Q&A: Larry Arnn

this week on Q&A our guest is the president of Hillsdale College Larry Arne dr. Larry Arne president of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale Michigan let me read you the first three sentences of the Wikipedia site for your school Hillsdale College in Hillsdale Michigan is a co-educational liberal arts college known for its refusal of government funding first sentence second and its publication de in Primus the National Review has described Hillsdale College as a citadel of conservatism let's stop there yeah right the truce and all three of those sentences it's an old college it's 165 years old now the reason it's a bastion or a fortress of a citadel of conservatism is that it's very stiff and Stern about its old document it started in 1844 is very beautiful document that founded it it's reason I decided I wanted to work at the college and we stick by that and so that's conservatism in a way but of course what that document says it sort of repeats in different words some of the principles of Declaration of Independence so that kind of conservatism the conservatism tied to the liberalism of the American Founding what about this refusal of government funding well that's a modern phenomenon as the gun as the government funding is a modern phenomenon the government funding of colleges direct aid to colleges and their students really is a late 1950s early 1960s thing that has grown very rapidly since then it was really sparked in part by the Sputnik Soviet launch the idea was to help us get to the moon that was the public statement about why they did it and we didn't think that was a good idea for a simple reason I our our country is very unusual the Society is separate from the government the sovereignty is located outside the government that never really happened before they take huge pride in the Federalist Papers in the idea that it's the first purely representative form of government ever started so that means that the places that train the leadership of the country had always been outside the government and so there was a hesitation on our part about that and we didn't take any direct money for a long time and in the 60s there was a debate at the college about it one of our members of our board very rich man said you're going to go bankrupt if you don't take it I recommend on the basis of a taskforce report that we have to start taking this money and the vote was 16-2 against it and this is in 66 or 7 I have the minutes and then there was a prayer for the college after they voted that down so there's always that and then in the 70s we had reached the decision in the 60s that the aid to the students was Student Aid and so they were allowed to have that in Hillsdale and then in the Carter Administration it happened that they wrote to all the colleges that weren't title for compliant and said you have to be if you're going to take this student aid and we got into an administrative hearing and then a lawsuit and they went to finally to the Supreme Court and we got beat and so we don't take that money either now and even though that's not really wasn't originally designed to be aid to the college but to the student and so we run it on private resources alone how many students thirteen hundred and fifty right now what's the tuition it's about 19 thousand how many professors about a hundred and thirty it's about ten to one and where is it physically located and why South Central Michigan and it was put there it was on the frontier then of course in 1844 and they were mostly New England preachers who are also abolitionists ours is one of the early and my argument is greatest of the abolitionist colleges and our Charter we think is the first one ever written that guarantees man and woman black and white all alike and so they come out to the Northwest Territory and they found this college and it was first in Jackson Michigan which is about 30 miles from us and then they moved down to Hillsdale after 11 years to get to a big town it was on the railroad and that was the way back then and Hillsdale was a very large thriving community of probably 4000 and now it's you know I'm looked at metropolis it's ten thousand how many other colleges or universities in the United States have the same basic rule of taking no federal or state money well I know about gross city and I've heard of others that make claims Grove City College and some Pennsylvania an old college nice College good place I think I'm not been there but I know good things about them I want to show you an excerpt from an interview in 1991 and I'll ask you to tell us about the individual but listen carefully to what he says is there such a thing it's built up over the years as a martin gilbert inc i'm in other words where have you got a big force behind you that helps you do research and secretaries i always believed in doing it oneself I've always done all my own research I was very lucky indeed but I always had one person to help me you know sort the files and go with me to the archives if only because under the British system one person can only call for three files but two people could call for six and one of my assistants Larry arm is now running a policy study unity in Clermont in California he was extremely good unfortunately fell in love with my secretary so he married her and she's also in California and then I got another assistant who came and this was in 1971 and I fell in love with her tell us about Martin Gilbert well he's sir martin gilbert now he's a very great man he's the official biographer of winston churchill he's published 81 books he happens to be here in washington right now because last night he got a bradley prize that's a Bradley Foundation and Milwaukee gives prizes to distinguished individuals and he won one last night and you know I went there when I was a graduate student in 1977 I had a rotary fellowship and I had an introduction to him this Oxford you know I well I met him in London at the London School of Economics that's where I was going to study at first and then I was very charmed by him I had taken up the study of Churchill and I loved Churchill and he's the man you know and he is very great man he's a human being and a friend of mine you know today of course I met my wife working in his house and you know she's still my wife after all that time but when I first