Re: Dartmouth to award seven honorary degrees at commencement ceremony
Why did the council on honorary degrees select Greg Lukianoff to receive an honorary degree this year?
Lukianoff is the president and CEO of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a foundation which protects free speech and individual rights on college campuses. Despite the organization’s connections to the Koch brothers and other right-wing networks, I generally applaud the work they do and think that their focus on improving freedom of speech on college campuses is extremely important.
One of their most notable initiatives is the publication of yearly free speech rankings for colleges and universities. This ranking takes into account a number of measures — such as the existence of speech codes and student surveys — to evaluate how “free” speech is on every campus.
Dartmouth jumped from 224 out of 251 in the 2025 rankings to 35 out of 257 in FIRE’s 2026 rankings. Last year, it also became the only school in the Ivy League to earn FIRE’s “green light” rating. A press release from FIRE announcing this improvement described how the foundation reached out to President Beilock, offering to partner with her to “make the classroom a ‘brave space’ once again.”
The fact that Lukianoff is now earning an honorary degree directly after this ratings change isn’t evidence of anything, but it certainly makes me wonder. Why did the council on honorary degrees specifically select Mr. Lukianoff this year?
Eli Moyse ’27 is an opinion editor and heads The Dartmouth Editorial Board. Letters to the Editor 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.
