President Sian Beilock sipped hot water and lemon as the Sowa Power Station event hall filled with alumni. Her voice was hoarse and unnaturally deep, but this was an important night—the Boston stop of her “On the Road” national tour, which has visited five cities so far. Beilock knew she had to “power through.”
And power through she did, gaining strength as she delivered a tight, 20-minute speech that covered her five biggest priorities, from improving students’ mental health and helping them build careers to championing free speech. Sprinkled throughout, Beilock offered the College as a model for repairing a broken
higher education system.
But the last questioner of the evening asked Beilock something more personal: What was her most challenging experience since becoming president in June 2023?
“You know, it’s been a really difficult three years in American higher education,” she said, taking a moment to compose her thoughts. “And I’m really proud of where Dartmouth has gone and how we’re leading and how we’re being very clear about our principles and values.”
She recalled three other women who became Ivy League presidents around the same time she did but who quickly lost their jobs in a storm of controversy at their handling of antisemitism on campus. All three—Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Columbia’s Minouche Shafik, and Liz Magill of Penn—stepped down during the first 14 months of Beilock’s presidency.
“It was so amazing to come in with so many fantastic women. We sort of took over the Ivy League,” Beilock said. But now those women are gone—“and all that turmoil just makes me sad because I think what we do is so special.”
Beilock’s presidency certainly hasn’t gone the way she or anyone else expected at her inauguration on September 22, 2023. Just 15 days later, Hamas terrorists launched a murderous attack on Israel, killing about 1,200 and taking hundreds hostage—and upending life on many campuses as students protested Israel’s massive military response and its treatment of Palestinian civilians.
Beilock’s moment of truth came on May 1, 2024, when she called police to respond to a small pro-Palestinian tent encampment on the Green. It resulted in 89 arrests. Beilock had to deal with the fallout—including a rare vote of censure by the faculty of arts and sciences.
During the past year, she has doubled down on her message that Dartmouth should be a leader in restoring public faith in higher education, generating a wave of favorable media attention. A March profile in The Chronicle of Higher Education headlined “Sian Beilock’s Star Turn” described her as “a new breed of college president willing to take shots at her own sector.”
Many of the 300 or so alumni who gathered in Boston to hear Beilock in May were also impressed, even if they didn’t always agree. Ian Sarr ’05, an incoming member of the Alumni Council, admitted that he would prefer more pushback against the Trump administration, but he respects the way Beilock has led Dartmouth through treacherous times.
I feel very responsible for building back trust, for ensuring that what we’re doing is creating the next leaders of our democracy.”
—Sian Beilock
“I can appreciate how thoughtful and well reasoned her decisions have been, especially at a time when so many have brought out the long knives against others in her position,” said Sarr.
A turning point for Beilock came last October, when she rejected President Trump’s proposed compact, which offered nine schools preferential access to federal funding if they agreed to conditions that would profoundly change admissions and hiring practices while limiting international students and freezing tuition.
Dartmouth students, faculty, and alumni almost universally opposed the compact, and Beilock’s critics feared she would agree to the deal to curry favor with Trump. But, on October 18, Beilock rejected it, making good on her promise to protect the College’s “fierce independence.”
So far, Beilock’s opposition to Trump policies has not drawn more federal scrutiny, and alumni have noticed. One of the biggest applause lines of Beilock’s appearance in San Francisco came when trustee Jeff Crowe ’78 said, “We are the only Ivy not under some sort of federal investigation.”
Beilock has critics, including Dartmouth Courage, a group formed to pressure her to speak out more strongly against the White House. The group’s invitation to a recent meeting noted that working with the Trump administration to improve education is “like hiring an arsonist to house sit.”
Beilock didn’t mention the president in her Boston speech, focusing instead on the future: “I feel very responsible for building back trust, for ensuring that what we’re doing is creating the next leaders of our democracy, and I take that very personally.”