met him you know I notice in the clip he's a younger man that he is now but he still great as you know are you in the clip do ya quite a bit younger but it what's the connection between Winston Churchill and Sir Martin Gilbert and Hillsdale College well I after I went to Hillsdale I mean he and I have preserved our friendship for a long time now and I proof read his books off and on for decades and see him when I go over there and when he came to America he always come to Claremont and spend an extra day and we'd go driving around Southern California together where's Claremont it's in outside Los Angeles in Southern California and then I moved to Hillsdale Michigan and we have a big history department teaching history at Hillsdale is a big thing it's our largest department which almost no College can say and and he came to visit and he was there over the weekend of September 11th 2001 he was there on that day and we got to talking and I told him about an ambition I had which was I want to see the great biography of Churchill completely finished I worked on it he's been working on it really since 1962 as the biographer since 68 and this great biography is very large it's you know it's almost too large to read although he would kick me for saying that and it's many volumes of documents and what's not finished is the document volumes the narrative volumes in numbering 8 are finished most of those are out of print and so I've always thought that it was something I should do if I got the way to bring all that back into print and to help him finish those document volumes and we are doing that together and it's a very big job and we're up to volume 5 now so very soon volume 5 will come out and volumes 1 through 5 you can order them from Hillsdale College and that means they have these associated document volumes you can read the original stuff for yourself it's kind of like c-span on paper and and then he's got seven more volumes of documents to do to finish up to the end of Churchill's life and that means the original source material about the life of this very great man will be complete and we are doing that together Hillsdale College and Martin Gilbert how old is sir Martin he's 72 or 373 no 172 I think maybe 73 in October you also have the archives of William F Buckley Jr how did no we don't we don't they went to Princeton we have his articles and all of his published essays are online at the Hillsdale College web site and we did that work with him how fast is that thousands it's very big and you know you know there are you get searchable you can find anything he wrote he just so happens I knew him for a long time and admired him very much and late in his life I actually went after him to get his papers and because I thought somebody should put him online where you can find him and read him he's a very interesting man and they were committed and he said how about these articles and I said well I'll take what I can get and I like the articles they're good so go back to we like to make connections here go back to Claremont Institute what is that and who funds that that's a think-tank it's in Southern California it was started by a bunch of graduate students and of whom I happened to be one and you know it still goes that we had the idea we were studying it was very exciting time in our lives we were studying with what I still believe were very great teachers led by man named Harry Jaffa a Lincoln and Aristotle scholar and a great man and we got into the American Revolution and Lincoln threw it light as he did in his life through Lincoln he actually wrote a book a very great book called crisis of the house divided and the implication in the book is that Lincoln saved and corrected things in the American Revolution that it was flawed when it was put together and in later work working backwards from Lincoln he came to see then Lincoln never said that and Lincoln was right and what he said all honored to Jefferson who had the forecast to inject into a merely revolutionary situation an abstract to truth applicable to all men and all times to be a stumbling block to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny beautiful thing Lincoln said that and that's a paraphrase what he said is close and so we thought wow read this stuff this stuff is very beautiful American the United States Mark had a beautiful beginning and it is being forgotten and so we had the idea that we would start a think tank and by the way what do we know about anything right but we did that and we would teach people and remind people including in the context of policy disputes about the meaning and tradition of America and so that's been going on there for a long time now and who funds it a lot of people the Bradley Foundation that gave this prize last night is a funder of it the Johnny Olin Foundation which is disel dissolved now and my day was a big funder of it henry Salvatori the man who got Ronald Reagan into politics was a big funder of it a lot of people but they're you know they're thousands of people who give it support want to run an old recruitment video it's not a great video but it'll make a point of for Hillsdale College but I think this is back in the eighties okay Hillsdale deserves the appreciation of all who labor for freedom your creative outreach on national issues enables little Hillsdale to cast such a long shadow Hillsdale skein independence opens the door for your educational advancement and personal development Hillsdale College is truly unique we're unique because we won't take government money and they won't take government control we're unique because of a special educational experience which is at once highly personal and deeply rooted in the values of Western civilization the American tradition and the judeo-christian heritage this place represents the liberal arts tradition at its very best we teach you not only what to learn but more important how to learn and wide alert so how did you get the resident to do that of course I wasn't there then but I knew him to Ron Reagan Reagan was interested in Hillsdale there are some letters in which he mentions it he was on the campus once and appeared at a college event another time if I remember correctly of course that was when I wasn't working there and he took an understand because of this dispute that we had with the Department of Education