About 600 college leaders recently A message signed Opposition to the Trump administration’s intervention in higher education. The Ivy league president was the only one who did not sign the letter was Sian Bilook, the president of Dartmouth College.
Instead, she wrote her own message to the campus, saying that higher education institutions must strive to do better, “to enhance our position as a reliable lighthouse for knowledge and truth.”
“Reflection does not mean surrender,” she added.
This type of message, as its critics and supporters say, has so far helped remove Dartams from the cross -hair in the Trump administration.
Six of the eight Evis faces major financing threats, with billions of dollars, as the federal government is trying to punish them about concerns about anti -Semitism and other issues. Harvard University may lose more than two billion dollars. And all ivy, but Dartam is investigated by allegations that it allowed anti -Semitism on the campus.
Although Dartmouth was not specifically targeted, it will not appear safe if the Republican administration reaches its path. For example, the higher endowment taxes can bring a big financial blow. Administration Campaign visa Some of the current and former Dartmithm students have tangled.
Supporters of Dr. Belok see as the hero of free expression and dialogue between people who have different political views. They say they were consistent, and supported these ideas long before the Trump administration or even Hamas’s attack on the complex campus policy in Israel.
“It is clear to me that this is something that is really committed to,” said Malcolm Mahouni, the leader of the Political Union in Dartmouth, a non -partisan group that sponsors discussions. “It is not something you do for political ease.”
But for her critics, she is trying to weaken conservatives in an attempt to spare Dartmath from revenge. They say that it has harmed, and did not help political tensions on the campus, noting the police campaign against a pro -Palestinians last year, many students and faculty said it is not necessary.
A number of reasons may also explain the reason not to face the same pressure as her peers. Dartmouth, a small liberal arts college in New Hampshire with a tightly coherent student body, may be outside the radar of legislators in Washington. He was also famous for the presence of a more conservative bent.
It seems that Dr. Belok has carefully put her school in the friendly lands of the conservatives. She rented a former Republican Party official in a major administrative position, focused on freedom of expression in her public messages and took a difficult approach to the demonstrators. She also sought friends in high places.
White House officials have recently taken praise for Dartmouth.
“I was very affected to find out how Dartmouth (my mother’s mother) afflicts him, after all these years,” wrote Harrett Delon, a Trump pro -Civil Rights Division at the Ministry of Justice, on social media last week.
Mrs. Delon said that Dr. Belok recently met her team in the letter. (The White House did not respond to the request for comment.)
“Glory to Dartmouth!” Ms. Delon added.
In an interview, Dr. Belok said that her university was keen to protect freedom of expression. She said: “But freedom of expression does not mean stealing others from free expression, screaming speakers, taking over the common space and announcing one ideology.”
Dr. Bilok said she had contacted Mrs. Delon, adding that she was talking to graduates through the political spectrum. They talked about academic freedom, the diversity of the view, and “the importance of being strongly independent as an institution.”
In 49 years, Dr. Bilok is the youngest of the Lubbian League and was at work under two years. A wave of its peers-Harvard heads, the University of Pennsylvania and Colombia-resigned after a violent reaction on how they dealt with the protests of the pro-Palestinian students.
In contrast, Dr. Bilok won the praise of the conservatives as a model for the leadership of the university.
While its supporters and critics describe it as a moment of gatherings for the university, it allowed the armed state police End of the protest camp On the Green College. Student activists said that the protest was peaceful, but the school said the tents were not authorized.
This was a contradiction of how the university dealt with another famous protest against Al -Akhdar in the 1980s, when the president forgave the pharaoh that students established to protest the apartheid in South Africa. One night, dozens of students, most of them from the conservative student newspaper, Shatter With heavyweights.
After President Trump took office, Dr. Bilok Matthew Rimmer, the former chief adviser to the Republican National Committee, was appointed as the largest lawyer at the university. In late January, Mr. Rimmer argued to support Mr. Trump’s plan to end the newly born citizenship. Mr. Rimmer is now overseeing the Dartmouth Visa and Immigration Services Office, which is said by activists who say international students are terrified.
Dr. Bilok said that the employment of Mr. Rimmer represents “the type of difference in my view through my team.”
She added, “We rented, not as a Republican lawyer in Dartmouth, but as a lawyer in Dartmouth.” “I am not employing people on the basis of the political party.”
Her position towards the Trump administration divided the campus. More than 2,500 graduates of Dartmouth fell on a petition calling Dr. Bilok to “join the ranks of the growing colleges and universities that resist.”
“You embarrass us”, read a the address In the student newspaper.
Roberta Milstein, a member of the 1988 category and organizer of the graduate mission, said that Dr. Bilok’s position represents a “wink and gesture of the Trump administration”.
But another graduate, Gerald Hughes, also from the 1988 category, began his special contact, describing Dr. Bilok as a “leader of freedom of expression” who “follows a measured and studied approach.” More than 500 graduates, faculty and students have received.
Dr. Bilok, the cognitive scientist who studies how people study high performance StirShe said that she would not change her approach.
Dr. Bilok was occupied as a faculty member and then the Executive Vice President at the University of Chicago. That school was an early hero of institutional neutrality, the idea that school officials should avoid opinion on politics or social issues except when they are central to the university mission. Dartman Reviewed recently A similar policy.
Dr. Bilok said her experience in Chicago had a “great impact on my opinion.”
Chicago also did not sign the letter from the university leaders. Vanderbilt, led by Daniel Demir, had no former Sharifa in Chicago.
In the uproar, the university continues to sponsor programming that aims to bridge the differences on the campus.
On Thursday, Mr. Hughes, who started a pro -petaling for Beilock, has managed a committee with university directors on how to improve “the environment for open dialogue, respectful dispute, and academic freedom.” (Mr. Hughes was one of the students who I participated in a heavy attack On huts, a position that he refused to discuss in detail.)
In the interview, Dr. Belok said that she supports other universities because she is moving in a difficult political climate, but her university campus will continue to make her own way.
She said, “We can stand with our peers and also speak our voice,” she said. “This is not mutual exclusive.”
