James O. Freedman, "staunch advocate of intellectualism" (The Dartmouth), leading voice against “intolerance on college campuses” (NY Times), “lightning rod of the academic culture wars” (Boston Globe), constant opponent of the Dartmouth Review, purveyor of “anti-conservative outrages” (National Review), “opportunist and demagogue” (New Criterion), Jew and Nazi (according to a 1988 Dartmouth Review cartoon portraying him as Hitler) died March 21st from non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at age 70.

A soft-spoken Jewish boy from a gentile New Hampshire town, Freedman rose to the highest ranks of academia. He attended Harvard in 1957, graduated from Yale Law in 1962, clerked under Thurgood Marshall, and taught at the University of Pennsylvania before becoming president of both the University of Iowa in 1982 and Dartmouth in 1987.

The New York Times’ Ken Arenson waxes nostalgic over Freedman’s 11-year tenure as Dartmouth president, calling him a “forceful voice against anti-Semitism and other forms of intolerance” who “gained his widest attention speaking out against strains of prejudice and bigotry."

Others were less teary-eyed. Stefan Beck, former writer for The Dartmouth Review, declares in the New Criterion: “he [Freedman] gained his widest attention by sniffing out prejudice and bigotry where they didn't exist." Many point to Dartmouth English professor Jeffrey Hart’s article in the National Review Online, where Freedman is described in a 1990 Rally Against Hate blaring into an amplifier, declaring the conservative student paper “attacked blacks for being blacks” while Kevin Pritchett, editor of the review, and black, stood by.

Yet there is one thing that everyone who knew Freedman can agree on: he was a voracious reader. In the Boston Globe, Sam Allis describes the well-known bibliophile and news junkie with this anecdote: “I told him about Jim Romenesko's addictive media blog that journalists check upwards of nine times a day. It was like alerting Elizabeth Taylor to the existence of chocolate." Even the Dartmouth Review grudgingly admits Freedman’s innocent vice. In a 1997 article about overpaid university presidents, when asked what he would do with a $400,000 salary, Freedman replied: “Books, books, books. I’ll get lots and lots of books. Whee!”

He is survived by his wife Bathsheba, two children, Dorothy and Joseph, and a personal collection of 6000 books.