idea?)

You mention the debate modes of sarcasm, self-victimization, and demonization as signature tools of the “Right”. I would add ad hominem attack, guilt by association, condescension, deceit through the use of half-truths and at times outright falsehoods; further these are equally used by the “Left”. (I prefer your “In/Out” terms. Apparently many among Dartmouth “Ins” remain under the false impression that the “Outs” are all right-wing neo-cons seeking to take Dartmouth back into the past; they would be surprised by some quite liberal thinkers among their opponents.)

Some personal background might be instructive. Beginning in 2001, I lived immediately adjacent to campus and was highly involved with the College in a variety of ways. My direct observations confirmed that a lot of the criticisms being raised during the elections of petition trustees were correct, no matter how uncomfortably they may have been presented. The reaction was not a mere pulling back, the reaction you say you have to such debate modes, but outright denial of the issues and personal attacks on the messengers. This carried over first into the debate on the AGTF-proposed constitution and later into the trustee board reconfiguration. In my opinion (recognizing it as opinion only, but I was a very involved participant paying close attention), both these efforts were primarily undertaken to undermine traction the “Outs” were making in garnering alumni support. They made the “Ins” uncomfortable and needed to be stopped. This all reached a climax in the first lawsuit, its initiation and then withdrawl by a different executive committee. Without rehashing all the arguments of either side, I can assure you that all the modes you mention, plus those I have added, were applied in force by the “Ins”, in an effort to win at any cost. There are many specific examples that I can use to back this up, but that would be counter-productive at this point and might give you the impression I am trying the self-victimization ploy. If you want specifics, contact me in private.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/13/2010 9:02 PM
To Al, Part 2: A few other quick responses to the points of your various postings:

1. Incorporating the governance role of the Association (we are talking about the role alumni have participating in the proper governance of Dartmouth, not governing alumni themselves) into the Council structure can only work well if the Council is truly the open democratic representative body it is advertised as being. That will not happen unless every class and club picks their representatives through open contested (i.e. having choice) elections conducted via multi-media across their members. 1. Not practical 2. Not desired… no one wants these all different groups to become politicized bodies. In my opinion a separate Association handling our governance duty resolves this dilemma. I even go to the extreme of suggesting that the trustee nominating committee should be reverted back to the Association from the Council.

2. Based upon all of your readings, you have concluded that the first lawsuit was destined to failure. Yet one source you did not mention was the opinion of the Court in rejecting the Administration’s motion to dismiss; please give it a read.

3. There was indeed a major problem that David Spalding, wearing his administration employee hat and controlling resources upon which the Association depends, used his powers to limit the behavior of the Association’s elected representatives. I was one and saw this first hand.

The challenges you note continue today. I truly despair at the attacks made here and elsewhere by so many unwilling to identify themselves. Ditto the debate modes of Dartmouth Undying, at least as nefarious as the techniques many attribute to the Hanover Institute, even though UnDying’s are more cleverly veiled by a pretense of civility. Who are their principals anyway? Please advise me how to cut through half truths being used with faulty logic, without my appearing to “parse” the words of critics. Please advise me how to deal with “Ins” who use the power of incumbency to maintain an uneven playing field without my appearing to play victim.

Here’s a constructive proposal to cut through all this. How about if you, me, John Engelman, and Bert Boles all run together in the next election on the same slate? Maybe some real communication and progress might occur. The alternative is that the debate modes which cause you to doubt the “Outs”, invoked by the “Ins”, will just drive us all away completely (perhaps what some desire.)

Sine Cere. Tim D.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/13/2010 9:05 PM
This comment has been removed by the author.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/13/2010 10:07 PM
While I have intentionally stayed out of the fray up until now, there seem to be some real mischaracterizations of what occurred and what was [fully] understood by the AoA. Let me make clear for the record:

1. We (the AoA) discussed the lawsuit and our approach to dismissing it for the majority of one of our earliest meetings (mid-June, if someone wants to look it up).

2.John M. had the authority to act on our behalf and we agreed that we'd dismiss w/prejudice and we understood why that was the best approach. We were elected to dismiss the lawsuit and we did so.

3. I agree with Al Henning's position on combining the organizations (AoA and Council) and think he speaks eloquently about the parity issue as well. It's time to move on and understand that there are more important and more effective things we could be doing with our time and the College's resources.

4. The court's notice of decision was sent to a number of board members who, by virtue of their positions as law professors, should have understood the meaning of it better than anyone else.

So be done with bringing up the past in unconstructive ways for no particular gain. Continuing to re-hash old issues is a poor use of time and resources and I will be ignoring further posts that do so.

Best,
Cheryl Bascomb '82

By Cheryl, at 3/14/2010 5:58 PM
To Cheryl Bascomb,

Since I wasn't in the room I cannot vouch with any certainty what was said at your Executive Committee meetings. All I can know is what your Executive Committee (through the Minutes of your meetings) and the administration elected to tell the alumni or, as is the case in this situation, elected NOT tell the alumni.

Their is no question that in your initial, eight-minute meeting on June 10, 2008 -- the day you were elected -- that you authorized John Mathias "to obtain the prompt dismissal of the lawsuit." No one is arguing that you didn't have every right to do that, since it was the only thing that you had campaigned on in the election. But there is NO MENTION in those Minutes about any discussion of a dismissal "with prejudice" versus "without prejudice" or, as you put it, a discussion of "the lawsuit and our approach to dismessing it..." And there hardly could have been -- the Minutes show the meeting lasted only eight minutes, and there were other items on the agenda.

There is no mention of a discussion of this terribly important subject in the Minutes of the next meeting, on June 18, 2008. [Two days later the joint dismissal with prejudice was filed with the court.] If you did discuss the enormous difference between the two types of dismissals at your meeting on June 18, you made sure that no one outside of your 11-person EC would know about it.

Let me take you at your word: "we agreed that we'd dismiss w/prejudice and we understood why that was the best approach." Why was this hidden from the alumni by making no mention of it in the Minutes? Why did John Mathias' post on the A of A Blob announcing the end of the lawsuit never mention it? Why did the Dartmouth press release making the same announcement never mention it?

Yes, you were elected to end the lawsuit and you did so. But you were NEVER elected to take away the ability of future Association of Alumni leaders to act to protect whatever rights remained under the 1891 Agreement with the trustees. But that's what you did, with the dismissal "with prejudice," and you did it with a total lack of transparency or disclosure.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/14/2010 6:51 PM
Cheryl: Let's look forward as you suggest. If your position is to combine the Council and the Association, how do you suggest making the Council a truly representative body having open multi-candidate elections without politicizing it? How can it have any legitimate role in governance without such characteristics? I do not know how anyone can take your position without first answering these questions. Or should we adopt the position of some that democratically-organized alumni really do not merit a role in College governance anyway? My own position is simple... keep the separate Association we have for the governance task, and insure it is both independent and democratic.

John Mathias: My specific questions:

When we alumni have elected leaders to represent us in matters related to College governance, and the alumni's role in such governance, is it healthy to have those leaders totally dependent upon any organization outside the Association, most especially when such a controlling group is the paid administration of the institution itself?

Do you as AoA president have unfettered access to association member email listservers, with the ability to communicate with them without advance review and approval by the Office of Alumni Relations, in the same manner they allow alumni councilors to email class and club members?

If the answer is No, and the Association officers are subject to veto by the Alumni Relations administration, is this healthy for our association, for alumni, and ultimately for Dartmouth?

Questions to both of the individuals above are important, as they are candidates running for re-election of the Association, a governance body at its essential core. We voters would like to know what they believe on these matters of governance.

Al H: My questions above are not intended to persuade anyone. I am trying to understand the thinking of others, which I currently am unable to do.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/14/2010 8:09 PM
On June 23, 2008, four days before the Court entered the dismissal with prejudice order, petition trustees Stephen F. Smith, Todd J. Zywicki, Thurman J. Rodgers, and Peter M. Robinson were sent email notice of the parties' letter to the Clerk of Court submitting the Stipulation of Voluntary Dismissal With Prejudice along with a copy of the Stipulation dated June 20, 2008. You can see the transmittal letter and the stipulation right here:

http://www.daaus.org/dismissal.pdf

On June 30, 2008 the Clerk of Court sent petition trustees Stephen F. Smith, Todd J. Zywicki, Thurman J. Rodgers, and Peter M. Robinson a copy of the Court's Order of June 27, 2008 dismissing the case with prejudice in accordance with the stipulation. You can see the Clerk's letter and attached order here:

http://www.dartmouth.edu/~news/features/governance/aoasuit/dismissal_order.pdf

Stephen Smith and Todd Zywicki are lawyers and law professors. They knew what a dismissal with prejudice was. The four petition trustees had appeared in this case and had earlier submitted an amicus curiae brief in opposition to the College's motion to dismiss.

We pledged to end the lawsuit filed by our predecessors without alumni approval--not to withdraw it temporarily until John MacGovern, the Hanover Institute, or others could refile it. Our AoA EC had an 86 minute meeting on June 18, 2008, during which I explained what it meant to dismiss the case with prejudice. All our EC members were very concerned that we end the lawsuit once and for all so that the Hanover Institute could not undo the election results by filing a second lawsuit. They gave me full authority to take this step. I then proceeded to have the lawsuit dismissed openly, with notice to the four petition trustees and on the public record.

We are determined to work with our superb new President Jim Yong Kim to involve our alumni/ae in the great issues facing the world today so that we may join forces to make a difference. Dartmouth alumni/ae deserve more from their elected leadership than constant bickering about politics. It is time to turn this page.

By John Mathias, at 3/15/2010 7:58 AM
The College official responsible for PR, Diana Lawrence, sent around an internal note concerned that the "with prejudice" clause would be controversial. It was never mentioned in the minutes of the meeting in which it was discussed, per John above, nor in the alumni updates issued by the Association or the College. Apparently it was deemed that because the court had notified three independent trustees of the dismissal with prejudice, that that would suffice for informing all Association members; no direct open communication was necessary. How sketchy.

Taking John at his word, that this strategy was discussed and approved by all of the executive committee, it means they ALL agreed it was OK, without a constitutional amendment, to place limits on the actions of future officers that alumni might elect. Would they have honored a vote by their predecessors that no future administration could reverse the predecessors' decisions? Would alumni ever pass a constitutional amendment enabling such a rule? One doubts it.

Time to turn the page? We study history to make wise decisions in the present. When the current administration is no longer running for re-election, then maybe this matter becomes less relevant.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/15/2010 8:57 AM
Tim,

I'm pretty much with Cheryl, in particular, and John Mathias, as to the latest portions of this thread.

Neither the 'Ins' nor the 'Outs' are blameless for what's transpired since TJ Rodgers' election. Carrying the assumption that Dartmouth Undying is 'nefarious', or escalating the intensity of division through the use of the word 'quisling', is indicative of the type of pejorative behavior I want to avoid. The prejudicial reference in Council emails regarding articles about Joe Asch's Trustee candidacy is also the kind of thing I want to avoid.

What Cheryl is saying, what I am saying, what IMO Dartmouth Undying is saying: get on with the work at hand. I've said this elsewhere, but Marge Piercy's poem, 'To Be of Use', is what continues to preoccupy my thoughts relative to Dartmouth, and to my own work, in this regard.

To paraphrase a comment from someone among the 'Ins', who has borne the recent brunt of public criticism on the Joe Asch election controversies: "If a bunch of smart Dartmouth alumni cannot curb their enthusiasm for partisan politics over a beloved institution, it doesn't give us much hope that we'll ever see a reconciliation between the red and blue state people."

As for running for AC or AoA: I don't believe in slates. Slates perpetuate the Us/Them, In/Out, partisan bifurcation. I understand why we've had them in the last two elections, but I regret the need. That said, I'd be happy to work with you. I think you raise mostly good points, are civil, and are a decent advocate.

There is only one group worthy of our support, and that is the students, and the faculty who teach them and learn from them.

PS: FWIW, I did read the NH court ruling which first allowed the suit to proceed.

By Al Henning '77, at 3/15/2010 2:09 PM
John, all you are saying is that three days AFTER you and the College counsel had negotiated and signed the joint Stipulation for dismissal with prejudice you met your legal obligations by notifying all the parties, which included the four trustees mentioned. And that the Court, seven days after that notice, followed its rules and also sent notice to all parties, including those trustees, of the judge's approval of the Stipulation. Neither you nor the Court could have failed to take these steps.

Is this offered as some kind of counter to the charge that you negotiated the "with prejudice" dismissal in secret, with no disclosure of its impact to the members of the Association you represented? And that after the Court approved the Stipulation, your notice to the alumni -- as well as the administration's -- NEVER mentioned this highly consequential aspect of your actions? In other words, you're saying that "I complied with the bare legal minimum required of notices, while leaving 67,000 alumni in the dark?" What a flimsy, slender reed that is.

