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 of Imprimis. The National Review has described Hillsdale College as a ”citadel of conservatism.”

Let’s stop there. Is that right?

LARRY P. ARNN, PRESIDENT, HILLSDALE COLLEGE: The truth in all three of those sentences. It’s an old college. It’s 165 years old now. The reason it’s a bastion or fortress or ”citadel of conservatism” is that it’s very stiff and stern about its old document and it started in 1844. It’s a very beautiful document. It founded it, it’s the reason I decided I wanted to work with 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 the Declaration of Independence. So, that kind of conservatism. The conservatism tied to the liberalism of the American Founding.

LAMB: What about this refusal of government funding?

ARNN: Well, that’s a modern phenomenon. As the government funding is a modern phenomenon, the government funding of college is 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. Our country is very unusual. The society is separate from the government. 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 are going to go bankrupt, if you don’t take it. I recommended on the basis of the taskforce report that we have to start taking this money.” And the vote was 16-2 against it. And this is in ’66 or ’67, I have the minutes. And then there was a prayer for the college after they voted that down. So, there is 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 at Hillsdale. And then in the Carter administration it happened that they wrote to all the colleges that weren’t Title IV compliant and said that, ”You have to be, if you are going to take the student aid.” And we got into an administrative hearing and then a lawsuit, then it 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 – it wasn’t originally designed to be aid to the college but to the student, and so we run it on private resources alone.

LAMB: How many students?

ARNN: Thirteen hundred and fifty right now.

LAMB: What’s the tuition?

ARNN: It’s about $19,000.00

LAMB: How many professors?

ARNN: About 130. It’s about 10 to one.

LAMB: And where is it physically located and why?

ARNN: The South Central Michigan. And it was put there – was on the frontier there, of course, in 1844. And they were mostly New England preachers, who were also abolitionists. I was just one of the early and my argument is greatest of the abolitionists’ colleges. And our charter, we think is the first one ever written that guarantees men and women, black and white all alike.

And so, they come up 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 4,000 and now it’s you know a metropolis, it’s 10,000.

LAMB: How many other colleges or universities in the United States have the same basic rule of taking no federal statement?

ARNN: Well, I know about Grove City. And I’ve heard of others that may claims. Grove City College in Pennsylvania, an old college, nice college. Good place, I think. I’ve not been there, but I know good things about them.

LAMB: I want to show you an extract from an interview in 1991. And I’ll ask you to tell us about the individual, but listen carefully to what he says.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

BRIAN LAMB: Is there such a think that it’s built up over the years as Martin Gilbert, Inc. I mean in other words, were – have you got a big force behind you that helps to do research in secretarism?

MARTIN GILBERT: No. I always believed in doing it oneself. I’ve always done on my own research. I was very lucky indeed, that 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, two people can call for six. And one of my assistance Larry Arnn is now running a policy study unit in Claremont in California. He was extremely good, but unfortunately fell in love with my secretary, so he married her and she is also in California. And then I got another assistant who came and, this is 1971, and I fell in love with her.

(VIDEO ENDS)

LAMB: Tell us about Martin Gilbert.

ARNN: Yes, he is Sir Martin Gilbert now. He is a very great man. He is 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 the Bradley Prize. It’s a Bradley Foundation in Milwaukee gives prices 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.

LAMB: This was Oxford?

ARNN: You know 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 is the man. You know he is very great man. He is a wonderful human being and a friend of mine you know today. Of course, I met my wife working in his house and you know she is still my wife after all that time. But when I first met him, you know I noticed in the clip, he is a younger man that he is now, but he is still great as you know are you in the clip too.

LAMB: Yes, quite a bit younger. But what’s the connection between Winston Churchill and Sir Martin Gilbert and Hillsdale College?

ARNN: Well, I – after I went to Hillsdale, I mean he and I have preserved our friendship for a long time now. And I proofread his books off and on for decades and see him when I go over there. And when he came to America, he used to always come to Claremont and spend an extra day, and we go driving around Southern California together.

LAMB: Where is Claremont?

