LETTERS

Hunters Versus Explorers

Professor Kemeny's "When the Young Turks Came" in the Winter issue throws a lot of light on the origins and the direction of Dartmouth's trend toward becoming a research university.

President Dickey's desire to have a faculty composed of "scholar-teachers" is that of any sensible academic administrator, and indeed of anybody interested in academic affairs. Clearly, though, Professor Kemeny identifies scholarship with research.

But, I submit, there is a profound difference. I do not deny that scholarship involves research, or that a researcher may be a scholar. But researchers, I suggest, are hunters. They travel in packs; they need graduate students as beaters and bearers; and their objective is to bring home the bacon. Much of the time, true, the bacon is a grant; but it is almost invariably a published article, of interest, if at all, only to other members of the immediate "pack."

A scholar, on the other hand, is a lonely explorer, sometimes in new lands, sometimes seeking new understandings in well-plowed fields. He needs a good library, but he doesn't need elaborate equipment, co-workers, or graduate assistants. He may publish; but publication is not his chief end. The natural environment of a researcher is a university; the element of a scholar is an institution devoted to liberal education.

Again, institutions and professors devoted to research are, in the nature of the case, specializers. Undergraduate majors, and to a much greater extent graduate courses, become narrower and narrower as they become more advanced. They aim, also, at professional training, not at education. Professor Kemeny's revelation that despite his desire to have a Ph.D. program in English, he cancelled plans for a degree in comparative literature because there would be no market for its graduates at the time illustrates my point.

"He's no scholar, but he is a great teacher" is an assertion more often than not made to cover up the fact that the colleague referred to is intellectually dead. It is at best unprovable. Nobody has yet devised a satisfactory method of evaluating teaching, one's own or anyone else's. But research produces results which can be pointed to and quantified. Scholarship often does. And in the best tradition of economists in particular and of Americans in general, if we can't measure what we value, we value what we can measure. For this among other reasons, it is much easier to establish a reputation for excellence in research than in teaching.

These things being so, Dartmouth's future direction is clear. We are going to become a university, in fact if not in name. In so doing we may attract a more prestigious faculty; we may attract more research-minded students; ideally, Dartmouth would be composed of Nobel laureates teaching prospective Rhodes Scholars. The researchers will consider the student body much improved.

We will certainly become bigger, good intentions to the contrary not withstanding. It is in the nature of the beast. And, presumably, we will no longer have the sort of department to which Professor Kemeny refers, one which went home after lunch. But, unless I much mistake his reference, it was a member of that department, with no notable publications to his credit, who had time to read Spinoza and Erasmus with two undergraduates throughout the fall and spring of 1942-43, to the profit, I like to think, of all three of us. That wasn't research; it was, I think, scholarship and teaching of a high order. It illuminates what another member of that department said when asked what I was doing taking Greek when I was clearly destined to be a lawyer or an English professor. (Neither of which I was, incidentally.)

"And I just told him," said Professor Stearns, '"Why, to save his immortal soul from eternal damnation, that's why!'" That was, that is, a scholar speaking about a kid to whom he, and several non-productive members of what was admittedly a very weak faculty, showed some glimmerings of light.

I hope, but I do not very firmly believe, that the new Dartmouth will at least try to do the same sort of thing. And that it has some success.

Edenton, North Carolina

Classicist John Barker Stearns appearsto have had some effect on Dr.Turpin's career (we are not in a position to judge hissoul). After getting a master's in philosophyat Oxford, Turpin earned a Ph.D. in economics at George Washington University.He teaches Latin at the Lawrence Academyin Merry Hill, North Carolina.

Environmental Championship

"Dartmouth's Nature" [Winter] is the greatest and most pride swelling article I have seen yet in our DAM. All those priceless, meaningful side notes, the truly great literature used to state the Dartmouth interest in the environment, but most of all how right Jonathan Kohl is! And he's a '92.President Freedman should sign him up. Our accomplishments on the environment rank with the Ivy athletic championship.

