Dartmouth College
June 5, 2026 — Scott Johnson
I am traveling early this morning and most of the day to the wedding of John Hammel Strauss, the son of Berney Strauss, in upstate New York. Berney was my best college friend. After college we went to graduate school together pursuing our interest in literature before shifting our attention elsewhere. In lieu of my usual deliberations over the news of the day, I want to invoke Berney’s memory while
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May 28, 2026 — Scott Johnson
Jeffrey Hart taught English at Dartmouth College from 1963 to 1993. During most of those years and after Professor Hart also served as a senior editor of National Review. I was his student for four of those years. The memories have come flooding back as I have been rereading Gulliver’s Travels over the past several weeks, a book I first read in Professor Hart’s course on the era of Dryen
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May 4, 2026 — Scott Johnson
The Washington Free Beacon notes this unlikely story with an Ivy League twist in the “additional reading” conclusion of its Morning Beacon newsletter: Anti-Israel students at Cornell followed the university’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, to his car after a “debate over the war in Gaza” and surrounded it as he attempted to leave. Kotlikoff just kept on reversing, “brushing” into one student before his car “accelerates and bumps into the student,”
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September 15, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Matthew Mosk is senior investigative editorial director at CBS News. In the current issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine he interviews fellow Dartmouth alum and Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon. Harmeet matriculated at Dartmouth at age 16. Among other things, she served as editor of the maverick Dartmouth Review. Mosk, by contrast, served as editor of the institutionally respectable The Dartmouth. The magazine has posted the Mosk/Dhillon
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September 11, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The Times attributes authorship of these artful profiles collectively to Kirk Johnson, N.R. Kleinfeld, David Barstow, Barbara Stewart, Jane Gross, Neela Banerjee, Constance L. Hays, Lynette Holloway, Janny Scott and Somini Sengupta. We can’t capture the magnitude of the loss, or the meaning of who and what we lost, but the
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August 18, 2025 — Scott Johnson
When China scholar and journalist Jonathan Mirsky died in 2021 at the age of 88, Britain’s Guardian posted Jonathan Steele’s excellent obituary with many links recounting his career, mostly in British journalism. I recalled him myself on Power Line with the thoughts below. Jonathan taught Chinese and Chinese history at Dartmouth when I was an undergraduate. I got to know Jonathan (as we all called him) as the center of
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July 31, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In college I wrote for the daily college student newspaper — The Dartmouth — from early in my freshman year through my senior year. I interviewed visiting lecturers, reviewed movies and books, and covered arts-related events, usually working late in the paper’s office on a beat-up typewriter to scratch out copy to a midnight deadline. Copy would be taken to the paper’s printing plant in a nearby town that must
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July 7, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Traveling today, I would like to continue what Chris Flannery has started in his posts on Mark Twain for us. I want to return to Mark Twain from the perspective afforded by the end of his career and the man who taught me Mark Twain in college. “To the Person Sitting in Darkness” is one of Mark Twain’s late bursts of indignation against American imperialism. It seems to derive from
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July 1, 2025 — Scott Johnson
In my profile of William F. Buckley, Jr. in this series, I referred to the dinner with Buckley at which I was an invited guest of Jeffrey Hart writing a story for the daily Dartmouth College student newspaper. Buckley had just returned from Nixon’s historic trip to China and published his cover story on it in the March 17, 1972 issue of National Review. He incorporated part of his published
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April 29, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The Ivy League schools have beclowned themselves over the last few years. They have been hotbeds of anti-Semitism, they have persisted in illegal DEI policies, and they have been hostile to free speech. With one honorable exception. Under President Sian Beilock, Dartmouth has rejected these far-Left policies, and thus has kept its name out of the newspapers. This tweet sums up Beilock’s accomplishments: Dartmouth Alumni, Faculty, Students and Friends are
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March 16, 2025 — Scott Johnson
Berney Strauss was my best college friend. After college we went to graduate school together pursuing our interest in literature before shifting our attention elsewhere. Berney died this past Tuesday morning. He was in the hospital confronting dire complications of continuing health issues. His beautiful wife Ebie had donated a kidney to Berney to deal with his issues, but the underlying disease had recurred. When I texted Ebie for an
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December 2, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Catching the early flight from Minneapolis to Washington, D.C. on Thanksgiving, we found a group of players from the Minnesota State–Mankato Mavericks women’s hockey team waiting for their teammates at the entrance to the G Concourse. We were sitting at the coffee shop off to the side. “There’s the Gophers women’s hockey team,” my wife said to me. Close, but not quite. The ladies looked happy hanging out together. They
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September 11, 2024 — Scott Johnson
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The Times attributes authorship of these artful profiles collectively to Kirk Johnson, N.R. Kleinfeld, David Barstow, Barbara Stewart, Jane Gross, Neela Banerjee, Constance L. Hays, Lynette Holloway, Janny Scott and Somini Sengupta. We can’t capture the magnitude of the loss, or the meaning of who and what we lost, but the
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June 12, 2024 — Scott Johnson
I last attended a Dartmouth commencement for my youngest daughter’s graduation nine years ago and wrote up “Notes on Dartmouth commencement ’15.” Dartmouth holds the commencement ceremony outdoors rain or shine. In 2010 we had attended commencement on the Green for our middle daughter when it was rainy and cold. In 2015 the skies cleared around 9:30, leaving a few clouds hanging like feathers in the sky. The temperature reached
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May 13, 2024 — John Hinderaker
Dartmouth has avoided the ignominy suffered by some of its Ivy peers during the current anti-Semitic moment. That is because its president, Sian Leah Beilock–I missed it when Congress passed a statute requiring every university president to be a woman–has reacted swiftly to illegal demonstrations on Dartmouth’s campus. The major incident was when anti-Jewish protesters erected tents on the Dartmouth Green, surrounded by anti-Semites who linked arms to “protect” the
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September 11, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Following 9/11 the New York Times ran Portraits of Grief profiling many of those lost in the 9/11 attacks. The Times attributes authorship of these artful profiles collectively to Kirk Johnson, N.R. Kleinfeld, David Barstow, Barbara Stewart, Jane Gross, Neela Banerjee, Constance L. Hays, Lynette Holloway, Janny Scott and Somini Sengupta. We can’t capture the magnitude of the loss, or the meaning of who and what we lost, but the
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May 27, 2023 — Scott Johnson
Power Line observes its twenty-first anniversary this Memorial Day weekend. I want to take the liberty of looking back by pulling out three of my favorite posts of the past twenty-one years. This is from March 2009. * * * * * * Asked where they had their most memorable campus experiences, Dartmouth students polled back when I was an undergraduate most frequently identified the Hopkins Center for the Arts.
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