because you know title four of the Higher Education Act is four hundred roughly pages long yeah we have a lawyer here in town who tries to keep the government from giving us money and I want to ask him to send me title four and he said it wasn't any use I wouldn't be able to read it and so we there's a lot of reasons why we don't want to comply with that thing one of them being we it's very difficult to know what it says and it changes all the time but Reagan was interested in that dispute and so I think the college originally got in touch with him because of that I'm gonna try to use some language and you correct me at any time but I want to ask you about this before we move on the last person you saw in there was George Rowe true was the president of the college right and if my understand is correct he died in 2006 he did you replaced him yes I did but when you replaced him Hillsdale was in the national spotlight for there was a murder or suicide on the campus George is what you're explained yeah I will explain his daughter-in-law who was a college employee committed suicide in 1999 and she left a note saying that she had had improper relations with him for 11 years he denied that no witness ever came forward to confirm it hard thing to confirm or hardly yet to disprove upon that breaking he resigned retired from the college with the firmest and oft repeated assurances that he never did that thing I myself don't much think he did but there was trouble in his family and and so it was right in my opinion for him to retire and that that is that story and that was George Rocha how hard was it for you then to follow that did you have any problem raising money or did he have problems during that time raising money it happened pretty fast in regard to him and I think the suicide was in November and I think he retired before the month was out I mean I think maybe in ten days in my own case yeah you know you don't remember your pains it's one of the blessings of the human soul but I of course you know to run a college is to worry colleges are precious and fragile things in my opinion in ours is precious and fragile it has been wonderfully successful but think of all the trouble in the world you know three years from 2001 to 2002 2004 worst years for the stock market since the Great Depression until the last year and I think the first month I worked at Hillsdale College we lost 750,000 dollars that's a lot of money and I can remember once a colleague of mine calling the post office to make sure the mail was being delivered because we weren't getting any now having said that the first year I was at the college and only college year ends in June we had a good year and it has been good the American people are very generous people and and you know we watch our cost very closely you know I told you what our tuition number is that's low for a college rank like ours is and I and and we you know our cost per student has been going up less than the rate of inflation for some years now what's your dominant well it depends on when you're asking me but what it was was about 300 million and what it is now is about 250 something like that compared to the most and biggest and down the country Harvard's what 30 something billion I think we lost it to trough 22 percent which is a very good number maybe the best and it's mostly because of native caution we just we don't have you know we have gifts endowment and student revenues and that's what we got I'm holding in my hand something called in Primus and I read the last place I read at one point six million subscribers yeah a little over one point seven now this is you this is you back in 2008 when you or I get you write this or you speak it I wrote that I spoke it too but I wrote it first that's how it gets done it to be an impress and promises 35 years old now and it's it goes to a lot of people and to get it you have to be willing you have to want to get it if somebody watching this calls in my office or goes to Hillsdale edu and signs up they can have it for free there's no obligation we won't give your name to anybody else we never do and it's it's kind of an institution now and to get into it there's course a big demand for places in it and it's only one a month so to get in it you have to give a speech for Hillsdale College and then it has to be good and it has to be something we think it'd make a nice and Primus I mean Primus stands in Latin is in the first place that's correct who named it and how long has it been around it started in 72 I guess and somebody working as a college then I've heard and you know the people involved I can George Roche was involved and Ron Trowbridge was involved in a really great guy who's is the son of one of the leading lights of Detroit history a man named Clark Durant who still a businessman in Detroit and runs charter schools and private schools for inner-city kids cross road schools they're called those three guys I as I the story as I hear it really started building it in this and Primus I think I saw somewhere and you'll know well you don't know exactly what I'm talking about there's a six hundred and eight million dollar capital an endowment campaign to run through 2012 my first question is why is it six hundred and eight million why not just six hundred million that's an excellent question I think it's because we and of what we think we need and we multiply it by the number that it takes to get that much out per year and I think it came to that and I think there was some demand that arose it was started out to be a five hundred million dollar capital campaign and we've made that and Counting gifts and pledges and buildings and all that we've gone past that and not by much but a little and we decided that it you know a bunch of stuff came up and we need some more money and so we're still working on it and and I think when we redid the budget 108 million is what came up until we called it that in other in Primus issues that I have in front of me here's one with Rush Limbaugh do conservatives need to get beyond Reagan here's one by mark Stein it's a recent one live free or die he lives in New Hampshire there's one here by John O'Sullivan it used to be with National Review and Margaret Thatcher and this is Margaret Thatcher a legacy of freedom did I read you have a statue of her on the campus we did yes sir