Keene, New Hampshire

Faced with college selection, I rejected Harvard and Princeton; the only things one could hunt there were campus squirrels. Logging revenues from the Grant paid my scholarship at Dartmouth. Bait & Bullet was my club, the Grant my haunt (plus a lot of other New England countryside), Herb Bormann's forest ecology and Gene Likens's limnology the courses that shaped my career.

There is more to it all than efficient recycling and clean air, although these are important. It starts with exposure to the right environment, and what better place to combine the best education with the best environment than Dartmouth? Let me suggest ways we can build upon this unique strength: • Acquire wild land, not sell it (as for example the loss of the large tract some years back on Route 4A). • Attract faculty with environmental interests. Johnson, Bormann, and Likens put together the Hubbard Brook experimental watershed study in northern New Hampshire, the finest long term ecosystem study in the world. Robert Frost found a gold mine in stone walls and birch trees. Paul Sample and Adrian Bouchard used the environment in the visual context. Whether it be arts, business, or biology, there's something there for everyone. • Recruit students who enjoy the out of doors.

• Work actively to solve local environmental issues not the least of which is the size of the human population in the Upper Valley. • Reinstate the College Naturalist, and find another Ross McKenney! • Support outdoor oriented clubs and activities.

• Employ College officers who enjoy the out of doors (the late Sid Hayward, college secretary, was exemplary in this regard). • Cancel classes on the opening day of fishing season! Increasingly the urban environment has shaped our culture, our aspirations, our treatment of fellow human beings, and we need more weight on the rural nature-oriented end of the seesaw. That's where Dartmouth belongs.

Winnipeg, Canada

Jonathan Kohl's article "Dartmouth's Nature" voices cogent arguments explaining why "the environment could be the most important element in defining Dartmouth's niche in the marketplace of higher education." But there is more to Environmental Studies than "environmental literature, journalism, law, policy, health, and ethics." In the future, the quality of the environment will be heavily influenced by the birth of benign technologies which conserve resources and do not degrade our air and water. To be effective, an incisive program in Environmental Studies must interact heavily with the purveyors of technology.

The Thayer School of Engineering enjoys an enviable reputation in the field of conservation and renewable energy yet the school's activities are not featured as part of the Environmental Studies Program. To the neophyte this might seem to be a strange omission, since the Thayer School's links to the Medical School are internationally recognized. Unfortunately, across the country there is little interaction between engineering faculty and those concerned with Environmental Studies. This lack of interaction contributes to the mounting problems of energy and the environment, which have led us to war in the Gulf, and which promise to confront us again and again for generations to come.

Here is where Dartmouth can seize the initiative and define a unique niche for itself in Environmental Studies which builds on its greatest strength: the integration of the sciences (including engineering) and the humanities. I urge Dartmouth to build a comprehensive program in Energy and Environmental Studies by integrating the Thayer School more fully into the existing Environmental Studies Program.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Political Correctness

Letters in the Winter issue which deal with the Dartmouth Review, as well as Board Chairman George Munroe's piece in The Wall Street Journal, are uniformly Review-bashing, with nary a peep of defense in the lot. Question: Do any of these individuals read The Review? Or are their perceptions filtered through second- or third-hand reports, from critics who perhaps have not read The Review either?

It is said that if it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it probably is a duck. But if it looks, swims, and waddles like a duck, but howls like a coyote, something is out of joint, and the howling probably does not come from the duck but from somewhere else. The Hitler quote denigrating Jews is totally alien to The Review's ten-year editorial policy and is very likely the act of sabotage claimed by Editor Pritchet and The Review staff. Still, this logical explanation is brushed off by President Freedman and others hostile to the conservatism of The Review without the most cursory inquiry. "Off with their heads!" cried the queen. "We can have the trial afterwards."

Contrary to the most devout wishes of its critics, The Review will not be stamped out. Its subscribers will see to that. It addresses many problems, as they see them, currently dominating Dartmouth campus and other campuses across the country, as well as the country as a whole. Criticism will always be welcome if it is substantive not if it is in the form of Pavlovian epithets based on uninformed sources.

