Class Note 1964
Issue
Jul - Aug 2018
This article features classmates who are Dartmouth faculty members: Dale F. Eickelman and William Fitzhugh.
Dale writes: “I re-joined Dartmouth in 1989. The move was good for my academic health. Adjustment to Dartmouth after New York was initially challenging, but I continued to receive external fellowships and brought high-enough-level international conferences to Dartmouth, enabling undergraduates to work with my academic interests. My wife, Christine, aided me in research, beat me in book publication on the Sultanate of Oman, and took the lead in raising our two children.
“Undergraduates today differ from the early 1960s. They now have distracting electronics, banned from my seminars and classes. As a result, attention to seminar presentations improved. One of my favorite courses was ‘Secrets and Lies: Why Deception is Necessary in Human Societies.’ Topics included deception within the family and marriage, the legal profession, universities and corporations, government and international relations, online gaming, poker playing, and scientific fraud.
“I became emeritus in June 2016 but remain fully engaged at Dartmouth. Since 2003 I’ve run the Dartmouth-American University of Kuwait Program, creating from the ground up Kuwait’s first private liberal arts university. I’m supported by a fulltime program manager and faculty and administrative consultants, including classmate Roy Lewicki. On April 23 Phil Hanlon and former Shaikha Dana Nasser Al Sabah renewed the agreement through 2023. The program also brought 35 Dartmouth students to Kuwait as interns. Dartmouth just approved a for-credit undergraduate academic exchange. I’m also president of the Tangier American Legation (www.legation.org), our diplomatic base in Morocco from 1821 through 1956, now the only U.S. national park outside the United States and its possessions. It is a museum and cultural and academic center representing the strong cooperation between the United States and Morocco.”
Bill writes: “Dartmouth’s in my blood. Dad was a ’35. I came from Deerfield and played in the Barbary Coast band with some of the same Deerfield gang. I left Dartmouth with an anthropology degree, never guessing I’d return as a professor. When my thesis describing 8,000 years of environmental and cultural history in Labrador was published, Dad thought he’d end up bailing me out. Teaching at Dartmouth was the last thing he thought I’d do.
“I went from Dartmouth into the Navy, ending up in the North Atlantic, then to the Smithsonian as curator of North American archaeology. In 1963 Dartmouth’s anthropology department had just been created; two of its professors were Arctic experts; the third was the Wilson Hall museologist. The department changed its focus to equatorial and temperate regions. I nagged about maintaining the Arctic legacy, which included the great Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whose archives at Rauner are renowned as a center for Arctic studies. As the Arctic began to heat up, they hired me.
“I’ve taught circumpolar environments and archeology during winter term for the past four years. The students are unbelievable. Some join me for Labrador fieldwork. I struggle to deliver a few C’s for the deans who are always nagging the faculty about grade-creep.”
—Harvey Tettlebaum, 56295 Little Moniteau Road, California, MO 65018; (573) 761-1107; dartsecy64@gmail.com
Dale writes: “I re-joined Dartmouth in 1989. The move was good for my academic health. Adjustment to Dartmouth after New York was initially challenging, but I continued to receive external fellowships and brought high-enough-level international conferences to Dartmouth, enabling undergraduates to work with my academic interests. My wife, Christine, aided me in research, beat me in book publication on the Sultanate of Oman, and took the lead in raising our two children.
“Undergraduates today differ from the early 1960s. They now have distracting electronics, banned from my seminars and classes. As a result, attention to seminar presentations improved. One of my favorite courses was ‘Secrets and Lies: Why Deception is Necessary in Human Societies.’ Topics included deception within the family and marriage, the legal profession, universities and corporations, government and international relations, online gaming, poker playing, and scientific fraud.
“I became emeritus in June 2016 but remain fully engaged at Dartmouth. Since 2003 I’ve run the Dartmouth-American University of Kuwait Program, creating from the ground up Kuwait’s first private liberal arts university. I’m supported by a fulltime program manager and faculty and administrative consultants, including classmate Roy Lewicki. On April 23 Phil Hanlon and former Shaikha Dana Nasser Al Sabah renewed the agreement through 2023. The program also brought 35 Dartmouth students to Kuwait as interns. Dartmouth just approved a for-credit undergraduate academic exchange. I’m also president of the Tangier American Legation (www.legation.org), our diplomatic base in Morocco from 1821 through 1956, now the only U.S. national park outside the United States and its possessions. It is a museum and cultural and academic center representing the strong cooperation between the United States and Morocco.”
Bill writes: “Dartmouth’s in my blood. Dad was a ’35. I came from Deerfield and played in the Barbary Coast band with some of the same Deerfield gang. I left Dartmouth with an anthropology degree, never guessing I’d return as a professor. When my thesis describing 8,000 years of environmental and cultural history in Labrador was published, Dad thought he’d end up bailing me out. Teaching at Dartmouth was the last thing he thought I’d do.
“I went from Dartmouth into the Navy, ending up in the North Atlantic, then to the Smithsonian as curator of North American archaeology. In 1963 Dartmouth’s anthropology department had just been created; two of its professors were Arctic experts; the third was the Wilson Hall museologist. The department changed its focus to equatorial and temperate regions. I nagged about maintaining the Arctic legacy, which included the great Arctic explorer Vilhjalmur Stefansson, whose archives at Rauner are renowned as a center for Arctic studies. As the Arctic began to heat up, they hired me.
“I’ve taught circumpolar environments and archeology during winter term for the past four years. The students are unbelievable. Some join me for Labrador fieldwork. I struggle to deliver a few C’s for the deans who are always nagging the faculty about grade-creep.”
—Harvey Tettlebaum, 56295 Little Moniteau Road, California, MO 65018; (573) 761-1107; dartsecy64@gmail.com