wouldn't when did that happen a year and a half ago why well the college had a relationship with her she spoke at the college on several occasions and it just so happened that I knew her for a long time and and so I I had the crazy idea we happen to have a really great art department in Hillsdale College including a great painter who's the head of it named Sam connect and a a really great sculptor named Tony frudakis who's from a sort of old sculpting family and I saw some of his work and I thought there needs to be a really great bust of Winston Churchill I don't know I want meaning no aspersion to anybody who's made one and I asked him about it and he said he'd love to do it in fact he told me I'll just do it and of course later I find out it cost money and I went to the board and I asked them I'd like to do some statues just a few well not only did they love the idea but they put money up for four of them on the spot and they talked me into two modern modern people recent people people who have in our recent memories and one is Thatcher and one is Reagan and the argument because I'm sort of against that I think Churchill is as modern as you could you should go you find out about him as time goes on but then those two people had particular connections to the college and so it seemed to me that was okay and the board and we sort of settled it up that way that's how it came to him so how many total years did you worked with Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill three years full time and all the time that you thought and read about Winston Churchill what's the main thing you take away well he was a very beautiful man he was one of the very greatest men who ever lived and to study him in detail like to study Lincoln or in my opinion Washington Churchill once wrote this thing in a it's a greatest book called Marlboro his life and times he's describing how Marlboro won his battles and it becomes a commentary in my opinion of course it's nothing to assert it by Churchill but on Churchill he says huh the mirror Spirent after a type of character only shows his hopeless and inferiority nothing but genius the diamond and man can answer the riddles of war and because genius is much rarer than the rarest and purest of diamonds wars are mainly tales of muddle that's like the somatic sentence in Plato's Republic and I think Churchill is an example of a very great soul meant to lead in politics where are you from originally Arkansas where well I was born in the panhandle of Texas my dad was working for Phillips Petroleum and he he went to college which was an enormous fact in his family in this town but they were Arkansas people so he had decided after a few years doing that to become a schoolteacher moved back to Arkansas and I grew up where he taught most of his life and lived until he died in Pocahontas Arkansas another largest town where did you go to college I went to Arkansas State University it's a local place decided with three friends of mine well in contact with all of them still in about 10 minutes where to go we just went to the nearby place and after I got there I started finding out things I hadn't known like how college works and I'd always want to be a lawyer I applied and got into some really good law schools and then my dad thought my life is complete my son is gonna be a lawyer from a good school and then in my last semester at Arkansas State University was a man named Jeff Wallen who lives in Washington now I had to take it or I would have never done it he had a terrible reputation arrogant difficult you know he's a great man I had to read Plato's Republic and we're reading the first chapter the first book and it's the argument with their Symmachus and after Socrates wins that argument a Glock on an ambitious young man challenges suck show me Socrates that justice is good even if by practicing and you win the reputation for injustice and that injustice is wrong even if by practicing it you win the reputation for justice good for its own sake and I can remember thinking wow I'd like to know the answer to that question so I didn't go to law school I went to graduate school where Claremont California to Claremont Graduate University it is now masters or a PhD PhD and what was your thesis about Winston Churchill I wrote about him in the first world war and and it's like dissertations it's as good as they are and mine's not particularly good but it was I was onto something there because partly because Martin Gilbert helped me you know suggested it to me but Churchill was desperately afraid of war he took part in the last British cavalry charge it was a glorious triumph at Omdurman you know fighting Arabs and Muslims they were the British had a grievance against them because the Mahdi the ruler of Aldermen had khartoum had killed General Gordon a British hero and so KITT snare went down there to avenge that and they want a massive victory and almost no casualties and Churchill took part in that and recounting this battle which he you know was in the course of launching a political career he had every reason on earth to celebrate this overwhelming victory he writes it it as a tragedy when the dervishes come over the hill and the British there's a beautiful paragraph in that in the chapter in Churchill's book the river war called the Battle of Omdurman and this chapter is a commentary on what war has become and it says it says little did they know the impending tragedy and then he describes metal whistling into flesh and the screams of the dying on one side and then back on the British side a manufacturing process so if war becomes dangerous and if it's made dangerous by technical and technological advancement if it's made dangerous by the increased degree of organization possible in modern countries the increased devotion of people to their country in a democratic nation where we all get to own it it's possible then that the modern would that modern free government contains the seeds of its own destruction in itself he's afraid to say all his life he writes in 1925 mankind has never been in this position before without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance he has got into his hands at last the means of his own destruction so this guy terrified of war is the guy who confronts Hitler and to understand why he did that is to understand what it is that