And you continue to justify the "with prejudice" dismissal by great concern over what John MacGovern might do -- ignoring the far more significant question of what duly-elected future leaders of the Association of Alumni might want to do. I mean, please forget the MacGovern dark cloud that so worries you; you were expected to place your MAJOR concern with the Association whose members entrusted you to safeguard their interests. But you never mention future Association leadership, and their freedom to act to protect members from possible further actions in violation of the 100+ year agreement on alumni-elected trustees. That's because you took that freedom away. Thanks to your actions, the trustees could announce at a future meeting that there will be NO MORE alumni-elected trustees -- NONE -- and the leaders of the hamstrung Association of Alumni at that time will think back on John Mathias -- none too kindly, I suspect.

Our only hope now is to show to the trustees how much damage to the Dartmouth alumni body has been caused by their actions ending parity -- how that is affecting alumni contributions, continued alumni interest in Dartmouth and participation in the life of the College. Two years ago you promised to work to this end, but as of today you and your Executive Committee have NOTHING to show for it. We hope alumni will give another team a chance.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/15/2010 6:02 PM
Still awaiting John's position:

1. An Association independent of the Administration is a good thing for Dartmouth.
2. The benefits of dependence outweight the challenges of independence.
OR 3. Dreisbach's question is moot because there is never a legitimate difference of opinion between alumni and administrative employees that merits involvement by alumni broadly.

Of course, #3 is the superficial case when administrative employees control the resources and thereby can influence both the election of trustees (who are the ultimate bosses of those employees) and similarly manage the election of alumni leaders (who are responsible for representing those alumni).

One big happy family where Father Spalding always knows Best. Without receiving an explicit response, my presumption based upon his prior comment is that John favors Door #3.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/16/2010 2:26 PM
As somebody who helped get the Dartmouth Undying slate elected in the last elections, I must say, with great sadness, but without question, that it is indeed a nefarious organization. All of their meetings are held in secret a mile beneath Harvard Square. In the interest of full disclosure, I should say that I have been barred from all future knowledge of its machinations after having refused to swear a pledge to destroy Dartmouth; however, I am happy to openly discuss with anybody my experiences behind the Iron Curtain, and am currently working on a book deal, which will be ghost-written by Tom Clancy.

In all seriousness, I have always been happy to hear interested alumni speak with passion and debate the merits and goals of alumni governance and participation in the College. At the same time, I have always been opposed to litigation.

Regardless of how one feels about Dartmouth Undying, a group which I have always considered to be a means to an end (of the lawsuit), there is no doubt in my mind that The Hanover Institute is a largely harmful organization staffed by some rather uncivil and nasty people. The characterization of MacGovern as a man who earns his living making disparaging remarks about the College and promoting discord and strife within the alumni community through politicization and demagoguery seems to me to be unassailable. And if MacGovern makes his living that way, then so does Gado enjoy his retirement.

I am heartened to see that everybody has been able to engage with one another in a civil and constructive manner in this discussion, and encourage it; however, I think that the portrayal of Dartmouth Undying as conspiratorial and Machiavellian is better suited to The Hanover Institute, which, unlike Mr. Mathias and the other members of the current Executive Committee, has never been open to civil discourse, compromise, or negotiation, and which has pursued individual alumni with an unbelievable viciousness.

That is why I will never support a slate sponsored in any way by The Hanover Institute; in fact, I will not support a slate that does not explicitly distance itself from The Hanover Institute.

That said, best of luck to everybody in the race and, if anything, your passion for and devotion to the College should be admired regardless of your opinions.

P.S. It's odd to claim to be "betrayed" by officers for whom you did not vote. I and a majority of my peers voted for them, and we seem to be happy with the results.

By Wah, at 3/16/2010 8:16 PM
Wah: Please make a more credible comment. Provide your real name, and the names of the principals of the UnDying organization. Is that asking too much?

Would you like me to "parse" the many signature tools and debate modes (thanks A.H.) that were used in the two mailing I received from UnDying. I can take you thru them line by line if you wish.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/16/2010 8:45 PM
Dear Wah,

It's very interesting that you use humor to try to mask the indisputable lack of identity of the persons who started and run the Dartmouth Undying group (I love "their meetings...held in secret a mile beneath Harvard Square.") For three years Dartmouth Undying has had a lot to say about elections and governance at Dartmouth, without ever once revealing who they are.

I realize that they publish a list of their "supporters", but that gives no information on (1) who started this group; (2) who ran it in 2008, and (3) who runs it today. It has played a prominent role in Dartmouth discussions without ever once letting alumni know who are the organizers and directors of the group. Don't alumni have a right to know? Like you on this post, they hide behind anonymity.

The management of The Hanover Institute, by contrast, is a model of transparency. Last year John MacGovern even agreed to a lengthly interview and report in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. The Directors of The Hanover Institute are on the public record.
Alumni know far, far more about the organization and purposes of The Hanover Institite than they do Dartmouth Undying.

I have a theory why this has been kept a secret for three years. What if some of the organizers and managers of Dartmouth Undying were either active or retired administrators of Dartmouth -- that is, current or past College employees? Yes, they maight also be Dartmouth alumni, but cetainly their ties to the administration trump their membership in the alumni body. They make or made their living at the College, and these ties are quite strong.

What difference does this make? Just that Association of Alumni and alumni trustee elections are supposed to be of the alumni, by the alumni, and for the alumni. The administration HAS NO BUSINESS BECOMING INVOLVED in these matters that are exclusively reserved to the alumni.

So......Mr. Anonymous "Wah", prove me wrong. Get Dartmouth Undying to disclose the identity of the persons referenced above. Let's see them get as open as Mr. MacGovern and The Hanover Institute have been.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/16/2010 9:05 PM
I really don't care about who's behind Dartmouth Undying, so long as they are alumni. I don't understand how having worked for the College precludes an alumnus from having any voice in the alumni body -- is your perception of the College that warped? Does it always have to be 'the enemy'?

Second, I don't care about how transparent The Hanover Institute is, either. MacGovern and Gado do nothing other than throw acid and vitriol at their peers, and the former makes a good living doing it. I will never support an organization so thoroughly rude, venomous, and vile as The Hanover Institute, nor will I support any candidate who endorses it, implicitly or explicitly. A candidate who refuses to denounce MacGovern and his tactics is a candidate who has no respect for his or her fellow alumni.

By Wah, at 3/16/2010 9:21 PM
Once again, we have derogatory statements made by someone so bereft of candor and courage as to hide behind a pseudonym.

I suggest that if Mr Wah is truly of the opinion that association with a lawsuit over governance should bar one from holding an alumni office, he should withhold his vote from Mr. Keare--or has that record been expunged?

BTW, that's the same paragon of civility who refers to me as an "unwanted cancer."

And on the subject of civility, or truth, has the mud brigade who, without a shred of evidence, referred to us as bigots in mailings for which addresses could only have come from the Office of Alumni Relations (which office Mr. Wah, I infer, knows very well) ever been reprimanded?

What's next on your agenda? Exhumation of Black Dan Webster to burn his dust in retribution for having invoked the inviolability of a contract in the Dartmouth College case? Terrible man, that Webster; he took the administration to court.

Frank Gado

PS Mr Wah, do you know the meaning of "codswallop"?

By Tom Paine, at 3/16/2010 10:54 PM
Dear Mr. "Wah",

OK, OK, I get the point about your opinion of The Hanover Institute -- you want to be recorded as "leaning against." Please spare us any more vitriol about THI; John Mathias has already done a good job here and you are just repeating yourselves.

But back to Dartmouth Undying. You say you don't care who is behind it. Hmmmmm. You also say, "I don't understand how having worked for the College precludes an alumnus from having any voice in the alumni body..."

Surely you know we are way, way beyond the simple issue of "having any voice in the alumni body." We are not talking about having an opinion, or a voice -- we are talking about an organization that has raised a lot of money and labored mightily to influence the outcomes of ALUMNI elections, and ALWAYS on behalf of administration-favored candidates.

If the heavy hand of Dartmouth administrators -- past or present -- IS involved in Dartmouth Undying, then I certainly care about it. So will thousands of alumni, I am sure, who have been under the impression that these elections are strictly among alumni, as alumni, and that they have been fair contests. You refuse to deal with this question by saying "I don't care."

Well, I can only hope that you always find everything the College administration does with regard to alumni meets your approval. For if you ever find an issue where you think the alumni need better representation, and you seek to do something about it (through the process established long, long ago to enable that -- petition candidates) you might find you are "fighting City Hall." But don't start looking around at that point to find out "how did this happen?" The answer will be that too many alumni, like you, just "didn't care."

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/16/2010 10:55 PM
I simply don't think that the College should have my interests in mind at all. I graduated, after all. I'm no longer a Dartmouth student. I'm not the parent of a Dartmouth student. I'm not a faculty member at Dartmouth. I'm not in any way a Dartmouth employee. The only connection that I have to Dartmouth is in my fond memories and on the degree that I was awarded after four years there. That said, those two things are more than enough for me to continue to have great affection for the place and to want to support it; but, to answer your question, no, no, no, I do not feel that the College owes me anything as a private citizen who has since happily parted ways.

It's confounding, really. The way you talk about it, you'd think that Dartmouth existed to please you, represent you, or have your interests in mind. It's a liberal arts college, neither a private club, nor a public government, nor a retirement home. Dartmouth has always benefited from a great deal of alumni support, but in order for the support to be helpful, it can't come with strings attached.

Some alumni will always feel that they know what's best for the College, though based on what qualifications, I haven't a clue. They will in turn feel insulted and offended when the College doesn't actively seek out their wisdom on every matter pertaining to its continued existence. Does it bother me? No -- I can't say that I've ever found myself fit to run a college. There are two things that I do know: (1) that financial support, of which The Hanover Institute provides none (in fact, it subtracts from it), will always help the College; and that (2) the alumni, in the past decade, have proved to be entirely unworthy of the privilege that the College accorded to them in 1891, electing boneheaded petition candidate after petition candidate (relying on high rates of abstention, of course -- which the last elections proved) to embarrass nationally and within academic circles the College that I love with their thoughtless remarks and public criticism of the institution that they were chosen to support.

My contempt for The Hanover Institute arises not only from its participation in litigation against the College, its diverting of financial support away from the College, and racket-like qualities; it is also because the faces of The Hanover Institute, MacGovern and Gado, have time and again made personal attacks against Dartmouth alumni and people working within the Dartmouth administration.

Mr. Gado, I ardently believe that civil discourse is necessary in such a passionate debate -- nevertheless, I have nothing against calling a spade a spade. I do not feel that it is "derogatory" to state the obvious about your despicable behavior over the past few years. If Mr. Keare said that about you, then I can do little but admire his honesty and insight. I find it audacious of you, you who have made a reputation out of maligning those with whom you disagree, to make any credible attempt at an appeal to civility -- especially as little more than a punctuation mark in a macabre tale about digging up the bones of poor Daniel Webster. I would leave such figurative critique to your pseudonym, Thomas Paine, who had more talent and success with it.

Do you know what "trolling" means? Look it up online -- it's common parlance in the Internet community, used primarily to describe the activity in which you principally engage.

By Wah, at 3/16/2010 11:51 PM
Thank You Mr. Anonymous Wah.

You have made the point. The College does not have alumni interests in mind... that is not its role. But leaders of the Association of Alumni should have alumni interests in mind, being the role of alumni in selecting trustees. And because these are not the interests of the College, its Administrators should not be able to control Association affairs, including the means by which AoA officials communicate with alumni.

I do not know what is best for the College. But neither do the small number of appointees who sit on the Alumni Council's trustee nominating committee. What is best is that all alumni have an equal voice in selecting trustees, and that there be a level field in how such trustees are elected, without the administration's significant resources having influence.

You speak of civility, yet make personal accusations that four trustees of the institution you love are "boneheaded". If you feel your correctness justifies the attack, you are guilty of doing exactly what you criticize in others. In a word, hypocrisy.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 7:24 AM
Wah wrote:
" the alumni, in the past decade, have proved to be entirely unworthy of the privilege that the College accorded to them in 1891, electing boneheaded petition candidate after petition candidate"

Let's be honest, shall we. Wah is not alone in his opinion... this was the real thinking behind all the Board reform action, not just "expansion".

Where would the College be without having had those petition candidates and their awareness-raising? It is better for having them, despite all the discomfort. The divisiveness, and indeed the expenses of the lawsuit, are not caused by petition trustees, but by the attempts to constrain them.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 8:54 AM
"The alumni are unworthy".

That statement says a lot!! Think about who have fought for alumni, and who have not, because their admirable loyalty to Dartmouth blinds their sight and reason.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 9:02 AM
Do I have this right? Candidate Kondrake introduces and praises a website that exists solely as a negative campaign vehicle against another candidate he opposes. After negative publicity, it is taken down.

