NEW YORK -- Former Dartmouth president James O. Freedman urged the nation to continue promoting diversity in higher education at an American Jewish Committee tribute to the 68-year-old academic.
Accepting the AJC National Distinguished Leadership Award, Freedman said that without strong diversity programs, Americans will "fail to meet our own aspirations" as a society.
A packed crowd of AJC members and Freedman's colleagues in academia lauded him at the event, held in December inside Manhattan's Plaza Hotel.
AJC President Harold Tanner praised Freedman for possessing both humility and humanity. Carnegie Corporation President Vartan Gregorian, echoing his own statements from Freedman's 1987 Dartmouth inauguration, described him as honorable, decisive, quietly forceful and "witty without falling prey to cynicism."
Current Dartmouth president James Wright presented the award to his predecessor and discussed a question faced by any departing university president: Is the institution ultimately better off because of the president's tenure?
The answer, Wright said, generally requires extensive consideration. Yet, "of Jim Freedman's watch, there is no need for elaboration or inquiry. The answer is yes," Wright said. He described Freedman as at once quick to address instances of hatred and bigotry and a staunch defender of free speech.
Freedman, now retired and battling cancer, remained at Dartmouth until 1998. His involvement in education, however, has continued long after leaving Hanover.
At the AJC event, Tanner highlighted several AJC projects bearing Freedman's influence, including his efforts on a 2002 taskforce that drafted a statement denouncing anti-Semitism on college campuses. Some 300 college presidents signed the letter, which ran in The New York Times.
When the AJC joined the uproar surrounding last year's Supreme Court cases on affirmative action, its February amicus brief in support of University of Michigan admissions policies twice quoted directly from Freedman's recently published book, "Liberal Education and the Public Interest." Notably, in its section arguing that Michigan's college and law school admissions programs do not violate the equal protection clause, the brief borrowed Freedman's prose.
"Indeed, except for the military and professional athletics, universities have done more than any other institution to bring minorities into full membership in American life ..." Freedman had written. "These efforts have served to unite our shared destinies and burnish the legitimacy of democratic ideals."
At the dinner, Freedman cited estimates predicting that minorities will constitute half of America's population by 2025. He added that he perceives a waning importance of 1954's landmark Brown v. Board of Education case in the popular conscience, and described work to ensure the security of diversity-focused admissions programs as a "fight worth fighting."
Freedman also described how his search for a way to spend his energy following his departure from academia led to his work with the AJC. He said the organization "has a compelling case to receive the Nobel Prize for peace" and pointed out that "from Paris to Istanbul, we see that rising pattern of anti-Semitism," through attacks on synagogues and Holocaust denial.
Freedman's accomplishments in his time at Dartmouth included a reorganization of the curriculum that contributed to a 1995 number one ranking for excellence in teaching in the U.S. News and World Report.
Before Dartmouth, Freedman served as president of the University of Iowa. In 2000, he became president of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. A native of Manchester, N.H., he graduated from Harvard College and Yale School of Law before joining the faculty at Penn.
