Peter Goldsmith, the newly arrived Freshmen Dean, is as much a scholar as he is an administrator. A Princeton University anthropologist, Goldsmith compares his new and old schools as if he were examining case studies in collegiate culture.
"In my few, short visits up here in the summer, I was most impressed with the similarities between Princeton and Dartmouth. And in the week that I've been here the differences have begun to emerge. Among the differences that surprised and delighted me the most is what I take to be the tremendous informality of Dartmouth and the ease of interactions and the friendliness."
Inspired to study anthropology in his sophomore year at Marlboro College in Vermont by "a particularly good anthropology instructor," and another professor he had in his junior year at Boston College, Goldsmith said he could easily have been a historian had he met the right teacher.
"I suppose that here's a life lesson for undergraduates," he said, "sometimes it's just one very good teacher that makes all the difference."
Unable to escape his anthropological training, Goldsmith said his interest in multiculturalism stems from his original interest in anthropology.
"What anthropology discipline has to offer is the ability to step out of your own shoes. First off, to become self-conscious of your own cultural presuppositions that you take into situations and step out of them to begin to see the world through the lenses of other cultures."
In his seven years as Director of Studies of Mathey College, one of Princeton's five residential colleges, he supervised Mathey's Minority Affairs Advisers who are responsible for facilitating the adjustment of minority students.
He has also served in the past year on a race relations committee which came up with a set of responses to deal with racial problems on the Princeton campus.
Professionally, Goldsmith said this background makes him an "administrator with the ability to be empathetic with people who don't necessarily feel at peace with the traditionally represented culture at the campus, by that I suppose I mean of white, Anglo-Saxon and prep schools background."
"I think as an administrator I wouldn't want to leave the impression that I'm only a dean for those who have felt traditionally marginalized," he added. " It's important that a dean be there and be accessible for everyone."
Goldsmith's specific field of interest is African-American anthropology. The interest stems from his family's deep involvement in the civil rights movement and his experiences as a youngster while growing up in Princeton and his memories of being hauled off to civil rights demonstrations with his father, a physicist working at the time with RCA, an electronics company.
Goldsmith's sister, equally caught up in the civil rights movement, went to South Carolina after her freshmen year at Brandeis University to help the Southern Christian Leadership Committee with voter registration of southern blacks in the 1960s.
"In the wake of that, she brought back a young man from South Carolina to live with us for a year and to attend Princeton High School," Goldsmith said.
"In effort to address the inadequacies of his secondary school preparation in segregated South Carolina. It was a very well intentioned, liberal kind of thing for a suburban, Jewish family to do fraught with all kinds of naivete about who we were, who we're helping and what we do," he said. "Among the people who got a lot out of that experience was me. The man from South Carolina was very important to my upbringing."
Goldsmith has a quiet and gentle demeanor, fitting of his petite 5-foot-5-inch frame.
Rukmini Sichitiu '95, a member of the freshmen dean search committee, met Goldsmith over the summer during his interview at the College. She praised his experience but at the time said she was worried about his "ability to relate to students on more than an academic level."
"He seems very quiet and very reserved compared to the other candidates who are very lively," Sichitiu said.
In a telephone conversation last night from their new home in Norwich, Vt., Goldsmith's wife Fran said, "He can seem quiet, but if there is something he needs to say, he will say it."
Goldsmith said he can understand why some people would initially perceive him as very reserved and quiet.
"I have the impulse in a new situation to size it up and to size the cast of characters up," he said. "So in that way, I'm slower than some others in warming up to a new situation.
"I'm certainly not the most gregarious freshmen dean but I think being not overly gregarious is an asset. Students find me less intimidating and easy to approach which is the tone I like to set in my office," he added.
Goldsmith said he compares the freshmen year of College to "stepping off a cliff to adulthood" because of the difficult transitions of living away from home and the tremendous freedoms of being removed from parental restraints.
During his freshman year at Marlboro College in 1970, Goldsmith said he "felt very strongly the tension as most students felt, in differentiating myself and wanting to fit in."
Goldsmith said he sees the direction taken in the first year as very important. As a deeply thoughtful intellectual, and a temperate, diplomatic administrator, Goldsmith seems to fit the same mold as College President James Freedman and Dean of Students Lee Pelton. And he has openly praised Freedman's efforts to increase intellectualism.
"Its not the intention to turn every Dartmouth student into an intellectual. It's only one way of being in this world and being an intellectual isn't always the best way to define yourself or to be in the world. And you might argue that in some respects a community of people who define themselves as intellectuals can have dreadful results.
"But you might hope that these four years constitute the most intellectual experience in many students lives," Goldsmith said.
After his second year at Marlboro College, Goldsmith transferred to Boston College where he majored in English and received a master's degree in sociology. He received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.
He said he did not major in anthropology as an undergraduate because Boston College did not have a department in that subject.
