Dartmouth Wins Three-Way Battle for Looking the Worst

This may head into TL/DR territory.  You have been warned.

The extent to which Curmie’s alma mater actually allows
Voice(s) Crying in the Wilderness
is not entirely clear.

Curmie had remained blissfully ignorant of an incident, or perhaps series of incidents, this spring at his undergrad alma mater, Dartmouth College, until reading about it on Ethics Alarms.  I usually see stuff from FIRE; no idea why I didn’t, this time.

A little personal history first.  I think it may become relevant…

My time “on the hill” was, to coin a phrase, the best of times and the worst of times.  It was certainly a period of change.  The administration building had been occupied by anti-war protestors a couple of years before I got there.  Direct US involvement in the Vietnam War and the accompanying draft had ended, but there was a lot of residue. The campus police once demanded to see my draft card when I was studying in the lounge of a classroom building my freshman year.

My freshman class was the second in the college’s 200+ year history to include women; the male/female ratio was 5:2 when I enrolled, 3:2 when I graduated.  The “Indian symbol,” a commemoration of the college’s origins as a missionary school for Native Americans, was officially discarded in my freshman year: a neat trick since it had never been officially adopted.  Many students and alumni were upset by both of these changes to tradition.  Others rejoiced.

Certainly the concerns of both the Native American community and the women on campus were ignored if not suppressed, not (just) by the administration, but by a lot of fellow students.  Politically, the student body was all over the map.  Curmie at the time was probably a little right of center, but had friends from across the spectrum.  One had a parent in the then newly-created Heritage Foundation, another was the daughter of a Democratic member of Congress.  I knew radicals and reactionaries and about everything in-between.

I’ve had little direct contact with Dartmouth in many years.  I send the alumni fund a little money each year, and I check the alumni newsletter for news of friends.  I bemoaned the choice of commencement speaker a few years ago. That’s about it.  So I can’t say for certain what the student body is like in terms of political philosophy.  I suspect it’s rather familiar, except that those in the center have been pulled in one direction or the other.  There probably aren’t a lot of moderates left on either side, as has been the case nation-wide of late.

The great thing about Dartmouth in those bygone days (and I hope this is still true) was that there wasn’t a department on campus that wasn’t at least very good, and most were excellent.  Curmie started as a pre-law Government major, added a Drama major, and ultimately dropped the former and entered the honors program of the latter. 

Interestingly, a course in Political Ideals helped prompt the change from both directions.  It was one of two courses I ever took anywhere in which I felt any pressure to agree with the professor on matters of opinion.  But it also introduced me to the study of dramatic texts as an exercise in more than simply literary analysis.  The idealistic and intellectual Doctor Stockmann in Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People was used as an example of traditional conservatism (how far today’s GOP has wandered from that template!), and I became intrigued.  This was far from the only reason for my decision to change to a different career path, but it was certainly a factor, and it may have been the first catalyst.

But… enough of the scaffolding.  The story:

In January of this year, the Dartmouth chapters of the College Republicans, Turning Point USA, and Network of Enlightened Women (no arrogance associated with that title, right?) were scheduled to host an on-campus event, “Extremism in America,” featuring conservative journalist/media personality Andy Ngo and ex-antifa, now libertarian activist, Gabriel Nadales. 

At the last minute, college authorities, citing “safety issues” and “concerning information” from the local (Hanover, NH) police, apparently suggesting the possibility of violent protests, moved the event exclusively online, despite the fact that no one actually showed up to protest.  Later, they billed the sponsoring organizations $3600 for the added security.  (Note: the demand is a little more nuanced than that, but that’s the de facto gist.)  The zoomed event was seen by 177 unique viewers, with a peak viewership at a given moment of 94.  Filene Auditorium, where the event was originally scheduled, has a seating capacity of 221.  Organizers believe the event would have attracted more viewers if they’d had more time to distribute the zoom link; it’s difficult to argue with that.

