The gift is powering a $50 million campaign to endow the civil discourse initiative.
Karen and Jim Frank ’65 and their son Daniel ’92 have committed $25 million to support Dartmouth Dialogues—a national model for facilitating challenging conversations across campus and giving students the skills to build bridges across personal and political divides.
The Franks’ gift is one of the largest ever made at an American university to support programming and education around civil discourse and the free exchange of ideas, which President Sian Leah Beilock has made a top priority. It includes $15 million to launch a dollar-for-dollar challenge to bolster the cultural change and skills-building that Dartmouth Dialogues is promoting on campus and $10 million to endow the James Frank Family Executive Director of Dartmouth Dialogues.
“The Dialogues initiative, which has been championed by President Beilock as one of her highest priorities, takes the concept of discovery and constructive debate to a whole new level,” says Jim Frank, who is currently CEO of 2Fi Investment Firm and a member of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees.
“Dartmouth’s comprehensive approach is setting a national example for the type of constructive exchange of ideas that has been foundational for the success of our republic. It is thrilling for us to support this initiative, and we invite others to join us in providing the resources to assure its continuity long into the future.”
Dartmouth has raised $29 million to date for Dartmouth Dialogues toward its $50 million campaign goal to fully fund the initiative in perpetuity. Alongside the Frank family, Stephanie and Michael Lempres ’81 have contributed generously to the campaign. And more than 35 alumni and families, including the Casque & Gauntlet Trust, have also committed funds to ongoing program support for Dartmouth Dialogues.
“At Dartmouth, we believe that the ability to engage in respectful conversation when our views are being challenged is fundamental to the educational experience—a prerequisite for learning, and a requirement for good leadership,” says President Beilock, who in her inaugural address called on the Dartmouth community to “commit to centering viewpoints and voices that aren’t always heard and to brave spaces that let the diversity of thought and lived experience shine through.”
Embedding dialogue in the undergraduate experience
Through Dartmouth Dialogues, the institution is creating an immersive four-year framework to embed dialogue programming and skill acquisition throughout the undergraduate experience, with plans for a certification that includes a track for student leaders. The Dialogues team is also considering how the Dartmouth approach could be a model for other higher education institutions, or even high schools.
“Dartmouth Dialogues is creating spaces that meet students where they are and give them the tools to push past their comfortable assumptions to meet different perspectives with openness and curiosity,” Beilock says. “This gift is an incredible vote of confidence in this endeavor, and I am profoundly grateful to the Franks for their inspiring generosity.”
Officially launched in January 2024, Dartmouth Dialogues builds on faculty strengths, including, notably, the longstanding trust and collaboration among faculty from the Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies programs, which allowed Dartmouth to model civil discourse in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Middle East Dialogues have continued, with faculty from a range of disciplines offering new Special Topics Series—most recently tackling discourse related to Borders and Immigration. Former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences Elizabeth F. Smith convened the first “Dialogue Project” group at Dartmouth in 2019 and remains executive director for faculty engagement for Dartmouth Dialogues.
The initiative also extends a history of celebrated Dartmouth approaches to teaching and civic engagement. There are connections across Dartmouth Dialogues methods and the Great Issues course President John Sloan Dickey initiated in the 1940s to promote critical thinking about current events. Professor John Rassias later pioneered his method for teaching language as a means to achieve appreciation of similarities and respect for differences across cultures. Countless political candidates and policymakers have visited campus, drawn by the New Hampshire primaries.
Today, Dartmouth Dialogues leverages the work of the Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy, the John Sloan Dickey Center for International Understanding, the student-led Dartmouth Political Union, and other campus partners to bring an array of prominent speakers into dialogue with the Dartmouth community. Each event models how to engage in a constructive discourse while offering students exposure to—and direct engagement with—a broad range of viewpoints and opinions.
Recent guests have included Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Annette Gordon-Reed ’81, former secretaries of state John Kerry and Mike Pompeo, Fox News host Laura Ingraham ’85, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Vice President Mike Pence, civil rights leader Bernice A. King, and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul. An Open Expression Facilitator Program, where faculty and staff serve as viewpoint-neutral observers at these events, helps ensure that no speaker is shouted down and that challenging questions from students and community members are welcomed.
Dartmouth Dialogues has also created new opportunities—woven throughout the undergraduate experience—for students to develop critical skills, including partnerships with the StoryCorps One Small Step program, the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, and the Constructive Dialogue Institute.
A Shared Studios portal allows students to engage with peers, artists, activists, and professionals from around the world. Other programming includes the Sophomore Summer Soiree, a program designed to help students gain a deeper understanding of their classmates; partnerships with the Hood Museum of Art and the Hopkins Center for the Arts; and Moosilauke Talks, a first-of-its-kind collaboration with the Outdoor Programs Office that launched this month.
