Freedman Sinks Again

By The Editors of The Dartmouth Review and The Board of The Dartmouth Review | Wednesday, February 18, 1998

We publish, on the adjacent page, a letter made public and sent to various newspapers and magazines by English Professor Jeffrey Hart (Emeritus), and we are extremely sorry to see that outgoing President Freedman has chosen to return to his long-discredited theme that The Dartmouth Review has been, or even is, anti-Semitic. He returns to this theme well aware that many readers today will not be acquainted with the incidents in the past that historically gave rise to his accusation in the first place. He cannot be allowed to take advantage of this abscence of historical memory.

In the first incident, the October 19, 1988 issue of The Dartmouth Review published a satire by an undergraduate about the continuous harassment of this newspaper by the Freedman administration.

This includes rigged (CCSC) COS hearings (established in a law suit lost by the defendant Freedman administration), lengthy suspension of Review editors and staff, destruction of actual copies of the newspaper, bogus candle-light processions against the newspaper, and much else.

The satire in question compared this aspect of the Freedman administration with the Third Reich in satirical tones. Whatever the merits of the piece as satire, the present editors would not have published it, though it is amusing in parts.

On re-reading it they consider that, though the behavior of the Freedman regime had often been outrageous and contemptible, there is too great a disproportion between this and the crimes committed by Hitler's Germany for the satire to work.

We also note that in this satire the point was that the Nazis are bad guys, hence the attempted comparison with the Freedman regime. This, far from being anti-Semitic, is actually the opposite.

The second incident involved the September 29, 1990 issue of the Review. Into the usual masthead quotation from Theodore Roosevelt a computer saboteur inserted a vile quotation from Mein Kampf. The Editor, who is black, then cancelled the press run, apologized in print, and asked the District Attorney to investigate the incident.

What more he could have done is difficult to say. And within a couple of weeks the identity of the saboteur was known.

Mr. Freedman, however, pretended to believe that the Mein Kampf quotation represented Review editorial policy — as if anyone this side of Paraguay or the Louisiana fever swamps could take Hitler as a role model.

Mr. Freedman conducted a well-prepared, College financed rally against The Review, a huge hullabalu, in which he loudly accused the Review of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, and other fashionable sins. This situation attracted national media attention.

When the Wall Street Journal asked Mr. Freedman if he had ever considered the possibility of sabotage, he replied, 'I just haven't thought about that.'

Among the pertinent results of all this was an investigation, requested by The Review, into the allegations of anti-Semitism. This request was made by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, a Jewish organization expert in detecting anti-Semitism. The ADL examined issues of The Review going back to 1982 and concluded that charges of anti-Semitism were baseless.

Another pertinent result was the careful section devoted to The Review in William F. Buckley's important book In Search of Anti-Semitism (1992). This book examines a number of cases in which anti-Semitism had been charged. Some it finds valid, others not.

The section dealing with The Review is on pages 45-59. Mr. Buckley finds Mr. Freedman's charges of anti-Semitism utterly lacking in validity. Indeed, he finds Mr. Freedman, among those making false charges of anti-Semitism, to have been the 'most egregious of them all.' That is strong language in a most judicious book.

As Professor Hart says in the letter published here and elsewhere, it is absolutely breathtaking that Mr. Freedman would cite In Search of Anti-Semitism in the Los Angeles Times as confirming his charges, when in fact, it obliterates them. If such prevarications were horses, moral scoundrels might ride.

This judgment of Mr. Freedman's behavior, as Professor Hart notes, was supported by a number of well-known Jewish intellectuals, including Norman Podhertz, Sidney Hook, Rabbi Dennis Praeger, and Sidney Zion. Some of these took note of The Review's long established support for Israel.

It is possible that Mr. Freedman has come to believe that anyone who is not a Liberal, indeed anyone who is skeptical of Liberal icons, is some sort of Nazi. That is Delusion Country.

Whatever Mr. Freedman's delusions, let him be aware that he is being answered publicly about this latest smear, and that every time he employs this slimy and vicious tactic he will be bluntly and factually answered.

Freedman Sinks Again

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