you would sacrifice everything for because better to suffer whatever modern work and duty than to join in the policy of that man so I started figuring that out when I was writing my dissertation Claremont Institute set up right after you got your PhD well it was started while I was over there my friends Peter Schram and Chris Flannery and Tom silver the main one he's dead now and my wife and I are raising his kid he just graduated from high school the other day he died of brain cancer and then his wife died of breast cancer and that's went away we were very quiet very close people very tight still are one of them if Peter strands married to my sister and and we started this thing and they stood we planned it you know we were graduate students we were really dumb and so we didn't know you couldn't do it I mean I you know I believe mr. lamb you may have started all this and if you did that and I bet you did good for you and we were the same kind of thing except maybe dumber and now we would dine under the stars in a graduate student apartment in California and dream about these things we would do and they got it started and then I came back in August of 1980 and they gave me a job and you know I so I joined the staff right and in 85 I became the president for various reasons that they thought I could and and so I did that for 15 years and I made a go of it and then in 2000 after this 1990 thing you 99 thing you mentioned I got to talk into Hillsdale College and I didn't I'm running on now but I I didn't want to I didn't the idea got about that I could be a college president and I very much did not want to be because most of my friends our faculty members what do they think about college presidents you know and so when the job came open I was not interested and step by step Bill Buckley recommended me to the search committee the search committee was headed by a named man and broad back bill brought but who's the chairman of the board now a very great man a very close friend of mine and he kept calling and you know he like you know I kept first I started getting messages they want to talk to you and I'd say yeah no but you know why would you do that and then I read this old document in the college and I talked to Bill brought back and found him to be such a spectacular man and this old document in the college which is very beautiful you find it on our website is I began to think oh I see what you might do is try to run the college out of that it would be the law you would obey it the board but obey it others could be asked to obey it then and so we managed the college that way and that means it's uh I try to make it hard to make to have an argument with me I want people to have an argument with that and then if they don't want to argue with that then there's no reason for us to argue at all recently announced a Washington program run by Virginia Thomas yeah tell us about that well Virginia Thomas is an old friend Lenore she's a friend of mine of long-standing she's not actually that old she's married to Clarence Thomas and he's a man that I admire very greatly and I have known since before he was known to many other people so I think highly of him and very highly of her and I've had this idea for a long time that you know since the beginning of the Claremont Institute days that there are things that you should know to call yourself a leader in America you can find those things in the correspondence between Jefferson and Madison for example who laid out a curriculum and so people don't know those things very much anymore and then another thing is going on that in my opinion requires exploration now we think that the declaration independence is a first step in a development and so is the Constitution and they're they're good they're great but the real signal virtue they have is they allow for this development and so they live and the trouble is then things can be done in their name that are obvious ad negations of what they mean and the trouble with that argument is that it can't be true in one Pacific respect it wasn't the opinion of the people who wrote those two documents nor is it what they say that they are anything other than final and complete statements of the general truth of the matter and so the trouble is you can centralize the government way beyond what the Constitution constitutional authors imagined you can write four or five hundred pages of rules about how to run a small rural liberal arts college many by the way more pages were rules than the liberal arts college has in its own running and by the way it be miserable place if it had that many nobody'd know what they said you can do all that right but at some point the structure itself will have to alter is altering in some respects and the justification for that structure is written by James Madison and 51st Federalist he says what is government but the profoundest of all relation the reflections on human nature if men were angels no government would be needed if angels were to govern men neither internal or external controls on the government would be necessary so the point is we have to reflect on that today we are not angels that's why we require to be governed angels do not govern us that's why they must live within limits and so the point is the first step in my opinion is not just a shout that that's so the first step is to invite people to read and to think that's what we do we found on YouTube one of the young students at Hillsdale his name is Jared Hulsey do you know him yeah is he still in school I think he's graduated now redheaded boy I said I didn't know I didn't know his name until I saw him on the I watched the video last night because I had information that you were going to show it to me yeah he's a good kid this is just a student with a camcorder Shawn the school and we're just gonna run a little bits of them get you to describe what you're hearing from him okay College the Center for Education educating for Liberty since 1844 we are standing here in freezing-cold Hillsdale Michigan um in front of central hall the original building which was built in 1844 at Hillsdale College over to my left this is Kendall Hall this is one of the main academic buildings where most of the classes are held and to my right here this is Lane and that is where all of my terrible classes I mean all of my wonderful classes