What’s News—

It’s been rather a good weekend press-wise for those who’d like to keep petition candidates around. Saturday saw the double-whammy in The Wall Street Journal, comprised of (former Review editor) Joseph Rago’s interview with T. J. Rodgers and an editorial on The Illiberal College. They are both available online.

But the first of the month also means a fresh issue of New Cri. And the very first thing you’ll read in the September issue is “A putsch at Dartmouth?,” which includes this key paragraph:

This might seem like a parochial story, of interest only to Dartmouth alumni. In fact, it is an episode that has national significance. As we noted in this space last April, college faculties and administrations represent “an entrenched, sclerotic, and self-perpetuating hegemony.” For more than a hundred years, the alumni at Dartmouth have been enfranchised to challenge that hegemony. That right is now under threat by an administration concerned above all to preserve its perquisites and resist change. The deliberations of the Governance Committee are due to end this month, so by the time you read this we may well know whether Dartmouth has chosen to preserve its heritage of openness and democratic rule or to surrender to the forces of the academic nomenklatura.