Liz DeLillo
Staff Writer
Sian Leah Beilock believes universities must focus on what they are: places of education.
“When we are singularly focused on being an educational institution, our mission and values do not change depending on who is in political office,” she said. “At Dartmouth and universities across the country, we have to exist to teach students how to think, not what to think; our mission is to educate.”
Beilock, president of Dartmouth College and an influential cognitive scientist, spoke at 10:45 a.m. Wednesday in the Amphitheater for the Chautauqua Lecture Series. She addressed forces transforming the landscape of higher education in the United States, continuing Week One’s focus on “Themes of Transformation: Forces Shaping Our Tomorrow.”
In her lecture, Beilock stated that institutions of higher education must remain committed to their educational mission. Universities need to cultivate an environment where different perspectives can engage together on divisive issues. Preparing students for a rapidly evolving world requires providing them with the skills and tools to navigate it.
She encouraged institutions of higher education to center their core mission and values and to reconsider the university’s role in the current politically polarized landscape.
“If our universities are to better serve this generation — if we are to better serve our country in the world at this critical moment — we need a new way of thinking,” she said. “We need to redefine success not by prestige or ranking, or endowment size, but by actually providing that purpose in preparing our young people to lead.”
In pursuing these aims, Beilock elaborated three pillars guiding Dartmouth’s efforts: knowing their educational mission, fostering diversity, and teaching students how to think as opposed to what to think.
“Our goal has been to realign our core purpose and values,” she said, sharing three pillars Dartmouth focuses on to that end. The first pillar she discussed was knowing their mission.
“We are an educational institution, not a political organization. We are not even an advocacy or social justice group,” Beilock said. She affirmed that such institutions have “vital roles,” but that universities play a different one. They must be “beacons of truth” and remain focused on their educational mission.
The second pillar Beilock discussed is the need to foster diversity. In order to have those rich yet civil conservations across stark differences, diverse perspectives are necessary.
“Our goal as an institution is actually very simple: to get the best and brightest young people together from wherever they are in the world to speak their minds in a brave — not a safe — space,” she said. “To do so, we must inherently value diversity in all of its forms. It is an essential component of academic excellence.”
Diversity makes campuses stronger, Beilock said, but she emphasized that the second pillar doesn’t stop at diversity — a specific environment must be cultivated.
“This diversity comes with responsibility. It means accepting that real, passionate debate will occur across lines of difference, but it also means setting clear guidelines and rules so that they can happen. We fiercely defend free speech and the right to protest, but we have also — often in a juxtaposition to many of our peers — made it clear that no one is entitled to rob others of their own free expression,” she said. “… These kinds of expressions don’t elevate free expression, they silence it.”
The third pillar holds that institutions of higher education must teach their students how to think, as opposed to what to think. This requires providing students with “the tools to form their own opinions” and is the primary objective of the Dartmouth Dialogues initiative.
The program works to facilitate discourse, enabling students to develop the skills to engage with different viewpoints. With students participating during first-year orientations and again in their second year, Dartmouth Dialogues provides the opportunity for students to build up those tools.
“The ability to have a conservation with somebody you disagree with and put yourself in someone else’s shoes are not magic or innate talents that some are born with,” she said. “They are teachable, learnable skills.”
For Beilock, a considerable aspect of remaining focused on Dartmouth’s mission is committing to institutional “restraint.” She defined institutional restraint as having institutions and departments only release public statements that relate to their mission.
“At Dartmouth, we believe this fundamental concept, but we believe it must be adapted to meet the moment,” she said.
In adopting a policy of institutional restraint, the aim is “to make sure the individuals — faculty, staff, students and alumni — feel free to speak their minds, (and) don’t shy away from voicing an opinion because it may not be held by that institution as a whole — that is where we practice restraint,” Beilock said.
Illustrating the importance of institutional restraint in upholding the three guiding pillars, Beilock elaborated how institutional statements and actions can harm the university’s academic mission.
“Consider a student interested in majoring in a certain subject visiting the department homepage to explore course offerings (who is then) slapped in the face with an official statement exonerating her own political ideology — how comfortable would that student feel taking a class in that department, let alone share (their) perspective in class or in the paper?”
Because the university’s aim is fostering the space for that dialogue — not dictating its content — such departmental statements run counter to Dartmouth’s educational mission.
“We embody the exact opposite of our mission in those cases, which again, is to be the face of intellectual inquiry that seeks truth through questioning and dialogue,” she said.
At the same time, Beilock acknowledged that these pillars are not an easy thing to achieve. They are demanding, require accepting that one is imperfect and won’t get everything right.
“Just because that is our aspiration — it is not a guarantee that we are always there,” she said. “We have to continuously ask whether we have strayed from our mission and how we can get back.”
Beilock was clear that institutions of higher education do not derive integrity from esteemed students or the championing of political causes, but rather from their continued commitment to their educational mission.
“Our integrity comes from living up to our mission and values again and again, teaching students how to think, readying them to live a better life — fuller and more impactful than before,” she said.
A college education should not merely help people find the right answer; it should help them ask the right questions, Beilock said. Beyond accumulating information, what students gain at educational institutions should be skills for building common ground and coming to a shared understanding.
“Let’s keep showing up,” she said. “Let’s defend the integrity of our institutions, not with slogans but with substance. Let’s invest in an educational model that explains minds, builds character, and strengthens American democracy. Let’s keep believing that when we get it right, higher education is not just giving you a diploma to hang on the wall — it shapes the future.”
