Weaponized Data
Eyebrows raised here at seeing privacy and security relegated to a breezy late-stage mention in Chris Quirk’s article on tracking mental health via smartphone apps [“In the Face of Depression,” May/June] in an era when privacy risk is the key ethical issue hovering over both medical data management and app development.

Once compiled, information about an individual’s medical status has value. Employers and insurance companies would love to know of past bouts of depression, isolation, or anxiety. They would pay for this stuff, just as many companies eagerly pay for vehicle telemetry data harvested from motorists without their knowledge.

Assurances that some vague anonymization protocol is at work should be cold comfort; aggregated data can be disentangled. The potential always exists for most personal data—from an individual’s respect for speed limits to liquor store visit intervals to behavioral information netted by the College Experience app’s “conversation detection” capability—to be weaponized against the subject. 

The magazine’s cover tease for this article, “Your phone can tell if you are sad,” was perhaps intended as whimsical but in truth frames the sober, even sinister prospect of nonstop invasive surveillance. We should place higher value on our data, privacy, and security.

TOM FARMER ’81
Chicago

The cover headline, “Your phone can tell if you are sad,” might have been followed by the subhead “…because your phone made you sad in the first place.” While the technological innovations professor Andrew Campbell has made are laudable, indeed “things have changed a lot”—what has changed is the monetization of social media. 

It was one thing to get used to that stream of hilarious cat videos or pings from relatives one might otherwise never hear from except at holidays. But programmers quickly discovered the small dopamine hit from those positive interactions paled in comparison to the impact of information that generated negative feelings—of jealousy, guilt, or resentment. Algorithms were designed to maximize not just eyeball time that could be sold to advertisers but also anxiety and depression. 

All this is openly admitted by those charged with monetization efforts at Google, Meta, and others in the 2020 documentary The Social Dilemma, which should be required viewing for every new student at Dartmouth during orientation. 

Campbell is right that smartphones and other technologies such as AI are never going away. Precisely because we know they are not, Dartmouth needs to celebrate and support not just work such as Campbell’s but also work in philosophy and political science to devise realistic methods of regulating digital entrepreneurship. 

TIMOTHY H. SCHERMAN ’85
Wilmette, Illinois

Appeasement
President Beilock’s refusal to sign the statement by the American Association of Colleges and Universities [AAC&U] denouncing the Trump administration’s overreach into higher education—as well as the hiring of Matthew Raymer ’03, former chief counsel of the Republican National Committee, as the College’s general counsel [“Campus Confidential,” May/June]—can only be seen as appeasement, and we all know how well that works.

President Trump’s unrestrained assault on America’s institutions of higher education in general, and on Harvard University in particular, is venomous and lethal and has already inflicted irreparable damage on our country’s standing as a leader in science, research, and learning. Such an assault demands an equally unequivocal and unconditional response. Beilock’s comment that open form letters “are rarely effective tools to make change” ignores the fact that in its day the Declaration of Independence was such a letter. What would have happened if nine of the colonies had signed the declaration and four had followed President Beilock’s example?

MICHAEL M. RANSMEIER ’66
Landaff, New Hampshire

I get it. The job of university president is impossible. A president is hired to run a multibillion-dollar, donor-dependent enterprise and be focused on raising money and increasing the university’s public and academic profile. At the same time she must satisfy the demands of warring internal and external constituencies—politicians, students, faculty, trustees, unions, donors, regulators, alumni, social media, and the press—when each of those constituencies is itself irreconcilably and passionately divided.  

Yet, having taken the job, a university president such as Sian Beilock has a profound responsibility to protect the future of the College and the American constitutional order. She cannot pick one over the other, and that makes every action both perilous and significant. The great private universities must work together to combat what is happening, or they will be picked off one by one. Collective action is the only way. Giving in will only result in more pressure. I’m afraid that hiring Matthew Raymer, a Federalist Society apologist, as general counsel will not protect Dartmouth from what is coming. 

TODD BAKER ’78
Oakland, California 

Neutrality
I was quite dismayed to hear the call for institutional restraint [“The Neutral Zone,” March/April] at a time when our nation is descending into fascism. I generally believe that institutional restraint is a reasonable and prudent stance that cultivates diverse viewpoints—but not when inhabitants of the United States are being unconstitutionally detained in El Salvador against direct court orders. 

President Beilock’s modus operandi was revealed last year when she quickly had peaceful protestors arrested to avoid a media firestorm. While the disturbing arrest of professor Annelise Orleck made its way into the national news cycle, this methodology has proven fairly effective in deflecting the attention of the Trump administration. Dartmouth is one of only two Ivies not under federal investigation for antisemitism. Yet, given the true nature of these investigations, is that a distinction we should wear with pride? 

It is not inherently wrong to pursue self-preservation. Dartmouth is a great American institution that sees its legacy in centuries rather than election cycles (as it should). But opening blows have already been struck against Harvard and Columbia. Failure to stand with our peers against unlawful attacks and censorship risks turning Dartmouth
into an institution unworthy of preserving.

EMMA XIN VELICKY ’20
Seattle

Harvard has shamed Dartmouth’s administration and faculty for their votes to be neutral in matters of free speech, intellectual freedom, “woke” issues, bigotry, Ukraine, and Trump’s dictatorial demands on higher education. This is a disservice to students.

What was it like to be neutral in Nazi Germany? Is Hanover a little Switzerland? Vichy? 

PAUL NELSON ’56
Kennebunk, Maine

On the Side of Freedom
I read with interest the article on 19th-century Dartmouth graduates [“Brave Faces,” March/April]. It was refreshing to see so many who—on the critical moral issue of their time—stood on the side of human freedom. Whether Salmon P. Chase, class of 1826, Thaddeus Stevens, class of 1814, or Amos Ackerman, class of 1842, such men stood in opposition to the slave power, even at great personal cost. Which is why it was so disappointing to see President Beilock’s name missing from the AAC&U’s open letter on academic freedom. This should not have been a partisan issue for an educator. 

When Daniel Webster argued before the U.S. Supreme Court in the Dartmouth vs. Woodward case, he was arguing for the sanctity of contracts; he was also arguing for the independence of Dartmouth from being consumed by the government of New Hampshire. As early as the 1830s Thaddeus Stevens said, “I wished that I were the owner of every southern slave, that I might cast off the shackles from their limbs, and witness the rapture which would excite them in the first dance of their freedom.” That courage was rewarded by the judgment of history. President Beilock had the opportunity to continue Dartmouth’s tradition of principled leadership. She failed. 

GREG HAWES ’89 
Watertown, Connecticut

This letter did not appear in the print edition. 

Educational Enrichment

I concur with the concern of Sylvia Chi ’05 [“Your Turn,” May/June] that now is the time to “speak up against unchecked power.” We see another example of the abuse of power: The Trump administration seeks to prevent any foreign students from enrolling at Harvard, and to remove all current foreign students for the fall term. 

Foreign students have brought so much to all our universities and to our secondary schools. I was involved in the foreign exchange student program at my high school in Ferguson Missouri. These students enriched and broadened our education at a very insular school. During my years at Dartmouth there were few foreign students and fewer students of color, and we were poorer for it. Today that has changed dramatically for the better.

As a teacher both in New England and overseas I can attest to the educational enrichment of having students from 30 to 40 different countries in my science and math classes in Japan, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Romania, India, Abu Dhabi, and Sweden. These students were some of the best ambassadors for the United States when they went home each day or when they went back to their native countries. To attempt to end the presence of foreign students in our schools and universities is a stupid and self-defeating process.

DON RIES ’66

Tucson, Arizona