Dear College President Sian Leah Beilock:
We are three siblings, all Dartmouth graduates, and the children of another alumnus, the late Rodney V. Beach ’47. We write to express our profound disagreement with Dartmouth’s decision to date not to participate in the joint statement from the American Association of Colleges and Universities concerning “the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.” The AACU statement simply affirms the essential value of academic freedom and asks for constructive engagement with the federal government on the expressed concerns. There are now over 500 signatories to this statement; with each passing day, our alma mater is more conspicuous in its absence.
Your April 23 letter attempting to justify Dartmouth’s silence only reinforced our concern with the College’s present direction under your leadership. You admit to the seriousness of the challenges facing higher education from the government, including threats of revoking the tax-exempt status of private colleges and intrusive government supervision over who is admitted and what is taught. You agree with the assertion in the AACU statement of the fundamental importance of academic freedom, yet you are unwilling to take a stand shoulder-to-shoulder with your fellow institutions in its defense, instead counseling self-centered policies of reflection and restraint in this moment of crisis.
The AACU statement is not the polarizing call for “all-out battle” that you criticize. It is actually the opposite – a call for constructive engagement with the government. We applaud Dartmouth’s efforts on campus, which you highlight, to encourage respectful and constructive dialogue across differences. The AACU statement on its face asks for the same with the government. Why is that inconsistent with Dartmouth’s preferred path forward?
Your reluctance to sign the AACU statement centers on the assertion that such open letters are “rarely effective tools,” and that legal action on specific issues is more effective. If the issues are as serious and as fundamental as you admit, then surely there is a place for a statement of principles that unites with a common resolve the hundreds of institutions of higher learning that will be impacted. Following your logic, one could argue that the Declaration of Independence was ineffective because it did not advance in any concrete way our independence from Britain — years of war were required to achieve that goal. But of course the Declaration was of inestimable value in uniting the disparate states in common principles and in the recognition, in Benjamin Franklin’s apocryphal words after the July 4, 1776 signing, that “we must all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”
As freshmen at Dartmouth, we were taught that one of the proudest moments of Dartmouth’s long history was Daniel Webster’s ringing defense of the College’s independence in Dartmouth College v. Woodward, when the government of New Hampshire threatened to turn the College into a state-run university. The 1819 decision of John Marshall’s Supreme Court affirming the College’s independence from the state is the cornerstone of the freedom enjoyed by private educational institutions in the U.S. The summary of Webster’s argument, contained in the Court’s decision, serves as a continuing warning to us today:
“The case before the court is not of ordinary importance, nor of every- day occurrence. It affects not this college only, but every college, and all the literary institutions of the country. […]It will be a dangerous, a most dangerous, experiment, to hold these institutions subject to the rise and fall of popular parties, and the fluctuation of political opinions. […]learned men will be deterred from devoting themselves to the service of such institutions, from the precarious title of their offices. Colleges and halls will be deserted by all better spirits, and become a theatre for the contention of politics; party and faction will be cherished in the places consecrated to piety and learning. These consequences are neither remote nor possible only; they are certain and immediate.”
President Beilock, please take a walk around the campus preserved more than two centuries ago by Webster’s wisdom and eloquence. Find a picture or a bust of that great Dartmouth graduate –– we know there are several –– and reflect on your responsibility to carry forward Dartmouth’s tradition as a leader, not a silent, fearful follower, in protecting academic freedom. We ask you to reflect on whether the College’s continuing failure to speak clearly and cooperatively in this crisis has sadly tarnished that proud heritage.
Respectfully,
R. Thomas Beach ‘77
Edward F. Beach ’85
A. Pendleton Beach MED ’98
Guest columns represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.