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Brainstorm: Lives of the Mind Stan Katz

Presidential Grace Under Pressure

Photobucket

Dartmouth President James Wright
(Photo from Dartmouth’s Web site)


Like many self-appointed critics of higher-education policy, I have frequently disparaged the leadership of higher ed in this country. There may never have been a Golden Age, but I believe that on balance we had more passionate and articulate leadership from the presidents of our colleges and universities half a century ago when I was discovering my vocation as a professor. James Bryant Conant was my college president, and I remember him with great warmth. I never knew Clark Kerr or several of his most distinguished contemporaries, but it seems to me that I found more to admire in the presidents’ offices of a generation ago.

But that is not to say that I have not admired a number of more recent educational and university leaders. Ernie Boyer, a very good friend, was certainly such a person — as is his successor, Lee Shulman. But one of my benchmark figures for excellence in educational leadership was the late Jim Freedman, a very close friend whom I first knew as my dean at the University of Pennsylvania law school. Jim, a Jew from New Hampshire, an unlikely person for such a school and place, was a superb president at the University of Iowa. And, later, he performed heroically while under terrible pressure at Dartmouth College, securing his legacy as an administrator who fully understood the values of liberal education. Jim was a model of grace under duress — and it took its toll on him. If you have not read the memoir of his early years, Finding the Words, I urge you to do so.

One of the required skills for a great CEO is the capacity to identify and confer serious responsibility upon talented subordinates. After arriving at Dartmouth, Jim Freedman discovered just such a person, Jim Wright, and made him his provost. The two Jims were utterly different sorts of persons and scholars, but they were dramatically alike in their commitment to the need for democratic values in liberal undergraduate education. Jim Wright succeeded his mentor when cancer forced Freedman to retire a decade ago, and from my point of view he has had a brilliant run at Dartmouth, continuing the opening up of a heretofore rather closed college environment that his mentor had begun.

As it happens, I have known Jim Wright since he was a graduate student in American history at the University of Wisconsin. I liked him then, and my admiration for him as both a historian and college leader has grown exponentially over the years. Jim has just announced his retirement (when students retire before their teachers, it makes the teachers feel just a tad old), and I would like to go on record as saying that he is on my short list of those who have made a very significant contribution to the commonweal of higher education.

Thanks for a job well done, Jim!

Posted at 03:50:50 PM on February 6, 2008 | All postings by Stan Katz

Comments

  1. Jim Wright—and Susan Wright—deserve more applause and credit than all the glasses raised in Hanover can ever offer—and that’s saying something. They are not only mentors and models; they are heroes. I offer my thanks, my embraces, and my best wishes for all the happiness in the world awaiting them in the years of leisure and adventure that lie ahead!

    — Gina Barreca '79 · Feb 6, 09:26 PM · #

  2. James Wright had several foundational ideas about educatedness and the value to civilization of certain institutions whose mission was all and only about educatedness. He held to those ideas through thick and thin, through the slings and arrows of outrageous constituencies, taking heaps of abuse from outraged ignoramouses, with a grace and a beautiful dialogic style, that inspired those of us aware of it all, with the idea that individual people can by themselves change lives by resisting all the sell-offs, trade-offs, bribes, corruptions, lesser goals that life offers—-by seeing the high road and paying, consciously, the prices for walking there. That he took so many of his subordinates along for his walks on the high road, so they now today walk it proudly and competently is a legacy few of us go happily to our graves with. An admirable life indeed. In the end, us, and all of life as we know it, is just—-people.

    — Richard Tabor Greene · Feb 8, 07:34 AM · #

  3. Jim Freedman’s speeches were often crafted around someone he believed was a hero and he had a great eye for them…and Gina Barreca is absolutely right that Jim and Susan Wright are heroes. Thank goodness Jim F. recognized all of Jim W.‘s heroic talents and strengths and put his belief in words and action! Dartmouth has had an amazing run with the two Jims these past 21+ years.

    — Emily P. Bakemeier · Feb 8, 08:16 AM · #

  4. The relations, internal and external, in institutions of higher education have become more and more complex, and the job of presidents that much more complicated. I agree with all above that Dartmouth has been the beneficiary of Jim Wright’s ways of wisdom as well as his phenomenal dedication and devotion to the academic enterprise and to the College that I love (even when I find myself quite irritated with the place!) Thanks for the great service.

    — Kal Alston '80 · Feb 8, 12:31 PM · #

  5. 5. I sincerely believe no one will be able to soar high enough to salute Jim and Susan Wright’s kindness, humanity, dedication, perseverance, courage, and vision in their stewardship of Dartmouth College. However, I will be among the masses who will still aim to find the words to match and salute them for their exemplary lives.

    — Tommy Woon · Feb 8, 05:14 PM · #

  6. I sincerely believe no one will be able to soar high enough to salute Jim and Susan Wright’s kindness, humanity, dedication, perseverance, courage, and vision in their stewardship of Dartmouth College. However, I will be among the masses who will still aim to find the words to salute them for their exemplary lives.

    — Tommy Woon · Feb 8, 05:16 PM · #

  7. I am not an academician . I am a graduate of the college . Alas , displaying some pretension to intellectual snobery early on I viewed President Wright as likely , ‘ less than ‘ . Other than that he was a U S Marine , he only favorably caught my attention after initiating those programs aiding impaired veterans gain acceptance to college . Now that we are losing him I am aware of my own growing sense of loss – loss of balance , of moderation , of steadfastness , of wisdom for Dartmouth – more . Too , we at Dartmouth have been assailed over recent years by radicals – mostly from the right . I have resented this – and found in our departing leader a bulwark . . . a bulwark , really , to radicalism from both the left and right . I an unknown , say , alum here pursuing my life long after going out from my alma mater , wish him well and hope we may find such another .

    — Jack Patterson · Feb 16, 12:47 PM · #

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