are held in the middle of this courtyard here is a statue of a Union soldier holding a flag of course this comes from the Civil War or the war as we know it of Northern Aggression Hillsdale College sent more officers to the Civil War to fight in Civil War and serve than any other country any other school in the country except for West Point Military Academy now what did he mean by War of Northern Aggression and we know it is that we Hillsdale is that he had Jared Halsey I think Jared is from Texas I'm from Arkansas but no the college very much celebrates its connection to the Civil War into the Union Army and Jared was making fun of that fact too Jared as you know as a college student and he's a good kid he's a fine young man but but it is not widely so known on the campus if that's your question you know whenever you go on college campuses like you do to do on Hillsdale I'm sure I've never been there but Lane and Kendall halls and all that those are people yeah why did people want their names on these buildings well Harry Kendall for those two Billie's Lane and the the big building in the in the foreground central hall is old that was first built in dedicated on a four of July 1854 and then Kindle on the left as you were looking and laying on the right those are new those are three years old and the hairy Kindle and Marguerite who just passed away from Portland in their 90's they just loved Hillsdale College for 35 or 40 years they gave a scholarship money that much do you have to remember I think they gave us three four million dollars and the bob lane from from Jackson Hole Wyoming big supporter of the college for a long time love the college gave us four or five million dollars and is that primarily because they agree with the philosophy of the school dean mostly that's the motive they could the college is a cause and you have to state that cause carefully because it's a see the college is a unique thing on a very odd thing the college is trying to be what it was 150 years ago but the world has changed a lot and so 150 years ago everybody ran the way we ran now everybody runs with very significant revenues from the government here's another clip this would be some look at some a classroom one of the classrooms mmm well welcome to Lane we're him Lane call right now and I just wanted to give you a quick tour of a classroom quite a bit different than your standard a and M size classroom seats about 20 or so people that's a normal size class um in my freshman English class we have now since several people dropped out we have 11 students freshman English 101 required for everybody it's crazy tell you what what do you think he means by crazy first of all I'm interpreting the mind of Jer and a whole city so who knows what he means by any of this but I think what it's like and a that is you know it's ten to one student faculty ratio the faculty are teachers and they they have they teach three courses a term everybody has to take two semesters of English they read the same stuff everybody has to take two semesters of history they read the same stuff almost all original source materials everybody has to take a full semester course on the Constitution United States if you get a BA which the vast majority of people do you have to take a language everybody has to take two or three courses and the Natural Sciences so the core curriculum takes up about half the time and the core curriculum is probably going to be reformed some so it becomes a little bigger recent statistic I saw that only something like 53 percent don't pull me to this figure of people that enter college get out within six years what's the graduation rate at your points well I only have the four-year graduation rate I haven't have just been reason I can answer your question is I have just been looking that up because I saw that study that you saw our four-year rate right now is about 70 percent just 69 something and and that here's the way that works that's it and I don't know what our six-year rate is it'll be higher than that but our retention rates that's the measure of how many freshmen do you lose those have improved in the last five years from about 75 to about 93 and so our graduation rate should be going up but right now the four-year rate is about 70 what kind of a name is Arne it's a German extraction and possibly it's a it was Erin I have a great aunt Judy night who studies this stuff and if it was Erin we were Jews early Jews coming into the country have been used for a long time but if it was Arne then we're middle of the 19th century immigrants that's not work more from Jared Halsey this is about your construction going on okay this is called the quad what really meant that there were four buildings surrounding it central hall and then of course a cross all the way across lawn that is saga over there and this is all going to turn into some huge construction they've got massive buildings going up in here it has been vacant for a long time to my right here is the mossy library and then the new building which stands right back there that people are in front of that is the GU Kok center that is our new Student Union mossy money from somebody named mossy Don Massey chairman of the board emeritus now member of the board for 30 years huge construct buildings large massive erection jared is not fully accurate we don't actually planned any more buildings in that area unless somebody hasn't told me something which is unlikely we have built seven or eight new buildings in the last eight years and happy to report those are paid for and they what they are is two classroom buildings a music practice and rehearsal facility what am I forgetting a new dormitory a new science building addition I'm running out but and and we try to build them you'll notice from the architecture we try to build them so they look like central hall and they have a vertical thing because we think in colleges things should point up there was an interesting piece in The New York Times last couple days about an honor code developed by some people at Harvard you know what you know you know I'm going to ask you this Masters of Business Administration MBA at Harvard a bunch of the students totally upset with what was going on in the world decided to create an honor take an oath and you can find out in the internet and there are 585 students around the