Human Rights Chief, ADL Exonerate TDR

By Kenneth Weissman | Friday, April 21, 2006

Originally Published January 16, 1991.

Two independent reports issued in the past week have served to vindicate The Dartmouth Review against reckless attacks by the administration of Dartmouth President James Oliver Freedman. Barry J. Palmer, Chairman of the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, studied two years of the Review, and “didn’t find any hint of bigotry or prejudice,” a statement which blatantly contradicts numerous statements of Freedman’s.

In a separate study, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith confirmed that The Dartmouth Review is not anti-Semitic and that the anti-Semitic quote inserted into the Review’s masthead was neither perpetrated nor approved by the editors of the Review. This statement directly contradicts statements made by both Freedman and Dartmouth College spokesman Alex Huppe, who said The Dartmouth Review “should look in the mirror” to find the party guilty of inserting the quote.

In Palmer’s study, released December 31, Palmer says he read the issues of the Review written over the past two years and found no evidence of bigotry or prejudice in the publication. After concluding his research, Palmer, in a strong blow to the credibility of Freedman, “began wondering what all the fuss was about” concerning Freedman’s notoriously wild attacks on the Review.

Palmer’s interest in The Dartmouth Review stems from the Freedman administration’s attacks on the Review during the Professor Cole incident. Said Palmer, “[The Dartmouth administration] was charging racism, discrimination, and that sort of thing. Since that’s within the domain of the Human Rights Commission, I felt it necessary to take a look at the publication and see if these charges were justified. We’re the first ones to blow the whistle on that sort of thing.” In the winter of 1988, the Review printed a transcript of one of Cole’s classes, revealing Cole’s repeated use of obscenity and street talk. The Review was charged with being racist for its report on Cole, who is black.

When Palmer requested evidence of the Review’s discrimination from Freedman, he was told to obtain copies of the paper, which he did. In two full years’ worth of the publication, Palmer “read every single thing they wrote about teachers. I reviewed editorials and editorial cartoons. And I didn’t find any hint of bigotry or prejudice.”

Freedman has made a career out of recklessly attacking the Review , which often exposes the severe inadequacies of his policies. Yet never has Freedman attempted to substantiate his claims of the Review’s so-called bigotry and hatred. Now, the Chairman of New Hampshire’s Human Rights Commission has come in and planted Freedman’s feet firmly in his mouth.

Since he took over Dartmouth’s presidency in 1987, Freedman has consistently accused the Review of racism, sexism, and many other politically incorrect “isms.” For Freedman, attacking the Review, and thereby attempting to destroy its credibility, has been his only defense against the Review’s questioning of his competence.

In his latest display of public verbal recklessness, at the so-called “Rally Against Hate” in October, Freedman accused the Review of “attacking blacks because they are black, women because they are women, homosexuals because they are homosexuals, and Jews because they are Jews.”

Not so, according to the Human Rights Commission. Palmer said that the Review, in questioning the actions of people who happened to be minorities, displayed no prejudice. “It’s all right to criticize people who are black or female or Jewish, providing that the criticism is levelled at their performance. Those have always been the guidelines.” Palmer called the roots of numerous anti-Review tirades by Freedman part of an “ideological debate” between the two. When Palmer was asked about the lynch-mob atmosphere that Freedman’s rhetoric encouraged, he said, “I would think that a college president should be able to accept criticism, and argue with his opponents logically.”

It would seem that if any independent organization is qualified to judge fairly Freedman’s statements, it would be the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission. In the words of Palmer, who was unfamiliar with the Review before he initiated his study, “The Human Rights Commission is sensitive to anything which takes away from a human being’s self-worth and is always seeking evidence of such bias, whether in print or verbal form.”

As of yet, Mr. Palmer had received no response from Freedman concerning the study. Freedman also could not be reached for comment by the Review.

But that is not to say that Mr. Palmer has not gotten any reaction to his study. The usual suspects have been up in arms, claiming that the findings of Palmer, who is a copy editor of the Union Leader of Manchester, New Hampshire, are not valid, since Palmer’s position at the Union Leader supposedly constitutes a conflict of interest. The Union Leader has in the past supported the Review against Freedman’s vicious attacks, but this is irrelevant, says Mr. Palmer, who has never edited any of the stories run in the Union Leader concerning the Review. “I was quite surprised at the amount of reaction this study got. I guess I was a little naive in that respect.”

