Education: Dickey for Hopkins

Last week aging (67) Dr. Ernest Martin Hopkins quit the presidency of Dartmouth College. Anyone who thought that his departure had anything to do with his outspoken defense of a quota on Jew§ at Dartmouth did not know Dr. Hopkins, Dartmouth, or the facts. His retirement, and the search for a successor, were under way long before his opinions were unearthed by Manhattan’s tabloid Post. His friends might only concede (Dr. Hopkins was not talking about it) that he had spoken more freely than usual, knowing that he was about to quit.

Under Hopkins’ 29-year tenure, Dartmouth enjoyed what trustees proudly termed “the greatest era in its history.” It was a placid but progressive era: the physical plant was doubled in size, endowments were quadrupled. Hopkins tried to retire four years ago, was persuaded to carry on for the war’s duration.

Hopkins’ successor, a surprising unanimous first choice, is a youthful (38), scholarly, easygoing alumnus (’29) with little pedagogic background. As an undergraduate, John Sloan Dickey spent his spare time “doing no great damage to wild life” with gun and rod, finished with top honors in history. He graduated from Harvard Law School in 1932, since then has been in & out of private practice and government jobs (one year of penal work for the State of Massachusetts, seven years in the U.S. State Department). In five years with U.S. Senator Leverett Saltonstall’s old Boston law firm of Gaston, Snow, Saltonstall, Hunt and Rice, he wound up a partner. In the State Department he shepherded 44 civic groups (labor, education, women’s clubs) to the San Francisco Conference. When Archibald MacLeish left, Dickey took over all MacLeish’s duties.

When Dickey was first shown the spacious State Department office he now occupies, he demurred (“I don’t want to be in that pasture”), but was finally talked into it. One recent lady visitor was horrified to find him busily polishing his own white shoes. But with his informality Dickey has native caution: he refuses to say what he will do at Dartmouth until he takes over in November.