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Freedman and The Dartmouth Review

By William F. Buckley | Wednesday, February 18, 1998

Editor's Note: In The Los Angeles Times interview, Freedman references Buckley's landmark work In Search of Anti-Semitism, a book which took the most in-depth and authoritative analysis of the Hitler Quote Incident to date. Contrary to Freedman's recent claim, the book offered a severe indictment of his handling of the Review.


The Dartmouth Review

On October 4, 1990, the Student Assembly of Dartmouth College held a rally. It was a huge affair, probably the most massive gathering of Dartmouth students, faculty and administrators at any Dartmouth function since the Grateful Dead's appearance in the Seventies. Why?

The rally was brought forth under the banner, 'Dartmouth United Against Hate.' Twenty-five hundred people were there, according to the press. Speakers were James O. Freedman, the president of Dartmouth; two professors; and student leaders from the African-American Society, Dartmouth Hillel, Native Americans at Dartmouth, the International Students Association, and the Student Assembly.

What engendered this extraordinary convention was a single issue of The Dartmouth Review distributed six days earlier. Ever since its inception, the Review has carried under its logo what it calls 'The Review Credo,' a quotation from Theodore Roosevelt—'Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.'

But in the October 3 issue, 'The Review Credo' read: 'Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win great triumphs. Therefore, I believe today that I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding off the Jews, I am fighting the Lord's work: gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.' The lines sandwiched in between the two clauses by TR are from Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf.


The Immediate Aftermath

Here is what was done by the editorial staff of The Dartmouth Review when the mutilation was spotted in the days immediately after:

1. All of the issues of The Review, not already distributed (it was three days before anybody saw the imposture) were destroyed.

2. An apology was printed and distributed throughout the campus.

3. The district attorney of the state of New Hampshire was asked to conduct an investigation of the editorial substitution, a felony under state law.

4. A request was made to the trustees of The Dartmouth Review to dispatch a member to conduct his own investigation.

5. The editor of The Review volunteered to take a polygraph test designed to inquire whether he had foreknowledge of the act of sabotage.

Concurrently, the Dartmouth administration:

1. Organized an anti-hate rally.

2. Conducted an interview with Fox Butterfield of The New York Times, insisting that the quote from Hitler had been published intentionally and was characteristic of the editorial policies of The Review.

3. Drew attention to the appearance of the Hitler quote the day before Yom Kippur, a sacred day in the Jewish calendar.

4. Contracted to write an op-ed page piece for the New York Times (signed by Freedman) about the incident, and to publicize it wherever the opportunity lay.

President Freedman was off to a give-no-quarter start. His address to the anti-hate congregation contained the following sentences. 'For ten years The Dartmouth Review has consistently attacked blacks because they are black, women because they are women, and Jews because they are Jews. Now, in an act of moral cowardice that extends the reprehensible pattern, it relies on Hitler's Mein Kampf on the day of Yom Kippur. Appalling bigotry of this kind has no place at the College or in this country....I am very angry.'

The more sober community, looking in on Hanover, was understandably perplexed, and several commentators even spoke of the likelihood of sabotage. But Freedman ruled out the possibility. Asked by The Wall Street Journal how he would feel if it were in due course established that the Hitler quote was inserted by a saboteur, his reply was, 'I just haven't thought about that.' And to The Boston Globe, 'It's hard to believe it was an accident.'


The investigation by the ADL

The Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, which is formally concerned with evidence of anti-Semitism, accepted the invitation by The Dartmouth Review to look into the incident.

A Commission was established under the chairmanship of Richard D. Glovksy, an alumnus of Dartmouth, a former assistant United States attorney for the district of Massachusetts, where he was chief of the Civil Division from 1978 to 1980, and a principal in the Boston law firm of Glovsky & Associates. The ADL Commission issued its findings on January 8, 1991, in a substantial report.

The very first sentence in the report read, 'On the day before Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for Jews throughout the world, the following quote from Adolph Hitler appeared on the masthead of The Dartmouth Review.'

Question: Was it relevant to note that Yom Kippur was the following day? As it happened, saying so served at least the purpose of correcting the chronology of President Freedman, who at the Hate Rally had placed the Review publication not on the day before Yom Kippur, but on Yom Kippur.

