It really is a shame, because it is such a beautiful campus. Nestled in the nether regions of Southern Lower Michigan is Hillsdale college. It is a small, liberal arts college founded in the 1800’s. Hillsdale is an example of how a word like ‘liberal’ can have very different meanings, as it is currently a hotbed of modern reactionary conservative thinking in America. It also is an example of how the conservative mindset infiltrated not only Religion, but Republicanism itself over the course of American history.
Hillsdale College was founded in 1844 by an Abolitionist group of Free Will Baptists. Because of it’s abolitionist roots, Hillsdale is one of the few colleges in America that has always been open to both African Americans and females. Hillsdale’s second president, Edmund Burke Fairfield, helped to found the Republican party, and invited speakers such as Fredrick Douglass to the campus.
That original progressive spirit began to fade from Hillsdale into the mid 20th century, as the college’s leadership began to rail against ‘governmental control’ and ‘overreach,’ especially concerning the concept of Affirmative action. By 1984, Hillsdale chose to forgo all government funding, in order to keep programs like Title IX and affirmative action off their campus.
Hillsdale’s full descent into a right wing reactionary hotbed has continued unabated since then and had become the model of what modern Education should look like in the eyes of Mark Levin and Hugh Hewitt. It’s current faculty includes former Heritage Foundation director David Azerrad and Trump national security official, Michael Anton. Clarence Thomas is also noted as a visiting faculty member and fellow.
So it makes sense that this past July, Hillsdale put out what they are calling the 1776 Curriculum, an obvious response to the much heralded (and conservatively derided) 1619 project from the New York times. The curriculum, aimed at k-12 students, “springs from a sincere admiration and respect for America’s Founders and the principles they expressed so beautifully in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. The recognition that all men are created equal, that our natural rights pre-exist government and that governments are formed to secure our natural rights — the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of all citizens,” according to Kathleen O’Toole, assistant provost of K-12 education at Hillsdale. Even taken at face value there is enough dubious subtext in that statement to fill the Grand Canyon (the idea that the point of government is to basically put pre-ordained commandments from God into order, for example) but when you just peak at the curriculum, one can observe that it is just a playlist from modern conservative’s greatest hits playlist of historical gripes that white guys are being erased from history.
Here a just a few of the curriculum’s assertions:
- The Civil Right’s movement lead to explicit group privilege and identity politics.
- Social Justice explicitly sorts citizens into protected classes
- Critical Race Theory teaches a person’s race is the single important factor in thinking about the value of a person
Apparently, the free curriculum has been downloaded 46,000 times so far (hopefully more from curious people who enjoy looking at train wrecks and not teachers actually wanting to implement it) and the college plans on extending its current work to other parts of US History in the near future (currently its focus is the founding fathers, civil war and civics), including the great depression and modern America. I am sure the text will be a wealth of opportunity for anybody that wants to see how many times their eyes can roll before they fall out of their sockets.