Dialogues has also provided training for incoming students at first-year orientation as well as training for undergraduate advisers, facilitator training for students in the Rockefeller Center’s Dartmouth Leadership Attitudes & Behaviors Program, a One Small Step wellness course on facilitating dialogue, and workshops on how to have difficult conversations over the Thanksgiving holiday. This year saw the launch of the Dialogue Fellows program, a partnership with Seeds of Peace, a nonprofit committed to cultivating young leaders across conflicts.
“We have carefully studied what works to break down barriers between people and support authentic communication, and we are committed to applying these lessons to create multiple points of entry for students at every stage of their Dartmouth career to engage with Dialogues programming—to practice these skills and to witness them being modeled in tangible ways,” says Kristi Clemens, executive director of Dartmouth Dialogues.
A measurable impact
According to a survey published in November 2025, the programs are having an impact. The results found that 93% of Dartmouth students consider engaging with challenging perspectives as essential to their educational experience. Ninety-four percent say respectful disagreements with peers are a healthy part of the college experience, and 86% believe that a diversity of viewpoints on campus makes the community stronger. Results from a follow-up survey will be published later this year.
“Active listening, responding with care, engaging across difference, and really sitting in that discomfort—that’s part of coming to your learning edges. It’s part of working and living in a brave space,” Clemens says. “Students are hungry for these opportunities. I hear from incoming and current students all the time that part of the reason they selected Dartmouth is because they knew that we were cultivating these spaces and creating the opportunities for them to engage.”
Sixty-six percent of first-year respondents in the 2025 survey said Dartmouth’s commitment to fostering dialogue across differences was a factor in their decision to enroll.
To date, at least 16,760 people have attended dozens of Dartmouth Dialogues co-sponsored events. More than 1,250 first-year students—virtually the entire Class of 2028 and many in the Class of 2029—received training in dialogue skills as part of new student orientation, and more than 180 student leaders learned how to manage difficult conversations and interpersonal conflict. More than 230 members of the faculty and staff have also received training in dialogue facilitation.
Chase Kamikawa ’26, a history major and public policy minor from Hawaii who learned about Dartmouth Dialogues as a sophomore, describes its programming as a formative part of his undergraduate experience. Kamikawa now works as an Admissions tour guide, often fielding questions from prospective students about Dialogues.
“I think Dartmouth Dialogues is a huge draw for prospective students and their families,” Kamikawa says. “Families want to be able to send students to institutions where they’re allowed to freely think on their own, share their opinions without feeling judged, and really be welcomed into an environment where their thoughts and opinions are valued across our campus community.”
“Dartmouth Dialogues is showing what it looks like when a campus treats productive conversation as a core part of education, not an opt-in activity,” says Rajiv Vinnakota, president of the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, which supports opportunities for young people to build essential civic skills. “At a moment when too many Americans are losing trust in institutions and each other, Dartmouth is helping students practice the skills that strengthen both democracy and the workforce.”
Dialogue is a core component of Dartmouth’s commitment to freedom of expression. The university now leads the Ivy League in the College Free Speech Rankings from the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, as the only institution to earn a “green light” rating.
An ‘extraordinary experience’
Jim Frank majored in philosophy at Dartmouth and earned his MBA from Stanford University. He went on to join his family business, Wheels, Inc., one of the largest automotive fleet leasing firms in North America, and served as CEO of Wheels from 1975 to 2017, when he became executive chair.
Daniel Frank served as CEO of Wheels from 2017 to 2021, when the company was sold to Athene Insurance. He is the founder of Big Tray, a wholesale online restaurant supply company, has an MBA from Stanford and majored in engineering sciences at Dartmouth.
Jim Frank is chair of the J.S. Frank Family Foundation and serves on the boards of the University of Chicago and the University of Chicago Medical Center, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Illinois Network of Charter Schools, Teach for America, and the Chicago Public Education Fund. He and Karen live in Winnetka, Ill., and Aspen, Colo.
For Dartmouth, Karen and Jim Frank served on the Call to Lead Campaign Executive Committee. Jim Frank was also on the Board of Overseers of Thayer School of Engineering, the Thayer Campaign Executive Committee, and the executive committee of the Dartmouth College Class of 1965. Among their philanthropic commitments, the Franks helped fund scholarships for students participating in Foreign Study Programs, helping ensure all undergraduates who wish to study abroad can do so, regardless of financial means. They have also supported Dartmouth’s efforts to improve on-campus housing.
“One of the most important things that I took away from my extraordinary experience at Dartmouth was the ability to appreciate and respect alternative points of view,” Frank says.
“The world became a bigger and much more interesting place as I saw it from new and valid perspectives. That is why Karen and I previously supported the Dartmouth foreign studies program scholarships, and why we are now excited to endow Dartmouth Dialogues.”