John Sloan Dickey (November 4, 1907 – February 9, 1991) was an American diplomat, scholar, and intellectual. Dickey served as the 12th President of

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

Hanover, New Hampshire Hanover is a town located along the Connecticut River in Grafton County, New Hampshire, United States. As of the 2020 census, its population was 11,870. The town is home to the Ivy League university Dartmouth College, the U.S. Army Corps of Eng ...

, from 1945 to 1970, and helped revitalize the

Ivy League The Ivy League is an American collegiate athletic conference comprising eight private research universities in the Northeastern United States. The term ''Ivy League'' is typically used beyond the sports context to refer to the eight schools ...

institution.

Early life

John Sloan Dickey was born in

Lock Haven, Pennsylvania Lock Haven is the county seat of Clinton County, in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania. Located near the confluence of the West Branch Susquehanna River and Bald Eagle Creek, it is the principal city of the Lock Haven Micropolitan Statistical Area, ...

. He completed his

undergraduate Undergraduate education is education conducted after secondary education and before postgraduate education. It typically includes all postsecondary programs up to the level of a bachelor's degree. For example, in the United States, an entry-lev ...

degree at Dartmouth in 1929 and later graduated from

Harvard Law School Harvard Law School (Harvard Law or HLS) is the law school of Harvard University, a private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1817, it is the oldest continuously operating law school in the United States. Each class ...

Early career

Dickey had a varied career: partner at a major Boston law firm, special assistant to the

Assistant Secretary of State Assistant Secretary of State (A/S) is a title used for many executive positions in the United States Department of State, ranking below the Under Secretary of State, under secretaries. A set of six assistant secretaries reporting to the Under Secret ...

and later to the Secretary of State, a member of the

Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, later known as the Office for Inter-American Affairs, was a United States agency promoting inter-American cooperation (Pan-Americanism) during the 1940s, especially in commercial and econ ...

and the division of World Trade Intelligence, and Director of the State Department's

Office of Public Affairs An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific duti ...

. Even after 1945, when Dickey became President of Dartmouth College, he remained a figure in public policy. He served on President

Harry S. Truman Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...

's 1947

President's Committee on Civil Rights The President's Committee on Civil Rights was a United States presidential commission established by President Harry Truman in 1946. The committee was created by Executive Order 9808 on December 5, 1946, and instructed to investigate the status o ...

. A strong believer in the value of efforts towards international cooperation, he was part of the

United Nations The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and international security, security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be ...

Collective Measures Committee A collective is a group of entities that share or are motivated by at least one common issue or interest, or work together to achieve a common objective. Collectives can differ from cooperatives in that they are not necessarily focused upon an ...

in 1951. During 1952–53 he was one of five members chosen by Secretary of State

Dean Acheson Dean Gooderham Acheson (pronounced ; April 11, 1893October 12, 1971) was an American statesman and lawyer. As the 51st U.S. Secretary of State, he set the foreign policy of the Harry S. Truman administration from 1949 to 1953. He was also Truman ...

for the

State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament The State Department Panel of Consultants on Disarmament, sometimes referred to as the Oppenheimer Panel, was a group created by the United States Department of State that existed from April 1952 to January 1953, during the last year of the Truman a ...

, and he played a significant role in the panel's stark report about the dangers of nuclear weapons and relations with the Soviet Union.

Dartmouth presidency

Regularly welcoming freshmen at Convocation with the phrase "your business here is learning," Dickey was committed to making Dartmouth the best liberal arts college in the country. Dickey's commitment to the

liberal arts Liberal arts education (from Latin "free" and "art or principled practice") is the traditional academic course in Western higher education. ''Liberal arts'' takes the term ''art'' in the sense of a learned skill rather than specifically the ...

, or, as he termed them "the liberating arts," was perhaps best expressed in an innovative course on "Great Issues," designed to introduce seniors to the problems of national and international relations they would face as citizens. President Dickey also reintroduced doctoral programs to Dartmouth, as well as a Northern Studies program and a Russian Civilization department. Dickey sought to expand the horizons of Dartmouth beyond Hanover and introduced foreign studies programs, a public affairs internship, and various social action programs. The

William Jewett Tucker Foundation William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Eng ...

was opened by President Dickey, offering students opportunity and academic credit for social activism. During his 25-year tenure, President Dickey headed two capital campaigns, doubled African American student enrollment, reinvigorated

Dartmouth Medical School The Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth is the graduate medical school of Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. The fourth oldest medical school in the United States, it was founded in 1797 by New England physician Nathan Smith. It is o ...

, built the

Hopkins Center Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College is located at 4 East Wheelock Street in Hanover, New Hampshire. The center, which was designed by Wallace Harrison and foreshadows his later design of Manhattan's Lincoln Center, is the college's cu ...

and instituted continuing education for alumni. Consistent with his concern for, awareness of, and involvement in the great movements of the time, he saw the emerging importance of

computers A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations (computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These programs ...

—a field then in its infancy—and built the Kiewit Computation Center in 1966. After stepping down as president, he continued his affiliation with the College by teaching Canadian-American relations as the Bicentennial Professor of Public Affairs. In 1982, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding was opened at Dartmouth to honor Dickey's legacy and "coordinate, sustain, and enrich the international dimension of liberal arts education at Dartmouth."

References

External links

Dartmouth College Wheelock Succession of PresidentsDartmouth CollegeThe John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dickey, John Sloan 1907 births 1991 deaths American Presbyterians Dartmouth College alumni Harvard Law School alumni People from Lock Haven, Pennsylvania Presidents of Dartmouth College Commanders Crosses of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany 20th-century American academics