Speaking before an audience of leaders at the in Laguna Niguel, Calif., last week, said that the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision on affirmative action has not changed the necessity to cultivate a campus culture that welcomes different experiences and perspectives.
âWhatâs not on the table is this principle of diversityâthat having a diversity of views, of lived experiences, leads to better outcomes,â President Beilock said. âThe onus now is on us as an institution more than ever to go out and get the best and brightest, regardless of background.â
The remarks were part of an Oct. 11 panel discussion with Kristin Mugford, senior associate dean of culture and community at Harvard Business School, on the changing role of diversity in higher education and the workplace. The conversation was moderated by Fortune editor Ruth Umoh.
Having diverse identities in the room is not enough, Beilock said. Institutions like Dartmouth need to cultivate the skill of engaging with differing perspectives. She described her visionâannounced during her Inaugural address last monthâfor the Dartmouth Dialogue Project, which aims to encourage students to have and participate in difficult conversations in the classroom.
âThe data are really clear that better decisions are made when you have people at the table who feel like they belong and can push at each other,â she said. âAnd part of that is feeling you can trust one another, you have a community. Then you can say things, you can make mistakes, you can feel uncomfortable.â
In her own leadership, Beilock says that it is important to âtake stances that allow dialogue on both sides of an issue.â
âI bring a real push around free expression, around creating braveânot just safeâspaces where we can have differences of opinion and people hear each other on issues that they donât agree with.â
Beilock, a cognitive scientist, also discussed the need for higher education and industry to build partnerships. She described the , an effort Dartmouth is helping to lead among six other U.S. universities with women presidents and deans of engineering, including Brown University; Indiana University; Olin College of Engineering; the University of California, Berkeley; the University of Rochester; and the University of Washington.
The goal of the consortium is to leverage the 2022 federal CHIPS and Science Actâwhich Beilock called âa once in a lifetime opportunity in our country to think about the semiconductor industryââto bring more women and other underrepresented groups into the engineering and technology fields. The EDGE Consortium is hosting its first summit for leaders in education, government, and industry in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 24.
âWe have to think about multiple entry points. Itâs not just one âweed-outâ calculus class, but how do we think about all the opportunities to show meaning in engineering and STEM for our women, and especially people of color,â Beilock said. âDartmouth is a great test case. Weâre actually the first engineering school in the country to have gender parity at the undergrad level.â
Toward the end of the panel, Umoh asked Beilock to reflect on the arc of her career that led her to the leadership of an Ivy League university.
Beilock credited her success to âgreat people around me and great mentorship.â
âAnd I want to be very clear with that: Mentorship is not just from women. Itâs from men too,â she said. âMen have a real responsibility to help uplift the best talent, regardless of gender, regardless of race.â

Beilock was not the only Dartmouth woman represented at the three-day Fortune conference. Trustee , an award-winning actress, investor, and philanthropist, spoke about her approach to character, the pressure women face to be âlikeable,â and the challenge of developing her own production company.


