This is a story that is on the one hand very local, and on the other has far-reaching national implications. It is no big stretch to say that the VRWC, the vast rightwing conspiracy, is attempting a takeover of Dartmouth College.
What does it matter if the far right takes over Dartmouth? It means just over a thousand students a year being taught by professors to whom a conservative litmus test has been applied. It means a new training ground for rightwing pundits like Laura Ingraham and Dinesh D'Souza (both of whom came out of Dartmouth in the 1980s heyday of the Dartmouth Review). It means a prestigious academic home from which conservative faculty could themselves act as pundits, or draw support for their research. And it provides a blueprint for future assaults on other colleges and universities; it is, in the words of one of its leaders, part of a "multigenerational battle."
Here's the deal: Dartmouth has an unusually small board of trustees, with half the trustees historically elected by the alumni. In recent years, a group of alums has organized to elect hard right trustees, with the intent of rolling back two decades of Dartmouth's movement away from its infamously conservative past. Because the board of trustees is so small, it is vulnerable to the election of just a few people. (By way of comparison, Colgate University, with 2,750 students, has 34 trustees, while Dartmouth, with 4,100 students, has 18.)
When the college acted to make a full takeover of the board more difficult by expanding its size, the conservative-controlled Association of Alumni sued the college, supported by outside conservative groups. Now, the AoA is about to begin its elections, and the VRWC is continuing its mission to take over Dartmouth's alumni governance, continue the lawsuit, and influence the course of the college for generations.
Are these the people you want leading one of the nation's top colleges?
- Current trustee Stephen Smith has questioned evolution and defended fraternities sanctioned by Dartmouth for "publishing date-rape techniques in their house newsletter" and "secretly videotaping women hooking up with brothers."
- Current trustee Todd Zywicki, a professor at the incredibly conservative George Mason School of Law, used his blogging at the Volokh Conspiracy as a platform to aid his candidacy for Dartmouth trustee; he went on to say, in remarks at the John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, that former Dartmouth president James Freedman was a "truly evil man" trying to promote "Political correctness in all forms."
- Candidate for Association of Alumni (the group currently suing the college) First Vice President Martin "Bert" Boles spoke in February at an Opus Dei conference and has contributed money to the Club for Growth and Alan Keyes.
- Candidate for Association of Alumni Second Vice President Paul Mirengoff blogs at Power Line. Enough said.
In his Pope Center remarks, Zywicki laid out some of the plan:
It's going to be a multigenerational battle; it's going to take a lot of resources, and a lot of struggle. And I think what you have to understand is that those who control the university today they don't believe in God and they don't believe in country.
--snip--
Secondly we need to think about investing in alternative institutions or simultaneously or alternatively. Which is, that is we need to start thinking about creating and supporting alternative institutions. Elite institutions matter, absolutely, that's where the leaders of society are disproportionately going to be found. But we need to find the shining lights elsewhere and start nurturing these. I will just tell you about George Mason Law School....Our faculty are willing to engage on leading issues of the day, the second amendment, affirmative action, those sorts of things. We were the ones who sponsored the brief supporting the military, we wrote the brief supporting the military in the Fair v. Rumsfeld case, which we were then vindicated in eight to nothing in the Supreme Court. All the other law schools were on the other side of that issue....Because if reform is going to come I think it's going to come from these new institutions, not from those that are already within the elite institutions. People like Michael Monger and Robbie George, these people are sui generis right, you can't replicate them. If they come along, grab the opportunity and ride it. You have to invest in people and not just programs.
Having said that, the third point is that institutions do matter. Institutions matter a lot, which is what we've done is build institutions around the periphery like these centers, which again I think are very, very important and very, very useful. But fundamentally institutions matter. Jesus was great but Peter was just as important. Right? It's great to have people out doing these things but institutions are where the actions are, institutions is where you draw kids in and educate them with a fundamental curriculum and that sort of thing. People don't want to invest in overhead, for instance. But you've got to start thinking about getting institutions like George Mason Law School or wherever and building those programs and investing in them if it is going to be a multigenerational project of bringing them up to prominence so that they can compete.
This is a radical program to bring the worst intersection of neo-con and fundamentalist thought to higher education -- to engage in a multigenerational battle to take over your children's education, and the airwaves, and the courts. It's not just about what happens in the colleges themselves, but about the influence they can have, about the conservative infrastructure they can have waiting for the next time a George W. Bush is elected president and wants to staff an administration with lawyers who will find the justification for torture, for steamrolling Congress, for the unitary executive.
They have set up institutions to lend themselves credibility -- rightwing candidates at Dartmouth often cite FIRE, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. This group is ostensibly committed to free speech, but somehow it always seems to be the speech of frat brothers who've "jokingly" published date-rape manuals that FIRE is most concerned about. It's funded by the Sarah Scaife Foundation and others. According to SourceWatch:
FIRE is a major proponent of the intellectual diversity movement which aims to dismantle the so-called liberal bias in higher academia.
--snip--
FIRE also has a legal network which connects students who feel their rights have been violated by faculty or administrators with attorneys specializing in FIRE's major talking points.
Then there's ACTA, the American Council of Trustees and Alumni. ACTA was founded in 1995 by Lynne Cheney and Joe Lieberman, among others. Its current president, Anne Neal, worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities under Lynne Cheney in the first Bush administration. ACTA can often be found inveighing against the Dartmouth administration and supporting the actions -- including the lawsuit -- of its rightwing movement alums.
When you read articles about these conflicts, then, there are always outside, neutral-sounding groups weighing in against the college. If you don't know that they are conservative front groups, it might sound convincing. And that's the point. You build institutions so that whenever you need it, there's an "expert" to give the media a quote supporting you, to fund your lawsuits, to be a constant source of money and manpower and support for the generations-long project of moving American higher education drastically to the right.
This isn't just Dartmouth. It's just the first step.
What you can do:
If you are a Dartmouth alum, or know any, the Association of Alumni elections begin tomorrow, April 28, and run until June 5. VOTE
For more information before you vote, go to Dartmouth Undying, the group organized to retake the AoA and drop the lawsuit against the college.
I would encourage you to vote for their slate (not, as you will see, a set of wild-eyed radicals) -- but equally I would encourage you to do your research. Look seriously at their candidates; don't vote for someone you know nothing about. In this case, getting the lawsuit dropped so that the college can defend itself against the Todd Zywickis and Stephen Smiths is of paramount importance.
If you aren't a Dartmouth alum, but are an alum of a school that allows you to vote on trustees or alumni groups, take this as a reminder of the importance of that. Research your candidates and vote, or those elections may become vulnerable to organized groups trying to impose radical agendas.
When you see groups like FIRE and ACTA being quoted, know what's going on. Know what their agenda is and look for ways to unveil it in individual conflicts.