The D reports the person behind the site is one Chris Allen '07. MEanwhile, Rick Allen '77, member of the Council's nominating committee, is also a P'07. Wonder of wonders. Might the son of a nominator be involved in highly-negative campaigning against the opponent of his father's preference?

It appears civility and transparency are both missing here.

Makes one think about Mr. Murphy's comment and wonder what overlap exists across the nominators and the UnDying.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 11:03 AM
Dear Anonymous "Wah",

My replies to your posts have principally concerned the secret provenance of Dartmouth Undying, and the fact that its still clandestine origins may hide the fact that it was founded and still may be run by current or past administration employees. If so, the claim of strict administration neutrality in Association and alumni trustee elections is exposed as a sham. You obviously don't want to talk about the subject -- even though there might be a very large administration thumb on the scales of fairness, you "don't care."

OK, this ends that discussion, but with our suspicions only elevated. Before quitting this string, however, I want to say a few words about the sideshow you attempt to generate -- viz., an extreme attack on The Hanover Institute.

As far as I know, the Hanover Institute had nothing to do with the infamous board-packing plan of the Dartmouth trustees which sundered the 117-year-old 1891 Agreement. That act by Dartmouth's Board was one of the most destructive acts to occur at Dartmouth in this generation. It has bitterly divided the alumni body. The 1891 Agreement has been good for Dartmouth and good for alumni. The Hanover Institute is seeking to preserve it.

Second, as far as I know, the Hanover Institute had nothing to do with undermining the nearly successful fight to restore parity. That was done by the current incumbent Association Executive Committee, a group now seeking re-election to a third term.

The Hanover Institute had nothing to do with the effort in 1990 by a small group to end the 117-year-old right of alumni to vote on the second term of alumni trustees. The Hanover Institute tried to reverse that reduction in alumni rights.

The Hanover Institute had nothing to do with requiring alumni to travel to Hanover in order to vote for Association officers. The Hanover Institute FOUGHT SUCCESSFULLY to reverse that, and now ALL Dartmouth alumni may vote for their Association officers by written ballot or electronically.

The list goes on and on. What is clear is that the actions harmful to Dartmouth and her alumni are mostly done by establishment trustees and Association officers more loyal to the administration than to their constituents, and that all these actions are opposed by the Hanover Institute.

Has the Hanover Institute made mistakes? I am sure it has, so have we all. But nothing can compare to the destructive actions reported above. Those who seek to compare the two suffer, as William F. Buckley, Jr. once said, "from a severe dislocation of perspective".

To end, once again, with my initial point: John Mathias and his slate are on the ballot, the Hanover Institute is not. Mathias' record, his accomplishments (or lack of them) are what is at issue in this election. I know you would prefer to change the subject, because it is difficult to defend his failure to deliver on a key 2008 campaign promise. But trying to change the subject by setyting up a straw man won't work with Dartmouth alumni.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/17/2010 11:15 AM
To all concerned and hopefully voting alumni:

I will never forgot a few words from one of President John Kemeny's convocation addresses during my undergraduate years when he said: "Men and Women of Dartmouth......You ARE your brothers' keeper". These words ring in my head frequently as I walk through life and they rang again this morning as I read Mr. Wah's comments showing no ethical responsiblity for the rights of others.

His missives also brought to mind a profound parable that I will also never forget during my lifetime:

When the Nazis came to take away the gypsies, no one said anything. When they came to take away the physically and mentally disabled, no one said anything. When they took away the political dissidents, no one said anything. When they took away the gays, no one said anything. When they took away the Jews, no one said anything. And when they came to take me away, there was no one left to say anything.

Dartmouth UNITED is trying to present alumni with information about how the Office of Alumni Relations controls their email and postal addresses and who has access to them. Dartmouth UNITED asked for equitable access to these lists in the hope of participating in a fair election, but has been denied all requests.

The manner in which the Office of Alumni Relations carefully controls the dissemination of information to alumni both through content and access to recipients' addresses is one small example of why President Kim might consider an Ethics course requirement in the curriculum.

By JIm Guth '77, at 3/17/2010 12:23 PM
Mr. Guth, you've violated Godwin's law. Talk of the Holocaust is not only inappropriate in this discussion, it's offensive -- and the comparison is shameful.

Dreisbach and Murphy: "good for alumni," "bad for alumni," "harmful for alumni," "serve the alumni," "interests of the alumni" -- none of these terms make any sense to me in a discussion of the governance of the College. Alumni "interests," whatever those may be -- and no one has yet to define them, if they ever could be -- are absolutely irrelevant. All that matters is that Dartmouth should continue to be one of the finest liberal arts colleges in the world. That is the only thing that should matter to those of us who have long since graduated.

If you want to argue that the College is best served by an active alumni community and by the active participation of alumni in College affairs, then that's fine. I don't think that anybody would disagree with that. But your rhetoric belies a certain sense of right and privilege that pertains only to alumni and not at all to the College; in fact, you are unable to speak of the two without marking a clear distinction and opposition. Your language suggests that whatever the College wants, the alumni could not possibly want; whatever the alumni want, the College could not possibly want. This hardly surprises me, considering the years-long campaign by The Hanover Institute to construct a specious dichotomy between the two. The result is that some confused alumni now believe that Dartmouth is an Athenian democracy in which they alone are citizens (students, faculty, parents, and employees, then, must be domestic chattel) -- to the extent the words like "tyranny," "Hitler," "Nazis," "freedom," and worse are bandied about with the utmost irresponsibility!

This largely misinformed, highly inflammatory, and unquestionably divisive rhetoric comes only from one camp, and always has: The Hanover Institute, with MacGovern and Gado at the forefront, and its supporters. (During the last election, Gado frequently, and with apparent glee, compared former president James Wright to Hitler.) The worst part of it is that some of it is clearly spoken in bad faith, though I don't mean to question your good intentions (even if I disagree with you). Look at the disgraceful former petition-elected trustee Todd Zywicki: the man used his position on the Board, a position entrusted to him by the alumni, a position of charity and service, as a platform for his radical, conservative views about higher education, making no attempt to hide his contempt for Dartmouth, which he gladly and vocally condemned in public, a champion of his own personal ideology. The other petition-elected trustees have been almost as irresponsible in their actions and rhetoric. That is why they are boneheaded, which I feel is a generous remark; in truth, I would go so far as to question their ethics.

In the past decade, alumni petitions to govern Dartmouth have clearly not been a source of positive support. The College has dropped in its national ranking, has lost financial support, and has become a lightning rod for national politics. I support alumni governance not as a "right" but as a practicality. It's absurd to talk about rights within the context of a private non-profit institution and its former beneficiaries. If the election process can be fixed to the extent that outside interests and organized minorities can no longer hijack Dartmouth by means of it (as happened in the case of Zywicki), then I would gladly see it restored. I don't see that happening anytime soon, however; our own community has been infected with the same disease that eats away at national politics.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 1:08 PM
Mr. Wah:

What is shameful is your cowardice in not stating your name and being responsible for YOUR rhetoric.

I was fully aware of my use of the policially incorrect,in your anonymous opinion, reference to the Holocaust, but was disapointed that you completely missed the point. If some person or group doesn't stand up for others' rights as they are diminished, they will certainly be taken and disappear. That's the point and hopefully other readers will get it clearly. Please note that no one in my post was called a name, something you feel is completely appropriate and honorable.

Oh, yes, once again, what is yours?

By JIm Guth '77, at 3/17/2010 2:05 PM
Mr. Wah:

What is shameful is your cowardice in not stating your name and being responsible for YOUR rhetoric.

I was fully aware of my use of the policially incorrect,in your anonymous opinion, reference to the Holocaust, but was disapointed that you completely missed the point. If some person or group doesn't stand up for others' rights as they are diminished, they will certainly be taken and disappear. That's the point and hopefully other readers will get it clearly. Please note that no one in my post was called a name, something you feel is completely appropriate and honorable.

Oh, yes, once again, what is yours?

By JIm Guth '77, at 3/17/2010 2:06 PM
Your reference to the Holocaust is not simply "politically incorrect" (a term most often used to decry the victimization of bigots), it is absurd. Niemöller, to whom the aphorism is attributed, was imprisoned for years in Dachau. He was speaking about the mass imprisonment and extermination of people -- something just a wee bit larger than Dartmouth's minor political indigestion. Are you seriously trying to claim that you weren't attempting to portray those with whom you disagree as murderous Nazis? If so, I would suggest using a different metaphor than the Holocaust. At this point, it seems that you're a graduate of the Frank Gado School of the Rhetoric of Nonsensical Comparisons to the Second World War, a subsidiary of The Hanover Institute. Donations are accepted.

I came here to share my $0.02; those who read my words can judge them on their merit alone, separate from my personality. If you, Dreisbach, and Gado consider anonymous writing to be "cowardly," "dishonorable," and "without candor," then you must be ignorant of the long tradition of anonymity in polemics, politics, and the academy. Perhaps Mr. Gado, who appears to be a fan of Thomas Paine, forgets that the revolutionary signed his pamphlet, Common Sense, "an Englishman." If he had been a contemporary of Paine's, he would no doubt have written to the Philadelphia newspapers to complain about this anonymous coward's lack of candor.

Of course, it would be difficult to place that within the mythology and fabulations of the organized opponents of the College, who never miss an opportunity to portray themselves as haplessly persecuted revolutionaries.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 2:38 PM
From Wikipedia:

Godwin's Law itself can be abused, as a distraction, diversion or even censorship, that fallaciously miscasts an opponent's argument as hyperbole, especially if the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. A 2005 Reason magazine article argued that Godwin's Law is often misused to ridicule even valid comparisons. Others argue that the law is entirely self-serving bludgeon and that those who invoke Godwin's law would more plainly state their position as "The longer it takes for you to submit and conform to my line of reasoning, the more incessantly I will imply to the rest of the audience that your continued resistance is a crime against humanity that is worse than Hitler."[7]

By JIm Guth '77, at 3/17/2010 2:55 PM
I leave it to the perspicacious sons and daughters of Dartmouth to judge whether or not your comparison of the current disagreements about alumni participation in College affairs to the crimes of the Holocaust is hyperbole -- and shameful hyperbole, at that. Were we talking about matters of life and death, about the fate of civil society, or about actual questions of civil liberty, my invocation of Godwin's law might be "fallacious"; since we're not, since we're talking rather about the intestinal politics of a liberal arts college, I think that it's quite appropriate.

This concludes my small intervention in these matters. As for the ghosts of Daniel Webster and Adolf Hitler, may they haunt grounds more suited to their legacies -- and never meet again.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 3:19 PM
Mr. Anonymous Wah: If you think sitting on a Board of Directors or Trustees is an act of charity and service (your words above), you know nothing about organizational governance. Even with non-profit charities, Board membership entails responsibilities for oversight and accountability.

My guess is that, given your confusion on this, you also confuse the roles of the Alumni Council and the Association of Alumni, as I noted previously for Mr. Mathias.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 3:47 PM
Apparently Mr. Anonymous Wah has been driven away. Or he is afraid of further probing questions as to the hidden principals behind Dartmouth UnDying and their negative tactics.

Hint: Norwich Vt is the bedroom of Hanover NH. It is home to both involved alums and administrators.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 3:56 PM
It doesn't take a genius to understand that oversight and accountability are included in the vast term 'service'.

I have not been driven away; I have simply said what I desired to say. I'm not interested in continuing to entertain your paranoid fantasies about conspiracies and Machiavellian scheming.

Even if it were to be revealed, tomorrow, that Dartmouth Undying was headed by members of the Alumni Council or by employees in the administration, these nefarious and shadowy blackguards, I could do little more than commend the College for taking an active role in its self-preservation. Smith, Zywicki, Rodgers, and Robinson have done nothing but bring strife and division to the College, either through litigation or divisive rhetoric (including public contempt).

Mr. Dreisbach, you have a tendency to make a charitable presumption of ignorance with regard to all of your interlocutors, and generously seek to educate them to the errors of their ways. Although I can hardly blame you for the passion with which bravely edify your apparently bumbling and misinformed peers, I would advise you, very humbly, that some might misconstrue, no doubt maliciously, your enthusiastic good intentions as arrogance. Your enemies are everywhere!

Lastly, since your participation in College affairs has provided you with considerable fame and placed you under a public spotlight, I suggest that you trademark "...get your facts straight...!" as your catch-phrase -- so as to dissuade those who will doubtlessly seek to capitalize on lowly imitations of your genius.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 4:17 PM
Mr. Anonymous Wah wrote: "I would advise you, very humbly, that some might misconstrue, no doubt maliciously, your enthusiastic good intentions". Apparently some already have. Thanks for the advice.

As to "I suggest that you trademark '...get your facts straight...' ", I'll pass. I would prefer that that be the approach of more people here.

Can we go back to the issues alumni voters should concern themselves with... leaders who represent their constituents, independence from external influences who control critical communication resources, transparency in dealings, and so on. That is what the Association officer elections are supposed to be about.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/17/2010 5:33 PM
Mr. Murphy, on your slate's web site, you claim that you did not "promote" either lawsuit against the College. In your remarks above, however, you criticize the incumbents for dismissing the lawsuit.

