15 Minutes of Fame: Dartmouth’s Feature in a 1988 Episode of 60 Minutes, and What Was Left Out

In the fall of 1988, famed 60 Minutes host Morley Safer¹ and his camera crew arrived in Hanover to capture a conflict that had erupted on campus earlier that year: a heated confrontation between Professor William Cole and members of The Dartmouth Review, including then Editor-in-Chief Christopher “Chris” Baldwin. Review staff had covertly taped Cole’s class in order to publish the transcript alongside commentary in their weekly paper. Baldwin and other Review-ers, armed with a tape recorder and camera, had entered Cole’s classroom to deliver a letter requesting Cole’s response to the recording, escalating into a physical confrontation and eventual legal battle. Baldwin is featured in the 60 Minutes segment alongside current Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights and former Review editor Harmeet Dhillon ’89. Rauner houses both the official 60 Minutes segment and Safer’s unedited interview with Professor Cole, donated by Cole himself. Viewing these together brings new dimension to The Review’s time in the limelight.²

Setting the tone for the following 15 minutes, Safer opens the segment by stating that “Dartmouth vs. Dartmouth is the ’60s in reverse. A conservative student newspaper, The Dartmouth Review, is suing the liberal university administration of Dartmouth College.” This concept of the “’60s in reverse” is heavily present in Safer’s estimation of the situation, but not necessarily in those of his interviewees, especially Cole. In fact, throughout his entire interview with Cole, Safer brings up this exact concept several times, although none of those moments made the final cut. In one instance, Cole discusses how students are not qualified by themselves to completely overhaul Dartmouth’s curriculum. Safer responds by asking, “That’s kind of what happened in the ’60s though, wasn’t it? That’s kind of what happened from the Left.” Not agreeing with Safer’s framework, Cole replies, “I think that any time, irrespective of that person's political leanings, reactionary or liberal, is attacked, accosted, I don’t care who they are, whether I like them or not, I’ll come to their defense if they’re a professor, because I think that that kind of anarchy can’t be tolerated at a college or university.” Here, Cole also makes an important distinction between dissent and disrespect, a line that is blurred in the final segment, as Baldwin argues that his right to dissent includes actions such as recording classes.

The real shift made during the ’60s, at least according to Cole, was not that college students became anti-establishment, but that there was a widespread pushback, from both students and educators, against the concept that American universities should only teach European literature, philosophy, and history, an idea commonly found in the pages of The Review.³ Cole argues that courses about Native Americans or Black Americans support a uniquely American curriculum that helps students grasp the diversity of the US and its difference from Europe. In the unedited version of the interview, Cole voices his concern with the direction of higher education, asserting that “there has been a struggle since the late ’60s to make American colleges and universities American colleges and universities, not European colleges and universities in America. To do that, you have to speak the truth.” Contrary to Safer’s estimation that the College administration was liberal, the pieces of Cole’s interview that didn’t make the final cut seem to suggest that the College administration is not simply “liberal” as Safer assumes. Additionally, this commentary suggests that there is a deeper, more prolonged conflict at the College beyond The Review and Professor Cole, which is a fundamental disagreement over what should be taught at Dartmouth, and how.

Safer aims to include all perspectives on the situation and compile it all into a 15-minute segment, and this means that not everything from the original interviews can be captured in the final cut. However, Safer’s narrative that this incident represents the “’60s in reverse” doesn’t capture deeper debates at Dartmouth over what students should be educated on and how education should be structured.

¹ “88 RE: DARTMOUTH REVIEW AND PROFESSOR COLE,” 60 Minutes, CBS, November 1988, Rauner Special Collections Library, https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/211368.

² Morley Safer, “Bill Cole Unedited 60 Minutes Video with Morley Safer (Raw Footage),” 1988, Video, Rauner Special Collections Library, https://archives-manuscripts.dartmouth.edu/repositories/2/archival_objects/790016.

³ Jeffrey Hart, “Does Dartmouth College Have a Curriculum?,” The Dartmouth Review, October 3, 1980, Rauner Special Collections Library.

Posted for Mackenzie Wilson '27, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2026 winter term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in Dartmouth's past. For more information, visit the program's website.