A perfect trustee for Dartmouth

I gave up on Dartmouth College years ago. The fact that Dartmouth has gone from a top seven ranking in campus free speech (according to the FIRE rankings) to third worst says much of what we need to know about the College’s decline in the past decade.

To some extent, Dartmouth may also have given up on me. I no longer get calls from students soliciting money, even though I was always polite when I said “no.”

I still get mailings from Dartmouth, though. The latest one is the Alumni Council’s announcement of a trustee candidate.

The candidate is Joyce Sackey, M.D.. According to the announcement, she is chief diversity officer for Tufts University’s Health Sciences Schools and dean for multicultural affairs and global health at Tufts University School Medicine.

With so many outstanding Dartmouth’s alums of all races and ethnicities, you might think the College would select a trustee with an honest job.

It makes sense, though, that Dartmouth would instead turn to a diversity monger. Dartmouth is obsessed with diversity, except when it comes to diversity of thought and expression. It has an office of “Institutional Diversity & Equity” and an office of “Pluralism and Leadership.” It has come up with six — count them, six — initiatives to “foster a culture of inclusion across Dartmouth.”

I have been unable to determine the number of Dartmouth employees whose work is devoted primarily to “diversity.” If anyone knows the number, I’d like to see it.

Dartmouth grants race-based preferences to Black applicants for admission (and, quite likely, to Black applicants for certain kinds of employment). This practice is legally suspect.

When the lawsuits challenging similar preferential admissions policies at Harvard and Yale are resolved, Dartmouth might need to rethink its policy of preferring Black applicants if it wants to comply with the law. Despite all of Dartmouth’s “diversity” personnel and the addition, soon, of a “diversity” trustee, I doubt there will be anyone on hand to rethink the matter in a manner consistent with the legal prohibitions against racial discrimination.