It’s time to take over Parkhurst again!
With apologies for my hyperbolic language, this latest action by President Beilock in abstaining from signing the American Association of Colleges and Universities letter, the only Ivy League president to do so, only confirms the obvious ... that MAGA has come to Hanover and now appears to control the actions of both College President Sian Leah Beilock and the Board of Trustees.
While history will condemn Trump’s antics and praise the courage of Harvard and Princeton Universities, how will Dartmouth fare? Not well, I expect ... becoming an academic pariah, capitulating in their hiring practices and, even more significantly, in their public pronouncements, essentially condemning the College to institutional isolationism.
Finally, in response to President Beilock’s comment that “reflection does not mean capitulation,” reflection is, indeed, capitulation when it is used as an unethical and untenable strategy meant to satiate a political bully rather than to confront threats to academic freedom and our democracy itself.
Tom Charles ’70
Tom Charles is a member of the Class of 1970. Letters to the Editor represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
