Newt ana Other Spring Speakers
Divers Notes and Observations
AN ATYPICAL DAY OF SUNSHINE warmed the news warmly offered by Trustee and chair of the presidential search committee Bill King '63 that the Green had found happiness in the same place that Al Jolson did, namely, "back in your own back yard." A cheer emerged from Alumni Hall that could be heard on the river, from administration, students, faculty, and townspeople alike, for Jim Wright, veteran history prof who at one time or other had held almost every other job at Dartmouth during his 28-year career.
We mingled into the crowd for reactions and got "gracious," "rock-solid," "the only one," "real leader for the new century." The thoughtful headline in the campus publication Vox was "Historian Wright cites past, looks to future," and the Chronicle of Higher Education chipped in with, "He said he would continue Mr. Freedman's push to make the life of the mind central to the Dartmouth experience a controversial proposal to some of Dartmouth's outdoorsy, partying types." In Wright's own words, the College would strive to be "open to difference, less confined by dissension."
The summery weather went on for at least another week, culminating in one Saturday afternoon of wall-to-wall "outdoorsy, partying types" on the campus—no room anywhere for even a game of Frisbee. Just wait, partying types, until in Robert Frost's words, we're "back in the middle of March."
Former national security adviser Anthony Lake had some good advice for a packed-house audience in 105 Dartmouth: express our nation's military, economic, and cultural leadership in more qualitative terms; and spend it more on long-term efforts such as North Korea's impending collapse, China's obduracy on Taiwan, Russia's weaknesses, Iraq's chemical weapons. He challenged us that good news has us squandering our opportunities; we prefer Washington politics. In the same lecture hall, a few weeks later, the ineffable John Kenneth Galbraith appeared, a little less the guru than the last time we saw him. He celebrated the 30th anniversary of his seminal book, The Affluent Society—and illustrated the growing gap, which the book predicted, between the haves and have-nots by the example of driving an expensive car through littered, bumpy streets to park by a polluted lake.
There never seems to be any lack of anniversaries to celebrate at Dartmouth, so how do you like the 100th anniversary of the Spanish American War ? An excellent three-day conference was held in early April, featuring speakers from several Latin-American countries as well as the U.S. We were only able to make one session, "Arts, Media, and Culture," in part of which we saw the very first films ever made of war and their inevitable comparison to our coming leadership, not always benevolent, in the hemisphere.
At the hospital last Thursday there was an unscheduled work stoppage as nurses, doctors, and patients paused in midduties to view the televised countdown of space shuttle Columbia on its final mission. One of the astronauts was Dr. Jay Buckey, a Dartmouth professor of medicine and internist and researcher on brain-eye coordination in a state of weightlessness. In addition to his fellow crew members, he had hundreds of animals ready in the Neurolab to take their first steps in orbit without the steadying force of gravity. More Med School news—a new dean, John C. Baldwin, has arrived to replace Andrew Wallace, effective July 1. Dr. Baldwin is DeBakey-Bard professor and chairman of surgery at Baylor College in Houston. And the 21st annual Bristol-Myers Squibb Award for Distinguished Chemical Research went to Dr. Michael Sporn, the Oscar M. Cohn '34 Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology. His field is that of arresting or reversing the progression of cancer in its early, premalignant stages.
The last time Newt Gingrich was in the Upper Valley, his avowed reason was that he had never seen a moose and wanted to see one—but what he did was rain on Bill Clinton's parade with his highly publicized but unrequited handshake with the President over the topic of campaign finance. He's back—chosen by the seniors to kick off their yearly symposium J with a program a bit more modest than his revolutionary Contract for America—and when last seen was jovially signing copies of his latest book in the bookstore.
Perhaps the most enjoyable speaker we will hear all year is this year's choice for Commencement, the journalist and historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. A former professor of government at Harvard, she has written biographies of the FDRs, of three generations of Kennedys, of LBJ, and she has appeared as a provocative guest on nearly every news talk show on the dial.
Womens lacrosse is taking up where women's hockey left off. The stickers have lost only to national champions Maryland, and at this moment are 10 and 1. Captain Sarah Hood '98 has been named to the first All-America women's hockey team ever selected. When college basketball had the stage a few weeks ago, the Valley News had literally nothing to say about Dartmouth, and resorted to this impossible trivia question: "Two of this year's Final Four participants won their only NCAA championships by beating the same team." You guessed it. In 1942 the Green beat Kentucky, but lost to Stanford 53-38. In 1944 they upset Ohio State only to lose a Heartbreaker in overtime to Utah, 44-42.
And oh, yes!— Doris Kearns Goodwin claims that she was the first woman to enter the Red Sox Locker room.
