Endurance Tested
My bike riding is limited to the flat topography of Scituate, Massachusetts, which I do not do when the temperature dips below 40 degrees. So, it is hard for me to fathom the 1,000-mile journey Janice Tanaka Tower ’84 and her brother, Matt Tanaka ’81, undertook with the challenging and harsh winter conditions of Alaska’s subarctic interior [“The 1,000-Mile Journey,” November/December].
The sheer planning and physical and mental endurance, along with the unwavering teamwork of this duo, is beyond inspiring. Congratulations, and thanks to Jim Collins ’84 for writing about their amazing adventure.
RODMAN “RICK” BLACK ’75
Scituate, Massachusetts
Complex History
I enjoyed the piece by Ty Burr ’80 about the role of David Schmidt ’09 in creating the Ken Burns series, The American Revolution [“America’s First Civil War,” November/December]. I was reminded of two chapters in the recent “Unfinished Revolution” issue of The Atlantic: “Dear Son,” which describes how the coming revolution tore apart Ben Franklin’s family, with Franklin’s son William remaining a loyalist while his father helped birth our nation; and another chapter, “The Black Loyalists,” which tells a story I had never thought about. Thousands of slaves escaped slavery to join the British and some of the Founding Fathers, including George Washington (a slaveholder), vigorously sought to reclaim their slaves after the revolution—American history I think not well known or appreciated. I assume Burns’ and Schmidt’s research as it appears in the series will cover the former issue, and I hope it will include the latter, despite its bit of tarnish on our nation’s nostalgic sense of that period.
DAVID C.-H. JOHNSTON ’66
West Hartford, Connecticut
Joy and Threats
I loved the article on the historic Harvard-Dartmouth football rivalry [“Dartmouth vs. Harvard: Football’s Battle for Civilization,” DAM online]. I remember it fondly as an undergraduate. It was a rocking good time and one helluva weekend (especially since our teams beat those guys all four of my years). One thing I found disconcerting about the article was the threatening comments of John Hinderaker ’71 about Harvard’s “policies and records” putting it in danger with President Trump. I wonder if people such as Mr. Henderaker have begun to internalize the danger in which their rhetoric and behavior have put this entire country. I’m pretty sure they haven’t, and I for one am sick and tired of listening to these threats. Such commentary stands in sour contrast to a joyous article about football between two great institutions of higher learning that do not need instruction on how to operate as such from a 34-time-convicted felon who, thankfully, couldn’t get into either.
DANIEL RODGERS ’83
New Orleans
The better story is University of Washington vs. Dartmouth in the first game ever played in Husky Stadium in Seattle—which, of course, we won. It still sticks in their craw, and they don’t like being reminded of it, which means it’s always good to republish the story.
BILL PICKARD ’71, TU’76
Seattle
“We’re Not Stupid”
I just read “Dartmouth Goes to Washington” [November/December] and for a moment thought I was reading an article from Fox News or the Heritage Foundation. Being a darling of the Trump administration and its conservative acolytes is not exactly a badge of honor; rather, it’s a badge of disgrace. From the DAM puff piece on U.S. Department of Justice attack dog Harmeet Dhillon ’89 to the appointment of the former general counsel of the Republican National Committee to be the general counsel for the College to the campus invitations to former VP Mike Pence and U.S. Sen. John Fetterman to President Beilock’s recent interview with The New York Times in which she criticized President Roth of Wesleyan for calling out Trump’s attack on universities, it’s pretty obvious in which direction the College is being pushed. This piece is, at best, an insult to the intelligence of Dartmouth grads. We’re a lot of things, but we’re not stupid.
VLADIMIR SVESKO ’69
Dolores, Colorado
Regarding “Dartmouth Goes to Washington,” call me crazy but perhaps groveling like a dog (or, as the article says, “staking a neutral ground”) to a joyfully cruel, puerile, wannabe authoritarian administration is not, in fact, a good thing.
KATHERINE N. GOYETTE ’22
New Haven, Connecticut
More Legends
“Stage Legends of the Hop” [September/October] astoundingly ignored Jerry Zaks ’67. The Hop had just opened when he arrived on campus, and he became the pioneer for all subsequently successful Hop alumni. In the 1970s or 1980s, I watched him receive an award on national TV and in receiving it, he thanked the people at the Hopkins Center! He has won or been nominated for an eye-popping number of awards.
BOB SANNER ’67
Palo Alto, California
I am curious why you did not include Jennifer Leigh “Tweety” Warren ’77, in “Stage Legends of the Hop”? She was a regular and prominent actor in Hopkins Center productions in the late 1970s.
WILLIAM PENDER ’78
Charlotte, North Carolina
On the Fence
I annotated the following while pondering the photo from the archives of Alexander Christie ’32 and Bob Harrison ’32 [“Class Notes” cover, November/December]. Sitting on the Senior Fence: enjoying attributional power. Fashion: those shoes, cuffs, tie! Wealth: those shoes and the Hanover slush! Perhaps a Navy pea jacket, not an officer’s trench coat (no gun flap or rings for grenades): likely to change in 10 years.