Roland Adams, of the College News Service, was quick to point out that the administration “obviously” disagrees with Palmer’s conclusion.

Then, in an attempt to discredit Palmer’s study, Adams continued, “There was no proper study conducted here. Unfortunately, a lot of the news that has come out about this has presented this as being a study by the New Hampshire Commission for Human Rights. That’s not the case. [Palmer] conducted this study in his private capacity.”

But when Palmer was asked about this, his answer was quite clear and quite the reverse of what Mr. Adams said. “I am the Chairman of the New Hampshire Human Rights Commission, and this study was done in my capacity as Chairman of the Commission.”

On October 7, approximately one week after an issue of the Review appeared with a quote from Hitler inserted in its masthead, Dinesh D’Souza, a trustee of the Review, wrote to the ADL to ask them to help find the saboteur.

The ADL sent six investigators to Dartmouth on a fact-finding mission. The group conducted interviews with, amongst others, Review editors, Dartmouth administrators, and various Jewish students on campus.

While the ADL did not focus its attention on trying to find who inserted the anti-Semitic quote, the findings of the group strike another sharp blow against the Dartmouth administration’s anti-Review propaganda campaign.

In response to the ADL’s report, which was released January 9, the Review issued the following statement:

1) The Dartmouth Review asked the ADL to come in and help us with our investigation of this obviously anti-Semitic incident. At our request, investigators came to Hanover to look into the insertion of the Hitler quote.

2) The ADL’s primary concern was not to find a perpetrator of the insertion, but to look at the situation at Dartmouth and The Dartmouth Review.

3) We are grateful to the Anti-Defamation League for investing time and effort into compiling its report. While we regret that the ADL investigation did not lead to the apprehension of the culprit responsible for inserting an unauthorized anti-Semitic slur into the Review’s masthead, we note that, pursuant to its investigation, the Hanover Police have arrested a disgruntled former staffer, Pang-Chung Chen, and charged him with harassing Dartmouth Professor Jeffrey Hart in the wake of Hart’s efforts to uncover the saboteur. The police also administered polygraph tests to top editors, and the police found no evidence to link them to the sabotage. The Hanover Police Investigation has uncovered important items of information that the Review intends to report in the near future.

4) The ADL “does not believe the students of the Review are intent on a campaign of unrelenting malevolence.”

5) The ADL confirmed that The Dartmouth Review is not anti-Semitic. Though the ADL points to past incidents (such as the article “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann”) that were “insensitive,” the ADL did not report any anti-Semitism that might have been perpetrated by the Review during the past ten years. Prominent Jews, including David Brudnoy, David Horowitz, Sidney Zion, and Dennis Praeger have also said as much—that the Review might be insensitive on some occasions or sometimes runs items that are in poor taste, but it is not anti-Semitic. Quite the contrary, the Review has been a consistent supporter of Israel and Judaism, and condemns anti-Semitism.

6) The ADL confirmed that the anti-Semitic quote inserted into the Review’s masthead was neither perpetrated nor approved by the editors of The Dartmouth Review. This is in direct contradiction to the statements made by Dartmouth College spokesman Alex Huppe, who contended that if The Dartmouth Review wanted to find the perpetrator of the insertion, the paper “should look in the mirror.”

7) The ADL makes the important point—a point aimed at the College and meant to castigate the Dartmouth College administration—that free speech is inherent in the American way of thinking. “Any society that ensures freedom of speech and of the press must be prepared to live with the occasionally frustrating consequences of its guarantees,” said the ADL. The College has, since the Review’s founding, tried to inhibit the Review’s right of free speech, by suspending its top editors, blocking donations to the Review, lawsuits, and other intimidations.

8) The Dartmouth Review’s primary regret is that the ADL chose to highlight a few items published in the newspaper as far back as 1982, when the current editors were in elementary school. Some of these items have nothing to do with anti-Semitism or Jewish issues. The ADL gives no importance to the Dartmouth administration’s recognition and subsidy of Stet, which has published blatantly anti-Semitic material, nor does the ADL address Dartmouth’s speaking invitations to avowed anti-Semites like

Vincent Harding.

9) The ADL report serves to cause Dartmouth President James Oliver Freedman a great deal of embarrassment, as Freedman has contended through this past “Hitler Quote Controversy” that the Review is “anti-Semitic.” After this ADL report, Freedman is going to have to answer for his falsehoods.

Human Rights Chief, ADL Exonerate TDR

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