Second in a series of articles about James O. Freedman.
Dartmouth's Board of Trustees hired James Freedman as the 15th President of the College with one goal in mind: to improve the intellectual atmosphere of a school that ranked as the least academic of the Ivies.
Freedman took over the presidency from David McLaughlin '54, a businessman and CEO without a doctoral degree who was heavily criticized by the faculty for his lack of intellectual leadership.
In January 1985, an ad hoc committee formed by the faculty to examine the governance of the College released a report sharply criticizing McLaughlin's leadership style. The faculty debated whether to take a vote of no confidence in the President.
McLaughlin's efforts at building the campus infrastructure and strengthening the endowment charted the initial course for Dartmouth to head into the 21st century. But the lack of faculty support coupled with a deeply divided student body in an uproar over apartheid and other political issues made McLaughlin's resignation nearly inevitable.
As a replacement, the Trustees sought an academic capable of stressing the College's intellectual life. The Board selected Dr. James Freedman, president of the University of Iowa with his extensive list of academic degrees -- A.B., LL.B., A.M., L.H.D., LL.D.
"We felt the College wasn't being given the kind of credit it should have been given," said Robert Henderson, a former Trustee and member of the search committee that picked Freedman. The committee wanted a president who could "take what we had and make it better," Henderson added.
When Freedman began his presidency Dartmouth was viewed as a conservative, male-oriented institution where the social life dominated the campus.
In August 1987, just before the start of his first academic year in Hanover, Freedman told The New York Times, "What I hope we are able to do at Dartmouth is to emphasize that the life of the mind is the central thing that this place is about."
Today's Dartmouth is a very different institution.
Under mandate from the Trustees, Freedman has tried to shed the stereotype, infusing intellectualism and attempting to make Dartmouth a more comfortable place for women, minorities and individuality.
In his inauguration speech Freedman uttered the now immortal words about making Dartmouth a comfortable place for creative loners -- cello players and translators of Catullus.
During Freedman's first six years, Dartmouth has adopted a new curriculum, attracted a smarter and more diverse student body, and established opportunities for individual academic work like the Presidential Scholars Program and the Women in Science Project.
Last April, the faculty approved a new curriculum which will change the fundamental definition of a Dartmouth education.
Curriculum revision often divides college faculties and can spell disaster for deans and presidents. This was the first revision of Dartmouth's curriculum in more than 70 years.
Set to be implemented with the Class of 1998, the curriculum is designed to give students a more structured education by establishing specific areas of study.
Eight intellectual fields
The new curriculum replaces the College's traditional divisions -- humanities, social sciences and sciences -- with eight "intellectual fields:" social analysis; philosophical, religious and historical analysis; arts; literature; international/comparative study; deductive science; natural science and technology/applied science.
Students will be required to take at least one multidisciplinary course that approaches a topic from a variety of academic perspectives and must also complete a "culminating experience" within their major.
"The new curriculum represents a coherent vision of liberal education," Freedman wrote in a letter to the Dartmouth community last December. "It reflects the interdisciplinary character of much of today's most important scholarship; it recognizes the value of exposing students to American, European, and non-Western cultures; it requires more comprehensive attention to the most significant modes of intellectual inquiry ... and demands that [students] take a more active role in their own education."
While the new curriculum was supposed to be in place for the Class of 1997, in April Dean of Faculty James Wright decided to delay implementation for one year because the College does not have enough money to make all the changes.
A broader multicultural approach
Like Dartmouth's new curriculum, changes at other schools reflect a belief that a broader multicultural approach, emphasizing the voices of women, minorities and foreign cultures, better prepares students for a world that is becoming increasingly interdependent.
"The faculty has said 'this is what an educated student should know,'" Freedman said.
But while Dartmouth's new curriculum is based on the same underlying beliefs of multiculturalism and the importance of interdisciplinary study as reforms at other colleges, Dartmouth does not mandate that students take any specific courses.
Instead, the curriculum rigidly defines distributive areas to be studied while allowing students to choose what to take within that area.
For example, a student could take courses in the government, economics, geography, anthropology or sociology department to fulfill the "social analysis" requirement.
The risks of curriculum revision
Attempting to revamp an institution's curriculum is risky. However, the changes at Dartmouth have come about peacefully with a strong bond of support having been forged between the administration and faculty.
Freedman attributed the success to Dean of Faculty James Wright's leadership. Wright chaired a committee which reviewed the College's curriculum and proposed the changes.
Freedman said one of his largest contributions to the process was convincing Wright to chair the committee.
"It's usually the kiss of death for a dean to chair a committee [for curriculum review]," Freedman said.
"I credit it to Dean Wright and the soundness of the proposal that we didn't have the kind of carnage" that often happens at other institutions, he said.
The whole process -- from chartering the committee to the final faculty approval -- was completed in a little more than two years.
Freedman said there was a lot of discussion between faculty and the administration. Through a series of lunches, Freedman said he and Wright met with 120 of the 300 senior faculty members to discuss the changes.
In a recent interview Freedman said before faculty members voted on the new curriculum he told them: "If you let the best be the enemy of the better you'll never pass anything."
On April 6, 1992 the faculty voted overwhelmingly in favor of the curriculum.
"If it had gone down in flames it would've been very damaging to the President," English Professor William Cook said.
Unlike McLaughlin, Freedman has maintained staunch faculty support.
