![]() programming, Kirby is where the college “radiates” its mission in Washington, hosting lectures and seminars on the importance of constitutional governance. According to Matthew Spalding, the Hillsdale dean who oversees all D.C. ![]() Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship. Arnn also boosted Hillsdale’s prominence in Washington with the establishment of a satellite campus on Capitol Hill in 2009, the Allan P. He expanded its offerings to include free online classes-today, the most popular, “Introduction to the Constitution” and “Constitution 101,” enroll more than 1.2 million-and a network of classical charter schools. Constitution and another in Western Heritage.Īrnn took office in 2000 and recast the curriculum as a public good. The school “considers itself a trustee of our Western philosophical and theological inheritance tracing to Athens and Jerusalem,” the mission reads, “a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law.” On campus, every undergraduate studies the same core curriculum: Two years of required courses in rhetoric, biology and philosophy culminate in a class on the U.S. Hillsdale’s politics match a stated mission to “maintain the immemorial teachings and practices of the Christian faith,” to protect civil and religious liberty and to teach the core tenets of Western civilization. It was up to Roche’s successor, Larry Arnn-founder of the Claremont Institute, a think-tank devoted to limited government and Western political tradition-to rebuild the so-called conservative citadel. Roche was a talented fundraiser, but the scandalous suicide of his daughter-in-law and rumored lover in 1999 left Hillsdale’s reputation in near ruin. Political clout helps keep it alive, but for Hillsdale to actually survive the current crisis on the right, many say, its academic commitments must always come first.įounded in 1844 by devout abolitionists, Hillsdale remained a relatively unremarkable Midwestern college until the end of the 20th century, when its then president, libertarian George Roche III, refashioned the college’s refusal of federal funds as an ideological opposition to big government. Alumni and students of Hillsdale strain to reconcile their college’s convenient accommodations to Trump with its permanent mission: to sustain and spread a coherent and inherently moral constitutional conservatism. ![]() This is not a trajectory that everyone welcomes. Former White House national security spokesman Michael Anton accepted a position at Hillsdale upon his recent exit from the West Wing. Its alumni fill prominent roles in the administration, from speechwriters to the chief of staff for Betsy DeVos. The school, which takes no federal funds, benefits financially from public ties to Trumpism: It advertises on Fox News and in Trump supporters’ inboxes. Hillsdale’s ties to Trump have multiplied since the spring of 2016, when its president, Larry Arnn, a respected conservative wiseman, threw his intellectual weight behind the real estate mogul’s controversial candidacy. What’s happened to Hillsdale lately reflects the compromises conservative institutions across the country have made following Donald Trump’s 2016 victory: They’ve accommodated themselves to the president. But the tiny Christian college with a graduate school in statesmanship, a strong conservative bent and roots in an anti-slavery Baptist church, has long been a treasured institution in right-of-center circles-known for its required classical liberal arts curriculum, its commitment to a principled conservatism, and its outreach in Washington, D.C. Or maybe you hadn’t heard about the school before it precipitated a floor fight in the Senate during tax bill negotiations last fall.
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