Dartmouth College on Monday tapped Jim Yong Kim, a physician known for his work in the global fight against AIDS and tuberculosis, as its next president.
Dr. Kim, who is 49, will assume the presidency at a time when the Ivy League institution has been undertaking a series of painful budget cuts and layoffs following a steep drop in the value of its endowment (The Chronicle, November 13, 2008). He will succeed James Wright, who had previously announced he would resign after 11 years as president, on July 1.
Dr. Kim, who is chairman of the department of global health and social medicine at Harvard Medical School, said he recognized that Dartmouth, like other institutions, has had to make “difficult choices” in recent months, but he praised Mr. Wright and college leaders for doing so in a manner that preserved key institutional priorities, like need-blind admissions for both American and foreign students.
Dartmouth has lost more than $200-million of its once $3.8-billion endowment, which provides more than a third of the college’s $700-million operating budget. In response, the college has announced plans to lay off staff, freeze salaries, reduce work hours, and postpone construction projects.
Despite the tough economic climate, Dr. Kim suggested, it might also be a time to exercise bold leadership. “This is a time for a great institution like Dartmouth to think about how to leap ahead when others are afraid and cutting back,” he said. “It’s a matter of being strategic.”
Dr. Kim brings a wealth of international experience to an institution that has sought, in recent years, to become more deeply engaged globally. He is a former senior official at the World Health Organization, where he started an effort to greatly expand HIV/AIDS treatment in low- and middle-income countries. He is a co-founder and former executive director of Partners in Health, a nonprofit organization that supports health programs in poor communities worldwide.
Dr. Kim said he would like to expand Dartmouth’s existing offerings in global health and would also seek to continue efforts to strengthen undergraduate education at the college. But Dr. Kim, who holds a Ph.D. in anthropology as well as a medical degree (both from Harvard), said that rather than coming to the job with an agenda, he would put his “anthropological training to use and listen.”
Dr. Kim is also chief of the division of global health equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, a major Harvard teaching hospital, and director of the François-Xavier Bagnoud Center for Health and Human Rights at the Harvard School of Public Health. He received a MacArthur Foundation “genius” award in 2003.
Raised in Iowa, he is a native of South Korea who came to the United States with his parents when he was 5 years old. He is one of the few people of Asian heritage to lead a major American university and the first to lead an Ivy League institution.
In preparation for the position, Dr. Kim said he would be going back to school. He plans to take a course for new chief executives offered by his friend and Harvard colleague, Michael E. Porter, a professor in the business school.
The Dartmouth presidency, however, will not be Dr. Kim’s only new responsibility. He and his wife, Dr. Younsook Lim, a pediatrician, welcomed a new son on Saturday. They also have an 8-year-old son.