OK: let’s start at the beginning.  Ngo and Nadales have both been all over the map in terms of any kind of personal philosophy.  Ngo, for example, has been a Buddhist, an evangelical Christian, and a loud and proud atheist.  That’s a pretty good range for someone still in his mid-30s.  A sympathetic reading of this phenomenon would be that he is a perfectionist, moving on from any ideology that does not express his true beliefs.  A more cynical interpretation is that he actually has no core values, but will pretend to do so if it gets him something we wants—fame, money, whatever.  But ultimately, none of this matters.

Nor does it matter that Ngo and Nadales, like so many others, left or right, on the traveling talking-head circuit, were booked not because they have anything terribly pertinent to say, but because they’re controversial (and little else).  Why else would the College Republicans’ previous event have featured Madison Cawthorn?  The College Republicans’ next guest?  They brought Ngo’s mentor, James O’Keefe, who has literally no integrity whatsoever, to Hanover a couple of weeks ago.  An opinion piece by Kyle Mullins in The Dartmouth (a.k.a. the “Daily D”) accurately describes the obvious conclusion: “The group’s decision to bring him to campus appears to be another example of trying to ‘own the libs,’ proving that they are more interested in self-victimization than in a free dialogue about conservative ideas.”  Curmie could not have put it better.

For all this, the fact that Curmie wouldn’t sit through an hour of listening to the likes on Ngo and Nadales (or Cawthorn, or O’Keefe) if he were paid to do so doesn’t mean that they have no right to speak, or that others have no right to hear them.  Things in this case are a little more complicated than that, of course, but deciding how much so probably tells us more about the reader’s politics than about what actually happened.

A couple of days before the event, event organizers learned of a protest by a group calling itself Dartmouth Anarchists.  The protest was to take place at Filene Auditorium, beginning an hour before the scheduled beginning of the event.  There then ensued a series of e-mails between Chloe Ezzo, a Dartmouth junior who is an officer in all three sponsoring organizations and apparently the lead organizer of the event, and various college officials, including a representative of the campus police and the events coordinator.  You can see at least some of that exchange here.

There was apparently an in-person meeting, as well.  What’s clear is that Ezzo suspected that “Dartmouth Anarchists” didn’t really exist, but, given the history of some antifa protests, wanted to take no chances.  It was her idea to ban backpacks at the event and to require a Dartmouth ID to attend an event originally intended to be open to the general public.  (There were also some COVID protocols.)  She asked about the possibility of metal detectors, but was told that was infeasible.

Jim Alberghini, the events coordinator, also wrote, prior to the event, that Ezzo and her fellow sponsors were “responsible for the smooth execution of this event…. as hosts you are responsible for the guests you invite to campus—including crowd behavior, violations of College policies, and any associated damage.”  He also urged moving the event online or requiring a Dartmouth ID; organizers rejected the former suggestion but had actually already proposed the latter.  What is conspicuous in its absence from Alberghini’s CYA e-mail is any indication that the sponsoring organizations would be responsible for the cost of security deemed necessary by College officials.

On the day of the event, there was a “routine” security check; Ngo said it involved bomb-sniffing dogs.  That assertion is uncorroborated, as far as I can tell.  Curmie wouldn’t trust Ngo not to exaggerate, but that’s different from saying he’s lying.  And Curmie has attended dozens if not hundreds of events (even excluding sports and the arts) at colleges and universities over the years.  With the exception of appearances of Presidential candidates (in one case a sitting Vice President) or an ex-President, none, not even the ones involving sitting governors or senators, have, to the best of my knowledge, had security checks at all.  So there was obviously at least a little concern (by whom, exactly?) for the safety of guests and attendees alike. 