ARNN: 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 he came to visit. And he was there over the weekend of September 11, 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 has been working on it really since 1962 as the biographer since ’68.

And this great biography is very large. It’s almost too large to read although he would kick me for saying that. And that’s mini volumes of documents and what’s not finished is the document volumes, the narrated volumes in – numbering eight 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, so you can read the original stuff for yourself. It’s kind of like C-SPAN on paper. And then he has got 7 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 together, Hillsdale College and Martin Gilbert.

LAMB: How old is Sir Martin?

ARNN: He is 72 or 3 – 73. No 72 I think, maybe 73 in October.

LAMB: You also have the archives of William F. Buckley, Jr. How did that…

ARNN: No, we don’t.

LAMB: You do not?

ARNN: 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.

LAMB: How vast is that?

ARNN: Thousands. It’s very big. And you know you go there, you can 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 him put online where you can find them and read him. He is 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 liked the articles. They’re good.

LAMB: So go back to – we’d like to make connections here, go back to Claremont Institute. What is that and who funds that?

ARNN: That’s a think tank. It’s in Southern California. It was started by a bunch of graduate students of whom I happen to be one. And you know it still goes. It – we had the idea. We were studying. It was a very exciting time in our lives. We were studying with what I still believe are very great teachers led by Harry Jaffa, a Lincoln and Aristotle scholar, and a great man.

And we got into the American Revolution and Lincoln through – 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 then later work – working backwards from Lincoln, he came to see that Lincoln never said that and Lincoln was right in what he said. All honor to Jefferson who had the forecast to inject into a merely revolutionary situation an abstract truth applicable to all men and all times to be a stumbling block to harbingers of reappearing tyranny; a beautiful thing.

Lincoln said that, and that’s a paraphrase of what he said but close. And so we thought, wow, read this stuff, this stuff is very beautiful. The American – United States of America 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 and 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 John M. Olin Foundation, which is dissolved now and in 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 you know there are thousands of people who give it support.

LAMB: I want to run an old recruitment video. It’s not a great video, but it will make a point of – for Hillsdale College. I think this is back in the ’80s. Let’s look at it.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

RONALD REAGAN: Hillsdale deserves the appreciation of all who labored for freedom. Your creative outreach on national issues enables little Hillsdale to cast such a long shadow.

VOICEOVER: Hillsdale’s keen independence opens the door for your educational advancement and personal development.

GEORGE ROCHE: Hillsdale College is truly unique. We’re unique because we won’t take government money and we 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.

VOICEOVER: We teach you not only what to learn, but more important, how to learn and why to learn.

(VIDEO ENDS)

LAMB: So, how did you get the President to do that?

ARNN: Of course I wasn’t there then, but, I knew him too, Ronald Reagan. Reagan was interested in Hillsdale. There are some letters in which he mentions it, and he was on the campus once and appeared at the college another time, if I remember correctly, of course it was when I wasn’t working there.

And he took interest because of this dispute that we had with the Department of Education, because Title IV of the Higher Education Act is 400-roughly pages long. 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 IV. And he said it wasn’t of any use, I wouldn’t be able to read it.

And so, we – there is a lot of reasons why we don’t want to comply with that thing, one being 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.

LAMB: I want to try this – use some language, and you correct me at anytime, but I want to ask you about this before we move on. The last person you saw in there was George Roche who was the President of the College.

ARNN: Correct.

LAMB: And if my understanding is correct, he died in 2006?

ARNN: He did.

LAMB: You replaced him?

ARNN: Yes, I did.

LAMB: But when you replaced him, Hillsdale was in the national spotlight for – there was a murder or suicide on the campus. George – do you want to explain it?

ARNN: Yes, 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; a hard to confirm or harder 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 so it was right in my opinion for him to retire.

And that is that story, and that was George Roche.

LAMB: 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?

ARNN: It happened pretty fast in regard to him. And I think that the suicide was in November, and I think he retired before the month was out. I mean I think maybe in 10 days.

In my own case, yes you know you don’t remember your pains. It’s one of the blessings of the human soul. But I was, of course – you know to run a college is to worry.