Do you consider the previous election, in which the incumbents were elected by a sizable majority with remarkably high voter turnout, to have been a referendum on litigation?

As a candidate, will you pledge that the "vigorous negotiations" you mention on your web site will not involve litigation?

How do you imagine working with the administration, which ultimately has a final say, outside of litigation, on the matter of parity?

I ask, because, although I can understand the administration's position, I do consider parity to be an important tradition and part of what made Dartmouth unique. I do not think that it should be restored, however, until there is significant election and campaign regulation reform. That said, I would like to see both of those things happen. Would you commit yourself to reforms that would eliminate the influence of money in alumni elections and establish a neutral, independent election commission that would ensure fairness and a level playing field in elections?

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 7:39 PM
TO MR. "WAH"

PART ONE

Couldn't stay away, eh? Actually, in one way it's good to have you back. While we have some profound differences of opinion, you write with a high level of intelligence, although I wish you wouldn't condone one member of our opponent's slate calling some other alumni a "cancer." That's indefensible.

Anyway, to improve clarity, permit me to repeat your questions here.

1. Q: Mr. Murphy, on your slate's web site, you claim that you did not "promote" either lawsuit against the College. In your remarks above, however, you criticize the incumbents for dismissing the lawsuit.

1. A: Correct about no one on our slate "promoting" either lawsuit. However, you miss the whole point about my criticism of the incumbents and the dismissal of the Association suit. I have always recognized that since they campaigned quite emphatically to "end the lawsuit" that they had every right to do so when they were elected.

What I criticized was THE WAY that Mr. Mathias ended the lawsuit. The normal way would have been to file a voluntary dismissal without prejudice. There was no danger of another Association lawsuit at that time because Mr. Mathias and his slate were in control of the Association. That continued into a second term in office and now they seek to go into a third term. And even if they lose this election, no one on our slate is promising another Association lawsuit.

The consequences of Mr. Mathias' dismissal "with prejudice" were unexpected to alumni, and did something NEVER mentioned during his 2008 campaign. The details are explained in a series of posts on this blog between John Mathias and myself, but basically John reached out into the future -- 2, 5 even 10 years from now -- and effectively removed from future Association of Alumni leadership the ability to seek redress should there be further trustee depravations against the alumni right to elect trustees. He and his slate had never mentioned they would do this; it was done with lightning speed (10 days from the date of the election) and when both Mr. Mathias and the administration announced the dismissal of the lawsuit, they never disclosed that it was with prejudice and what that meant. THAT, and only that, was the source of my criticism.

2. Q. Do you consider the previous election, in which the incumbents were elected by a sizable majority with remarkably high voter turnout, to have been a referendum on litigation?

2. A. Of course it was. How could it not have been -- THIS WAS THE ONLY ISSUE ON WHICH THE MATHIAS SLATE CAMPAIGNED. We tried to discuss the issue of parity (our name, remember, was the "Dartmouth Parity" slate.) However, there was no discussion of parity and the consequences of the trustees' September 2007 actions because the other side refused to talk about these -- it was always the lawsuit, the lawsuit, nothing but the lawsuit.

3. Q. As a candidate, will you pledge that the "vigorous negotiations" you mention on your web site will not involve litigation?

3. A. With regard to the trustees' 9/2007 action to reduce the alumni-elected Board members from 1/2 to 1/3, yes.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/17/2010 9:54 PM
PART TWO

4. Q. How do you imagine working with the administration, which ultimately has a final say, outside of litigation, on the matter of parity?

4. A. First, I assume you misspoke, and mean "the trustees" having the final say, vice "the administration." (If not, I'm sure there will be some shocked trustees out there.)

We don't want to give away any secrets because we fear the Mathias slate would steal them and use them in their own campaign. However, at least three things can be said with confidence at this time:

A. When the trustees executed the plan initiated by Chairman Neukom to reduce alumni-elected trustees from 1/2 to 1/3 of the Board, they could not, of course, know what effects this would have on Dartmouth's alumni body. We have described these as "pernicious", and I think that is a fair word. Some of these are described on our web site, www.dartmouthunited.com.

We've all had the experience in life of taking an action but then seeing that it works out poorly, or with a higher cost that expected. To use just one metric, the percentage of Dartmouth alumni who give to the annual fund continues to fall (I am not referring to the declining level of contributions, which in these economically tough time might be expected; I'm referencing a measure where Dartmouth used to lead the country -- % of alumni contributing.)

B. Another is the effect of the recent Board expansion and some turnover. We have pointed out that in June, at the first trustee meeting after the elections, there will be 10 men and women around the trustee table who had no part in the 9/2007 action to kill parity. They will be able to evaluate the effects of the parity action without any particular defensiveness, because they had nothing to do with it.

Finally, another cause for optimism is the statements by ALL three candidates for trustee in this election -- you can see these at "Trustee Candidate Statements on Parity" on the "Dartmouth Media" page on our web site -- www.dartmouthunited.com No one is running against parity, and some are explicitly for it.

5. Q. Would you commit yourself to reforms that would eliminate the influence of money in alumni elections and establish a neutral, independent election commission that would ensure fairness and a level playing field in elections?

5. A. I don't know. This is a good question, however. My initial apprehension is that any such election commission would NOT be "neutral" and "independent." It might just reflect further administration encroachment into what is supposed to be exclusively alumni business. If the Association of Alumni could be restored to the independence that it once enjoyed, something like this could be possible. However, I do believe that the first move in efforts designed to reconcile our alumni from the havoc of the last several years should come from the trustees, via the restoration of the 117-year agreement to elect half the Board. That would put significant pressure on those alumni on our side of the issues (almost ten thousand in the 2008 election) to work diligently on remaining sources of significant problems. I would certainly do so.

By J. Michael Murphy '61, at 3/17/2010 9:57 PM
Mr. Murphy, I thank you for your polite and thoughtful responses to my questions. It is much appreciated. I'll take some time to think about it.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 10:16 PM
Wah surely has Dartmouth Undying cringing. They would slap him down if they knew who he was.

By DartBored, at 3/17/2010 10:52 PM
I only represent myself. I don't feel any particular allegiance to either slate, only to the future of the College. I remain anonymous for the very reason that I know people who feel strongly about both camps, and would rather be able to express my thoughts freely, and only as my own, without offending any of them. I have respect and sympathy for both sides of the debate.

By Wah, at 3/17/2010 11:14 PM
Wah: I agree with your last comment. Although I voted for Asch and Murphy, as well as every petition candidate except Zywicki and consider the Dartmouth Undying side the more extreme and divisive one now, I do think we need to find some middle ground. I oppose lawsuits. The Hanover Institute seems to be a lightning rod for Undying attacks. All of us in the middle are being ignored, but there are many reasonable alumni who are not ready to chose between blind loyalty and giving up and going away. Maybe Jim Kim will influence the Office of Alumni Relations to alter its current strategy.

By DartBored, at 3/18/2010 8:50 AM
The middle is ignored, because both sides have been painted as extremes. In fact, they only disagree about a few matters of substance and a few questions of method. I don't think that John Mathias is some kind of administration-sponsored Manchurian candidate who endorses blind loyalty to the College. I don't think that J. Michael Murphy wants to turn the College over to the thought experiments of right-wing think-tanks and critics of academia like David Horowitz. Unfortunately, the political environment into which "alumni politics" has developed has obliged both sides to cast one another in the most evil of terms.

As one who has observed this for some time, I feel that I can say with some sense of certainty that it was The Hanover Institute and its supporters that first introduced "the discourse of national politics," to use a catch-all phrase, into alumni elections. It employed highly political rhetoric, demonized the administration and the Board of Trustees, and managed, very effectively, to get people elected. It took a lot of people at the College by surprise. And, if The Hanover Institute were truly only interested in the preservation of traditions of alumni participation, I think that a lot of people at the College would have celebrated it.

I think that there are two major tactical and strategic concerns that make people feel uncomfortable about The Hanover Institute and those who are supported by it or who support it:

1. Its tactics of dirty politics, and not its overall strategy of achieving greater alumni representation. I think that this is something that was first very effective for the organization, but which has now come back to haunt it, as people are unwilling to support a group whose ends they share if they can't abide the means. I think that most Dartmouth alumni thoroughly and justifiably loathe the political rhetoric that has been introduced into what should be a polite choice between peers.

2. Its strategy, insofar as it is seen as supporting and being supported by people who have a vested personal political interest in "transforming academia" into something that a conservative would find more palpable. Its connections to the Dartmouth Review, the National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and a number of conservative blogs and think-tanks make a lot of people feel uncomfortable who are strongly opposed to introducing any kind of explicitly ideological element into the governance of the College. I would have similar concerns if, in an alternative universe, it was supported by the Socialist Workers' Party.

That's it, really. A lot of dancing is made around technicalities of the administration and governance of the College, but what's really informing a lot of voters' choices is politics, plain and simple. For instance, Mr. Murphy's explanations above are very helpful, very thoughtful, and deserve some serious consideration. But the fact remains, for me, that he supports that very organization that I feel has diverted attention away from matters about Dartmouth and towards matters about the future and the purpose of liberal arts education as a national political question. We have The Hanover Institute to thank for making Dartmouth alumni elections about politics rather than about Dartmouth.

This post isn't meant to engage with either slate on a substantive level; it's merely meant as a response to DartBored, as an attempt as some kind of description of the beast that has become "alumni politics," a vile expression whose existence is as lamentable as it is offensive.

By Wah, at 3/18/2010 12:19 PM
Wah/DartBored: Perhaps some common ground. You guys (gals?) know I have been speaking ad nauseum about getting the AoA to be more independent. That means from both the Administration AND the HI.

As noted previously, I and others accepted support from the HI because it was helpful... getting petitions signed initially, later getting resource support after being denied by the College (we even asked for help getting legal advice BEFORE we decided on a lawsuit as a last recourse). How much more credible would our AoA administration have been if we had been able to conduct our business without such a dependency.

You may be interested to know that I have discussed some of the details of a more independent Association with both John MacGovern and David Spalding. For example (if we do not want dues), a small endowment could fund a part-time administrator to maintain a member mailing list, a web site, and perhaps 2-3 informational mailings a year. More $ could cover the costs the College currently provides to administer AoA and trsutee elections. Interestingly, John expressed support to such an initiative. DAvid was resistant and not supportive at all... almost like the College wants the AoA to remain dependent. These direct interactions reinforced my belief that the Office of Alumni Relations views its job as managing alumni more than interacting with them in a true partnership.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/18/2010 3:09 PM
Mr. Dreisbach, I would be thrilled to support any project that would make these elections free of interest groups and independent fundraising. It saddens me that something so simple, and yet so important, as the governance of the College has been infected by the same kind of rhetoric that defines the constipation and stupidity of national politics.

I certainly understand why you accepted The Hanover Institute's support, and believe you when you say that you did as a means to an end, not as an end in itself. I simply think that it was very politically damaging for you to do so -- in essence, you got your hands dirty.

In the future, I would like to see elections without campaigning, without money, without lobbying, without all of the influences of politics: a pipe dream, perhaps. Give each candidate 1,000 words, put it all on a web site (and mail it out), disallow "endorsements," and let people pick the platform that, in their opinion, best suits the future of the College. All of this politicking should be immediate grounds for disqualification.

By Wah, at 3/18/2010 4:25 PM
Wah: We have traded some barbs, but we are very close on this. You are right that HI support was politically-damaging, yet it was a corner into which we were forced. People may not believe it, but the actions of my fellow EC members really were done with a sincere belief they were in the long-term best interests of Dartmouth, including even the lawsuit and its preliminary injunction for not seating new trustees.

I hate all the need for third-party resources, the dependency, and the negative focus on people rather than on issues. And it escalates... when one side goes negative, being deceptive, etc., then unlike what Al Henning suggests, it really requires that the other respond with what it believes is more truthful. How to solve?

Yet having said the above, I do not want to eliminate "campaigning" as I still believe in multi-candidate elections (i.e. real choice) and that necessitates allowing the voters to gain information about the candidates. Open debate about real issues is healthy and to be encouraged, not feared no matter how uncomfortable the topics may make some.

If we can have election reform that gets rid of the many problems we both decry, hurrah. However, I worry greatly that attempts to eliminate the problems will in fact lead to restrictions that make the playing field more uneven rather than fair.

You yourself are one of the first to honestly state that the governance reform (AGTF, board expansion, etc.) is to eliminate candidates you felt were unqualified. Those types of restrictions frighten me, as others have different opinions as to who is most qualified. Opposed to your view, what of those who believe that petition trustees identified real problems that other trustees were ignoring?