It would seem to this observer that, just to begin with, few Americans know when Yom Kippur falls, let alone exactly what it represents in Jewish theology. This ought not to be surprising, given the small size of the Jewish population in America (under three percent), much of it secularist. A poll conducted in England in the spring of 1991 revealed that 34 percent of Englishmen do not know what Easter Sunday is supposed to celebrate, and 39 percent do not know what happened on Good Friday.

But more important, the publication of the genocidal remark by Adolph Hitler would have been equally appalling any day of the year.

To relate it to Yom Kippur seemed therefore irrelevant, endogamous distraction. In the spring of 1991, when William Smith and his Uncle Senator Edward Kennedy were drinking at 3 a.m., following which (it is alleged) young Smith raped a woman, it was noticed by only very few people as seriously relevant to the event that the drinking had started on Good Friday and the (alleged) rape was committed on Holy Saturday. A rape one week earlier or one week later would have been equally scandalous...


The Dartmouth Case Goes National

The Hitler quote incident became national news. Some eighty U.S. congressmen signed a petition condemning The Review, which is more congressmen than condemned Kristallnacht in 1938. The Dartmouth administration fought lustily to pin anti-Semitism on The Review staff, but the counterattack grew. Official Dartmouth had allies, but they tended to sound formalistic ('We don't like the Dartmouth Review and therefore choose to believe that its editors are pro-Hitler') rather than analytical ('Why on earth would the Dartmouth Review editors be for Hitler?')....In his op-ed piece for the New York Times, President Freedman continued his comprehensive charges against the Review, repeating the charge, 'The Dartmouth Review....has attracted national attention with its brazen attacks on blacks, women, homosexuals, native Americans and Jews.' Two months later, President Freedman was required, by his prejudgement, to ignore the finding of a human-rights official. Here is the Associated Press account of December 31, 1990:

No Bias Seen in 'Review'

By The Associated Press

Manchester—The head of New Hampshire's Human Rights Commission is wondering 'what all the fuss was about' regarding criticism of The Dartmouth Review.

Barry Palmer of Nashua, a copy editor for the Union Leader of Manchester, said he read two years of issues of the Review and found no evidence of discrimination against blacks, women, homosexuals, or Jews.

Palmer, the commission chairman, said he conducted the study as an individual not on behalf of the commission, after continued criticism of the paper by Dartmouth College President James Freedman, who said the paper consistently attacks those groups.

The Toxic Waste

There is one guaranteed way to encourage anti-Semitism, and that is to discover it with thunderous indignation in the conduct or utterances of people you disagree with on matters that have nothing whatever to do with Jews or even with Israel. The Dartmouth Review isn't about Jews or about Israel, but it is loathed by the Dartmouth administration, which therefore calls it anti-Semitic. But the immunities of those who huddle in the fever swamps do not extend to such as the president and administration of Dartmouth College or to important correspondents of The New York Times. The fallout of anti-anti-Semitism, moreover, while difficult to quantify, is nevertheless legitimately resented. One gentleman (a neighbor, his stationery reveals) buys the Freedman line and closes a letter to me, 'The use of your name helps to give The Dartmouth Review credibility that it hasn't earned and doesn't deserve. Isn't it time to dissociate yourself by asking the Review to express its 'special thanks' to someone else?'

Some letters were intellectually vulgar beyond home ('Would you knowingly support a publication that quotes Adolf Hitler in its credo?'). Others give the sense of enjoying an opportunity to intimidate. Gerald E. Kochansky, 'Ph.D.,' sends copies of his letter to Freedman, to the board of trustees of Dartmouth, to the board of directors of Hopkins Institute, and to the editors of The Dartmouth Review, The Daily Dartmouth, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times. The operative sentence of his letter is, 'If you continue to support The Dartmouth Review, any reasonable observer will conclude that your failure to withdraw your financial support [I have never financially supported the Review] or to repudiate the publication demonstrates your own bigotry or your tolerance of bigoted attitudes and behavior.' But then anyone who has a mailbox is an easy target of bigotry.

Editor's Note:

The identity of the individual responsible for placing the Hitler quote in The Review was established after the publication of In Search of Anti-Semitism. He was known to the Hanover police in connection with other incidents.

In addition to the Anti-Defamation League, the American Civil Liberties Union and Midstream, a Jewish magazine, led those who affirmed the Review's innocence.

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