Career
Freedman was a member of the United States Senate Watergate Committee, which was established in 1973 to investigate the Watergate scandal involving US President Richard Nixon. Freedman, then a student at Michigan University, drove to Washington, D.C. and stood in line at 5:30 am every morning to listen to the hearings. He then started visiting members of the committee door to door, in the hopes of being able to work on the committee. He was eventually hired by Senator Herman Talmadge's office, and later joined the committee. [3]
He decided to stay in Washington, DC to continue his work, rather than returning to Michigan. He credited his decision to encouragement by the dean of MSU's College of Communications, who encouraged him to stay in DC and "get the scoop." [4] He worked on Capitol Hill as a researcher and investigator for five years. [5] He was the committee investigator for the United States Senate Committee on Civil Service. [6] In 1978, he was a staff investigator on the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations during the Koreagate scandal. [7]
Freedman is the proprietor of watergatecommittee.org, [8] an archive of information about the Watergate Committee which he built in 2017 for the committee's 45th anniversary. Freedman created the archive in response to the Special Counsel investigation into Trump's ties to Russia and Russian interference in the United States elections. The website archives documents and information about the committee, as well as hundreds of photos taken by Freedman in the 1970s. First-hand interviews with staffers were also collected for the website as personal narratives about the events surrounding Watergate. [9]
In 2022, he organized a reunion for the 50th anniversary of the Watergate break-in at the Kennedy Caucus Room, where the Watergate Committee met. [10] He also created the nonprofit watergate.org, an educational resource archiving materials related to Watergate. [11] Freedman was a signatory on a statement about the legacy and ongoing mission of the committee authored by legal scholar Erwin Chemerinsky. [12]
The reunion and archive was organized during the US House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, to address ongoing concerns about checks and balances in American politics and mechanisms to protect the democratic process from "runaway chief executive power." [13] Freedman voiced concerns about partisanship, [14] and noted the differences in the atmosphere surrounding the Watergate Committee and the January 6 Committee. [15] He said that "We now live in an era where the truth has been eroded as a standard." [16]
Education Industry
From 1996 to 1999, Freedman served as director for business development at California State University's Centre for Science, Technology, and Information Resources. Freedman was vice president of Knowledge Exchange, a media publishing company which he co-founded with Michael Milken in 1994. [5]
Freedman is the managing director of Knowledge Base, LLC, [17] a consulting firm whose clients include Michigan State University, University of California, O'Reilly Media, Capella University, eCollege and WebCT. He helped to build Prometheus, a course management program at George Washington University, of which he was executive vice president from 2000 until 2002. From 2002 to 2004, he was the acting CEO of Textcentric. [18]
He co-founded the International School of Monterey in 2000, and served on its board until 2007. [19] He was the Vice President of Global Education Strategy for educational technology company Blackboard Inc. from 2005 to 2011. From 2008 to 2011, he was the Blackboard Institute's executive director. [17]
In the late 1990's, Freedman transitioned into education policy, innovation and education technology. He was part of the start-up of the California State University, Monterey Bay and was the vice president of the global education strategy at Blackboard Inc., before founding the National Laboratory for Education Transformation (NLET) in 2011, a research and development nonprofit where he continues to serve on the board. [20] [21]
Film and Television
Prior to his work in education, STEM and workforce development, Freedman lived in Los Angeles and worked in the entertainment industry on fact-based dramas and documentaries. Over the course of his career, he produced a number of television films, miniseries and series including To Heal a Nation (1988), Baby M (1988) and the Fox series DEA (1990). Freedman also produced three feature films, Money for Nothing (John Cusak, 1999), To Walk with Lions (Richard Harris, 1999) and A Brief History of Time (1991). Freedman is also an author of non-fiction political books, including Gifts of Deceit (1980) and Winter of Fire (1990).
In 1991, he produced the documentary film adaptation of Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time , which was directed by Errol Morris. [22] The film won a Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.
Journalism and Writing
Freedman became a journalist in Washington, DC. First as a stringer for the Washington Post, then as a Washington Correspondent for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and then as a producer for ABC 20/20 and Nightline .
In 1980, he co-wrote Gifts of Deceit , an account of the Koreagate scandal and the committee's investigations, with Robert Boettcher. [23] In 1990, Freedman co-wrote Winter of Fire with Richard O. Collin, which dealt with US Army general James L. Dozier's kidnapping by the Italian terrorist group the Red Brigades. [24]
He contributed to the volume of Virtual Schools: Planning For Success, published by Teachers College Press in 2005. [25] In the book, Freedman discussed the possible applications of technology within a virtual learning environment. [26]
Government
Freedman worked on Capitol Hill as a researcher and investigator for five years. [5] He was the committee investigator for the United States Senate Committee on Civil Service. [6] In 1978, he was a staff investigator on the Subcommittee on International Organizations of the Committee on International Relations during the Koreagate scandal. [7]