And why the extremely late insistence that the event go online?  That’s unclear.  The Dartmouth reports that “Department of Safety and Security officers at the venue confirmed that the in-person event had been moved online, but did not explain why, referring comment to Safety and Security director Keysi Montas, who declined to comment.”  Not exactly the most shining example of transparency, that, but declining comment isn’t lying, and one supposes there could conceivably be a legitimate reason for the secrecy—protecting an undercover source, for example.  That’s a bit of a stretch, though, don’t you think, Gentle Reader?

Indeed, the Hanover Police deny making any recommendations that the event go online.  Curmie, who has dealt with that police force on several occasions over the years—before, during, and after his time at Dartmouth—is quite confident that they’d cheerfully throw Dartmouth under the proverbial bus, given the opportunity.  But would they lie to do it?  Curmie doesn’t trust them enough to say “no,” but it’s certainly a “probably not.”

College Republicans president Griffin Mackey offers a scathing take-down of the college’s position in a post on NHJournal.com a couple of days after the event.  I do encourage you, Gentle Reader, to follow the link and check out his full screed, but here’s a brief sample: “Dartmouth College decided to cancel based on information that had been available for days — if not weeks — before. Moreover, if the security concerns Dartmouth had were so grave, why did we host the virtual event in the same room we had intended for the in-person event?”

That’s a pretty impressive rant.  But just because X is wrong doesn’t mean than every version of not-X is right.  There are, for example, a couple of flaws in the arguments presented by Mackey and Ezzo.  Yes, the college is correct in saying that College Republican officers themselves had expressed security concerns.  They decided to go ahead with an in-person event despite those concerns, but that doesn’t mean they didn’t express them.  The real point is that there doesn’t seem to have been any new evidence of a potentially violent protest.  

Moreover, it’s clear from both Mackey’s post and one by Ezzo on TheCollegeFix.com that they claim agency in arranging for all those police officers, SWAT team members, etc., to be present.  So why shouldn’t they be responsible for picking up the tab for that increased security?  

It’s also a bit difficult for the college to punish the “Dartmouth Anarchists,” as Mackey and Ezzo insist should happen, since: 1). no one knows who they are, 2). therefore no one knows if they’re actually students, and 3). they only advertised a protest, and never (that Curmie has seen, at least) threatened violence.  They don’t have the right to prevent Ngo and Nadales from being heard, but they can certainly gather outside the venue and protest the event to their hearts’ content.

Unsurprisingly, the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) got into the act fairly early on.  FIRE has a reputation for leaning a little to the right, but Curmie, being more of a civil libertarian than a traditional liberal, agrees with them more often than not.  This time… sort of.

At one level, FIRE’s claim that Dartmouth capitulated to a “heckler’s veto” seems accurate as far as it goes, but it also appears to be focused on a single facet of the larger picture.  To say the college handled the situation clumsily is truth bordering on understatement.  But for all their upside in terms of engaging the college community in considerations of different perspectives on current events, events like this with controversial speakers are lose/lose for colleges and universities in other terms. 

If such an individual, someone whose very presence has the potential to trigger a protest that could get out of hand, is invited by a student group, the college will find itself in a precarious position.  There are three choices, all bad: 1). decline to provide extra security and suffer the consequences if something does go wrong, 2). provide that security and be stuck paying for it, despite the fact that the college per se wasn’t the sponsor of the event (FIRE’s apparent belief that the college ought to pay for the added security because it has sufficiently deep pockets is particularly troubling in this regard), or 3). provide the security but expect the sponsoring organization to pay for it, whereupon they’ll whine to FIRE and to TheCollegeFix.com or MoveOn.org or whatever such platform best aligns with their politics about how their First Amendment rights are being trampled.

Who looks good here?  Literally no one.  FIRE seems to go heavier on the righteous indignation than on ethical and responsible argument.  The College Republicans do indeed seem more interested in controversy and victimhood than in raising the level of political discourse.  But, absent evidence they haven’t provided, Dartmouth officials look arbitrary, capricious, and authoritarian, perhaps even guilty of actively and intentionally undermining the event.  That’s not a good look.  At all.

Sigh.