Is it not better to have less-restriction and trust the voters to decide? If you want, I can bore you with a proposal I made two years ago, somewhat like what you propose above, but even to the point of eliminating the distinctions between Council-nominated and petition-nominated candidates. Others in the pro-petition camp had some reservations, and most in the Council camp absolutely hated it.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/18/2010 4:55 PM
I am not opposed to candidates engaging in debates with one another, or in being able to offer their views about issues. I simply think that the process needs to be formalized and highly regulated. When I say that I am opposed to "campaigning," I mean that I am opposed to mass-mailings, to "endorsements," and to third-party support for any candidate.

Regarding the reforms to the Board and to governance, I'm simply stating my own opinion on the matter, and I'm sure that it doesn't reflect that of the Board's or that of the Alumni Council. In the 2000s, four petition candidates with obvious political bones to pick were elected to the board by an organized minority supported by an organized political interest group, The Hanover Institute -- much to the glee of all of the nation's leading conservative pundits. Tim, I know that you feel that these candidates addressed issues that you felt were being ignored -- namely, alumni participation -- but, with all due respect, I view that as naive. They were pandering. Their statements, their associations, and their supporters in the national political landscape show that they are more interested in "education reform" as a national cultural and political issue than they are about "election reform" as a Dartmouth issue. The administration and the Board of Trustees rightly identified this as a threat to the future of the College -- which must not be treated like a thought experiment by any national political interests -- and went ballistic.

There are two parties at fault here: first, the administration for neglecting the concerns of alumni; second, The Hanover Institute and its supporters for exploiting these concerns and this neglect in order to advance their private political causes. I am willing to entertain the thought that even The Hanover Institute was being played like a fiddle by pundits in the conservative establishment.

So, as you can see, I have sympathy for you and for the administration. I have never questioned your sincerity, even if I teased you above for your tone (which I now apologize for), and I admire your passion. There's a reason why, in 2008, the election was made into a circus and was absolutely swarmed by political locusts from as far off as the Wall Street Journal: Dartmouth's long tradition of open and honest alumni participation was being exploited by outside interests. As a result, we're all in this mess together -- and we need to get out of it together. I think that all of us sincerely want that tradition to return. Before it can, however, reforms must be enacted, so that such exploitation can never again occur. I wish that we could all stop fighting each other and identify the real enemy, which is outside political influence on academia, conservative or liberal. The College recognized this, and it overreacted; the unity slate recognized this, and was elected; now it's time for you to recognize this, so that we can work together to restore parity in such a manner that it will not be abused by outside political interests.

At this point, I'm dissatisfied with all candidates, because they're too focused on the 1891 issue to realize that the actual issue resides in this question of procedural exploitation. The lofty political rhetoric spoken by both sides has confused the issue; one calls it a matter of "rights," the other calls it a matter of "loyalty" -- it's neither, it's a matter of who gets to control the College.

What was your proposal?

By Wah, at 3/18/2010 5:35 PM
Wah: My response in 2 posts.

Since you ask, my governance thoughts from back when I was on the AoA EC and its ballot committee, and my specific proposal:

1. Have a small association endowment so there is no financial dependency on anyone, and an administrator (part-time) who reports to the elected AoA officers without being an employee of the alumni relations office. MacGovern supports this, even with the understanding that people might donate to their Association instead of the HI.

2. Have the College support an initial round of communications by the AoA to alumni to move in the direction of #1. Former Pres. Hutchinson and Secty Spalding were opposed to moving in this direction. One of David’s objections is that he does not want alumni making donations to their Association, as these dollars would not be under administration control. He fought our efforts to set up a separate treasury, even though he was also the alumni’s treasurer. He actually returned checks to alumni donors.

3. On elections, expand the Vox website so all candidate messages are on the same site, but with images and content under the control of the candidates themselves, so the administration cannot limit speech or restrict messages it does not like. This suggestion went nowhere with the ballot committee 2 years ago (on which Secty Spalding sat) or with David wearing his VP OAR hat.

4. Send out a single hard mailing and give each trustee candidate and each AOA slate a fixed number of sheets they could include, but with no vetting of the content. Say 2 pieces of paper each. As the OAR has all the money to administer elections, this was a decision not only for the Ballot committee but also for David wearing his OAR hat. It did not happen two years ago. This election cycle, Asch has made a similar proposal, subsequently rejected by the other candidates.

5. Most importantly, depoliticize the Council by eliminating the current nomination process delegated to it from the Association. (Some say the Council is not political today... well yes, and that is why their nominees never really give alumni meaningfully-differing choices.) My specific proposal: Make all candidates become candidates by a very simple petition process and treat them all exactly the same. Some petitioners do not like this because no one can become a candidate in response to someone else. The objection I hear from others is that many good candidates need to be found and approached by a nominating committee; they do not otherwise step forward to run. Well, the Council could still have a committee pick a candidate!!! and then just have councilors and friends sign a petition and enter it into the process. The Hanover Institute could have its different nominating committee decide who it thought ideal, and then get them petitioned. So could any group. This addresses the question about getting people to step forward. I reject the idea of having a single nominating committee to filter out bad candidates… I trust alumni to do that!! Non-serious candidates are eliminated by virtue of the signature limit. No one candidate would get any special differentiator or treatment. Additionally any individual candidate could initiate their own petition effort without a prior nominating organization (as I know Joe Asch did, though he eventually was supported by others).

I once wrote a formal amendment to the AoA constitution to achieve #5 above. It encompassed adding a mere 3 words to the then-current text, and DELETING 350 words. Simpler, and better. This has never gotten any traction; I believe those who object the most fear losing the power, control, or influence they have today.

I am sorry if the above rambles a bit. It is late. I hope you, and others, get the essence of the ideas.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/18/2010 11:48 PM
Post #2 to Wah:

We do have some difference of opinion regarding the petition trustees. They were not addressing concerns over alumni participation when they first were elected. Rather it was free speech (Rogers), then athletics (Robinson/Zywicki), then bureaucarcy and waste (Smith). Interestingly, after the issues were raised, changes were made to the speech codes and the athletic/admissions office interactions. And now President Kim is leading the charge to finally address what McKinsey and company pointed out was a poor organizational structure years ago. It was unpopular to raise these issues (and yes, the independent trustees did find a need to be vocal in ways many found objectionable) and so began the concerted efforts to have no more petitioners gain the Board. Only after that did the focus of the petition trustees move on to defending alumni participation. My knowledge of all the above comes from living adjacent to campus, direct involvement, and personal interaction with key people from across the spectrum.

A quick aside on one petitioner, Todd Zywicki, reviled for his Pope speech. I recall a discussion he and I once had in which he expressed frustration that the Board had no committee structures to focus on the most fundamental matters of the College... academics and student life... Apparently his suggestion they should spend more time on these topics as a matter of standard practice through standing committees was dismissed as micro-management. At the time the only standing committees were for finance, physical plant, and governance/succession planning. Low and behold 2 years later in the governance reform, the two committees we spoke of were added, along with the one dealing with alumni. It is a shame these positive actions were lost because of the cloud of the parity dispute.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/18/2010 11:50 PM
Wah: Last evening I did not respond to your concerns that the Dartmouth petition movement is a politically-driven attempt by conservatives to take over higher education on a national basis. I will not deny that some concerns about Dartmouth relate to the national level. One of my colleagues on the prior AoA EC lamented that new hires into his law firm lacked basic writing and logical thinking skills, even though their degrees were from top law schools. Former trustee candidate John Wolf (not a petition candidate), with considerable international background, lamented how U.S. universities were in danger of falling behind those in Europe and Asia.

However, there is no master right-wing conspiracy. You will find Frank Gado’s views on the classical-liberal academy, with an emphasis on humanities, diverge greatly from one petition trustee who believes curriculum should be set based upon the free market of what current students value. Opinions are all over the map, among petitioners as across all alumni.

You and others should explore the Daniel Webster Project for an interesting look at a suggested core curriculum for Dartmouth, by no means one dominated by dead white male European authors.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/19/2010 8:20 AM
Mr. Dreisbach, I am very sympathetic to the reforms that you outline. I think that we share a lot of common ground on that point.

I do not, however, share your pessimism about the American academy. First, because, where problems do exist, they exist in larger research universities and in the "publish or perish" academic marketplace. Graduate programs are producing Ph.D.s and future scholars who are obliged to churn out articles and books, rather than teach or reflect. "Research" has supplanted "thought" -- but this is a problem that exists mainly in the humanities, not in the sciences, where such a model actually makes some sense.

Second, because students today are brighter than they have ever been. I don't even need to point to standardized testing, something that I consider to be more than suspect. I can simply point to admissions, which today are based much more on merit than they were 30 or 40 years ago. I can also point to my own experience in academia. There will always be stupid lawyers. There will always be graduates who are not worthy of their degrees. All Dartmouth can do is continue to provide the opportunity for the best liberal arts education in the world.

And that's the job of the faculty, not the Board of Trustees. The Board can and should do little more than give them the moral and financial support to do their jobs.

As for Zywicki, his speech to the Pope Center was typical anti-1960s rambling about how hippies have destroyed America. He bemoaned "political correctness" and "multiculturalism." He chided Dartmouth for producing "creative loners." He continued:

And I think that the largest lesson I have drawn from this is that academic reformers have to decide whether or not they are serious or not about the project of reforming higher education. It's going to be a multigenerational battle; it's going to take a lot of resources, and a lot of struggle. And I think what you have to understand is that those who control the university today they don't believe in God and they don't believe in country. University is their cathedrals. Their entire being, both those who fund it and those who teach within it, are tied up in the universities. It is basically their religion and its supported by those who, the Medicis of the earlier age built academic buildings rather than cathedrals today and they call the shots.

[...]

If it were the case that there was no morality and there were no values being taught in the academy that would be better than what we have, which is that there is a new dogma. The new dogma is environmentalism and feminism and that is the dogma and they will enforce it viciously. We have the Spanish inquisition and you could ask Larry Summers whether or not the Spanish inquisition lives on academic campuses today. So that's why the first point is that we are either all in or we're not. It's going to be a long and vicious trench warfare, I think, if we are serious about taking the academy back.

He then encouraged people to invest in conservative institutions rather than Dartmouth.

I'm not a fear-monger; I don't sit here and dream up conspiracies. Zywicki very clearly and publicly outlined his desire for political conspiracy. The man is a fanatic and a nutjob. He has no understanding of what it means for a country to have a strong, independent, and critical academy. This is a side point, but -- well, Dartmouth College had every right to see Zywicki's election and the way that he was elected as a serious threat to the future of the institution. The fact that such a man, with such radical and backwards-thinking views, was on the Board of Trustees upset a lot of people -- and that is why we need to reform the election process before we can work towards restoring parity.

By Wah, at 3/19/2010 7:36 PM
Wah: Let's focus on the governance issue.

Do you feel that the election process needs to be reformed so that a candidate's "radical thinking" is known to voters before they vote, or to preclude such people from being on the ballot in the first place, for those cases in which a majority of voters might also entertain such radical thoughts?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/20/2010 7:58 AM
I just received the latest mailing from the Replogle campaign. After getting past the apparent expense of the glossy paper and the alignment of President Kim’s name with “A Vote for John is a Vote for Dartmouth”, apparently an attempt to imply endorsement, I did read John’s words in the text. He made some good points and I would like to vote for him.

There are two open seats on the Board. In the past, alumni would have had the chance to vote for both Replogle and his opponent to fill these positions as their top two choices over the third trustee candidate. Thanks to the constitutional amendment that the Mathias slate lists as one of its achievements, that option has been denied to alumni in this election.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/21/2010 8:20 AM
Do you feel that the election process needs to be reformed so that a candidate's "radical thinking" is known to voters before they vote, or to preclude such people from being on the ballot in the first place, for those cases in which a majority of voters might also entertain such radical thoughts?

By the time a majority of Dartmouth graduates come to agree with the opinions of Zywicki on the dangers of "feminism," "environmentalism," "creative loners," "progressives," "atheists," and the like, the United States will be such a different country that I doubt Dartmouth could do anything but go with the flow.

What I am opposed to -- and I thought that I made this clear in my call for election reform and my sympathy for your own suggestions in that regard -- is the manipulation of Dartmouth's special and unique tradition of alumni participation by political ideologues to push their own pet agendas. Clearly, that's what Zywicki did -- and he did it with the full support of the Hanover Institute, conservative political pundits and newspapers, and private donors. Even if he had not completely failed in his duty as a Trustee, that alone would be reason enough for Dartmouth to worry.

I would say the same thing if the threat had come from the opposite side of the spectrum. I'm not saying that academia should be devoid of politics -- I think that some of our best ideas, liberal or conservative, comes from college campuses, along with great political energy -- but that radical changes to the academy should come from within the academy itself, from the scholars, researchers, professors, and students of which it is composed, and that it should come as the result of the processes which make the academy a bastion of humanism and scientific rationalism: discourse, argument, and reason rather than political manipulation, deceptive rhetoric, and fear-mongering.

