‘A Different Kind of Ivy’

Dr. Sian Leah Beilock, the president of Dartmouth, arrived at the Aspen Ideas Festival in the mountains of Colorado on a peak of her own. The recent commencement speech by tennis great Roger Federer had gone viral during a season when most viral college videos were not the kind that thrilled admissions officers.

For the most part, Dartmouth had avoided rancorous protests. There had been no existential crisis...