John Freeh

John Freeh

Dr. Freeh is the Co-founder of Kateri College of the Liberal and Practical Arts, a new four-year college in Gallup, NM, opening in 2024 that will integrate liberal and vocational education. A native of Jersey City, N.J., he has studied and taught in D.C., Chicago, Spokane, Pittsburgh and Oxford, England. Tempted by the adventurous spirit of the West (and a strong nudge from Providence), he left a tenured position at Hillsdale College in order to teach at Wyoming Catholic College and assist in the development of its Great Books curriculum. Following similar promptings, he was eager to help found the Newman Institute of Catholic Thought in Culture in Lincoln, NE, a program inspired by Blessed John Henry Newman’s ideal of a liberal arts education, which seeks to form the whole person: mind, body and spirit. Newman’s motto – cor ad cor loquitur, or, heart speaks to heart – has been integral to his own educational philosophy.

He is a life-long teacher: his fields are Renaissance Literature, Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot. Dr. Freeh enjoys travel, hiking, and camping with his growing family. He finds himself so very blessed on the path Providence has laid for him and wishes all to take encouragement, as he has, from Newman’s wise words about the human condition: “God has created me to do him some definite service… I am a link in a chain, a bond of connection between persons. He has not created me for naught.”