The Review had practiced owning the libs since its founding. As an undergrad, I knew several staffers and founders, some of whom had defected from The Dartmouth, the traditional student daily for which I wrote. And some studied and worshiped with me at Aquinas House, the Catholic student center. Star writers and editors for the Review would become stars in our current populist firmament, connecting the 20th-century Review and 21st-century MAGA.
One was Dinesh D’Souza, the author, filmmaker and Trump-pardoned felon (he pleaded guilty to violating campaign contribution laws during a 2014 Senate race in New York). D’Souza was an amiable freshman at Dartmouth when I edited a story he did for The Dartmouth about longshot 1980 presidential candidate Phil Crane. (“Reagan without the wrinkles,” Dinesh memorably called him.) When the Review was born, it gave D’Souza, as editor and writer, a platform for provocation.
He wrote an article outing members of the college’s Gay Student Association and oversaw highly controversial articles, including one featuring an interview with a former KKK member — by a Black Review staffer, illustrated with a staged photo of an African American hung from a tree. Another condemned affirmative action in a column, entitled “Dis Sho Ain’t No Jive, Bro,” written in mock African American dialect. That last article drove New York Rep. Jack Kemp, a Republican who worked to bridge the party’s divide from people of color, to resign from the Review’s advisory board — proving you could own the cons as well as the libs.
Then there’s Laura Ingraham, today a Fox News star, back then a Review editor best known for her critique of Bill Cole, a beloved music professor whom the Review deemed incompetent — even though he was tenured and the chair of the Music department. (It should be noted that Cole is Black.) In her Review article, Ingraham quoted a student description of the professor as resembling “a used Brillo pad.” Cole later sued for libel but dropped the litigation. I didn’t know Ingraham well, but I recall her telling me about the professor verbally accosting her over her coverage. She seemed both taken aback and bemused by his outburst.
(Neither D’Souza nor Ingraham responded to requests for comment.)
More than a media celebrity, Ingraham informally advised Trump in his first term. Another Reviewer is an official member of the president’s second administration. Harmeet Dhillon was nominated by Trump and confirmed as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. She was the Review’s editor-in-chief when it published a 1988 satire likening James Freedman, Dartmouth’s then-president, who was Jewish, to Hitler.