Today we mark the birthday of John Sloan Dickey, Dartmouth’s 12th president, born November 4, 1907.
Dickey came to Dartmouth in 1945 from the State Department, and he never stopped believing that a liberal arts education, what he called “the liberating arts,” had to prepare students for the world beyond campus. He created the Great Issues course to put graduating seniors face to face with the national and international problems they would inherit as citizens. He opened Dartmouth’s first foreign study programs and public affairs internships, served on President Truman’s Committee on Civil Rights, sat on the United Nations’ Collective Measures Committee, and helped write one of the earliest unflinching assessments of the dangers of nuclear weapons.
The Dickey Center was founded in 1982 by a group of his former students to carry on his legacy and “coordinate, sustain, and enrich the international dimension of liberal arts education at Dartmouth.”
Our Great Issues Scholars program takes its name and its purpose directly from Dickey’s pioneering course, introducing first-year students to international affairs as they start their tenure at Dartmouth. The Davidson Institute for Global Security and our War and Peace Fellows take up the questions of conflict, deterrence, and security that occupied Dickey as a diplomat. The Institute of Arctic Studies builds on the northern studies he reintroduced to the curriculum. Our Global Health and Development work, our international internships and postgraduate fellowships, and initiatives like Dissent and Democracy, Powering Peace, and the Middle East Initiative all answer the same charge: that students learn best by engaging the world’s hardest problems, not by reading about them from a distance.
The Dickey Center educates, convenes, and empowers people to confront the world’s problems. We bring the world to Dartmouth and Dartmouth to the world.
Happy birthday, President Dickey. You continue to shape and inspire what we do today.
