There is a reason Hillsdale College, a tiny liberal arts college in rural Michigan (and my alma mater), has been in the news recently.
To its credit, the college responded last month with a brilliantly understated open letter, first published in the school newspaper then in the Wall Street Journal, arguing that everything Hillsdale does, “though its work is not that of an activist or agitator, is for the moral and intellectual uplift of all.”
By the inflexible logic of critical race theory, Hillsdale’s abolitionist past does not matter, its efforts to improve private and public schools do not matter, its financial aid to underprivileged students does not matter.
Precisely because Hillsdale resists the racialized thinking of the progressive left, it will remain a target of those who insist on total submission to the diktats of critical race theory and social justice activism.
The substance of Whyte’s complaints against Hillsdale dissipates upon close inspection, whether because they are anecdotal and unverifiable—a black student claiming, without corroboration or details, to have been called a racial slur by a white student— or because they are intellectually dishonest.
July 28, 2020. There is a reason Hillsdale College, a tiny liberal arts college in rural Michigan (and my alma mater), has been in the news recently. It is not because anything particularly newsworthy has happened there of late, but because the college, almost alone among education institutions in America, has had the temerity to push back ...
Indeed, the only remotely substantive criticism of Hillsdale Whyte levels is that it refuses to categorize students by race or practice race-based affirmative action in admissions. What Whyte may not realize—or simply refuses to acknowledge—is that Hillsdale eschews racial categorization on purpose as a matter of principle.