Shortly before his first academic year as Dartmouth president, James Oliver 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."
Throughout his tenure at Dartmouth, Freedman marked the presidency with a dedication to intellectualism, diversity and to making Dartmouth welcoming to the introspective as well as the outgoing, a legacy which has profoundly influenced the current state of the College and its image.
Freedman pursued his commitment to academics and diversity during his presidency both with actions and words. He established undergraduate research opportunities such as the Presidential Scholars program and the Women in Science Project, stressed affirmative action and gender parity in admissions policies and spearheaded the College's first curricular overhaul in 70 years.
But as important as the concrete changes enacted under Freedman was his emphasis that Dartmouth was first and foremost an intellectual and academic institution. He made every effort to convince the faculty, the student body and the rest of the world that Dartmouth was dedicated to academics at a time when many believed that the College was more rambunctious than intellectual.
Freedman's inaugural address set the intellectual tone of his presidency when he 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."
College President James Wright said that his predecessor's success in strengthening Dartmouth's intellectual image was among his most significant accomplishments and that Freedman deserves credit for the College's reputation today.
"I think that there was an image of Dartmouth outside of the Dartmouth community more broadly of being a place that was marked by Animal House and by anti-intellectualism," Wright said of the time Freedman assumed the presidency. "[Freedman's leadership] may have changed some of the external image of Dartmouth which is not a trivial thing."
Freedman's outspoken zeal for academics reminded the Dartmouth community and outsiders of Dartmouth's intellectual prowess, and the College saw an increase in both faculty and student quality under Freedman. Admission to the College became harder in the Freedman years, and in 1995 U.S. News and World Report ranked Dartmouth first for teaching excellence.
"His legacy is a stronger, more serious, more diverse, more searching and ultimately more interesting Dartmouth," former College Trustee David Shribman said of Freedman.
The 15th president's devotion to intellectualism and diversity in some ways ran counter to Dartmouth's Greek system, about which Freedman had misgivings. Freedman felt that a gender-neutral social scene was necessary for Dartmouth to achieve its goal of gender equality, and in 1995 he said that he expected Greek houses to become coeducational in the next decade.
According to Shribman, Freedman felt that he had not fully addressed his problems with the social life at the College when he left the presidency, an issue which his successor and close ally Wright approached soon after Freedman's departure. In 1998, the Wright administration implemented the Student Life Initiative, which strove, in part, to make Dartmouth's social scene less male-dominated. According to Wright, Freedman was not instrumental in shaping the SLI but that his "mentor's" values and goals for Dartmouth were consistent with his own.
Whether dealing with social life or academics, admissions or the curriculum, Freedman approached his charge as president by promoting intellectualism, diversity and gender equality. He reminded Dartmouth of its commitment to intellectualism and challenged it to welcome all different types of people.
"It's a legacy that the students of the Freedman years enjoy and the students of the Wright years personify," Shribman said. "He made Dartmouth modern, vibrant and yeasty, and all of us will spend our lifetimes thanking him for it."
