The President Steps Down

Divers Notes and Observations

HARDLY HAD the first draft of these notes emerged when we learned that the Dartmouth president who had just addressed the College's 228th Convocation would not address the 229 th. Jim Freedman anounced his resignation, after 11 outstandingly productive years, to take effect right after Commencement next June. On page 11 of this issue you will find a bit more on the announcement. And our June 1998 issue will include a special commemorative look back at the Freedman years-and an assessment of the opportunities awaiting his successor.

At Convocation, most fittingly for the celebration of 25 years of coeducation at Dartmouth, the President dedicated the year ahead to his predecessor once removed, John Kemeny '22A, in whose administration co-eds got the go-ahead. The "mentor" whose life he chose, as is his custom, to be exemplary to the incoming class, was Dorothy Day, pioneer activist who hobnobbed with the bohemian Greenwich Village crowd of the 'teens, espoused Catholicism, founded the Catholic Worker movement, took the side of the downtrodden and underprivileged and by the time of her death had achieved her goal of living the true Christian life in a not-too-sympathetic twentieth-century America. This year's keynoter was renowned novelist Louise Erdrich, a member of that first coed class of' 76 and part Native American. Her recollections of her freshman days immediately struck a chord with the class of 2001. "My first attempt to program the computer—then about the size of a tennis court was based on dream logic...and I passed math only on condition that I never try to program again." Erdrich endorsed failure, saying that it is only the result of ing a risk—but having taken each risk is a sure sign of eventual success. Most dramatic was her last exhortation to the students, first in the Ojibwa language, which has no gender distinction, and then in English. And for reasons unsaid, she quietly declined the proferred honorary degree at this time.

One of Erdrich's sly observations on arriving in Hanover was "I did notice that there were a lot of men." Among them was allpro linebacker Reggie Williams, also a member of that class of' 76, who would have been proud of how in the season's opener the Big Green defense crunched Penn, 23-15, to stretch their undefeated streak to 18 games. The game's (or any-game within anyone's memory) most unusual score came when after his second field goal, place-kicker Dave Regula '98 kicked off to Perm's goal line, Perm's receiver was tackled at his own 32-yard line and fumbled into the arms of the waiting Regula who sped ahead untouched for a touchdown.

The president's enthusiastic appointment of acting provost Jim Wright to the full job of provost was warmly seconded over most of the campus, as it was in our report in last month's issue. But not universally: a group from the acuity of Arts and Sciences held that the lack of a formal search was contrary to the president's commitment, made some years ago, when the provost's relationship to the faculty was being re-examined. Himself a former law professor, the president agreed to play by the rules, and presumably a conventional search is now underway, with ample representation from the Arts and Sciences faculty. Wright has announced that he will continue as acting provost until June 1998 to give the committee time to do its work, but will not submit his name to it as a candidate.

We have heard no murmur of criticism of Wright's eminent qualifications to handle the job. Two other reasons come to mind for the insistence on a search. One, as Napoleon is reputed to have said, every foot soldier carries a marshal's baton in his knapsack—and there may have been some of the faculty who felt that other colleagues were at least eligible for consideration. Two, it might set an unfortunate precedent for a future president who felt moved to make a similarly spontaneous decision, but of a less qualified appointee, or at a time of more concern about faculty inter-relationships. Our own observation is once again the remark of our old girl friend, "Try and have anything nice."

A diverse season ahead: Dartmouth Night arrives on October 31; former Secretary of Labor Bob Reich '68 will be here to speak on October 4; and British statesman and Oxford chancellor Roy Jenkins will shortly be resident as a Montgomery Fellow. You have seen that President Clinton has just nominated trustee president Steve Bosworth '61 to be ambassador to South Korea not making any easier the Board of Trustees' new task to find Dartmouth both a president and a provost in the next nine months.

Characteristic of the Medical School's event-overflowing 200th anniversary was the talk by Nobel Laureate (one of three) Joseph Goldstein, "Hamburgers, Chips, and Genes." All unknown 35 years ago, McDonald's now feeds most of the world; the silicon chip has completely transformed how we communicate; and genetic knowledge is on the verge of revolutionizing humankind's very existence. Some of the problems facing 21 st-century medicine were examined by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop '37, foremost among them market-based managed health care and the influence of economics on medical issues.

In his opening remarks to the symposium, President Freedman recalled the somewhat primitive state of medical knowledge at the outset of Nathan Smith's founding of the Med School in 1797. After attending one of Smith's classes, then-President John Wheelock offered this prayer at chapel: "O Lord, we thank thee for the oxygen gas, we thank thee for the hydrogen gas, we thank thee for all the gases. We thank thee for the cerebrum and for the cerebellum. We thank thee for the medulla oblongata. Amen."