Perhaps I'm too much of an idealist, but I find Zywicki's approach to be cynical and dangerous. Blame my Dartmouth education for that.

By Wah, at 3/22/2010 9:11 PM
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

By 節奏, at 3/23/2010 4:53 AM
Wah: Thanks for the response. I hope our 1-1 dialog is of interest to other alums; I certainly find it insightful. Again a two-part comment:

I believe your position is that alumni have elected petition candidates with radical views, even though a majority of alumni do not share those views; this happens because of a flawed election process in which either that majority is uninformed, or they are not all represented by the smaller number of them who comprise the majority of those who vote. Hence reform is needed. Yes? My guess is this also reflects the position of some non-petition trustees.

Perhaps you are right. But how do you know? What if you are wrong? What if a majority of alumni, both voting and non-voting, knowingly want a candidate with views you feel are both wrong and bad for the institution? Might in fact the majority be correct that such a candidate is good and not harmful, no matter how controversial? Even if the majority itself shares what you believe to be a harmful, radical view, are the long-term interests of the College served by undemocratic attempts to keep their choices off the board? In my opinion, I would rather have a “bad candidate” slip through the cracks of intelligent, thoughtful, discerning alumni than risk losing the long-term benefits of their collective wisdom with more “managed” elections.

Again, what basis do you have that your position is correct? And if you are right, what reforms do you suggest so that voters are better informed? Do restrictions on campaigning result in a better informed electorate? The trustees themselves recognized the challenges in so doing when they backed away from this in their report on governance reform. When the Mathias slate begins to speak of “reform” as its highest next priority, I fear it means more restrictions to prevent “bad candidates” (in their opinion) rather than insure that voters are more fully-informed and have more choices of candidates who compete on a truly-even field.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/24/2010 10:50 PM
To Wah, Part 2:

You made a reference to the problems of “large research universities”. Dartmouth has already been labeled “a research university in all but name”, and when I arrived on campus in 2001, the prevalent attitude was certainly all about growth, growth, growth. As even Trustee Zywicki noted, there is considerable “hydraulic pressure” to move in that direction, related to prestige and pragmatically, to money. The current fiscal straits may have forced a short-term slow-down, but I sensed little previous desire to resist those pressures; this is one of my reasons for valuing independently-minded, sometimes contrarian-thinking, trustees. Can the current process ever result in the nomination of a contrarian trustee candidate without the use of petitions?

You speak of the academy as a bastion for humanism and scientific rationalism. I am also a believer in science and reason, but hope you also find a place in your academy for the study of religion… not merely to debunk it, but perhaps to seek understanding for how mankind’s spiritual and faith-based beliefs can co-exist and complement fact-based science. For example, one can believe in life-after-death, indeed including individual consciousness, based totally on faith, yet find this totally explainable and consistent with quantum physics, even though not provable today. Certainly many leading figures of the Enlightenment saw no incompatibility between the sciences they advanced and the Almighty they worshipped; do we really believe that the humanists of today are more intelligent or better critical thinkers?

And finally you note that radical changes to the university should come from within the university itself. While radical ideas about society do in fact germinate within academia, my observation is that higher education is one of the most conservative of environments when it comes to changing its own structure and culture. Radical thoughts about the academy itself do not occur within academia because such radical thinking is negative and to be discouraged. Where have I heard this before? Our discussion has come full circle. :-)

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/24/2010 10:52 PM
DartBored: You wrote:

"there are many reasonable alumni who are not ready to chose between blind loyalty and giving up and going away. Maybe Jim Kim will influence the Office of Alumni Relations to alter its current strategy."

I hope you are right, and fear you may be wrong, on both counts.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/24/2010 11:27 PM
John Mathias: Regarding the unanswered questions from 10 days ago (3/14 above) pertaining to the alumni's Association.....

oh, why bother.....

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/24/2010 11:41 PM
More on elections, prompted by a article in today's online D:

John Mathias once wrote:

"I have come to the view that "parity" is not a good thing, driven principally by the abusive electioneering and demagoguery of the last two petition trustees, the slating done by the Hanover Institute, the formation and financing of petitioner candidate slates by the Hanover Institute for election to the AoA EC, the acceptance by the Hanover Institute of non-Dartmouth financial support, the egregious misconduct of Trustee Zywicki (who should never have become a Dartmouth Trustee under any credible system of selection), and the ideas currently being advanced by the likes of Mr. Gale that alumni trustees should somehow "steer the Board"--among other things. So, I do not think parity is a good idea at all.
....
By john mathias '69, at 11/16/2007 9:53 AM"

One might easily write:

I have come to conclude that elections are not a good thing, driven principally by the abusive electioneering and demagoguery of the campaign staff of the current nominated trustees, the slating done by the Alumni Council, the financing of those candidate slates by Dartmouth UnDying, a opaque organization of former Council officers, for election to the AoA EC, the acceptance by the Dartmouth UnDying of non-disclosed financial support, the egregious misconduct of President Mathias(who limited alumni in perpetuity with his "with prejudice" strategy), and the ideas currently being advanced by the likes of Mr. Kondrake that alumni trustees providing fact-based oversight will by definition be guilty of micro-management. So, I do not think elections are a good idea at all.

Then again, the option of eliminating elections and conceding defeat to the brokers of power is even worse.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/25/2010 8:52 AM
Dear Tim, JMM, Jim Guth, Frank Gado, and colleagues,

I'm with Wah, here, and with anonymous@9:47 yesterday on The Dartmouth site. We’re trying to articulate a broader, but middle, ground. And I address my comments to you, because your comments dominate the discussion here.

I talked earlier about persistent polarization, and the destructive aspects of the rhetoric of demonization and vilification. My classmate Jim’s re-invocation of the Holocaust matter is just another manifestation of this approach to the debate – an extension of the ‘quisling’ portion of this thread from a week or so ago. It’s not helpful. Rise above; find another modality to express your view. And don’t simply say, well, the Other Side did it: for such is merely a rationalization, not a justification.

Like my classmate Jim, I am reminded frequently of President Kemeny’s admonishment: Women and men of Dartmouth, all the world is your brother, and you are your brother’s keeper. It was Kemeny’s spin on what earlier, and later, presidents have said to the graduating seniors. The message is consistent: you are blessed with talent, knowledge, and the ability to learn; go and make the world a better place.

However, turning inward, and focusing energy on all the minutiae of Dartmouth and its governance, in a ceaseless fashion, is NOT what Kemeny, or Dartmouth’s other presidents, had in mind. This kind of behavior reminds me of the song "Pickalittle (Talk-a-Little)" from The Music Man – absent the humor, and taken to destructive extreme.

So, I would urge everyone not to overthink, not to make overly complex, the role of alumni/ae in the life of the College. The current conflict between the Ins and the Outs (as Tim and I have earlier named the two ‘sides’) bears many of the attributes of, say, the conflict in northern Ireland, but with almost none of the substance (and fortunately with none of the violence). But if that greater conflict can be resolved, then I have hope this minor one can, too.

And it *is* minor. Because for me, it's pretty simple. Who is the College? The College is the tenured faculty. Who is the College for? The College is for the students; the College cannot exist without students. Who supports the College with their labor? The administration and the staff and the junior faculty and the adjunct faculty. Who supports the College with their money, and with other student-focused intangibles (applicant interviews, internships for students, job opportunities for students)? The alumni/ae. Who is responsible for the College, for defining its purpose ever afresh, for setting its goals, and measuring progress toward their realization? The Trustees. What rules govern the actions of the Trustees? The Charter.

As alumni/ae, we can certainly offer criticisms, as long as the criticisms are constructive. But at some point (and IMO the Outs have long since passed it), repetitive criticism becomes destructive, not constructive. In that event, if you don't like the direction of the College, or how it uses your money, or how it admits current students: don't participate. Withhold your time, money, or opportunities for the students. If you feel compelled to continue to support higher education, give to an institution that matches your perception.

But this seemingly ceaseless struggle by the Outs to assert their vision for the College, and to project their control over the realization of this vision...well, I have a hard time understanding why the Outs can't apply that fervor to other endeavors to benefit society; why it must be applied only to the College.

Ladies and gentlemen, we had our time at Dartmouth. For most of us, it was wonderful. But now it’s someone else’s time. Stand aside, hold open the door, offer advice (but don’t expect it to be taken), and let them pass through.

By Al Henning '77, at 3/26/2010 2:05 PM
Al: I understand your sentiments. However, your view of the College is a bit simple. You miss a few important questions, all related ultimately to governance.

The College is the tenured faculty... who grants them tenure?
The College is for the students... who admits them?
The College is supported by staff labor... who hires and directs them?
The College is financially supported by alumni... with what vision are they supporting her?
The College is directed by the Trustees... The Charter gives them responsibilities and powers, but who selects them?

Is the College best served by having the Board dominated by those who can simply buy seats by making large donations? If senior administrators are allowing the College to drift in less-than-desired ways (but one example, allowing structural deficits to grow), how will a Board recognize and correct such drift if the election of the Board members themselves is conducted under a system whereby information and communication is controlled by those very same administrators?

While the criticisms of the College by the independent petition trustees have at times been quite controversial in both delivery and content, I believe that net net, the College is stronger and better for it. Thus my own sense of responsibility to resist attempts to limit such participation. It would be a gross dis-service for any alumni to walk away if they still care about the College... and her students, and her faculty, and her staff.

And finally, please do not conclude "Outs" have no fervor for other societal endeavors, or that "Ins" do not want to use their powers to project their control over their vision of Dartmouth. There are examples to prove you wrong on both counts.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/26/2010 3:05 PM
Tim,

With respect, your perspective is too complicated. While the College, as an institution, is certainly complex, my point is that the relationship of alumni/ae to the College is really quite simple (not simplistic; I'm sure you appreciate the distinction).

Beyond that, I've said enough. Probably too much. Looking forward to being in Hanover in a few weeks...

By Al Henning '77, at 3/26/2010 5:58 PM
Al: You want the relationship between our alumni and their College to be simple. That does not mean that it is, or should be; we are not like other schools in this respect!! With respect, I believe your attitude is dis-respectful to our alumni and does a longer-term dis-service to the College.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/27/2010 9:30 AM
PS I do not mean Al is disrespectful of alumni as individuals. I mean disrespectful of their ability to contribute. "Your time is up; others will now do a better job; stand aside."

On a broader scale, consider how we citizens govern our military. The arguments against material alumni involvement in governing Dartmouth is that we do not have the knowledge to run the College. But we should be able to elect trustees to oversee the administration... just as we elect a civilian to oversee the generals. Imagine if the generals in our military controlled the FCC use of the airwaves and the citizen knowledge of the census/IRS/DMV used to administer elections. No one would ever buy that, no matter how highly we regard our military or believe their goals are aligned with civilian ones, yet that is exactly what happens today with the Office of Alumni Relations.

"Governance of" is different than "support to".

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/27/2010 3:02 PM
Tim, I too have enjoyed our conversation, and am glad that we have achieved a level of civility that didn't exist here two years ago.

I have several reasons for believing that my position is correct. These are they:

1. You agree with me that Zywicki et al. are radical conservatives. I find it hard to believe that a majority of Dartmouth alumni are radical conservatives.

2. The majority of the U.S. population is not radically conservative. Dartmouth alumni, being college-educated, are likely to be politically moderate in their outlook. Young alumni are even likely to be liberal. Ergo, I find it hard to believe that somebody like Zywicki represents the views of alumni.

3. Zywicki himself frames the debate in terms of his minority status.

I agree with Mr. Henning's views about alumni participation, although I tend to feel a stronger philanthropic urge to support the College even when it does not do what I want it to do. After all, the College supported me, financially and intellectually, without attempting to direct my life afterwards. Between the ages of 18-22, the College gave me an enormous amount of resources and trusted me to use them wisely, there and beyond. Why should I not accord it the same standards and expectations?

On the one hand, you lament that quality of undergraduate education and the intellectual level of recent college graduates. On the other hand, you claim that these apparently woefully ill-equipped graduates are the very ones who should be governing the College.

I see a couple of issues with this. First, Dartmouth leads the country in undergraduate teaching. Are you suggesting that the students are simply stupid? Second, in order to resolve the contradiction in your statements, I can only conclude that you suggest some kind of generational gap in which only older alumni have received the renowned Dartmouth formation of the days of yore. I frankly find that not only a little insulting for younger alumni, but also contrary to reality.

I also disagree with your perception of change in the academy. Certain institutions -- tenure, freedom of thought, "ivory tower" syndrome, even a certain amount of elitism -- have been a part of the academy for centuries, since at least the Middle Ages. Zywicki suggests that the academy should be concerned principally with God and country; but, God was the principal subject of the academy only under the theocracies of the Middle Ages and for a brief period of time in New England -- as for country, that's simply never been the case. The idea that nationalism and religious sectarianism should emanate from the university is a frightening and largely ahistorical notion -- and it's radically opposed to the Enlightenment from which the modern university was born. This isn't to say that God has no place in the university; quite to the contrary, the central question that any humanistic discipline attempts to answer is how man should understand his place in the world. Both the belief in God and the non-belief in God are perfectly acceptable avenues of inquiry. During my time at Dartmouth, not long ago, atheists and believers were equally welcome -- and Dartmouth's religious studies department remains one of the best in the nation.

