February 16, 2006

The president as radical

Alumni who haven’t been following the college closely over the past five years—or those put off by Amherst’s privileged atmosphere—shouldn’t miss the BusinessWeek article describing the ambitions president Tony Marx holds for the College.

Starting by describing Marx’s own “nothing to lose” pitch to the Board of Trustees—in which he remembers saying, “I’m not interested in being a custodian over a privileged place,”—the article describes Marx’s agenda as “a new affirmative action initiative, this time based on class rather than race.”

It also connects the dots with Dean of Admissions Tom Parker’s Christmas comments and the faculty report on admissions from a few years ago, and includes quotes from professors Barry O’Connell, Geoffrey Woglom, David A. Cox and Jan Dizard.

To Marx this isn’t a revolutionary goal; he sees it as a return to Amherst’s roots. The college, he notes, was founded in 1821 by Noah Webster, creator of the American Dictionary, whose portrait hangs in Marx’s office. “The object of this institution,” Webster wrote, is “educating young men in indigent circumstances, but of hopeful piety and promising talents.” The wording is antiquated, and women weren’t allowed back then. But there’s nothing dated about the sentiment.

Parker Morse '96 | February 16, 2006 07:50 PM | Campus | Faculty

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