University of Iowa President Chosen To Take Helm of Dartmouth College

After a six-month search, the Dartmouth College Board of Trustees last Monday unanimously selected a Harvard graduate to assume the presidency of the college this summer.

James O. Freedman '57 will leave his post as president of the University of Iowa to take the helm at the Hanover, New Hampshire campus on July 19.

Freedman will succeed current president David T. McLaughlin, whose five-year tenure at Dartmouth has been marked by friction over student activism and faculty relations, campus observers have said.

Iowa's president since 1982, Freedman has received praise for his activities backing new and innovative educational programs, said Carol A. Monaghan, a staff reporter on the student newspaper The Daily Iowan.

Freedman will preside over a campus that in recent years has been divided by the issues of South African divestment and ROTC on campus. He said in a speech last week that campuses should have controversy and debate, but that debate should be "conducted in a climate of civility."

Last year campus hostility at Dartmouth reached a peak when a band of students, mainly members of the conservative magazine "The Dartmouth Review," destroyed a shantytown built by pro-divestment students. Critics on both sides of the issue charged McLaughlin with failing to take definitive action and not meting out fair punishments.

In his second year as president, McLaughlin was criticized for overriding a faculty vote against reinstating the Campus ROTC program, said Lisa J. Bransten, the senior editor of the student newspaper The Dartmouth.

Although McLaughlin took many strides forward during his tenure--to increase the endowment, build several dormitories and a $17.5 million sports complex, and renovate most of the campus' older dorms--he has never been able to completely leave behind the pronounced divisions on the Dartmouth campus.

During his presidency in Iowa City, Freedman did not get involved with pro-divestment and anti-CIA student protests on campus, Monaghan said. "The students felt he didn't take a stand on the issue of divestment on any active level," Monaghan said.

Freedman told the Globe last Monday that although the University of Iowa has divested its holdings, he personally has not come out in favor of total divestment.

Although students at Iowa said that Freedman's resignation from his post there comes as a "big surprise," he told The Daily Iowan that returning to his native New Hampshire was "a once in a lifetime opportunity."

Freedman's major accomplishment at Iowa include developing an intensive language training program for teachers and supporting the university's Writer's Workshop, according to The New York Times.

Freedman attended Yale Law School after graduating from Harvard. He taught at the University of Pennsylvania law school for 18 years and served as dean there in 1981 for a year before leaving for Iowa.