Category:Famous Dartmouth Alumni
Dartmouth College is a private institution in Hanover, New Hampshire, chartered in 1769, the smallest of the Ivy League schools and the only one that still calls itself a college. Its most consequential appearance in American law came from one of the people in this category: Daniel Webster argued Dartmouth College v. Woodward before the Supreme Court, establishing that a state legislature could not unilaterally rewrite a private charter. The membership here is weighted heavily toward Washington rather than toward any industry, and within Washington toward one department in particular. Four members held the office of Secretary of the Treasury, two of them in the nineteenth century and two of them consecutively through the 2008 financial crisis, and that run is the clearest signal in the category.
The Treasury line
Levi Woodbury graduated from Dartmouth, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, trained at the Litchfield Law School, and went on to serve as Governor of New Hampshire, Secretary of the Treasury and an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court. Salmon P. Chase graduated in 1826 near the top of his class at eighteen, read law in Washington under Attorney General William Wirt, and later held the Treasury under Lincoln before becoming Chief Justice of the United States. Hank Paulson was raised in Barrington, Illinois, took degrees from Dartmouth and Harvard Business School, and ran the Treasury through the 2008 financial crisis. Timothy Geithner took his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth and succeeded him, having previously led the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Webster enrolled in 1797 and graduated in 1801 as a student of the classics and rhetoric, apprenticed into the law rather than attending a law school, and served twice as Secretary of State alongside a career of landmark constitutional argument.
Law, the bench and the executive branch
Amos T. Akerman was born in New Hampshire, educated at Dartmouth, and moved south as a young man before serving as Attorney General under Grant. Laurence Silberman left Pennsylvania for Dartmouth and then Harvard Law, and sat for more than three decades on the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Neal Katyal took his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth before a career arguing before the Supreme Court and teaching national security law. Sherman Adams studied at Dartmouth after the First World War, settled in New Hampshire, entered the lumber business, and became the second White House Chief of Staff under Eisenhower.
The elected cohort is large and bipartisan. Kirsten Gillibrand, Angus King, Rob Portman, John Hoeven and Tina Smith, who took her MBA at the Tuck School, have all served in the Senate. Josh Stein and Tom Wolf became governors of North Carolina and Pennsylvania, Bruce Rauner of Illinois, and Eleni Kounalakis lieutenant governor of California. George Jepsen was Attorney General of Connecticut. Annie Kuster, Alex Mooney, Tom Kean Jr. and Brandon Gill have served in the House.
Business, science and the screen
Lou Gerstner graduated from Dartmouth and Harvard Business School before running RJR Nabisco and then IBM, an episode he wrote up himself in Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?. John Donahoe came out of Dartmouth and Stanford Business School into consulting and then technology leadership. Leon Black took his bachelor's degree at Dartmouth before Harvard Business School and the founding of Apollo Global Management. Gail Boudreaux played varsity basketball at Dartmouth and now leads Elevance Health. Rauner and his wife funded the renovation of Webster Hall into the college's rare books and manuscripts library in 1996.
Barry Sharpless did his undergraduate work at Dartmouth and later won two Nobel Prizes in Chemistry, for asymmetric catalysis and for click chemistry. Martha Pollack took her Bachelor of Arts in 1979 and became president of Cornell University. Shonda Rhimes graduated in the class of 1991, having used the liberal arts curriculum to work on creative writing and performance, and left for a graduate screenwriting program in Los Angeles. Dinesh D'Souza arrived from Bombay as a high school exchange student and first drew attention as editor of a conservative campus publication.
See also
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