Off the record

What if they held a major international event and the news media didn't come?

That happened on campus in mid-May, when an important gathering of American and Soviet leaders took place and the hordes of journalists one might expect to cover such an occasion were notable only by their absence. They weren't covering it because of the extremely hush-hush nature of the event, the 14th in a series of informal, off-the-record talks among leading citizens, academics, government officials, and business leaders from the United States and the Soviet Union. Ancl not only was the 14th conclave held at the College, but the discussions are known as "The Dartmouth Conference."

Begun in 1960 at the urging of President Eisenhower, the Dartmouth Conference has been held in Hanover three times in its first year, in 1972, and this spring. The conferences are administered by the Kettering Foundation, which publishes the substance of the proceedings some time after each gathering. The sessions, however, are not open to the public or the media and no public statements are issued. The Kettering Foundation explained that the conferences have served as "a significant unofficial channel to search for means to minimize the conse- quences of differences between the superpowers." The talks have helped keep communications between the two countries open through such international crises as the downing of a U-32 spy plane over the Soviet Union, the Berlin Crisis of 1961, and the Vietnam War.

The agenda for the four-day 1984 conference included political relations, arms control, economic relations, and regional conflicts. The participants 18 Americans and 12 Russians were Co-chaired by Norman Cousins, former editor of Saturday Review and an adjunct professor in medical humanities at UCLA, and by Georgi Arbatov, director of the Institute of USA and Canada Studies, the main Soviet think-tank for American-Soviet relations.

Mathematician C. Dwight Lahr, newly-named dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at the College, will not be leaving the blackboard behind him as he assumes hisnew duties on July 1. He intends to continue teaching one course a year as well as towork administratively on issues involving curriculum and faculty recruitment.