FRANK STECH ’68
Glenn Dale, Maryland
The Championship Season
Regarding “Gridiron Glory” [September/October], “No one living remembers…,” but I do! From my very, very young age, my father, John Phillips, class of 1928, would tell stories about Nate Parker, Swede Oberlander, Dutch Diehl, and Myles Lane in the company of Josh Davis as they relived the championship season. After seeing them all on page 41, I immediately photocopied my dad kicking a field goal against Harvard in 1927 in Soldier’s Field—glory days indeed. Although my own Dartmouth football experience ended in a blink, coach “Bullet Bob” Blackman did produce winners and joy on campus. I found athletic satisfaction and pride representing Dartmouth on the rugby pitch with a proud dad often on the sidelines.
BOB PHILLIPS ’60
Colchester, Vermont
An interesting sidelight to David Shribman’s “Gridiron Glory” piece on the undefeated 1925 football team: One of the players was Charlie Starrett, class of 1926, of Athol, Massachusetts (my hometown). In the team photograph he is, I believe, the third player from the right in the third row. He would go on to make a Hollywood-record 131 Westerns, most of them as the Durango Kid. He was also active in forming the Screen Actors Guild and was issued card No. 10. The L.S. Starrett Co., founded by his grandfather, is still making precision measuring instruments in Athol.
STUART DEANE ’65
Newburyport, Massachusetts
A Legacy Question
An omission from both the “Four Questions for Cheryl Bascomb ’82” and the “Class of 2029 at a Glance” data [November/December] that I think holds particular interest for many of us: How many applicants were the children of Dartmouth alums and what percentage were accepted?
ANDREW LEE ’92
Menlo Park, California
More Pushback
In her interview with DAM [“From Advocate to Enforcer,” September/October], Harmeet Dhillon ’89 said: “I fully support the deportation of people who are in this country illegally. I fully support everything this administration is doing to enforce our immigration laws.”
Masked bullies rounding up people based on skin color, language, occupation, or location and sending them off to be tortured in third-country oubliettes is not deportation. Zip-tying children and separating them from their parents for hours in the middle of the night is not deportation. Creating concentration camps to house captured people—less than half of whom have committed any crime, let alone any serious crime—and then losing track of half of them is not deportation.
The lack of empathy, compassion, and objective understanding of reality shown by someone now overseeing the civil rights division is alarming. Surprising—no. Disheartening beyond.
BRIAN NORRIS ’71
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Flabbergasted? Appalled? Amazed? I’m really not sure how to describe my reaction to reading the comment Harmeet Dhillon—a soi-disant “First Amendment activist”—made in her interview. She said: “If you have a student visa or a green card, you don’t have the same license to express your views as American citizens do. That’s just a fact.”
The text of the First Amendment is worded as a general limitation on government power, not a form of special protection for a particular group of people, such as U.S. citizens or permanent residents. The U.S. Supreme Court held as much in the 1945 Bridges v. Wixon case, when it ruled that “Freedom of speech and of the press is accorded aliens residing in this country.”
While there are some statutes that set out limitations on free expression by non-citizens, such as limits on espousing terrorism, other than those specific limitations, people with student visas and green cards have exactly the same license to express their views as American citizens do. Dhillon’s assertion to the contrary is not correct.
I would argue that even those narrow statutory limitations are antithetical to the spirit of the First Amendment and, unless confirmed by Supreme Court opinion to be constitutional, are subject to challenge.
CAROLYN GRAFF WADE ’80
Eugene, Oregon
When a Dartmouth alumnus attains a significant public position, it is routine for the alumni magazine to publish a soft, celebratory account of that accomplishment. The appointment of Harmeet Dhillon ’89 as assistant attorney general for civil rights at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is different. Because of the broad public impact of that position, Dhillon’s views and policies deserved closer scrutiny.
Take the recent example of the administration firing a U.S. attorney (an administration appointee) who concluded that a case lacked evidence sufficient to support indictment of a political opponent of the president. Does Ms. Dhillon still assert that the department is being managed as a nonpartisan organization with regard to prosecuting persons the current president deems his enemies?
I served, across different Republican and Democratic administrations, in the civil division of a U.S. attorney’s office. I and my peers took an oath to support the Constitution of the United States. The idea that all administrations before this one (including, apparently, Trump I), got the law wrong and had misguided enforcement priorities reeks of “I alone can fix it” arrogance. It suggests that DOJ lawyers who came before and subscribed to the constitutional oath lacked integrity and were either partisan hacks or free agents pursuing personal agendas. It suggests that legions of DOJ lawyers lacked the intellectual capacity to discern the law and that the accumulated experience and wisdom of career government attorneys have no value. It tells lawyers to take positions for the client without regard to the law or get fired. That jaundiced view of DOJ, the legal profession, and our history is wrong.
The DOJ will need rebuilding when this administration ends.
RICHARD W. MARK ’77
New York City
Unfairly Burned
Regarding “Burned” by Jane Varner Malhotra ’90 [November/December 2011], I was provided a copy of her article about the late Steve Posniak ’66 while visiting the Chik-Wauk Museum and Nature Center in Grand Marais, Minnesota.
As a Boundary Waters Canoe Area visitor, I have read the book Gunflint Burning, published by the University of Minnesota Press. When I visited the Chik-Wauk Museum, the curator and I spent some time discussing the 2007 Ham Lake fire. She made the point that Mr. Posniak was not the careless camper that the author of Gunflint Burning portrayed him to be. She was confident that, had this case gone to trial, he would have been found not guilty. The museum curator made me a copy of the article.
I so appreciated the writing of Jane Varner Malhotra. She effectively and accurately pointed out the inaccuracies of the public perception that Mr. Posniak was careless and irresponsible.
RANDY BATES
Rhinelander, Wisconsin