country that have signed this MBA types and over close to 200 of the I think a hundred or a thousand at Harvard have signed up for this I'm going to read it to you and ask you why you think this is necessary and then I'll ask you about your own honor code I will act with utmost integrity and pursue my work in an ethical manner I will safeguard the interest of my shareholders co-workers customers and the society in which we operate I will manage my enterprise in good faith guarding against the city and behavior that advanced my own narrow ambitions but a harm the enterprise and the society it serves I will understand and uphold both in letter and in spirit the laws and the contracts governing my own contact and that of my enterprise I will take responsibility for my actions and I will represent the performance and risks of my enterprise accurately and honestly I will develop both myself and other managers under my supervision so the profession continues to grow and contribute to the well-being of society I will strive to create sustainable economic social and environmental prosperity worldwide and I will be accountable to my peers and they will be accountable to me for living by this oath why do we need this it's lovely we need beautiful things that's a very fine thing if you're saying people should just do that naturally without having to do such a thing well the answer is human beings are the odd creature that can do wrong if they please they have a choice about the matter and so things that remind them and commit them to do better things are good now you all have an honor code I'll read it okay a Hillsdale College student is honorable and conduct honest and word indeed dutiful and study and service and respectful of the rights of others through education the student rises to self-government how long has that been around just about five years it's a resurrection of something not dissimilar from the 19th century why was it necessary five years ago well we think my view I've learned a lot working in a college and there's something I didn't know and it's a in my opinion it's a fundamental thing it's central you don't really teach them they learn their efforts are crucial they need to know what you're after the word college actually means partnership something for a bunch of people to do together and so I found I like the students I spend a lot of time around them I teach every term I eat in the dining hall I you know I hang around and I found that a lot of them were cranky with us when I got there some minority why well nobody told me right and this is not what I wanted I've been injured you see by that they thought and kids are another thing about people in their 18 to 21 year range they can do anything we can do they just never did before so you got a and they're their biological urge their thing is they got to grow up and so if you're putting rules on them you're at war with something very central in them so they have to adopt it for themselves and our honor code is our way of formalizing that adoption and making sure they understand and that we understand what we're both going to go about and then that way they get and you know I I said our retention rates have risen a lot and has something to do with it we have another I don't know that strange harvardconnection from an article written by Bill McGurn he used to be the chief speechwriter for George Walker Bush this is from June 2nd of this year and the title on it is how Hillsdale beat Harvard here's a paragraph the operative principle defining Harvard's relationship to the military is the university's non-discrimination policy specifically Harvard's prohibition on discrimination based on sexual orientation conflicts with the military's prohibition on gays serving openly serving openly so the Reserve Officer Training Corps remains banned from Harvard's campus military recruiters are grudgingly permitted only because the Soliman Act requires the university either to grant them access or to give up its governmental funding about 15% of its operating budget according to the latest annual financial report now you also don't have ROTC on campus right what's the what's the similarity here well we don't have it because we'd love to have it and and but you you can't have it without this title four of the Higher Education Act and so the reason we don't have it is because we won't we don't on all that mass and we regret that in regard to the military and the GI bill and all that stuff and so that's why we don't have it the article goes on to say that we produce a lot of kids for the military I think right now there might be I heard this yesterday one of our boys Jack Shannon was a Commission on graduation day and and he's a student of mine and I know him well and he reports back I got word this week that there are six kids from Hillsdale College at Quantico right now so we have a lot go but we've always had a lot go we had very great I mean mr. Halsey mentions it in his video we had a very great contribution to the Civil War and it's some really lovely things were done by Hillsdale College students in that war all for the Union Army but you will allow recruiters on your campus oh yeah very welcome and they and he quotes the article in the article a bill McGurn who was on their bill mcgurns father was a marine and at lunch one day I took him to lunch in the dining hall which is what I will do if I can ever get you to come to the campus and we were sitting around and he's ask me about the military on campus that's something there's a lot of it and we don't have ROTC and we went upstairs and darned if the recruiters Marine Corps recruiters weren't there in the Student Union and I said there's a bill magar and his dad was a marine here's these Marines talk to him if you want to he got the quotes for that article I think on that day that's how it happened and and you know I there's just always been a lot of military service at Hillsdale and we don't teach we never did really have military training as any kind of a discipline or course at the college but the college seeks to inspire a love of the principles and the Constitution of the United States of America and that drives young men and women to want to go and serve do you think not do you think but what do you think the difference is between getting an education Harvard and getting an education