The Illiberal College
2nd September 2007
Read it. Dartmouth is a poster child for what is happening to our educational system.
One of the more momentous cases in Supreme Court history, Dartmouth College v. Woodward (1819), involved an attempt by the state of New Hampshire to wrest control of the privately chartered school from its board of trustees. But a corporate charter like Dartmouth’s, the Marshall Court ruled, is the same as a private contract; the state could not simply annex the school.
Nowadays, of course, it wouldn’t be a problem — they’d just say they wanted to use it for something more socially useful, like low-income housing.