Last spring, we reported on Dartmouth College’s longstanding practice of electing nearly half of its board of trustees from among its alumni. Until recently, most alumni candidates had been indirectly sanctioned by the Dartmouth administration and so helped to assure that educational matters at Dartmouth proceeded as they did elsewhere: under the aegis of whatever the academic equivalent of conventional wisdom happens to be regnant at the moment.

Beginning in 2004, however, things began to change. It was then that T. J. Rodgers, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, ran and won as a “petition candidate”—one not sanctioned by the administration. His election was followed in short order by two more petition candidates, Todd Zywicki and Peter Robinson. At that point, the Dartmouth administration really sat up and took notice: a clear threat to business-as-usual was brewing. Accordingly, when Stephen Smith, ...