Freedman's Perverse Personalism

Since his arrival at Dartmouth in 1987, President James Freedman’s most prominent and repeated public stance has been the frequent public announcement of a private matter — his own Judaism.

Freedman has used his religion as explanation for his meaningless drive to “intellectualize” Dartmouth, has exploited it as a knee-jerk response to criticism (opponents of Freedman’s policies are, in his analysis, anti-Semitic, since Freedman himself is Jewish; Louis Farrakhan uses similar reasoning to label his critics as racists) and has embraced the associated stereotypes (bookishly introspective intellectual) to project and promote a politically correct public image.

We therefore invite the reader to consider without bias Steven Menashi’s column (page ten) which explores the history of President Freedman’s personal involvement with the Jewish community at Dartmouth and his public treatment of Jewish issues throughout his career here.

Mr. Menashi’s research uncovered, in Freedman’s writings, speeches, and interviews, a repeated use of his religion and ethnicity to justify rhetorical attacks. Freedman’s reveals itself as a perverse personalism: a constant reference to his own context (in Freedman’s case, his Judaism, in Farrakhan’s, his race) as reason, explanation, and basis for rhetorical attack.

Freedman’s record suggests that his faith may be more political tool than spiritual impulse. Despite the recent fanfare in The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times over Freedman’s role in the creation of the Roth Center, he has returned there only once since the dedication ceremony: his token yearly appearance at Dartmouth’s temple services.

After the College scheduled Freshman Parents Weekend on Passover in 1989, an embarrassed Freedman could express only “regret” over the situation. Apparently, Freedman himself didn’t know the date or understand the relevance of the Jewish holiday.

Nowhere was Freedman’s spin on Freedman more grossly evident than in Sara Rimer’s fawning biographical piece in The New York Times (January 4, 1997). The sequence of Freedman’s quotations in that article, and the context in which they were couched describe a distinct political bent.

Freedman portrayed himself, as he had throughout his career, as the Jewish, intellectual President of Dartmouth. In other articles he has described the religious and cultural basis of his intellectualism.

All of this would be thoroughly irrelevant to a fair assessment of Freedman’s Presidency had he not begged it himself by making his Judaism central to his Presidency and his spin on himself. Freedman’s personalist spin, however, demands the sort of analysis that we present on page 10.

—The Editors of The Dartmouth Review