By Wah, at 3/27/2010 10:43 PM
As for how quickly the academy changes, it has evolved over the past century -- the Ivy League especially -- from a collection of charm schools where rich white men might learn how to conduct themselves in the company of older rich white men all while dallying here and there in a bit of Kant and Shakespeare, to a cosmopolitan institution with worldwide impact. In truth, despite charges of "political correctness," the American academy is more open and free-thinking than it has ever been, attracting the best students and the best thinkers from within the U.S. and around the world -- from all faiths, from all kinds of politics.

In my view, Dartmouth's impact on the world is too great to be determined by a small group of graduates, many of whom having never looked back on the place after commencement, or, much worse, having never engaged with any kind of academic matter since. I support parity because I consider it to be a part of Dartmouth's unique tradition; however, I don't have so rosy a picture of what alumni have to offer the College in terms of governance as you do -- mainly for the reasons that I have already outlined.

In order for parity to become the main issue for me, elections need to be reformed. Out with the money, out with the politics, out with the outside influence. Dartmouth had every reason to clamp down as it did, even if it did so with little grace.

By Wah, at 3/27/2010 10:44 PM
Tim,

My comments are disrespectful to neither individual alumni/ae, nor to alumni/ae en masse. And I do no disservice. You have misread and/or misunderstood what I wrote. (I said clearly, that constructive criticism is and should be welcome; such as criticisms about OAR. I do not advocate 'open wallet, close mouth'.) Alumni/ae have a huge role to play in the life of the College and its students. Where we disagree is on the matter of how large a role alumni/ae should play in the governance of the institution. You want their/our role to be equal to or greater than that of the Trustees, and such will not happen, for the reasons I've stated earlier. Your analogy to the US military etc. is flawed, because the US government is a democratic republic, while the College is overseen by the Trustees, whose embodiment and power is decidedly not democratic (that is, does not derive from 'we the people', and certainly does not derive from 'we the alumni/ae').

Dartmouth's governance is already unique in American higher education, insofar as every Trustee (save the Governor and the President) is a former student. So the 'argument' boils down to the selection process for the Trustees. But the Charter gives the Trustees full power for selection and perpetuation. So there really can be no argument.

I view much of the conflict on the parity-in-governance issue, as driven by some alumni/ae who wish for more input, more control, more power, than is healthy for any institution of higher education, even one as special as we believe Dartmouth to be. And I say this from a somewhat unique perspective, having been an UG student, grad student, TA (employee), faculty member, UG student parent, alumni club leader, and husband of a former UG student and admissions officer. There are plenty of places for alumni/ae to be involved in the life of the College, deeply and meaningfully. But the desire to 'run the show' should be set aside.

I know you feel deeply about this, Tim. I know I'm not going to change your mind. I feel just as deeply, that this continued struggle over the question of governance, diminishes the ability of the College to deliver the highest quality of education.

By Al Henning '77, at 3/28/2010 2:09 AM
Wah: How did unorthodox thinking ("radical") morph to conservative?

Al: I have never claimed the College is a representative democracy... but the Association of Alumni is (when not under the resource control of Alumni Relations) and it should be. The alumni money spent by the Hanover Institute/Dartmouth UnDying/even the College itself in just 2-3 election cycles is enough to have the AoA endowed and independent forever... and Dartmouth would be better for it. Why does the OAR fear and resist this?

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/28/2010 7:39 AM
I have no problem with unorthodox thinking, Tim. In fact, it's central to the role of a liberal arts education, essential to the project of the academy. The only thing that could be called "orthodox" about academia is that it generally follows the method of scientific rationalism, i.e. it pursues the answers to questions from a foundation of accepted hypotheses backed up by a history of experimentation and empirical or logical judgments; yet, the "unorthodox" is also an integral part of this process insofar as advances are made only by challenging, within the limits of scientific inquiry, those very hypotheses.

Zywicki's approach, and that of his supporters, is by definition orthodox; in fact, it goes back to the medieval conception of doxology. His nostalgia for a university whose role has been reduced to that of inculcating a sense of nationalism and religious fervor in its students is not only nostalgia for something that has never really existed (such being the case, alas, with most forms of nostalgia), but also runs contrary to humanism (by definition universalist) and rationalism (by definition skeptical). It's political conservatism, in its most radical form, pure and simple. A more moderate conservative would have enough faith in reason and in the strength of his or her ideas not to have to resort to what amounts to systematic indoctrination. There is a reason why Bob Jones or Liberty University are not even close to being in the same intellectual league as Dartmouth and are irredeemably condemned to irrelevance.

I'm really at a loss as to the meaning and purpose of your question.

By Wah, at 3/28/2010 1:40 PM
Wah: My point was that you err by associating all in the broad tent of the petition trustees with political conservatism.

Frank Gado (using his Tom Paine login) attempted a thoughtful reply to your posts above on the subject of the academy, a topic on which he is quite expert given his experience therein. I defer to him on supporting details underlying my (and his) belief that the academy is conservative, not liberal, in regard to itself.

Frank in a side email tells me his posting also included some facts that disprove a claim by John Mathias. For whatever reason, apparently the posting has not yet been approved for publishing by the moderator, or, in fairness, some snafu happened in its processing. We have all experienced the frustration of having writing lost in the PC ether; I encourage Frank to take the time to recompose his thoughts.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/28/2010 3:33 PM
Tim, I don't disagree that the academy tends to be institutionally conservative. Tenure is a perfect example -- a holdover from long ago that more or less now only exists in the U.S. I would be fine, for example, with mandatory retirement at a certain age, as is the case in the U.K., where even celebrated literary critic Terry Eagleton, not long ago, was forced to give up his position at Manchester at the age of 65. This would end the systematic if unintentional age discrimination (and, one could argue, class discrimination, considering the investment, lost income, and sunk costs of graduate education) that currently exists in the American academy, in which young scholars from the ages of 25-40 often drift from low-paying and insecure adjunct position to adjunct position hoping for an opening to crop up somewhere, anywhere. Talented young scholars who would otherwise bring much to academia must decide between living in relative poverty with the slim hope of gaining tenure or abandoning the field altogether for a professional career. Mandatory retirement would not only make the already peculiar and intensely idiosyncratic academic job market more just, it would also encourage an inflow of fresh talent and new ideas. Professors emeriti with established careers would still be able to access university resources and even publish -- they would simply be freeing up the tenure line for a younger scholar. There's a perfect example of radical change that probably won't be heralded by septuagenarian scholars anytime soon.

At the same time, I simply feel that it's not helpful, and certainly not accurate, to paint with such broad strokes a vast and diverse collection of practices, beliefs, methods, projects, and goals.

Now, that's the very charge that you levy against me with regard to the petition trustees. I must disagree. Zywicki positioned himself as a victimized political minority intent on infiltrating an institution that he gleefully labeled evil -- and much worse. The other petition trustees openly supported him in this, a crime worse than omission. That led me to question, in what I believe to be all fairness, either their competence or their good faith. They're either incapable trustees or bad trustees -- take your pick!

By Wah, at 3/28/2010 5:35 PM
If Mr. Gado can refrain from accusing me of cowardice and malfeasance, which has thus far been his modus operandi in the face of dissent, I would gladly also hear his thoughts on the matter.

By Wah, at 3/28/2010 5:36 PM
If Wah is right about the christian conservative conspiracy, why doesn't OAR just level with the alumni instead of making Mathias play games?
Are we too stupid?

By DartBored, at 3/28/2010 7:21 PM
That's a good question, DartBored.

My hunch is that OAR doesn't want to admit that it's a political thing, because that would play right into Zywicki's hands. (I do think that I'm right about the "Christian conservative conspiracy" -- that's exactly what Zywicki describes in his Pope Center remarks.) If the very issue at hand is the politicization of academia, then of course the College isn't going to put itself into a position where somebody like Zywicki can raise enormous amounts of money while shouting: "See!? I'm being repressed!"

By Wah, at 3/28/2010 9:42 PM
Wah, DartBored, Al: Might we actually have a consensus here... that the Office of Alumni Relations is itself a political entity?

There seems to be a consensus that elections by alumni, even if needing reform, are the proper way to allow their participation in selecting some, even if not half, of the Trustees.

How to do that while keeping the Administration apolitical? The same way I suggested depoliticizing the Council... confine everything related to alumni elections, including the communications and ballot administration, under the exclusive management of an independent Association, of the alumni and by the alumni, without College involvement!

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/29/2010 7:40 AM
PS I also include the nomination of trustees in my list above. Take the OAR and the Council both out of the political loop.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/29/2010 7:43 AM
Tim, I don't believe that the OAR is political. I think that they have been dragged into an intensely partisan ideological dispute by the Hanover Institute and by the petition trustees that it has supported over the last decade.

The Board responded by eliminating parity, well within its right, even if some might argue that it was not the best decision. This has had two consequences: it has sharpened the political divide (bark) while nullifying its effect (bite). The Board was put into a difficult position and essentially reacted with little more than a survival instinct.

By Wah, at 3/29/2010 12:06 PM
Wah: You say that the Board eliminated parity in response to the ideology of the petition trustees. But the Board itself denies this; they claim they wanted more trustees with more diversity without requiring additional elections. Either you are wrong or the Board was mis-representing their own action.

If the OAR had nothing to do with administering how alumni conduct elections, they would not have been dragged into anything.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 3/29/2010 12:32 PM
I assume that what you see as an impediment to our discussion of the academy is my post of 3/16. If you will reexamine that post, you will see that I was impugning the making of derogatory statements about those with whom you disagree while hiding behind a pseudonym. I would be most interested in reading your defense of such a practice. You are offended by my characterizing that as cowardly--an adverb, modifying an act--while you say nothing about the many insults and falsehoods directed at me, personally.

Elsewhere, you attack Todd Zywicki for having called Dartmouth "evil." Could you please quote that exact statement in the transcript of Todd'a Pope Center comments? What I read was a reference to President Freedman as "that evil man," a quotation from Jeff Hart (whose endorsement of Replogle and Kondracke is proudly displayed on their campaign literature. What Hart was disparaging (most correctly, in my view) was Freedman's expulsion of students on HIS presumption of their guilt, without so much as a hearing. The students sued (something, it seems, you and John Mathias believe is at the very least disloyal) and were reinstated. Todd's criticism of THE ACADEMY (not directed specifically at Dartmouth) is of a piece which that of many others, of diverse political affiliations.

The threat to free speech and open discourse in today's academe is real, insidious, and pervasive. It is threatened from the right, but also, and perhaps more effectively, from the left. The constriction of thought begins long before Professor X thinks twice about what he or she writes or states in a lecture. It begins when Department A decides the nature of the slot in the department to be filled. The next roadblock to a free academy is in the vetting of CVs and in the interviews. And then there is the review on the way to tenure consideration, and then tenure itself. In short order, Department A has locked out all but the polemical position to which its members are committed.

It really didn't used to be that way. Have departmental politics always played a part in employment and promotion practices. Only a fool would deny it. But differences in regard to approach to subject matter were tolerated, even encouraged. That is no longer the case in the US.

Your solution (partial, I assume) of mandatory retirement is a little like advocating amputation as a treatment for an infection. Why mandatory retirement for professors and not for lawyers, or physicians? Yes, professors have tenure, but these other professions have virtual tenure. The problem, as I see it, lies in teachers who allow their enthusiasm for learning to wane, who demand less and less of their students because it is less taxing on them, who strike all sorts of implicit covert deals with their students in trading easy grades (and light assignments) for uncritical assessments.

Too much of academe has become ossified. The faculty make the rules, directly and indirectly through faculty who rise to administrative posts.

Frank Gado

By Tom Paine, at 3/29/2010 12:41 PM
Wah,

You write that the petition candidates and the HI have injected "ideological" positions and "national politics" into Dartmouth elections.

As you know, I have been a member of the HI board for several years. I know of no "ideological positions" (unless advocacy of democratic procedures comes under that category). What national political issues have you espied? What "political" issues have petition trustees advanced within the Board?

I think of myself as conservative (especially in fiscal matters), but I advocate some rather "liberal" positions in social matters. I am an environmentalist (is that really "liberal"?) and if advocacy of equal standing is feminism, I'm a feminist (but not if being a feminist means having a department that is defined by being polemically committed to a cause). I think government has no role in favoring the preference of one orifice over another for sexual gratification or in the choice of the partner supplying it. I see no advantage in having insurance companies as arbiters of my medical care instead of the government, but I also regard the new law as fundamentally unconstitutional. No one in the HI has ever asked me my political views or tried to subject me to a political litmus test. Our concerns have always and exclusively been the quality of a Dartmouth education and respect for the 1891 contract between the Board and the Association.

