James O. Freedman

George Mason law professor Todd Zywicki, a Dartmouth alum (and trustee) later referred to Freedman as a "truly evil man" whose "agenda was to turn Dartmouth into Harvard." Former Dartmouth Senior Fellow William C. Dowling, noting that the danger of Dartmouth's ever becoming like Harvard was exceedingly remote, characterized Zywicki's remark as typical of a "brutal philistinism too often associated with the Dartmouth name." Dartmouth's Board of Trustees publicly repudiated any association with Zywicki's sentiments. On December 18, 2007, head of the Board Ed Haldeman (Dartmouth '70) issued a statement noting that "Mr. Zywicki has apologized to members of the Freedman family and indicated that he would like to retract other parts of his speech." Zywicki was not reelected to the Board.

President Freedman died of non-Hodgkin's lymphoma on March 21, 2006.

Shortly before he stepped down in 1998, ground was broken for the Baker-Berry Library project, a pioneering model for access to books and electronic information in the 21st century.

The one event in Freedman's presidency that garnered the most press was the so-called "Hitler Quote" scandal of The Dartmouth Review in 1990. A member of the staff of the controversial conservative weekly paper inserted a quote from Mein Kampf into the masthead of one edition of the paper. This edition of the Review was dated on Yom Kippor, the holiest day in the Jewish year. In the same edition, the paper also printed a drawing of Freedman as Hitler. The paper's editor discovered the quote three days after the paper was distributed, pulled available copies, and issued a campus-wide apology, but the quotation was seen as the latest in a series of attention-getting stunts that were either provocative or offensive depending on the reader's point of view.

James Oliver Freedman (September 21, 1935 – March 21, 2006) was an American educator and academic administrator. A graduate of Harvard College and Yale Law School, he served as Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School from 1979 to 1982, before becoming the 16th president of the University of Iowa from 1982 to 1987, and then the 15th president of Dartmouth College, from 1987 to 1998. At both Iowa and Dartmouth, Freedman sought to create as The New York Times described it, "a haven for intellectuals," with mixed results. Freedman was a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.