As I walked into Spaulding Auditorium yesterday for the live closed-circuit announcement of the next president of the College, I was thinking that Bill Bradley or Robert Reich would be nice choices, but that James Wright would be the logical choice. And that's exactly what Wright's election to the Dartmouth presidency is -- a logical, conservative choice that marks an important first step toward restoring some stability to the Dartmouth administration.
If there's one thing Dartmouth abhors, it's instability. There have been just 15 presidents in the 228-year history of the College -- yielding a 15-year average for each presidential administration. That's stability. Yet the past seven months have seen the resignations of the College's four top administrators, essentially throwing the Dartmouth leadership into disarray. The College faced the prospect of losing more than 30 years of Dartmouth administrative experience and inserting four outsiders into the positions of president, provost, dean of the College and vice president and treasurer. Having Wright stay on as provost or ascend to the presidency was not just an option -- it was a virtual necessity.
The Board of Trustees also gave a very big nod to established tradition by returning to the College's time-honored practice of anointing a president with strong existing Dartmouth ties. When outgoing President James Freedman was elected in 1987, shock waves reverberated as it became known it would be the first time since Bennett Tyler's administration of the 1820s that the College's CEO was neither a Dartmouth alumnus nor a member of the faculty. But little issue can be made with Wright's Dartmouth experience -- he has been a member of the faculty since 1969 and an administrator since 1989. He has been in the provost's office for the past 17 months, and before that he was dean of the faculty for two terms, from 1989 to 1997.
Wright's election also makes sense in that Freedman has been seemingly grooming him for the job for some time. The two men are good friends and generally are considered to share like views on a variety of subjects. When Freedman was on sabbatical in 1995, he hand-picked Wright to serve as acting president for six months. And when Freedman knew he would be stepping down and wanted to appoint a new provost quickly to preserve administrative stability, he turned to Wright. Wright and Freedman have for years stood together in support of Robert Venturi's Berry Library designs, and when dissent arose among faculty and students last year, both the provost and president affirmed their unwavering support for the project to go ahead as planned. Freedman's and Wright's close relationship means a smoother-than-normal presidential transition period is likely -- yet another reason that the choice of Wright is a logical one.
So what does all of this mean for the upcoming Wright administration? If his comments yesterday are any indication, there will be something for everyone under President Wright. He spoke at length to the faculty, saying he is first and foremost "a faculty member, teacher and historian," and emphasizing several times his commitment to expanding the faculty's research opportunities. For students, he said he was committed to seeing them engage in learning as "active participants" instead of "passive observers" and said he intends to engage in a dialogue "especially with students" as to what membership within the Dartmouth community means. Oh yeah -- and Wright even alluded a couple of times to his "vision of Dartmouth," which no doubt had the Student Assembly groupies doing cartwheels well into last night.
Looking through a historical perspective, the last time Dartmouth hired a president from within who had such extensive roots in the faculty was 1969, and that president was John Kemeny. Kemeny, succeeding the legendary John Sloan Dickey, had some big shoes to fill. Many doubted Kemeny would ever be able to chart his own course or make much of a presidential name for himself following an icon like Dickey. But Kemeny co-educated Dartmouth and started the Dartmouth Plan; now he is remembered as one of the College's great presidents. Kemeny was able to do it largely because he had existing relationships with Dartmouth, knew how things worked at the College and didn't have to spend years acclimating himself. So, too, is the case with James Wright. This is not to say that the Wright presidency is destined for greatness, but historical precedent suggests that presidents with his pedigree have been able to do great things before.
And so, in a few months James Wright will take his place in the Wheelock Succession for real. Even if his hires for provost, dean of the College and vice president and treasurer are all outsiders, Wright's presence at the top of the administration gives some much-needed stability to the institution. Once the business of stocking the administration is complete, Wright can then turn to the College's more important chores: faculty and student recruitment, expansion of both the campus and the endowment and continued intellectualism, just to name a few. The choice of James Wright as the next president of the College was indeed a logical one. Hopefully years down the road we will all be saying it was a good one, too.
