Mr. Freedman's moral suicide - Dartmouth College president James O. Freedman - special issue: 35th Anniversary 1955-1990

National Review, Nov 5, 1990 by Jeffrey Hart

On October 12, the New York Times published an op-ed piece by Dartmouth president James O. Freedman. Mr. Freedman accused some of his undergraduates of all sorts of trendy sins, and several critics of sinful activity responded by joining in the attack on the Dartmouth Review. Mr. Freedman's accusations were false. Dartmouth professor of English and NR senior editor Jeffrey Hart replies below.

DARTMOUTH's President James O. Freedman has abused his office and ignored his moral responsibilities as an educator. He has mixed half-truths with falsehoods to produce an ugly brew. He has leveled at his students and mine, falsely, perhaps the most damaging of all charges in today's climate of opinion: bigotry and racism.

After a bizarre event occurred at the office of the independent undergraduate newspaper, the Dartmouth Review, Mr. Freedman went into high gear. What happened, in the real world, seems to be the following. A disgruntled or perverted junior staffer on the newspaper invaded the word-processor circuit. In the newspaper's standard quotation from Theodore Roosevelt on its masthead, he inserted a sentence from Mein Kampf. That this was computer invasion is indicated in two ways. First, the culprit made mistakes in his choice of typeface; and, second, no one north of Paraguay, with the possible exception of David Duke, is a fan of Mein Kampf.

President Freedman chose to go bananas. Before inquiring into this incident or talking with any of the students involved, he issued a public statement: "The Dartmouth Review . . . has consistently attacked blacks because they are black, women because they are women, homosexuals because they are homosexuals, and Jews because they are Jews."

When he made that statement, President Freedman knew that the editor-in-chief of the Review, Kevin Pritchett, is black. He knew that the Review had often praised black, female, and Jewish professors. If he had bothered to inquire he would have found that the Review has had three female editors-in-chief and many female staffers; that it has had a Jewish president; that it has had two editors-in-chief from the Indian subcontinent.

The Dartmouth Review has from time to time committed breaches of taste, a generic fault of undergraduate journalism. It has never attacked anyone on the basis of race, only on performance. It has criticized white professors, and praised people of all colors.

Mr. Freedman is simply, wrong about the financial backing of the Review, probably intentionally wrong. The Review's operating expenses are covered by its $25 subscribers. The large sums he mentions ($800,000 over the past three years) are contributions to a legal defense fund for students unjustly suspended by Dartmouth. After an extensive hearing, a judge ordered the students reinstated at Dartmouth. Mr. Freedman ignores this inconvenient fact.

The Dartmouth Review for ten years has strongly supported Israel. It has argued, in its central thrust, for a curriculum of serious quality. It has opposed Dartmouth's "condom races," the invitation to Angela Davis to celebrate co-education, the hardcore porn movies shown in connection with a Film Studies course. And much more. It has argued the merit principle as regards admission to the college.

A day or so after offering his "racism" calumny, President Freedman held a Rally Against Hate on the Dartmouth campus. Speaking from a hastily erected wooden platform, he pursued his theme of bigotry, adding "native Americans" to his standard litany of Review targets. Whipping up the crowd, he produced more hatred in one spot than has been seen since the Maoist Cultural Revolution.

President Freedman has chosen to fling the charge of bigotry against these student journalists. Yelling "racism" is in this situation, in Samuel Johnson's phrase, "the last refuge of a scoundrel."