at Hillsdale well of course they're you know really good at many very important things and Hillsdale you know so forget them why do I want to make invidious distinctions I'll tell you what we do we think that liberal education is a thing we think that it exists because of the hierarchy of ends that are apparent in the world when you look about you and in which every human life to be well lived must live in light of the sins and so to study those things best is to study in a small setting with other devoted people the great literature devoted to those which expands now across 3,000 years in the West and and in the East there's doubtless a similar thing but you started out as an institution that was for the abolition of slavery very much and for anyone coming to your institution of any color creed and all that background how are you doing today with minorities we don't have a lot we don't count of course so I can't tell you how many we got why don't you count well because we never have because doesn't matter doesn't have any build anything to do with your ability to learn you know Frederick Douglass was a speaker on our campus in January 1863 one of the most famous photographs of him was taken on our campus and his principal was you know paraphrase is what I can do you ask what should be done for the freedmen I say nothing for him at all if he cannot stand up let him fall down then he will learn to stand after all he's been getting so much more of your pity than he has of your justice so our principle is you know I say this to every kid in America who wants the kind of thing we do right it's what we do if you and it's easy to find out what we do it stated in that honor code you read and you can read it on the website it doesn't matter what color you are you want to do that thing we might be a really good place for that because everybody's doing that at our place Jared Hosea we have one more clip from the YouTube he takes us on a little tour of a dorm room here's our freshly opened door as we walk into the room let's pan around that is David's den he is very neat and tidy as you can see he has his share and everything in desk and obviously don't need to explain that one to you this is a one Galloway 310 shelf complete with many DVDs of my own and here is my bed or couch rather it is converted into a couch during the day most days if I make my bed and it is a bed all the other time red white and blue obviously is the motif we're going for here here's our lovely Hillsdale Chargers flag which I have displayed prominently and here is my desk no question that it's a conservative room a conservative fellow and a lot of the speakers that come to your conservative mirror all this any concern or do you get around there some way that you're only getting one point of view do you get the Democratic Party liberal in the all in the new tradition point of view at your school well of course we do I mean there's in a variety of ways we have the College Democrats we have you know we have I think there's a kid I heard today yesterday that there's a kid interning at Greenpeace from our college this summer there's kids like that of course there are and we don't by the way we don't ask any questions about that if some prospective student says to me I'm not a conservative to that matter or if they say even better I'm a conservative I should come to your college I always say you know you're too young to know about that that's not the thing right the thing is what are you and why you know I was when I was 18 years old I was fooling myself and I knew a lot you know and I then encountered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written my world was turned upside down that's not the last thing nice thing that ever happened to me so we're not trying to we're trying to train liberally educated people and that means by the way the vast majority of what we teach every student and about half what we teach we teach every student the vast majority of it was written before there was a United States of America much less a modern conservative movement so it does give you well if you're doing that if you're thinking that old things might have you of abiding nature not because they're all but because their real value is objective and maybe then eternal that gives you a disposition about modern liberalism and modern conservatism but that's the conservative we have on campus that's the source of it you have a lot of speakers both on your campus and your new Washington program what is it how often you have the the Friday morning breakfast once a month do you end up having to pay for all those people to do that or they do this gratis a lot do it gratis and some get paid it varies and in general if they're talking to students we don't pay them or we don't pay them a lot and an off-campus speaker sometimes you know they command fees and we pay them we pay I'll give you an example when Martin Gilbert comes to teach a course wait he's a distinguished fellow he has a salary for that but we've he wants to focus on getting the Churchill ography finished now so we've deployed some of his salary away from paying him to teach to paying the expenses mostly for the publishing of the Churchill biography so you know people make money when they speak and we pay them sometimes but for the kids not usually very much about our time what's your biggest concern about your future at the school well you know the college is a very old thing in a very competitive market with 2,000 competitors most of them are not financed the way we are and most of them don't do what we do anymore although any of the old ones used to do it so the trends are away from us how can we possibly survive and the answer is so far so good and it's in the hands of dr. dr. Larry iron president of Hillsdale College and Hillsdale Michigan thank you very much thank you sir for a DVD copy of this program call one eight seven seven six six to seven seven to six for free transcripts or to give us your comments about this program visit us at QA or QA programs are also available as c-span podcasts next week on Q & A the first in a two

Channel: C-SPAN

Views: 8,188

Rating: 4.7586207 out of 5

Keywords: commentary, analysis, C-SPAN, cspan, q&a, arnn, hillsdale, lamb

Id: fyAkvshCjCM

Length: 57min 57sec (3477 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 15 2009