Downey, California

Several months ago you made the statement that you were tired of letters from the alumni on subjects of the Indian symbol and The Dartmouth Review.

Apparently you changed your mind, or someone changed it for you, because in the Winter Alumni Mag are eight letters all highly critical of The Review, because of the Hitler quote hidden in the Credo. There are two sides to this unfortunate incident, as the editors of The Review claim it is an act of sabotage. This seems likely, as The Review has never been anti-Semitic, and always pro-Israel.

Your obvious bias in only publishing letters of the "Politically Correct" is one of the things that is turning me off on Dartmouth College. Other things that have contributed to my disaffection are President Freedman's haste to call a hate rally against The Review without making any effort to learn the facts of the case, and George Munroe's error- filled letter to The Wall Street Journal, which was published in the Alumni Mag, put the frosting on the cake.

I have contributed to the Alumni Fund every year since I graduated, including six years when my Marine Corps pay was hardly enough to support my family. However, the College's one-sided approach to this latest Review flap has turned me off, and I shall not contribute until things change.

Farmington, Connecticut

When we announced that we were sick ofletters about The Review, we were doingtheir editors a favor the overwhelmingmajority were anti-Review. We said at thetime that we'd be happy to publish lettersthat said something new about the issue.The insertion of a Hitler quote in the paper'smasthead changed the situation for us. Truthbe known, though, we're still sick of lettersabout The Review.

As for the rally, although PresidentFreedman spoke at it, he didn't arrange it;students did. For more information about"sabotage," see the February "Dr.Wheelock's Journal."

Jazz Coda

Thanks for the piece by Professor Don Glasgo on jazz at Dartmouth ["Syllabus," Winter], the first article on this subject I've seen in our Alumni Magazine. One does not have to agree with his particular selection of "notable" jazz of the eighties and I don't to realize the valuable contribution Don is making. Would that someone like him were there during our years on campus! Who knows how many of us now employed in the more prosaic nine to five world of commerce might have become involved in more self-satisfying pursuits with a hand such as his guiding our careers?

The art form of jazz has prospered at Dartmouth, even before direct faculty involvement. In the early fifties the late Warner Bentley initiated the Winter Carnival Jazz Concerts and brought such attractions to Hanover as the great Stan Kenton band, replete with such jazz artists as Conte Candoli, Frank Rosolino, Charlie Mariano, and Stan Levey. Thanks to an astute admissions committee, there has always been the nucleus of at least one good jazz combo on campus, as well as proficient musicians for the Barbary Coast Band. For instance, in the fifties Dartmouth was fortunate to have as undergraduates such gifted jazz players as trombonist Don "Rusty" Jackman and trumpeter Jesse "Jack" Morgan, both '52s, and alto saxaphonist Paul Robertson '58, each of whom went into other professions (publishing, education, and law, respectively), but whose talents were in my opinion at least the equal of most of those making a living in jazz.

Those of us who played and enjoyed jazz at Dartmouth owe the College for nurturing, encouraging, and even fostering it, providing us not only with a creative outlet but an appreciative if sometimes captive audience as well.

Los Altos, California

Shakespeare '42

If Shakespeare had been a member of the class of 1942 at Dartmouth, he might have sadly penned something like this but for private circulation only, not for the protesting mob.

When in the cry of slogans newly coined, And trendy buzz words trumpeting their ads, I think of Dartmouth's good name now purloined And sold off cheap to pay for Harvard fads. I'm pained to see great thoughts displaced by junk, And propaganda parade as proper good, While all that's hallowed is target for debunk, And its defense belied, misunderstood, Of tried traditions rudely strumpeted, And noble candor scorned for current cant Of obscenity renamed honesty, respected, And sodomy rechristened as a saint. Tired of these, of these I would be free, Save leaving these, Alma Mater, I leave thee.

Centerville, Massachusetts

While scholars are loners, says William Turpin '44, researchers tend to travel in packs.