The Dartmouth Review

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The Dartmouth Review is a conservative, independent, bi-weekly newspaper at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire (U.S.). It was founded in 1980 by disenchanted staffers—including Gregory Fossedal, Gordon Haff, and Keeney Jones—from the college's daily newspaper, The Dartmouth. It spawned a movement of politically conservative independent U.S. college newspapers such as the Harvard Salient and Cornell Review, and has been at the center of several lawsuits. Past staffers include author Dinesh D'Souza, talk show host Laura Ingraham, The Far Eastern Economic Review's Hugo Restall, and The New Criterion's James Panero. Author and columnist Jeffrey Hart, now Professor of English Emeritus at Dartmouth College, was also instrumental in the founding of the newspaper and has been a long-time board member and adviser. As of 2006, it claims 10,000 off-campus subscribers and distributes a further 5,000 newspapers on campus.

Contents 1 Controversies and stances 2 Influence and legacy 3 Current Problems 4 References 5 Further reading 6 External links

[edit] Controversies and stances

The Review gained national attention early on for positions on social issues regarded as "politically incorrect" which its critics see as examples of racism, sexism, and intolerance. Among the newspaper's exploits:

• The newspaper continues to refer to Dartmouth's sports teams as the "Indians", the traditional school mascot that was officially discarded in the early 1970s, pointing out that a Gallup poll of living Indian chiefs in fact supported keeping the Indian mascot.^[1]
• In 1986, its staffers took sledgehammers to shanties that had been erected on the campus quad as part of a campaign to protest apartheid by divesting Dartmouth from South Africa. The shanties were blocking the College's annual Winter Carnival and were considered by many to be eyesores; the town of Hanover had ordered the illegally-constructed structures torn down. When the College moved to remove them, 150 students blocked the workers; ten Review staffers attacked the shanties in a midnight raid and were later punished by the College.
• In 1984, the Review snuck a reporter into a meeting of a gay student organization and later published a transcript of the meeting, including a list of those present at the supposedly secure meeting place.
• While on the Review staff, Laura Ingraham frequently referred to homosexuals as "sodomites".
• In the fall of 1990, the Review was accused of anti-Semitism for the appearance of a quote from Mein Kampf in its masthead in place of its usual quote from Teddy Roosevelt. The quote was discovered by Review staffers three days after the paper was distributed. Immediately upon discovery, the edition of the Review was pulled, and a campus-wide apology was issued by the then editor-in-chief, Kevin Pritchett, who subsequently resigned from the Review staff. According to Review backer William F. Buckley, Jr.'s book In Search of Anti-Semitism, this incident was the work of a disgruntled former staff member. In response, almost two thousand people assembled on the Green for a "Rally Against Hate".^[2] This rally was later severely criticized by Dartmouth alumni who charged that the rally was an intimidation tactic by the administration against the Review staffers, and by the national media.^{[citation needed]} The "Hitler Quote incident," as it came to be known,^[3] came on the heels of several smaller incidents allegedly suggesting anti-Semitism on the part of the Review. Review adviser Jeffrey Hart, writing in the National Review, pointed out that many of the senior staffers at the Review at this time were, in fact, Jewish, as was a previous editor-in-chief.^[4]
• The November 28, 2006, issue of the Review featured a cover image of an Indian brandishing a scalp, with the headline: "The Natives are Getting Restless!" The illustration is widely used by national anti-Indian coalitions;^[5] the paper itself included multiple pieces criticizing both Native American students' complaints about a string of incidents perceived as racist, as well as the College's apologies for them. On November 29, 2006, more than 500 students, staff, faculty members and administrators responded to the issue by gathering for a "Solidarity Against Hatred Rally" in front of Dartmouth Hall. In an interview with the Associated Press, Review editor-in-chief Dan Linsalata said the paper was in response to "the overdramatic reaction to events this term."^[6] Editors subsequently issued statements expressing "regret" and called the cover, but not the "editorial content", a "mistake".^[5][7][8]

The paper has consistently supported a college curriculum based on the so-called Western Canon, advocated for a stronger role for religion in campus life, criticized Dartmouth College's alcohol policies and resisted political correctness on campus. In 2002, Dartmouth's liberal newspaper, the Dartmouth Free Press, documented other issues on which the Review, has taken a stand, most of them campus-oriented.^[9]

[edit] Influence and legacy

Some claim the newspaper's influence with current students may be on the decline. A February 17, 2003 article in The Nation, co-authored by a founder of the liberal Free Press, quotes early Review editor-turned-national-pundit Dinesh D'Souza as saying that the Review's current "impact on campus is debatable" since the paper no longer dominates campus debate as it did during his editorship.^[10] In 2006, the newspaper celebrated its twenty-fifth year of publication by releasing an anthology entitled The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent: Twenty-Five Years of Being Threatened, Impugned, Vandalized, Sued, Suspended, and Bitten at the Ivy League's Most Controversial Conservative Newspaper, in which William F. Buckley lauded the newspaper as "a vibrant, joyful provocative challenge to the regnant but brittle liberalism for which American colleges are renowned."^[1]

[edit] Current Problems

The paper has also come under scrutiny for many of its actions under departing editor Dan Linsalata, including accusations of driving the impeachment of the Student Body President ^[11] and a controversial cover depicting savage indians that led President Kevin Hudak to resign. ^[12] These events and others have prompted many staffers to leave, and The Review has been chided by the greater conservative community at Dartmouth.

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• (April 2006) in James Panero and Stefan Beck: The Dartmouth Review Pleads Innocent: Twenty-Five Years of Being Threatened, Impugned, Vandalized, Sued, Suspended, and Bitten at the Ivy League's Most Controversial Conservative Newspaper. Intercollegiate Studies Institute. ISBN 1932236937. 

[edit] External links

• Official website of The Dartmouth Review
• Dartmouth Free Press article on the Review
• Stories from the New York Times on the shanty scandal