Intellectualism
A poll in The Dartmouth in April 1985 found that more than three-quarters of the faculty criticized McLaughlin for a lack of intellectual leadership and mediocre defense of liberal arts.
"Freedman understands more clearly the way academics work," Cook said, citing Freedman's academic experience compared to McLaughlin's corporate background.
"He is a true intellectual," Cook said. This is a "vital quality in the chief officer of an institution of higher learning," he added.
In March 1987, a month before Freedman would be announced as Dartmouth's next president, a panel discussion criticized Dartmouth for its lack of intellectualism.
In a discussion titled "Intellectualism at Dartmouth: Does it Exist," panelists pointed to the admissions process, the lack of intellectual leadership by professors, and the fraternity system as creating an environment at Dartmouth that was less intellectual than at other Ivy League schools.
Panelists included Government Professor Gene Lyons and English Professor Donald Pease.
Freedman said that when he began his Presidency the Trustees' primary goal was "to elevate this place intellectually."
Freedman set the tone for his Presidency in a speech to the faculty on the day of his appointment, April 13, 1987. the two premises he set forth in the speech -- "that ideas matter" and "that people matter" -- have guided his administration.
"It is the function of colleges like Dartmouth to examine ideas, to develop ideas, and to teach ideas," Freedman said. "People matter most obviously in generating, teaching and disseminating ideas," he added.
"What I care most about is the strength of the intellectual environment ... and strengthening the academic purpose of the College," Freedman said in an interview this term.
Lyons said a College President needs to lead by example and serve as an intellectual model for the institution.
Cellos and Catallus
In his inaugural address in July 1987 Freedman said, "we must strengthen our attraction for those singular students whose greatest pleasures may come not from the camaraderie of classmates but from the lonely acts of writing poetry, or mastering the cello, or solving mathematical riddles, or translating Catullus."
To achieve these goals, Freedman embarked on a mission to diversify the student body, to improve the quality of the faculty and to provide more opportunities for independent undergraduate work.
Of the Class of 1997, 25 percent are high school valedictorians and 85 percent are in the top 10 percent of their high school class. Of the Class of 1993, which matriculated during Freedman's second year, 84 percent graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class but only 17 percent were valedictorians, according to Dean of Admissions Karl Furstenberg.
The Class of 1997 also boasts higher mean SAT scores (626 verbal and 691 math) than the class of 1993 (619 verbal 683 math), according to Furstenberg.
Furstenberg said these statistics show the "visible progress" the College has made toward attracting a more intellectual student body while also increasing diversity.
Lyons, who in the panel discussion six years ago attributed part of the blame for Dartmouth's anti-intellectual environment to the admissions process, praised the recent efforts to improve diversity.
Cook agreed. "The record is very strong," he said.
Freedman has also made a conscious effort to recruit leading scholars and teachers.
"Professors set the standards of excellence you demand in yourself," Freedman said.
Freedman said the quality of faculty appointments during his administration has been "unusually high."
"It's a tough market out there and I think Dartmouth has done extremely well," he said.
Increasing individual scholarly work
However, Freedman said he is proudest of programs established during his administration "that allow an individual to do one-on-one scholarly work."
He cited the Presidential Scholars Program, which allows juniors to conduct research for a faculty member in preparation for doing honors work during their senior year, the Women in Science Project, which sponsors internships and speakers to encourage females to pursue careers in the sciences, the E.E. Just Program, which provides internships and programs to minority students interested in science and the Mellon Minority Academic Career Fellowship.
"Nothing offers greater promise for the intellectual development of our students than programs ... that foster original scholarship and independent work by students in close collaboration with faculty members," Freedman wrote in the December letter.
Lyons said he thinks the overall intellectualism has improved at the College.
Although Lyons said he thinks Freedman serves as a good intellectual model, he said he questions whether students are embracing the intellectualism Freedman embodies.
"I think there is a gap between the model he presents and the expression of it on campus," Lyons said.
Lyons cited the overall lack of student interest in the Hood Museum and the poor attendance at concerts as examples and he criticized the fraternity system as anti-intellectual.
"There are other ways of finding companionship and camaraderie," that do not include a system of socialization based on alcohol, Lyons said.
Fraternities are not an obstacle
Freedman said fraternities are not necessarily obstacles to intellectual growth. But he questioned the Greek system's role at Dartmouth because of the large number of students involved and its dominance of the College's social life.
However, Freedman said a College's social life is created by its students.
"It is difficult for the administration to impose a social life on its students," Freedman said. He said he did not expect the dissolution of the Greek system.
When Freedman arrived at the College, 10 percent of the students did honors work. Today, according to Freedman, that number has risen to 18 percent.
But this number is still too low, he said.
If College guidebooks are any indication of how a College changes, Freedman's Presidency has succeeded in raising the College's intellectual atmosphere.
In the 1989 edition of "The Fiske's Guide to Colleges," author Edward Fiske viewed Dartmouth as being at a crossroads.
Fiske stated that with Freedman as President, "Dartmouth has entered a new era in its continuing struggle to reconcile a conservative past with its role as a leading center of liberal learning.
"It's really a fight to the finish between the advocates of old Dartmouth (drunken beer bashes, the old-boy network, fraternity pranks and the like) and those who want to make Dartmouth like the great university's of today (intellectual, inclusive and diverse)," Fiske wrote.
In this year's edition of the guide, Fiske wrote that Freedman is winning "the struggle for the soul of the institution."
"The long range prospects for poets and cello players at Dartmouth are looking good," Fiske stated.