Colleges are precious and fragile things, in my opinion, and ours is precious and fragile. It has been wonderfully successful. But think of all the trouble in the world. You know 3 years from 2001 to 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. 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 you know the college year ends in June. We had a good year, and it has been good.

The American people are very generous people, and we watch our cost very closely. I told you what our tuition number is. That’s low for a college rank like ours is. And we – our cost per student has been going up less than the rate of inflation for some years now.

LAMB: What’s your endowment?

ARNN: Well, it depends on when you are asking me, but what it was, it was about 300 million and what it is now, it’s about 250, something like that.

LAMB: Compared to the most and biggest endowment in the country, Harvard is like 30-some billion?

ARNN: I think we lost – it’s a 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 – we have gifts and endowment and student revenues. And that’s what we’ve got.

LAMB: I am holding in my hands something called Imprimis. And I read – the last place I read 1.6 million subscribers.

ARNN: Yes, a little over 1.7 now.

LAMB: This is you. Back in 2008 when you – do you write this or do you speak it?

ARNN: I wrote that. I spoke it too, but I wrote it first. That’s how it gets done. And to be in Imprimis, Imprimis is 35 years old now, and 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 is no obligation.

We won’t give your name to anybody else. We never do. And it’s kind of an institution now. And to get into it, there is of course big demand for places in it. And it’s only once a month. So to get in it, you have to give a speech for Hillsdale College, and then it has to good and it has to be something we think would make a nice Imprimis.

LAMB: And Imprimis stands in Latin as in the first place.

ARNN: That’s correct.

LAMB: Who named it and how long has it been around?

ARNN: It started in ’72, I guess, and somebody working at the college then. I’ve heard – and you know the people involved, I can say George Roche was involved and Ron Trowbridge was involved and a really great guy who is the son of one of the leading lights of Detroit history, a man named Clark Durant, who is still a businessman in Detroit and runs charter schools and private schools for inter-city kids. Crossroad schools they are called. Those three guys, is the story as I hear it, really started building it.

LAMB: In this Imprimis – I think I saw somewhere and you don’t know exactly what I am talking about. There is $608 million capital and endowment campaign to run through 2012. My first question is why is it 608 million, why not just 600 million?

ARNN: That’s an excellent question. I think it’s because we – and what we think we need and we multiply 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 it rose. It was started ought to be a $500 million capital campaign and we’ve made that and that account gives some pledges and buildings and all that.

We’ve gone past that. Not by much, but a little. And we decided that it – you know a bunch of staff came up and we need some more money and so we’re still working on it. And I think when we redid the budget, 108 million is what came up and so we called it that.

LAMB: In other Imprimis issues that I have in front of me. Here is one with rational Rush Limbaugh, ”Do Conservatives Need to Get Beyond Reagan?” Here is one by Mark Steyn. It’s a recent one ”Live free or die!” He lives in New Hampshire. There is one here by John O’ Sullivan he used 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?

ARNN: We do. Yes, sir.

LAMB: When did that happen?

ARNN: Year-and-a-half ago.

LAMB: Why?

ARNN: Well, the college had a relationship with her. She has spoke at the college on several occasions. And it just so happened that I knew her for a long time. And so I had the crazy idea. We happened to have a really great Art Department at Hillsdale College including a great painter who is the head of it named Sam Knecht and that – a really great sculptor named Tony Frudakis who is from a sort of old sculpting family.

And I saw some of his work and I thought there needs to be a really great best of Winston Churchill. I don’t know of one, meaning no aspersion to anybody who has 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 four of them on spot. And they talked to me into two modern people, recent people, people who have lived in our recent memories. And one is Thatcher and one is Reagan and the argument – because I was sort of against that. I think Churchill is as modern as you should go. You’ll find out about him as time goes on.

But then, those two people had particular connections to the college, and so it seemed to be that was OK. And the board and we sort of settled it up that way. That’s how it came to happen.

LAMB: So how many total years did you work with Sir Martin Gilbert on Churchill?

