We sat down to interview College President James Wright one week ago, just before he was inaugurated as Dartmouth's 16th president.
Since the April announcement that he would succeed former President James O. Freedman, Wright has not had much free time. He said he is currently reading "The Shape of the River," a book on affirmative action by former Harvard University President Derek Bok and former Princeton University President William Bowen. But he has not found the time for Cormac McCarthy's "Cities of the Plain," which he wanted to read over the summer.
The conclusion of our two-part interview focuses on Wright's personal life and background, from his life outside the office to his recent experience detonating a wall as part of the Wilder Hall expansion project.
The Dartmouth: A lot of students so far have noticed you out and about more. What kind of reactions have you gotten from them? Have they approached you? Have they talked to you?
Wright: A lot of students have comments.
Somebody said, 'I see you, you are out and about a lot more now that you have been appointed president.' This was last spring. I said, 'How do you know that I wasn't out and about before? You just didn't know who I was before.'
I have been out and about, but that is my style. I expect to be out more now that students are back, you are going to see me more over at Thayer, you are going to see me at the campus. I went over to Hop, to the snack bar at the Hop at noon today. And I think it's just important to be out and see people and say 'hello' to them and ask them how they're doing.
I hope students don't get tired of seeing me, intruding onto their turf and territory, but you're going to see me around. And I also expect to be visible in other parts of the community with the staff and the administration.
We have just a wonderful, rich community here. I think whenever I feel sort of overwhelmed by paperwork here or discouraged by financial things, I think going out and talking to some students or some colleagues in the faculty or administration will make me feel better so, I'll be out and about.
And talking to people is how I -- and talking to students last spring after my announcement -- is how I began, I think, to decide that I wanted to do something right away this summer to try to expand the range of social opportunities available to students.
I listened. I'm not always going to do what students tell me to do or ask me to do, but I will listen. I think the discussion is an important part.
What other interests and hobbies take you away from students and your work?
Well, not many things take me away from it any more. I've been sort of fully immersed.
I tried to take some time off this summer. We have a place over at lake Sunapee and I enjoy fishing. I never had a line in the water. I was sort of thinking about my Inauguration and I was also trying to plan my course for next winter because I knew that once the Fall term started I wouldn't have a lot of time to do that. So I've not had a chance to do that.
But I enjoy reading. I used to say I walk two miles a day, but I haven't even been doing that as faithfully lately because of moving and settling in. There's not been a lot of time for that sort of thing.
I enjoy watching athletic events, but not participating in them myself but I enjoy watching them. I enjoy watching movies, although my wife goes to movies far more than I do. Sometimes she'll let me tag along with her.
I enjoy seeing my grandchildren. I had a chance to see them this summer at the place over at the Lake. I enjoy watching people and seeing what they're doing.
Which was the greatest of the experiences in your life -- the college essay question -- that brought you to this point? To enable you to ...
I don't know. It is an interesting thing because I've been encouraged by people. I've been privileged to have people encourage me.
As I said last spring, I certainly didn't start off on a trajectory where one might have predicted that I would be at this place, at this time. I think that's not false modesty, that's a pretty fair objective assessment of where I started out and where I came from.
But I had the good fortune, I think, of being encouraged by people, a couple of faculty members as an undergraduate student, two of whom [were] here for my Inauguration on Wednesday...
I had a family that was very supportive of me. When I came to Dartmouth as a young faculty member I had some people, Lou Morgan, who was chairman of the history department at the time, took an interest in me and really was a good mentor and a good friend.
I've had other good mentors and good friends here. Nobody starts an academic degree program in graduate school thinking 'I'm going to be a college president.' I surely didn't and, I really don't think anyone else does.
But, there certainly are people who aspire to be a college president. It's a worthy thing for one to aspire to be. But I suspect that there are more people who think early on they would like to be in administration. They are more on that track and they would hope some day to be a president.
Somebody who goes onto receive an academic Ph.D. generally is not thinking about that. I wasn't, and I don't know when in my career here I thought well, maybe, administration is something I would like to do.
I was asked by a good friend and colleague Hans Penner to be associate dean of the faculty with him in 1981. And I hadn't quite really thought about doing something like that. But it sounded interesting, and I had a tremendous regard for Dean Penner.
