In a recent article for The Chronicle of Higher Education, Eric Kelderman reported that now-Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock became a client of BerlinRosen, a high powered New York-based public relations firm, in 2017. That same year, she was named the president of Barnard College, a private women’s liberal arts college affiliated with Columbia University. In a 2021 article published on BerlinRosen’s site, the firm counted “thought leaders like Sian Beilock of Barnard College” as one of their team’s “greatest wins” of the year.
BerlinRosen and Beilock’s relationship has continued through her time at Dartmouth. In multiple online sources, the College is described as a “client” of BerlinRosen. When College spokesperson Jana Barnello was asked to comment about the Beilock-BerlinRosen and the Dartmouth-BerlinRosen relationships, she wrote, “Like most higher education institutions, Dartmouth regularly engages consultants to assist in critical services, including marketing and communications for initiatives that uplift the important work and tremendous accomplishments of the entire community — faculty, students, staff and leaders. All consultants contracted by Dartmouth work for the institution, not any one individual.”
According to the PR Net, a public relations news organization, BerlinRosen acquired Dartmouth as a client at some point between September 2022 and September 2023, aligning with the time Beilock officially took office in June 2023.
It’s important to note a little bit more about BerlinRosen’s background. The firm was founded by two longtime New York Democratic operatives, Valerie Berlin and Jonathan Rosen, and has represented prominent left wing clients, including former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio and former presidential candidate Jill Stein, as well as a number of large labor unions. It’s interesting that a president who has positioned this institution as firmly “restrained” would allow the institution she heads to hire a firm that almost exclusively represents left wing clients. Beyond political affiliation, there is an interesting pattern of coverage in articles that BerlinRosen claims credit for: They tend to focus on Beilock and her personal achievements, instead of institutional promotion.
On the “Our Work” page of the BerlinRosen team dedicated to representing clients in higher education, one of the selected news pieces of their clients is a Wall Street Journal article about the College selecting Beilock as its 19th president: “Dartmouth Taps Barnard President as Its Next Leader.”
Another article listed, this one from Fortune Magazine, is titled, “I was elected to become the first woman to lead Dartmouth in over 250 years — and I still doubt myself. Here’s why that’s a good thing.” Although this article mentions Beilock’s new position as Dartmouth’s president, it is almost entirely a personal profile.
A LinkedIn post by a PR freelancer congratulates BerlinRosen for its coverage of “Sian Leah Beilock’s bold leadership” when Dartmouth decided to reinstate required standardized testing for admissions. The post links to a New York Times article that includes several outtakes of an interview with Beilock, as well as her headshot as the lead photo.
In a post on X, BerlinRosen promoted a piece in Time Magazine from July 2023 in which Beilock gives an extended interview about performance anxiety in the World Cup. The only two mentions of Dartmouth in the article are the fact that she is a president, and mentioning her giving a talk to Dartmouth medical students.
In an Instagram post, BerlinRosen discusses the youth mental health crisis in education. The picture attached to the post is of Beilock making her inaugural Dartmouth address, and the caption focuses on how she stated that Dartmouth is committed to supporting students’ well-being. The post also mentions “amplify[ing]” Beilock’s initiatives in Time and the Washington Post.
Interestingly, articles listed on BerlinRosen’s “Our Work” page about other colleges and universities take a markedly more institutional focus. One article discusses The Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, and includes interviews from the director of the program and one of its graduates. Another article highlights how the Monterrey Institute of Technology unveiled a new, 100 million dollar faculty recruiting effort. Another boasts about an exhibit of Toni Morrison’s personal papers at Princeton.
Onboarding of BerlinRosen at Dartmouth becomes even more puzzling when considering Dartmouth’s own resources housed in the Office of Communications. Part of the stated job of the office is to “provide advice on how best to extend reach to external audiences.” Why did the institution need to spend more money on hiring an outside PR team, specifically around the time that Beilock arrived, if it already has its own in-house office dedicated to this purpose?
These examples are all part of a broader pattern for Beilock specifically –– one of frequent mentions and features in top media sources. Although it is impossible to prove that many of the articles published about Beilock were in some way coordinated by BerlinRosen, the ones that are already connected here establish a strong pattern of BerlinRosen prioritizing Beilock’s voice, sometimes more than that of Dartmouth as an institution. Given Beilock’s previous work with BerlinRosen, this pattern raises questions about how the College’s communications priorities are being set.
BerlinRosen did not respond to multiple requests for comment by time of publication.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and columnist for The Dartmouth. He studies government and creative writing. He publishes various personal work under a pen name on Substack (https://substack.com/@wesmercer), and you can find his other work in various publications.