ARNN: Three years, full time.

LAMB: And of all the time that you’ve thought and read about Winston Churchill, what’s the main thing you take away?

ARNN: 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 his greatest book called, ”Marlborough: His Life and Times.”

He is describing how Marlborough won his battles. And it becomes a commentary, in my opinion, it’s – of course, its nothing asserted by Churchill, but on Churchill he says that, ”The mere aspirant after a type of character only shows his hopeless inferiority, nothing but genius, the daemon in 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 thematic sense in players’ republic. And I think Churchill is an example of a very great soul meant to lead in politics.

LAMB: Where are you from originally?

ARNN: Arkansas.

LAMB: Where?

ARNN: Well, I was born in the Panhandle of Texas. My dad was working for Phillips Petroleum. And he went to college which was an enormous fact in his family and his town, but they were Arkansas people. So, he decided after few years doing that to become a school teacher, move back to Arkansas and I grew up where he taught most of his life and lived until he died in Pocahontas, Arkansas, another large town.

LAMB: Where do you go to college?

ARNN: I went to Arkansas State University, the local place. Decided with three friends of mine, I’m 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 had always wanted 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 going to be a lawyer from a good school.” And then in my last semester in Arkansas State University with a man named Jeff Wallen who lives in Washington now – I had to take it, I would have never done it. He had a terrible reputation; arrogant, difficult, you know he is a great man. I had to read Plato’s Republic.

And we are reading in the first chapter, the first book and there’s the argument with Thrasymachus. And after Socrates wins that argument, Glaucon, an ambitious young man, challenges Socrates, ”Show me Socrates that justice is good, even if by practicing it, 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 sake.” And I can remember thinking, wow. I would like to know the answer to that question. So, I didn’t go to the law school. I went to graduate school.

LAMB: Where?

ARNN: Claremont, California. The Claremont Graduate – University it is now.

LAMB: Masters or you are a Ph.D.?

ARNN: Ph.D.

LAMB: …and what was your thesis about?

ARNN: Winston Churchill. I wrote about him in the First World War and a slight dissertation, so it’s – as good as they are. And my 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 Omdurman, of Cartoon, had killed General Gordon of British hero and so, Kitchener went down there to avenge that. And they won 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 as if it were a tragedy. When the Durvishes come over the hill and the British – there is a beautiful paragraph 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, ”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 – 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 free government contains the seeds of its own destruction in itself.

He’s afraid you see, all his life – he writes in 1925 that, ”Mankind has never been in this position before without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, he is 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 war can do to you than to join in the policy of that man. So I started figuring that out when I was writing my dissertation.

LAMB: So Claremont Institute set up right after you got your Ph.D.?

ARNN: Well, it was started while I was over there with my friends Peter Schramm and Chris Flannery and Tom Silver, the main one. He is 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.

So anyway, we were very close people, very tight, still are. Matter fact Peter Schramm married my sister. And so we started this thing and they, 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 will – 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 kind of same thing expect maybe dumber. And 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 so I joined the staff, right? And in ’85, I became the president for various reasons that they thought I could. And so I did that for 15 years and made a go of it.

And then in 2000, after this ’99 thing you mentioned, I got to talking to Hillsdale College. And I didn’t – I’m running on now, but I didn’t want to – I didn’t – how do you go about that I could be a college president, and I very much did not want to be, because most of my friends are 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 man named Brodbeck, Bill Brodbeck who is the Chairman of the Board now, a very great man, a very close friend of mine.

And he kept calling and make – I kept, at first I started getting messages, they want to talk to you, and I say, no. But you know why would you do that? And then I read this old document in the college, and I talked to Bill Brodbeck and found him to be such a spectacular man.

And this old document in the college, which is very beautifully you can 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 would obey it. Others would be asked to obey it then.

And so we managed the college that way. And that means it’s – I try to make it hard 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 is no reason for us to argue at all.

LAMB: Recently you announced the Washington Program run by Virginia Thomas.

ARNN: Yes.

LAMB: Tell us about that.

