President Jim Kim had hardly been appointed last year when he surprised the College community by declaring that he would reach back more than 40 years and reinstitute the “Great Issues” course. “I talk to grads all the time, and almost uniformly they tell me it was the best class they ever took,” he explained.

“Great Issues,” which ran from 1947 to 1966, was the signature course of President John Sloan Dickey ’29. It brought to campus a weekly series of illustrious speakers to educate seniors on pressing national and international issues. Students heard men of letters, historians, political figures, theologians and statesmen, including Robert Frost, class of 1896, Archibald MacLeish, Lewis Mumford, Dean Acheson and Norman Thomas, as well as attorney Thurgood Marshall and “containment strategist” George Kennan. Students listened to them lecture on Monday night and reassembled the next morning to question them. Students also had to read several top newspapers carefully to compare how they treated the same news. The three-times-a-week course—held in Dartmouth Hall and later Hopkins Center—was required for graduation and included keeping a journal, writing papers, taking exams and being graded, though some of these features were eventually dropped.

“Great Issues” caught the attention of other colleges and attracted excellent press. Several schools followed Dartmouth’s lead. However, after a reporter sent by the arch-conservative Chicago Tribune to investigate Ivy League schools saw a “Great Issues” exhibit portraying the Tribune and The Daily Worker as examples of slanted journalism, the reporter wrote a series of articles castigating the “socialist and internationalist” course and the College.

The College saw “Great Issues” as a way to encourage a sense of public responsibility in seniors and bridge the gap between student and citizen as seniors prepared to leave campus. Dickey also wanted to give the senior class a common intellectual experience with the accompanying benefits of studying issues together and debating them in every corner of the campus.

President Kim has repeatedly paid tribute to Dickey, and his motives in re-establishing “Great Issues” appear much the same. Kim has spoken of inspiring students to deal with global problems and having an entire class engage in a conversation. A major difference is that Kim wants the course taught during sophomore summer. A mini version featuring two lectures was scheduled this summer; a full course is expected to begin in 2011 or 2012.

For all the luster “Great Issues” added to the College early on, it ended on a sour note. By the early 1960s there were strong signs of disinterest and disenchantment among seniors—they wore outrageous-looking apparel to lectures, sent pledges to occupy their seats, displayed rudeness toward speakers and even occasionally booed them. Their resentment sprang from several sources, says history professor emeritus Kenneth Shewmaker. As majors became more demanding academically, seniors came to see “Great Issues,” an extra requirement, as a burden. The course had far fewer top-flight speakers after Dickey turned “Great Issues” over to the faculty, which lacked his ability to bring big names to Hanover. Besides, plenty of big names could by then be seen regularly on television. And the 1960s generation bridled at the course’s compulsory attendance. Attempts to reform the course were fruitless, and after a faculty vote suspended “Great Issues” it was replaced by a small lecture-and-discussion series.

“It was great for its time, but that time ended,” says Shewmaker.

What do alumni who took “Great Issues” remember in particular about it? Here’s what they told DAM:

“We were raised in the time of the Great Depression followed by World War II. We were generally of a conservative nature. There was little diversity at Dartmouth. ‘Great Issues’ introduced new ideas to us and broadened our vision. ‘Great Issues,’ in treating such topics as racism and prejudice, helped us to bridge from our restricted backgrounds to the real world we were entering.”
—Tom Bloomer ’53

“We had to go there and listen, but I don’t remember that it resonated, because it was sort of an obligatory thing with no hands-on follow-up in any way. Except that I did do a paper for a sociology course as the result of a ‘GI’ lecture on the nuclear threat, where I literally went out and drove around White River Junction and sat down and talked with five or six people and asked them about nuclear shelters. That I remember.”
—Denny Emerson ’63

“‘Great Issues’ provided the young post-World War II class with a jumpstart out of the adolescence of the college student. The presence of not only a number of veterans returning to complete their education, but also people who had done significant things with their lives for themselves and, more importantly, for others, had impact. It still does today.”
—Dave Halloran ’53

“The presentation by the president of Cummins Engine, J. Erwin Miller, on their labor management history was in stark contrast to what I had heard for years at home around
our kitchen table. That was an eye-opener.”
—Stew Wood Jr. ’56

“Since attendance at those Monday night sessions was compulsory, along with the wearing of coats and ties, we affected the most outrageous costumes imaginable—usually obtained from rummage sales or charity thrift stores around the Upper Valley. We sported out-of-date neckties of the broadest dimension and wildest patterns and colors—known as ‘blow-lunch’ tie—and horrid old sports jackets. Some lucky lads scored formal evening wear of yore: Bill ‘Malibu Fats’ Miller had a preposterous white dinner jacket, while I had found a swallow-tail morning coat that was always worn with Levis and sneakers.”
—Tom Conger ’61

“It taught us to think and to analyze and not take things for granted, and it brought us face to face with the real world. For a lot of us who were quite insular, this was a mind-bending experience.”
—Don Goss ’53

“It was the study of the media that really opened things up for me. I went off to college thinking if you read it in the New York Daily News, it was true.”
—George Cull ’50

“A benefit not often mentioned is the habit many of us have retained for a lifetime of reading a first-rate newspaper daily.”
—Jim Schaefer ’48

“The issues themselves were broadly discussed by our classmates all over campus, in fraternities, on team buses to away games and meets, at meals and late-night jam sessions, everywhere. We were taught critical thinking, understanding both sides, and how to express our own opinions concisely and persuasively. As a trustee—now emeritus—of Hanover College in Indiana, I worked closely with the faculty to develop an entirely new curriculum in the early years of this decade. When they said they wanted to introduce some kind of senior capstone course, I described ‘Great Issues’ to them and they loved it. It is now an important ingredient of Hanover’s revised curriculum.”
—Em Houck ’56

“Sitting with the entire senior class for a full year helped form that miraculous bond among men that the College is known for to this day. In a word, we were in it together, and we shared a common intellectual experience.”
—Joe Medlicott ’50

Peter Slavin is a freelance journalist and editor based near Washington, D.C.