Korean doctor, anthropologist selected to be Dartmouth’s next president

A native of Seoul, South Korea, Kim moved to the United States when he was 5 years old and grew up in Iowa in one of only a handful of Asian-American families in the area. Kim has said that his father, who advised him to be a doctor, also counseled him on issues relating to race.

“What he said to me was, ‘Look, you’re Asian-American. As a Korean you will have a skill no one can take away from you.’ And that’s still what people felt at that time,” Kim told The Dartmouth, the college’s newspaper. “No one would have said an African-American could be president of the United States. I mean, that was not in the realm of possibility in 1980.”

Kim currently serves as chair of the Department of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School, as well as chief of the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. He has never held a position at Dartmouth.

Kim was awarded a MacArthur “genius” fellowship in 2003, and U.S. News and World Report ranked him in 2005 as one of America’s 25 best leaders. In 2006, he was named one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people.

As a trained physician and anthropologist — he holds both an M.D. from Harvard Medical School and a Ph.D. in anthropology, also from Harvard — Kim has worked to improve the health of residents of many developing countries, serving as director for the Department of HIV/AIDS at the World Health Organization from 2004 to 2005.

As Dartmouth’s next president, Kim will face significant challenges as the college is pressured to cut costs. Last month, Dartmouth announced that it would cut 60 non-faculty employees after the value of the endowment fell by $700 million, or 18 percent.

Noting that he has tracked Dartmouth’s financial situation since the global economic crisis hit in November 2008, Kim said that he has few concerns about the budget cuts and is optimistic about Dartmouth’s finances.

“I think there’s a way for us to take advantage of this climate where everyone is just thinking about cutbacks and low-downs and scaling back on what they are going to do,” Kim said.

He added that he has no plans to “impose any research agenda” during his time at Dartmouth despite concern that he will be overly focused on bolstering research.

“I don’t want to argue with my faculty about content and curriculum — they’re the experts,” he said. “My job is trying to find ways of supporting them in delivering the content and curriculum in the most innovative way.”

As Kim prepares to take office in the coming months, he will also have to adjust to life with a second child in the house. Kim’s wife, Younsook Lim, gave birth to a baby boy on Feb. 27.

Kim will replace James Wright, who has served as Dartmouth’s president since 1998. Under Wright’s tenure, Dartmouth changed its financial aid policy to offer free tuition for all students from families earning less than $75,000 a year. Wright also oversaw the construction of new dormitories, gymnasium renovations and the creation of the Student Life Initiative in 1998, which banned the formation of new single-sex Greek organizations.

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Kim said he has “no particular bias against [fraternities and sororities]” and pledged to keep an “open mind” about the college’s Greek organizations. “I want them to be institutions that actually enhance peoples’ experience and don’t detract from them.”