ARNN: Well, Virginia Thomas is an old friend of mine. She is a friend of mine of long standing. She is not actually that old. She is married to Clarence Thomas. And he is a man that I admire very greatly and 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 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 that’s going on that in my opinion requires exploration. Now we think that the Declaration of Independence is a first step in a development and so is the Constitution. And they are good. They are great. But the real single 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 abnegations of what they mean. And the trouble with that argument is that it can’t be true in one specific 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 400 or 500 pages of rules about how to run the small rural liberal arts college. Many, by the way, more pages of rules than the liberal arts college has in its own running. And, by the way, it’d be a miserable place if it had that many. Nobody would 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 in 51st federalist. He says, what is government, but the profoundest of all relation – reflections on human nature. If men were angels, no government would be needed. If angels were to govern men, neither internal nor 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 to shout that that’s so, the first step is to invite people to read and to think. That’s what we do.

LAMB: We found on YouTube one of the young students at Hillsdale. His name is Jared Hulcy. Do you know him?

ARNN: Yes.

LAMB: Is he still in school?

ARNN: I think he has graduated now; a red-headed boy. I didn’t know his name until I saw him on – I watched the video last night cause I had information that you were going to show it to me. And he is a good kid.

LAMB: This is just – student with a camcorder showing the school, and we’ll just get on little bits of it and get you to describe what you are hearing from him.

ARNN: OK.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

JARED HULCY: Well, welcome to Hillsdale College, the center for education, educating for liberty since 1844. We are standing here in freezing cold Hillsdale, Michigan, in front of the Central Hall, the original building which was built in 1844 at Hillsdale College.

Over to my left 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, which 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 the Civil War and serve than any other school in the country except for West Point Military Academy.

(END OF VIDEO)

LAMB: Now what did he mean by War of Northern Aggression as we know it? Is that we, Hillsdale, or is that a he, Jared Hulcy.

ARNN: I think Jared is from Texas; I’m from Arkansas. But, no the college very much celebrates its connection to the Civil War and to the Union Army. And Jared was making fun of that fact. Jared, as you know is a college student, and he is a good kid. He is a fine young man, but it’s not widely so known on the campus, if that’s your question.

LAMB: You know whenever you go on to college campuses like you do on Hillsdale, I am sure – I have never been there, but Lane and Kendall Halls and all that, those are people.

ARNN: Yes.

LAMB: Why did people want their names on these buildings?

ARNN: Well, Harry Kendall – those 2 buildings Lane and the big building in the foreground, Central Hall, is old. That was first built and dedicated on the 4th of July, 1854. And then Kendall on the left, as you were looking, and then Lane on the right, those are new. Those are 3 years old.

And Harry Kendall and Marguerite, who just passed away from Portland in their 90s, they just loved Hillsdale College for 35 or 40 years. They gave us scholarship money…

LAMB: How much did they give you?

ARNN: Uh, I have to remember, I think they gave us $3 million or $4 million. And Bob Lane from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, a big supporter of the college for long time, loved the college, gave us $4 million or $5 million.

LAMB: And is that primarily because they agree with the philosophy of the school here?

ARNN: Mostly that’s the motive. The college is a cause and you have to state that cause carefully, because, see, the college is a unique thing and a very odd thing. The college is trying to be what it was 150 years ago, but the world has changed a lot. So 150 years ago, everybody ran the way we ran. Now everybody runs with very significant revenues from the government.

LAMB: Here is another clip. This would be a – looking at some of the – one of the classrooms.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

HULCY: Welcome to Lane. We are in Lane Hall right now, and I just want to give you all a quick tour of a classroom. Quite a bit different than your standard A&M size classroom, seats about 20 or so people, that’s a normal size class.

In my freshman English class, we have now – since several people have dropped out, we have 11 students. Freshman English, 101, required for everybody. It’s crazy. I’ll tell you what…

(VIDEO ENDS)

LAMB: What do you think he means by crazy?

ARNN: First of all, I am interpreting the mind of Jared Hulcy. So who knows what means by any of this. But I think what it’s like. I can tell you that. It’s 10-to-1 student faculty ratio. The faculty are teachers, they have – they teach 3 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 had to take a full semester course on the Constitution of United States.