When Jim Freedman in 1989 asked me to be Dean of the Faculty, I was quite honored. I was pleased to do it because of my regard for Jim and what he was trying to do here and it seemed the sort of thing I would enjoy doing. And I did.
I certainly fully expected to serve him for a number of years and go back to the History department. I didn't expect to succeed him as president.
I didn't expect that he would be leaving at the time that he did and I think when he announced that he was stepping down I didn't even think immediately about succeeding him.
But people mentioned it to me and I thought about it some, and thought about it some more and it became an attractive idea for me. So, I think I've been lucky, I've had people who have supported me and encouraged me and I think I'm privileged to work at an institution like this, that is willing to appoint somebody who comes out of its own ranks. I'm very pleased, I couldn't be happier to be right where I am.
[Editor's Note: To conserve space, we removed a portion where Wright discussed the search process and talked about meeting with the search committee.]
I became more and more intrigued by it. There's no doubt, that if they hadn't asked me by April I would have been disappointed.
I think it's fair to say I would have easily recovered from that and gone on and would have had my fishing line in the water this summer. I would be planning to teach more than that single course next year and I would have gotten along just fine.
But I would have been disappointed because I realize that there was a tremendous opportunity here to build on some things that were very important to me and to pull together some things that I've been a part of over the last 29 years, including the three things that we talked about before in the previous presidential administrations.
We can pull some of these matters together and really make Dartmouth the sort of place that I've always imagined it could be when I came here.
During your tenure as Provost and the controversy that ensued during that, what were your feelings? Was there any discouragement about the path you chose ...Were there any second thoughts during that controversy? 'Maybe I should have stuck with teaching or maybe I should have...'
Well, I think that when one finds oneself in a difficult situation, you always think 'I should have stuck with something else.' I imagine that's a natural reaction.
I think that I did not want to be in a position where I became the symbol of any divisions on the part of the faculty. I think I was gratified by the support that was reported -- I never saw any of the petitions. I saw the reports in The Dartmouth about the petitions urging me to stay on and was gratified by that.
And I was quite comfortable serving out my one year as provost and going back to the history department. So, I didn't monitor that with bitterness or hard feelings. I certainly have none now and I really had none then. It feels frustrating, it was not fun, I would not want to urge that experience on anyone because you find yourself sort of the focus of attention and controversy. And I think that nobody wants to become a symbol of divisions. Nobody wants to be embarrassed at a place that you've spent as much time at as I have.
But I'm a fairly resilient person, I understood what was going on, and we worked through that. I'm comfortable with where I am now ...
One of the things President Freedman spent a lot of time doing was fundraising and a lot of that involved going out of town. How do you plan to balance the fundraising aspect with teaching a class and being on campus?
Well, I don't know until I do it. I intend to balance them. Obviously I have the responsibility to serve as chief officer of the institution. I have the obligation to engage in certain public affairs activities that go with the office, the alumni relations activities.
I certainly have an obligation to raise the money that Dartmouth requires, that we require to do the things that I want to do. And I will just have to try to juggle that.
All college presidents do this in different sorts of ways. I think there's always a danger -- I'm told, the danger in one's first year in a position like this is that you agree to do everything and during the year you realize you can't. But you start to back away from one thing or another and people say will people say, "Well last year, you came to whatever it was, why won't you come now?" ...
I saw where you got to help participate with the construction behind Wilder Hall. What was that like for you, going back to what you had done before?
Well, I used to be a powderman when I worked in the mines.
I worked for a major mining company, and I worked on their drill machine and made $2.15 an hour.
They wanted a powderman and were paying $2.25 or something like that. It was a union mine and I was the least senior person there, and you had to put in for these jobs.
Nobody else put in for it, so I did and I made a dime more an hour by doing this. I used to set dynamite charges and run the wire out ...this was the first time I had detonated any dynamite since then.
In fact, it's not dynamite that they are using now, it is more of a nitroglycerin, what you would call a fertilizer. We used some of that, but we also used dynamite sticks in the mine where I worked. But I have to say, basically I sat there and watched these people load the holes and set the charges and set the timing and all of that, and it was nice to look at how they did it so professionally, but my job was to push the switch that detonated, and it's not much more complicated than flipping the switch over there on the wall that turns the light on -- we're not talking about a high-skill position.
But it was nice to be part of it ceremonially, and it was nice, I guess, to set off a dynamite charge again. But I don't expect to be doing a lot more of that.
