James Freedman, 70; Dartmouth President Revised Curriculum

James O. Freedman, president emeritus of Dartmouth College who overhauled the school’s curriculum during his 11-year tenure, has died. He was 70.

Freedman died March 21 of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma at his home in Cambridge, Mass.

In leading the most comprehensive examination of the school’s curriculum in 70 years, Freedman established more rigorous course requirements across several major fields. He created a number of departments and introduced or reinstated the study of Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese.

Other accomplishments during his tenure included gender parity in the student body by 1995. The college also led the Ivy League with the highest proportion of women among tenured and tenure-track faculty.

Freedman stepped down in 1998.

James Wright, who succeeded Freedman as Dartmouth president, called him “an eloquent national spokesman for the value of liberal learning. He left Dartmouth stronger and more confident than ever.”

Freedman, a native of Manchester, N.H., earned his bachelor’s degree at Harvard. He worked as a reporter for the Manchester Union Leader newspaper before attending Yale Law School. He graduated cum laude in 1962 and clerked for Judge Thurgood Marshall, who was then on the U.S. Court of Appeals.

Freedman worked briefly for a New York law firm before joining the faculty of the University of Pennsylvania Law School in 1964. He was named dean in 1979. Three years later, he was appointed president of the University of Iowa. He held that post until he moved to Dartmouth in 1987.

As a teacher, his primary interests were administrative law and higher education. He wrote extensively on those subjects.

He is survived by his wife, Bathsheba, as well as a son, a daughter and four grandchildren.