I’m not aware that serving on the Dartmouth Board of Trustees requires an alum to sign a loyalty pledge to their institution, but openly questioning President Sian Leah Beilock’s hard-line approach to dealing with student activists appears off-limits.

It’s possible all 25 trustees support Beilock’s multiple crackdowns on students for exercising their constitutional rights in ways that threaten her authority.

But if an individual trustee doesn’t approve of Beilock’s bullying tactics, he or she should speak up.

I’m thinking of one trustee in particular.

Jake Tapper, a 1991 graduate, is among Dartmouth’s most recognizable and trusted voices.

However, as I’ll get to shortly, by accepting a seat on Dartmouth’s governing board in 2022, Tapper voluntarily handcuffed himself. (As opposed to the 89 people, including two student journalists just doing their jobs, who were involuntarily handcuffed by police while being arrested during a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest on the Green last May.)

A CNN anchor and chief Washington correspondent, Tapper has his own two-hour weekday program that averaged 525,000 viewers in the most recent Nielson ratings report. (Down 25% from a year ago, but still respectable for the 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. time slot.)

His new book, “Original Sin: President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again,” that he co-authored with another political reporter is currently No. 1 on The New York Times’ bestseller list.

While Tapper isn’t shy about promoting the book on his program, he avoids saying anything — good or bad — about his alma mater.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of Dartmouth material for a political talking head to talk about, starting with the night in October 2023 when Beilock had two student activists arrested for criminal trespass after they pitched a tent on the lawn outside her office.

Then there was the statement put out this April by the American Association of Colleges & Universities that some 600 academic leaders signed in a show of unity against the Trump administration’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”

Beilock was the only Ivy League president not to sign.

Dartmouth remains the sole Ivy not under federal investigation for what the Trump administration alleges are civil rights violations involving antisemitism and other issues. Does it have anything to do with Harmeet K. Dhillon, a Dartmouth alum, running the Justice Department’s civil rights division? Or Beilock hiring a Trump lackey as the college’s chief legal counsel?

Tapper’s audience might benefit from a Washington insider like himself asking those questions. But even if he was willing to buck the trustees’ vow of silence, Tapper would have to come clean with viewers about the role he plays in overseeing Dartmouth.

Tapper’s lengthy profile on CNN’s website gives the year he graduated from Dartmouth and cites his academic achievements. (Phi Beta Kappa, Magna Cum Laude.) The part about his serving as a Dartmouth trustee isn’t mentioned.

Tapper and CNN probably figure the fewer people who know, the better.

I’d argue that a working journalist has no business helping govern any institution that itself is making news. He or she will invariably be seen as carrying water for the institution, and in Tapper’s case, elite colleges in general.

I hoped to ask Tapper about why he agreed to join the board when it could be seen as a blurring of journalism’s ethical lines. A CNN spokesperson told me that Tapper wasn’t “available to chat” this week.

“There is no conflict of interest,” the spokesperson added via email. “Jake does not report on Dartmouth given his role on the board. Pretty standard.”

After hearing from CNN, I called Rod Hicks, director of ethics and diversity at the Society of Professional Journalists, to get an expert’s take on Tapper wearing two distinctly different hats at the same time.

“It doesn’t have to be a conflict if he manages it properly,” Hicks told me. “He just shouldn’t cover anything related to Dartmouth.”

With the Trump administration trying to take a wrecking ball to higher education, especially elite schools, deciding what is and isn’t Dartmouth “related” gets tricky.

“If I was his boss, I’d tell him to stay away from any (higher education) stories, particularly involving Ivy League schools,” Hicks said.

Apparently, CNN doesn’t hold Tapper to such a standard.

Tapper recently devoted a segment of his daily program to the “escalating tensions between Harvard and the Trump administration.”

If there’s a hint of a conflict of interest, journalists need to disclose it, Hicks said.

To that point, Times columnist Nicholas Kristof praised Harvard last week for showing “courage and integrity in leading the effort to preserve the independence of higher education.” In the following sentence, Kristof alerted readers that he was a former member of Harvard’s board of overseers, and his wife was a current member.

(Full disclosure: My wife works at Dartmouth Alumni Magazine, where Tapper is a member of the volunteer editorial board.)

With a year remaining on his four-year term as a member of Dartmouth’s board of trustees, I don’t see Tapper gracefully stepping down right away. Members of the unpaid board, which is dominated by wealthy financiers with a few lawyers and Hollywood-types sprinkled in, often serve two terms.

In Tapper’s case that would compound the mistake he made by joining the board in the first place. Tapper should stick to journalism, which he’s proven good at for more than 30 years.

Dartmouth already has enough cheerleaders.

Jim Kenyon can be reached at jkenyon@vnews.com.