By Tom Paine, at 3/29/2010 2:40 PM
Thanks for your thoughtful response, Mr. Gado.

I think that we share similar concerns about the ossification of the academe. The humanities, especially, are in a sorry state. There are probably many reasons for this. If you read the Chronicle or listen to much of the professoriate, it can be almost entirely blamed on market economics. Certainly, capitalism favors capital, and the sciences will always have an advantage over the humanities in that regard, the latter producing little tangible wealth and existing, largely, thanks to the charity of benefactors. That's only part of the problem, however -- even as universities adopt more and more a self-perpetuating, "brand"-obsessed business model.

In my opinion, the source of the "crisis" in the humanities is probably in what you identify, mainly the failure of professors to communicate to students and to society in general the importance of the humanistic endeavour. My problem with the great many hand-wringing, bad-faith "leftists" that the baby boomer generation has unleashed on tenured positions is that there is actually very little that is revolutionary about their scholarship; it is, mainly, an echo-chamber of narcissism. I have nothing against polemical positions when their wit and incisiveness leads to thought and fruitful discussion. I have no issue with queer studies or gender studies as ideas or as disciplines; my issue is with lazy scholarship wherever it exists. The fact that an international relations professor might treat nation-states as Hobbesian rational actors -- a position in the U.S. that is as common as it is woefully outdated and tenuously maintained -- bothers me as much as the notion of an American studies scholar who specializes in super-model fashion. My problem with the critiques of "privilege" and "power" so fashionably emanating from the academe is that they could very easily, and perhaps should, be directed at the very people who are making them.

Actually, as the fashionableness of inauthentic feminist and post-colonial discourse wanes (as it did throughout the 2000s), we are now beginning to see scholars at supposedly reputable institutions abandon the humanistic enterprise altogether to examine the fickle tastes of rich people: fashion, spectacle, modernity (in the very limited sense of high culture), and so on. If you were to pick up a recent article on English literature today, you would probably see no mention of the human condition or why it is that humans even bother to produce or appreciate works of art. Philosophy has gone out the door: all that remains are attempts at the invention of cocktail-party witticisms, petty semantic wrangling, oneupmanship, and other musings fit more for a mid-brow culture magazine than an academic review. When I read a paper on literature these days, I sometimes feel that I'm reading the acerbic ramblings of a Renaissance mignon de la cour attempting to assassinate the character of his rival. It's not yet that bad, though -- there are usually at least a few sprinklings of Hegel, Foucault, Eliot, or Barthes to please the erudite, much in the same way that our pre-modern predecessors might misquote Cicero or Horace as proof of their pedigree.

So, believe me when I tell you that I understand that there are profound problems to be resolved in academia. That said, I don't think that the Board of Trustees has or should have anything to do with it. I think that you should have a little more faith in the rising crop of young scholars who are as fed up with the status quo as you are; academic thought moves in a dialectic, and we are about to experience a corrective antithesis.

By Wah, at 3/31/2010 11:30 PM
Wow, Wah, our views are almost exactly congruent. The only significant divergence is your faith that the rising scholars will right the ship. I wish I could believe that, but I see no evidence of it, and the structures we have put in place impede any such reform.

Certainly the crop of trustees we now have are not the ones to understand the problem, much less to solve it. The one hope I had in entering the fray of alumni politics was that it might be possible to educate the voters to choose trustees whose educations equipped them to see the dangers. It hasn't happened.

In my view, the weakest stage in American education is in the undergraduate years. The liberal arts college is dead in all but name. Indeed the concept of the college is pretty much belly up.

Back in the 40's and 50's, some of the great stars of the academy truly preferred to teach undergraduates--and not just those in their majors. That is no longer the case. We think it is a mark of progress to turn undergraduates into crypto graduate students (for the convenience of the professor's research, not the student's education.) And we assume that the old style professor (who was ideally at home in the world of the mind and familiar with broad regions of learning), what has come to be called a "generalist," is somehow a minor leaguer in relation to the specialist who puts up his (or her, of course) wallpaper at a frantic pace. What nonsense.

SO Dartmouth now has a president who banks on science to save the world and trustees who want to build monuments to themselves through their pet interests. A new arts building will be going up on Lebanon St. Has anyone at Dartmouth really thought about its impact on the curriculum? Is expanding the souk by installing more and more stalls, allowing infinite choice for students who really haven't the foggiest notion of education really the way to go?

Thank you for engaging in this discussion. You almost restore the faith lost through the katzenjammer antics of the Scott Meachams.

By Tom Paine, at 3/31/2010 11:57 PM
Martin Heidegger accurately predicted this change in the university as early as 1938 in his essay "The Age of the World Picture":

Hence the decisive development of the modern character of science as ongoing activity also forms men of a different stamp. The scholar disappears. He is succeeded by the research man who is engaged in research projects. These, rather than the cultivating of erudition, lend to his work its atmosphere of incisiveness. The research man no longer needs a library at home. Moreover, he is constantly on the move. He negotiates at meetings and collects information at congresses. He contracts for commissions with publishers. The latter now determine along with him which books must be written.

But he also says:

But man will never be able to experience and ponder this that is denied so long as he dawdles about in the mere negating of the age. The flight into tradition, out of a combination of humility and presumption, can bring about nothing in itself other than self-deception and blindness in relation to the historical moment.

I tend to agree with him on that -- and I agree with you that the liberal arts education is in grave danger, in the sense that it is now commonly accepted that "college is the new high school," and also in the sense that college now performs the function, as high school once did, of certifying the qualifications of future workers. A degree is not a sign of scholarship, but rather a necessary qualification for employment in any sector requiring even the lowest level of specialized skill.

I do not think that your comments apply so easily to Dartmouth, however. I graduated from there in the last decade. I had professors who were considered distinguished in their fields, and who, rather than attempt to get me to do their research for them, encouraged me and guided me in the pursuit of my own intellectual interests. I think that Dartmouth's recent recognition as having the finest undergraduate teaching in the country is warranted. Granted, I have only my own experience to go on -- and from speaking with those very same professors, I know that there are elements in the administration (especially former professors) who are hostile to the kinds of scholarship that we both seem to admire.

At the moment, the problems that the academe faces seem greater than any solution that I could possibly hazard, but, as you note, I have more faith in students and in the youngest generation of scholars. An important development over the past few decades is the expansion of financial aid; this has allowed a large number of people from diverse socio-economic backgrounds, without all of the idées fixes and prejudices of the dilettantes, to enter into some of the finest universities in the country. There are many graduate students these days who are frustrated and annoyed with the current state of scholarship, and who are itching to change it -- but, as you also note, it won't be easy.

I certainly understand and admire your motivations for entering into the fray at Dartmouth. I profoundly disagree with you, however, on the quality of a trustee like Zywicki. I don't think that there's anything wrong with producing "creative loners," for instance. (Some of the best thinkers in human history have been creative loners.) I don't have any problems with environmentalism or feminism. I take no issue with deviations from the traditional canon, when appropriate. I don't think that it's the university's responsibility to inculcate reverence for a particular religion's God or for one's particular geographical location. My critiques of academia are philosophical; his, if I may say so, are purely ideological.

I too have enjoyed this discussion and am always pleased to hear what somebody who has been in academia for much longer than I have has to say about things.

By Wah, at 4/01/2010 8:12 PM
Wah, Frank:

Respectful discourse... how refreshing and insightful.

Thanks!

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 4/01/2010 11:28 PM
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By 玉苓, at 4/02/2010 7:43 AM
Wah,

I feel very uneasy about agreeing with Heidegger, and especially with statements made at a moment when his adherence to Nazism was most virulent and he was doing the Party's bidding from his post at the University. So I'll cite others, who warned about essentially the same thing long before him. Henry Adams, for one: "We have mounted the wild horse of science and are run away with." (Note: Adams was not anti-science; just the opposite.) Or even John Dos Passos, in his essay written for the Harvard Monthly as he was graduating. (As undergraduate publications are difficult to consult, I reprinted it as an appendix to my interview with JDP in my book First Person, which is probably in your school library.)

Let me emphasize, however, that I am not against science in the university. My quarrel is with what the culture of grants (which Kim, Replogle, and Kondracke enthusiastically endorse)is doing to undergraduate education. Dartmouth, like many other universities, boasts of research projects in which undergraduates are part of the teams. It MAY be that this is indeed the best way to teach science--my teaching and competence are wholly in the humanities--but I'm skeptical. In addition, this culture indirectly (but powerfully) stimulates imitation by the traditional liberal arts disciplines. The emphasis on generating "new knowledge" (James Wright) eclipses the importance of understanding and interpreting old knowledge.

At the close of my career, the parochial education of most new entrants into academe was painfully obvious, not only in the interviews at the convention but also in new hires. Yes, the young, almost by definition, have a thinner and narrower base of knowledge, but what is troubling is that current thinking about curriculum, graduate education, and the reward structure fortify tendencies toward brachiation--one consequence of which is competition for student enrollments.

I'm glad that you found excellent undergraduate instruction during your time at Dartmouth. My contacts with the campus today, though limited, do indicate that Dartmouth continues to stress quality teaching to a degree that surpasses comparable institutions. But I also have to recognize that such traditional values don't long withstand the grievous weight of national developments. (E.g.: My faculty contacts tell me that the pressure to publish, at least one book by the time a tenure decision arrives, is palpable and growing.)

Again, please don't misunderstand me: I am NOT against research. I believe it is vital for scholars to manifest the intellectual curiosity they should be promoting among their students, and I think writing is sovereign means by which to confront and resolve the significance of what one has learned. But there are other, better ways of accomplishing this than the Swiftian Laputa that has evolved.

I do NOT advocate "going back." I'm a radical--in every sense of that word--when it comes to addressing solutions for the academy. And I certainly don't think the Dartmouth of my undergraduate years was exemplary. I experienced more than a mite of bad teaching (although I didn't realize how bad it was until I myself entered the profession).

But, knowing how US News comes to its judgments, I'm not very impressed by its ranking Dartmouth #1 in undergraduate teaching. And when I see such courses as "Acting Before a Camera" or an Italian offering of "The Sopranos"--to choose just two--my concerns about the direction Dartmouth is heading mount.

By Tom Paine, at 4/02/2010 12:10 PM
To be fair, Heidegger was a half-hearted Nazi, mostly out of nationalistic ambition -- one of the reasons why I strongly feel that nationalism has no place in a university. His moral failings fortunately have little effect on his historical perception.

I think that we agree about the problems faced by the humanities -- and I say the humanities, because, like you, I think that the sciences are doing fine, doing what they're supposed to be doing. It's the humanities' absurd imitation of the sciences that disturbs me. I'm not opposed to "research" (although I prefer the term "thinking," when it comes to scholars in the humanities, unless they're doing something like historiography or statistics); I'm simply opposed to production for the sake of production.

The only point where we really disagree is on the question of the petition candidates. I don't consider them to be particularly thoughtful or helpful participants in the matters of the College.

By Wah, at 4/02/2010 2:50 PM
Wah: For whatever reasons good, bad, justifiable or not, the petition trustees have become controversial by the way they have vocalized various concerns. Have you ever had the chance to have a real dialog with any one of them? You should reserve judgement and try to find an opportunity to do so. You might find it as surprisingly constructive as your conversation here with Frank G.

It is interesting to hear you and Frank share views of the academy, as you both have expertise and experience there. Others of us who are not academics have had considerable experience in the operations of complex organizations, AND also direct exposure to Dartmouth's operations along those lines. Beginning in 1996 when I became a P'00 and then accelerating in 2001 when I moved next to campus and became actively involved, I can attest to many areas in serious need of improvement; the spin from Blunt was in denial, and it was only petition trustees (for ideological or altruistic reasons is up to you)who were receptive to pulling heads up from the sands. I believe many of Al H's so-called "Ins" knew the same but felt quiet work behind the scenes was the way to make progress. Perhaps, but as we seem to have agreed, the academy is not a place where such change happens in a timely fashion, until something like the current financial crisis hits.

My point here is that so many have criticised Frank, myself, and other contrarian alumni as out of touch with Dartmouth and looking backwards. In fact we became more contrarian as we became closer, were able to look under the covers, and became more knowledgeable.

President Kim has a refreshing confidence, without crossing the line to arrogance, and appears ready to listen to alternative views. I hope this attitude can spread across his administration, and into a broader group of those in the alumni leadership.

By Tim Dreisbach '71, at 4/02/2010 5:45 PM
Tim: You've described the situation as well as I've ever read. I hope some last minute voters read your comments. I've got to believe that Jim Kim agrees with you.

By DartBored, at 4/02/2010 7:55 PM
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By 毓燕毓燕, at 4/10/2010 10:38 AM

Wednesday, March 03, 2010

Dartmouth Election Forum

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