Ya Get It?

By Daniel F. Linsalata | Friday, April 7, 2006

Sitting in the middle of the Green, gazing at the stage, and Baker Tower beyond it, on the afternoon of July 19, 1987, one must have felt the irresistible tug, the inertial plodding, of history. Seated on the stage were four members of the Wheelock Succession of Dartmouth Presidents, each representing his own distinct chapter in College history, but each could have just as easily been a stand-in for the progression—decline, some would say—of American higher education. In the audience perhaps one would be seated near the man who would next join this select group, history professor James Wright. When James Oliver Freedman, fifteenth in the Wheelock Succession and the youngest of those assembled on the stage, succumbed to lymphoma at the still-young age of seventy on March 21, President Wright became the sole living member of this prestigious association.

In Freedman’s inaugural address on that July day—his installation as President being the celebrated occasion—he spoke of Dartmouth’s “commitment to excellence in educating students for lives of leadership in their communities, their nation, their world.” Yet by tracing the paths of those four men on the stage, one cannot help but feel that those charged with leading the educators and the future leaders had, at some imprecise moment in history, betrayed their task.

For the first few centuries of American higher education, university presidents were not merely administrators and delegates. They were leaders of men and scholars for whom a university presidency stood as step in a progression of leadership, rather than the pinnacle; they had either proved their leadership capabilities in worlds far beyond those of academia, or would move on to more daunting challenges following their tenure—Woodrow Wilson comes immediately to mind.

Somewhere in the aftermath of World War II, the Baby Boom, the Civil Rights movement, and the host of other events appearing in a Modern American History class, university presidents ceased to be leaders. The contrast could be seen at Freedman’s inaugural. The two elder gentlemen, John Sloan Dickey and John Kemeny, were unquestionably leaders and pioneers, in the fields of international relations and computing, respectively. Both, of course, also made superb university presidents.

During Kemeny’s tenure, an observer can find the demarcation line for the leadership of university presidents. In 1972, Dartmouth became coeducational and increased admission of underrepresented minorities soon followed. Kemeny did an excellent job of marinating calm at the College during a tumultuous decade for American universities, largely by acquiescing to demands of various factions and interests. In an era marked by national social transition, these compromises can be justified; however, they set a dangerous precedent. Presidents and administrators became complacent, in the interest of maintaining harmony.

Kemeny’s successor, David McLaughlin, a Dartmouth Man through and through, took office with designs of complacency. At McLaughlin’s first meeting with the entire faculty, a professor arose to state, “Sir, you don’t belong here.” That was the high point of his presidency, vis-à-vis faculty relations, and he was run out of Hanover just six years later.

Enter James Freedman, a Harvard-educated student of law, and the first president to don the Flude Medal having neither attended Dartmouth nor served on her faculty since Samuel Bartlett, the eighth President of Dartmouth, inaugurated a full 110 years before Freedman. It should be noted that Bartlett himself was a disastrous president, impressively managing to alienate faculty, students, alumni, and trustees, while facing calls for removal less than four years into his term.

Just as Bartlett’s unfamiliarity with the College hurt him, Freedman’s estrangement from Dartmouth and her ways proved an insurmountable handicap. Freedman never wholly managed to comprehend the intangibles which make Dartmouth so unique. Warning flags immediately went up when, in his inaugural address, Freedman outlined plans to expand graduate and research programs so that they might “enlarge the global dimensions of the College.” More than fifteen years before the misguided creation of Buzzflood, and Freedman already sought to go against the grain, so that Dartmouth would, under his banner of diversity, one day posses the same name recognition as, say, Harvard.

And Freedman was never shy about the fact that, deep in his heart, he ultimately yearned to become President of the school on the Charles. He certainly outlined his vision as such, championing a politically-correct “diversity,” devoid of critical debate. His famous desire to make Dartmouth hospitable to those students who “march to the beat of a different drummer,” those “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,” insulted not only those who believed intellectuals already thrived in Hanover, but the universal understanding that the camaraderie of classmates at this small college was precisely the appeal for those who love her.

To his credit, James Freedman accomplished his goal of ramping up the intellectual rigor of the College. He brought in numerous accomplished, senior professors, and was able to seamlessly fit them in with current, young faculty. He oversaw the construction or renovation of numerous academic buildings, and broke ground on four new libraries, most notably Rauner and Baker-Berry.

However, Freedman’s vision as to how one should go about learning seemed far better suited for Harvard—or, at least, an institution lacking the cult-like adoration abiding in the sons and daughters of Dartmouth. In his address, Freedman expressed his desire to maintain the integrity of the “Dartmouth Experience,” but never seemed to grasp exactly what that experience was. Not that it is itself easily definable, but the fact of the matter is that Freedman was never able to tune into that je ne sais quoi that makes Dartmouth, well, Dartmouth. Alumni took notice; giving rates fell off some thirty percent during Freedman’s tenure.

In the end, it was probably Freedman’s own convictions that proved his undoing. Several embarrassing, costly, and widely published run-ins with The Dartmouth Review (see TDR 3/3/06) brought more negative attention to the College than Freedman had bargained for. The New Hampshire state justice in one lawsuit seemed so bemused by Freedman’s ravings and machinations that he was content to let the man continue until all were exhausted and, by Friedman’s testimony alone, Dartmouth was nationally portrayed as violently anti-Semitic and universally unwelcoming. Many observers point to this incident in hypothesizing why Freedman was never able to ascend to the Harvard presidency.

In his fanaticism to shape Dartmouth into one of his own vision, Freedman damaged his own credibility as a leader. His refusal to align his own, newborn vision of Dartmouth with two hundred-odd years of the College’s own traditions rendered him ineffective. He just didn’t get it.

Under James Wright, the College is playing catch-up. Rather than driving towards a grandiose new horizon, Dartmouth is completing projects that are long overdue. And while it is nigh impossible to term President Wright a true leader, he at least—after some struggle (the swim team and the SLI come to mind)—seems to get Dartmouth. He knows where it’s coming from and, in the big picture, where it should go. I once asked him what singular thing about the College today he would change if given the chance, he quickly responded by saying that he would want every student to experience Dartmouth as he did during his earliest days here.

The contrast between Freedman and Wright, neither of them leaders, makes at least one thing self-evident: the seventeenth member of the Wheelock Succession damn well better get Dartmouth. The best way to ensure this, of course, is selecting a President from the ranks of Dartmouth alumni. Then, perhaps, the College can enjoy the governance of someone as devoted to her as only a son or daughter can be.

Ya Get It?

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