If you go to BA, which is the vast majority people do, you have to take a language. Everybody has to take two or three courses in 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.

LAMB: Recent statistic I saw that only something like 53 percent – don’t poll me this figure – people that enter college get out within 6 years. What’s the graduation rate at your college?

ARNN: Well, I only have the 4-year graduation rate. I happend – just been – the only reason I can answer your question is I’ve just been looking that up because I saw that study that you saw. Our 4-year rate right now is about 70 percent to 69 something. And that – here is the way that works, that’s – and I don’t know what our 6-year rate is, it will 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 4-year rate is about 70.

LAMB: What kind of a name is Arnn?

ARNN: It’s a German extraction, and possibly it’s – it was Erin (ph). I have a great aunt, Judy Night (ph) who studies this stuff. And if it was Erin (ph), we were Jews, early Jews coming into the country having been Jews for a long time. But if it was Arnn then we’re middle of 19th century immigrants. That’s how it works.

LAMB: More from Jared Hulcy, this is about your construction going on.

ARNN: OK.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

HULCY: This is called the Quad. Really meant that there were 4 buildings surrounding it, Central Hall, and then, of course, across – all the way across the lawn, that is Sanga (ph) over there. And this is all going to be turned 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 Mossey Library, and then the new building which stands right back there, that the people are in front of, that is the Grewcock Center. That is our new student union.

(VIDEO ENDS)

LAMB: Mossey, money from somebody named Mossey?

ARNN: Don Mossey, Chairman of the Board Emeritus now, member of the Board for 30 years.

LAMB: Huge construction – huge buildings, massive construction.

ARNN: Well, Jared is not fully accurate. We don’t actually plan 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 I’m 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 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 theme because we think in colleges things should point up.

LAMB: There was an interesting piece in the New York Times last couple of days about an honor code developed by some people at Harvard you know – I know you know what I’m going to ask you – Masters of Business Administration, MBAs at Harvard, a bunch of their students are clearly upset with what was going on in the world, decided to create an honor, take an oath, and you can find out on the Internet.

And there are 585 students around the country that have signed these MBA types, and over close to 200 of – I think 800 or 1,000 at Harvard had signed up with this. I’m just 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 interests of my shareholders, co-workers, customers, and the society in which we operate. I will manage my enterprise in good faith, guarding against decisions and behavior that advance my own narrow ambitions but harm the enterprise and the societies it serves. I will understand and uphold, both in letter and in spirit, the laws and contracts governing my own conduct 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 that 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?

ARNN: 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 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.

LAMB: Now, you all have an honor code and I’ll read it.

ARNN: OK.

LAMB: ”A Hillsdale College student is honorable in conduct, honest in word and deed, dutiful in study and service and respectful of the rights of others. Through education, the student rises to self-government.”

How long has that been around?

ARNN: Just about five years. It’s a resurrection of something not dissimilar from the 19th century.

LAMB: Why was that necessary five years ago?

ARNN: Well, we think, in my view, I’ve learned a lot working in the college and there is something I didn’t know. And 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 are 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 you know, I hang around. And I found that a lot are 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 there, 18 to 21 year age, they can do anything we can do. They just never did before. So you got a – and their biological urge, their thing is they got to grow up. And so, if you are 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 said, our retention rates have risen a lot, that has something to do with it.

LAMB: We have another strange Harvard connection from an article written by Bill McGurn. He used to be the chief speechwriter for George Walker Bush. This was from June 2nd of this year and the title on it is ”How Hillsdale beats Harvard.”

Here is 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. So the Reserve Officer Training Corps remains banned from Harvard’s campus. Military recruiters are grudgingly permitted only because the Solomon Act requires the university either to grant them access or to give up its government funding – about 15 percent of its operating budget, according to the latest annual financial report.”

Now, you also don’t have ROTC on campus.

ARNN: Right.

LAMB: What’s the similarity here?

