MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
It's been more than a year since many elite colleges and universities were roiled by on-campus protests sparked by the Hamas attack on southern Israel and the war in Gaza that followed. But the scars, the angst and the debates live on. Those debates are often centered on questions about what kinds of speech and protests should be allowed. But the debates have gone on to focus on questions about what colleges and universities are for to begin with. Are they mainly places to train people for jobs, or are they places to teach people how to think or even what to think? As you might imagine, a number of higher education leaders have wanted to weigh in on this, and so has our next guest, Sian Leah Beilock. She's the president of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, and she wrote a piece for The Atlantic titled "Saving The Idea Of The University." And she is with us now. President Beilock, thanks so much for joining us.
SIAN LEAH BEILOCK: It's wonderful to be here.
MARTIN: You had just begun your tenure as president of Dartmouth when on-campus protests began to break out in a lot of places around the country. You got a lot of positive attention then because your campus remained relatively calm when so many others were in, like, deep turmoil. Why do you think that is?
BEILOCK: Immediately after the terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, our faculty in Jewish and Middle Eastern studies came together and had open panels on the Middle East, on the war, on the history that were broadcast to our community in person but also online.
MARTIN: At some point, you did wind up calling the police on a campus protest. That happened in May, and I believe some 90 people were arrested. I'm sure some people agreed with the decision, and I'm sure some people didn't. What do you think the line should be?
BEILOCK: Look, protest and voicing one's opinion can be an important part of free expression. I don't believe, however, that one's free expression should rob someone else of free expression. And when we're taking over shared spaces and declaring it for one ideology or shouting down speakers, that's taking away free expression from others. And my goal always is the safety and security of our campus and making sure that everyone feels welcome, regardless of their background or viewpoint.
MARTIN: This whole question of these campus protests has caused some people to say that the - you know, Dartmouth is an Ivy League institution. It has caused some, you know, prominent people to say that these universities, on the whole, have become a problem. They've become too liberal. They're one-sided in their view. And that there's a view that something needs to be done. Have you been privy to those kinds of conversations, and what do you make of it?
BEILOCK: Look, I think these are valid criticisms, and I think Dartmouth is a different kind of Ivy. We've showed that very clearly over the last year in terms of our push to build dialogue and ensure that everyone can have a voice on campus. But I do believe our institutions need to be in a place where we can have different political views on campus, different ideologies, different lived experiences and draw people from across the country. Higher ed is one of the best forms of thinking about social mobility in our society of having an impact. And we, as institutional leaders, need to really work to make sure that we're living true to that promise.
MARTIN: In your piece for The Atlantic, you cite some - as you've mentioned, you're a cognitive scientist, and you've cited a particular study in your piece that you said was part of what guides your thinking on this area.
BEILOCK: Yeah.
MARTIN: You're talking about a study by the - a series of experiments by the social psychologist Solomon Asch about how easy it is to kind of squash different opinions. Could you just talk a little bit about that?
BEILOCK: Yeah. This was really a landmark series of studies that showed that people were willing to change their opinions about what they knew was true based on what other people in the room were saying. And one of the things that I think's most interesting about Asch's work is that he showed it just took one dissenter, one lone voice, to get people to really voice their own true opinion. And so I think about that a lot on our campus. How do we create the spaces so people aren't self-censoring, so those voices can come, so people are willing to confront challenging issues?
MARTIN: What if the - that dissenting voice is a very charismatic crank who is talking nonsense? I mean, part of the reason I raise that is that students who are on college campuses today are immersed in social media, where there are very few guardrails about what is true and what is actually completely made up. And the reality of it is that there are people, for lots of different motivations, are very much in the business of creating false narratives - things that are just not true - for purposes that, you know, meet their needs. And I just wonder how you think about that.
BEILOCK: Yeah, I mean, part of what we're doing is giving our students the tools to understand sources of information and where it comes from and make up their own mind, rather than just being fed information. And with the rise of information that is not verified and the ability to push people's views around, I think thinking through students' ability to understand the sources of information and giving them the tools to really think about that is more important than ever. I see a university campus is more important than ever.
MARTIN: Well, you wrote about that in your piece. You say, in our polarized America, where what people will accept as fact is based as much on tribal affiliation as on evidence, universities have an opportunity - indeed, a duty - to be an illuminating, objective force. But how can they do that when they are themselves under attack as kind of elitist bastions of groupthink?
BEILOCK: I think that we always have to focus on centering the institution, and also bringing in different perspectives. Dartmouth is very focused right now on recruiting students from different areas of the country, especially rural areas, thinking about how we recruit veterans or other people to have voices at the table and teaching people the skills to have dialogue. You have to be able to see the common humanity in another person. You have to understand that their opinion or idea is not a testament to who they are as an individual writ large. And those are skills that we can teach on this campus and that we are teaching on this campus.
MARTIN: What do you see as your role right now?
BEILOCK: (Laughter). I think being a university president has never been tougher, I would say. But I really believe that it is - as a leader, I have to be constantly talking about what our North Star is. Which is to find students from the broadest swath of society and bring them to Dartmouth, teach them how to think, not what to think, to go out to be leaders, and to base everything on that principle.
MARTIN: Sian Leah Beilock is the president of Dartmouth College. President Beilock, thanks so much for talking with us.
BEILOCK: Thank you.
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