Geo. Will got there first

Mr. Will once said that funding higher-ed was, in essence, funding the Democrats and their political agendas.

Any reasonable person, being objective, would acknowledge that. It is why donors increasingly focus their donations, as well as litigate them later.

Hardly shocking. Or new.

L.L., at 7:30 am EST on November 26, 2007

Freedman the bully?!

Correct me I’m wrong, Mr. Zywicki. Wasn’t Freedman the president depicted on the cover of the Dartmouth Review as Hitler? He responded with an eloquent essay elegantly articulating the difference between careful conservative rationale and right-wing thuggery, the latter an affront the former. He challenged these students to be true to their purported ideals. That’s true intellectual leadership, a hallmark of his presidency.

In favor of reason, at 8:25 am EST on November 26, 2007

Zywicki is a trustee of Dartmouth but I don’t think he’s a trustee of George Mason.

That’s why his four-point battle plan for the expansion of George Mason and other “independent” institutions at the expense of Dartmouth is so puzzling. He’s a lawyer, so he must know what a fiduciary duty is — does he really think that supporting his personal interests at the expense of his board’s is acceptable, whether or not someone’s taping his speech?

Reader, at 11:45 am EST on November 26, 2007

I’m a little surprised that any educated person should believe that universities are about instilling religious faith. I had been taught that they were about advancing knowledge through open-minded discussion (without pre-ordained religious-adherence litmus tests). For those to whom religious faith is an essential matter, there are seminaries and religiously-based institutions. It also seems odd that both former college presidents he names (Summers and Freedman) happen/happened to be Jewish. I wonder what kind of lesson this Trustee is teaching students? Bigotry,intolerance, and lack of respect for others’ beliefs—those are unlikely to be the university goals, I’d hope. Dr. C.

Dr. C., at 12:30 pm EST on November 26, 2007

Spanish Inquisition?

I’m grappling with the implications of comparing college-level PC movements with the Spanish Inquisition. My initial reaction is to be amused and offended by the overblown comparison of over-heated activist education with the vicious anti-diversity institution which targetted insufficiently converted former Jews and Muslims (unconverted ones were just expelled, or killed), not to mention proto-Protestant heretics in Catholic Spain.

But a slightly more nuanced reading of the Inquisition itself — which is not, I’m afraid, what the original speaker probably intended — suggests that the comparison might have some value. The Inquisition was not primarily about persecution and torture, though those were tools of the institution, but about the redemption of lost souls. Most Inquisitorial actions were extended arguments, rather than thumbscrew sessions, trying to bring those who were accused or suspected “back to the fold.” There were even cases where the standards and arguments of Inquisition were used against Inquisitors by the supposed subjects of their investigations.

Lives were ruined, to be sure, in the enforcement of orthodoxy, and that is, I’m sure, what the comparison was meant to highlight. But there’s more to it than that, and that’s worth thinking about.

Jonathan Dresner, at 2:05 pm EST on November 26, 2007

Spanish Inquisition

Mr. Dresner — Perhaps a better comparison than the Spanish Inquisition would have been the Red Guards’ re-education camps. Or perhaps you have never been subjected to freshman (or corporate, for that matter) “diversity training.” First you must repent your sins: as a white male heterosexual (or member of the bourgoisie, as the case may be), you are inherently a racist, classist, oppressor. Having repented, loudly and publicly, you can be lead to the true light, blah, blah, blah.

Gee, maybe the Spanish Inquisition wasn’t such a bad analogy after all.

DBL, at 2:25 pm EST on November 26, 2007

In my experience, freshman diversity training would be best compared to a visit to the DMV- it takes about a half-hour, it’s basically a hassle, and most of the people going through it are thinking of other things that they’d rather be doing.

rufus, at 4:35 pm EST on November 26, 2007

This is pure hysterical Fascism and McCarthyism — a throwback to the 1950s.

TW, at 6:25 pm EST on November 26, 2007

Someone wrote that Zywicki “probably not violating a fiduciary duty (if one exists and it isn’t clear).”

That’s not true. Every trustee on the board of a private college has a fiduciary duty to the corporation and is required to put the interest of the college ahead of his own interests at all times. Zywicki also took a specific oath and is bound by specific duties in Dartmouth’s bylaws that spell out his responsibility to raise money for the institution and to represent it positively in public.

This is why Zywicki’s comments, paranoid as they are, would be no problem if uttered by a non-trustee. Coming from his mouth, however, in the form of a four-part plan for diverting funds away from Dartmouth and toward alternative institutions including his own employer — along with the extremely negative portrayals of the past president, the current president, and the board, and the suggestion that he is using his “back-door” seat as a platform to change the institution in service of the conservative forces in the culture war — is clearly a violation of the particular duties he has on that board, if not his very real fiduciary duties.

Able, at 10:55 am EST on December 3, 2007