Some 600 college chiefs recently signed a letter Oppose the interference of the Trump administration in higher education. The only president of the Ivy League who did not sign the letter was Sian Beilock, the president of Dartmouth College.
Instead, she wrote her own letter to her campus, saying that higher education institutions should strive to do better, “to continue our position as a trusted beacon for knowledge and truth”.
“Reflection does not mean capitulation,” she added.
This is the kind of message, say his criticisms and supporters, who has so far helped keep Dartmouth out of the hair of the Trump administration.
Six of the eight IVIs face threats of major financing, up to billions of dollars, while the federal government tries to punish them for concerns about anti -Semitism and other questions. Harvard University alone could lose more than $ 2 billion. And each ivy, but Dartmouth, is the subject of an investigation for allegations according to which they authorized anti -Semitism on the campus.
Although Dartmouth was not specifically targeted, it would not emerge unscathed if the republican administration obtained its way. The higher taxes for the endowment could bring a significant financial blow, for example. And administration Visa repression prevented some current and former students from Dartmouth.
Dr Beilock supporters see her as a champion of freedom of expression and dialogue among people with different political views. They say that she was consistent, supporting these ideas long before the Trump administration or even the attack on Hamas against campus policy complicated by Israel.
“It is so clear for me that it is something that she is really committed,” said Malcolm Mahoney, the chief of the Dartmouth Political Union, a non -partisan group who sponsors the debates. “It is not something she does for political facility.”
But for her detractors, she tries to appease the Conservatives in order to save Dartmouth with a retribution. They say that she injured, not helped, political tensions on the campus, pointing to a police repression on a pro-Palestinian demonstration last year that many students and teachers said useless.
A number of reasons can also explain why Dartmouth did not face the same pressure as his peers. Dartmouth, a small college of liberal arts in the New Hampshire Rural with a closely knitted student body, can be outside the radar of Washington legislators. It is also known to have a more conservative fold.
And Dr. Beilock seems to have carefully positioned his school in friendly territory with the conservatives. She hired a former Republican Party official for key administrative employment, focused on freedom of expression in her public messages and adopted a difficult approach to the demonstrators. She also looked for friends in high places.
White House officials recently praised Dartmouth.
“I was so impressed to learn how Dartmouth (my Alma Mater) does things correctly, after all these years,” wrote Harmeet Dhillon, a Loyalist of Trump who heads the Division of Civil Rights of the Ministry of Justice, on social networks last week.
Dhillon said Dr. Beilock had recently met his team in the message. (The White House did not respond to a request for comments.)
“Congratulations to Dartmouth!” Mrs. Dhillon added.
In an interview, Dr. Beilock said that his university had paid attention to the protection of freedom of expression. “But freedom of expression does not mean stealing other people from freedom of expression, screaming speakers, taking care of the shared space and declaring it for an ideology,” she said.
Dr. Beilock said that she had contacted Ms. Dhillon, adding that she would speak to the elders of the political spectrum. They talked about academic freedom, diversity from a point of view and “the importance of being fiercely independent as an institution,” she said.
At 49, Dr. Beilock is the youngest president of the Ivy League and has been at work for less than two years. A wave of his peers – the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia – resigned after the counterpou to the way they managed the protests of pro -Palestinian students.
Dr. Beilock, on the other hand, was rented of the conservatives as a model of university leadership.
In what her supporters and criticisms describe as a moment of the watershed for the university, she authorized the armed state police to end a protest camp on the Green College. Activist students said the demonstration was peaceful, but the school said the tents were not authorized.
It was a contrast to the way in which the university managed another famous demonstration against green in the 1980s, when the president tolerated a slum that students created to protest apartheid in South Africa. One night, a dozen students, mainly from the conservative student newspaper, broken the barracks with sleds.
After President Trump took office, Dr. Beilock appointed Matthew Raymer, the former chief lawyer of the National Republican Committee, as the best lawyer for the university. Until the end of January, Mr. Raymer had argued in support of Mr. Trump’s plan to end the citizenship of the right of birth. Raymer now oversees the Dartmouth visa and immigration office office, according to student activists, has terrified international students.
The hiring of Mr. Raymer represents “the type of difference in point of view of my team,” said Dr. Beilock.
“We have hired Matt not as a republican lawyer for Dartmouth, but as a Dartmouth lawyer,” she added. “And I do not hire people according to the political party.”
His posture towards the Trump administration divided the campus. More than 2,500 alumni from Dartmouth signed a petition calling Dr. Beilock to “join the growing ranks of colleges and universities that resist”.
“You embarrass us”, reads a title In the student newspaper.
The posture of Dr. Beilock represents “a nod and a nod to the Trump administration,” said Roberta Millstein, member of the 1988 class and organizer of the Elders’ letter.
But another former student, Gerald Hughes, also from the 1988 promotion, began his own petition describing Dr. Beilock as a “head of freedom of expression” which “adopts a measured and deliberate approach”. He received more than 500 signatures from the former, teachers and students.
Dr Beilock, a cognitive scientist who studies how high people stifle under pressuresaid that she will not change her approach.
Dr. Beilock was a member of the faculty, then executive vice-prevail at the University of Chicago. This school was a first champion of institutional neutrality, the idea that school officials should avoid judging themselves on politics or social problems, except when they are at the heart of the university’s mission. Dartmouth recently adopted a similar policy.
Dr. Beilock said his experience in Chicago had “a great impact on the way I think”.
Chicago also did not sign the letter of university leaders. Vanderbilt, who is led by Daniel Diermeier, a former Chicago provost.
In the middle of the tumult, the university continues to sponsor the programming intended to fill the differences on the campus.
Thursday, Mr. Hughes, who started the pro-Beilock petition, moderated a panel with university administrators on how to improve “the environment for open dialogue, respectful disagreements and academic freedom”. (Mr. Hughes was one of the students who participated in the hammer attack On the barracks, a situation he refused to discuss in detail.)
In the interview, Dr. Beilock said that she was supporting other universities as they sail in a difficult political climate, but that his campus would continue to go.
“We can stand with our peers and also talk about our own voice,” she said. “These do not exclude each other.”