ARNN: Well, we don’t have it because we’d love to have it. And – but you can’t have it without this Title Four the Higher Education Act. And so the reason we don’t have it is because we won’t, we don’t want all that mess. And we were good 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 – as I heard this yesterday, one of our boys Jack Shannon (ph) was commissioned on graduation day and he is 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. Hulcy 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.

LAMB: But you will allow recruiters on your campus?

ARNN: Oh yes, very welcome. And they – and he quotes – in the article where Bill McGurn was on it. Bill McGurn’s 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 ever get you to come in campus, and we were sitting around and he is asking about the military on campus.

And I told him there is 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 this is Bill McGurn. His dad was a Marine and 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 you know there has just always been a lot of military service in Hillsdale, and we don’t teach – we never did really have military training as any kind of a discipline or a course at the college. But the college seeks to inspire a love of the principles and the Constitution of the United State of America. And that drives young men and women to want to go and serve.

LAMB: Do you think – no, not do you think, but what do you think the difference is between getting an education in Harvard and getting an education in Hillsdale?

ARNN: Well, of course, they’re you know really good at many very important things. In Hillsdale you know – 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 those ends.

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 in the east, there is doubtless the similar thing, but…

LAMB: You started out as an institution that was for the abolition of slavery.

ARNN: Very much.

LAMB: And for anyone coming to your institution of any color, creed and all that background, how are you doing today with minorities?

ARNN: We don’t have a lot. We don’t count, of course. So I can’t tell you how many we got.

LAMB: Why don’t you count?

ARNN: Well, because we never have, because it doesn’t matter, doesn’t have 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 principle was – you know I can paraphrase it is what I can do. He asked what should be done for the free man. 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 has been getting so much more of your pity than he has of your justice.

So, our principal 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. And it’s easy to find out what we do. It’s stated in that honor code that 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 is doing that at our place.

LAMB: Jared Hulcy, we have one more clip from the YouTube. He takes us on a little tour of his dorm room, yes.

(VIDEO BEGINS)

HULCY: Here is our freshly opened door. As we walk into the room, that’s David’s den. He is very neat and tidy, as you can see. He has his chair and everything in desk, and bed obviously don’t need to explain that one to you.

This is a one galloway 3-10 (ph) 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 are going for here. Here is our lovely Hillsdale Chargers’ flag, which I have displayed prominently. And here is my desk.

(VIDEO ENDS)

LAMB: No question that is a conservative room, a conservative fellow. And a lot of the speakers who come to you are conservative. Any concern or do you get around this someway that you’re only getting one point of view? Do you get the Democratic Party, Liberal, in the new tradition point of view at your school?

ARNN: Well, of course, we do, I mean, in a variety of ways. We have the college democrats. We have – I think there is a kid I heard today – yesterday that there is 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 students asked me, I am not a conservative, does that matter? Or if they say even better, I am 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 at full of myself and I knew a lot, you know and then I encountered one of the greatest pieces of literature ever written. My world was turned upside down.

That’s not the last time that that’s ever happened to me. So we’re not trying to – we are trying to train liberally educated people. And that means, by the way, the vast majority of what we teach every student. And about half of 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 – if you are doing that, if you’re thinking that all things might have a value of abiding nature, not because they are old, 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.

LAMB: You have a lot of speakers both on your campus and your new Washington program. How often do you have the Friday morning breakfast?

ARNN: Once a month.

LAMB: Do you have to pay for all those people to do that or they do this gratis.

ARNN: A lot do it gratis and some get paid. It varies. And in general, if they are talking to students, we don’t pay them or we don’t pay them a lot. An off-campus speaker, sometimes they command fees, and we pay them.

We pay – I’ll give you an example, when Martin Gilbert comes to teach – of course, he is a distinguished Fellow, he has a salary for that. But he wanted to focus on getting the Churchill biography finished now, so we would deploy 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.

LAMB: About out of time. What’s your biggest concern about your future at the school?

LAMB: 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 God.

LAMB: Dr. Larry Arnn, President of the Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, thank you very much.

ARNN: Thank you, sir.