Hillsdale Schools Columbia
The tiny college has much to teach the Ivy League about how to stand up for values.
By William McGurn, WSJ
March 17, 2025 5:34 pm ET
Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Mich., April 6, 2023. Photo: Chris duMond/Getty Images
Columbia University’s interim President Katrina Armstrong sounded unequivocal in a Saturday statement: “In this moment, I want to reiterate: Columbia University will stand by its values.”
The “moment” isn’t a good one for her university. Mahmoud Khalil, a former graduate student who helped lead last spring’s anti-Israel disruptions, was arrested at his university-owned apartment on March 8. The Justice Department says it is looking at whether Columbia’s handling of incidents “violated civil rights laws and included terrorism crimes.” On top of it all, President Trump is threatening to cancel $400 million Columbia receives from the federal government on the grounds that the school hasn’t done enough to combat antisemitism on campus.
What’s a university president to do? Columbia’s irresolute response to campus occupations has already claimed the resignation of one president. If Dr. Armstrong, a physician, is looking for an example of how an institution of higher learning stands up, there is an excellent model: tiny Hillsdale College.
On the surface, the two institutions have little in common. Columbia is a 270-year-old Ivy League university with 8,900 undergraduate and 26,000 graduate students. It is an urban campus in upper Manhattan and has a $14.8 billion endowment.
Hillsdale, by contrast, remains the small liberal-arts college it was at its founding in 1844. The campus is in rural Michigan and has a total enrollment of about 1,700. The endowment is roughly $900 million.
Hillsdale is thriving. But it faced its own challenge from the federal government in the 1970s, when the Department of Health, Education and Welfare threatened to cut off all government funds unless Hillsdale began counting students by race. Hillsdale would be considered a “recipient college” for the purpose of regulation even if the only government money it received came from student loans and Pell grants.
Like Columbia, Hillsdale issued a statement—saying it would “resist, by all legal means, any encroachments on its independence.” The college noted that its founding charter had declared it open to all persons, “irrespective of nationality, color, or sex”—notable for a school founded before the U.S. abolished slavery. In 1956 its undefeated football team refused to play in the Tangerine Bowl when game officials demanded it leave its black players home.
“Hillsdale believed that accepting money from the federal government would require compromises that a free university must not make,” says Larry Arnn, Hillsdale’s current president.
Refusal to compromise its principles wasn’t without costs. Hillsdale didn’t get anywhere near $400 million. Mr. Arnn says it was more like $1 million a year. That was a lot of money for a small college, and unless Hillsdale found a way to make up the shortfall, students receiving federal loans would have to drop out. Hillsdale students couldn’t even enroll in the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps without jeopardizing the school’s independent status.
But a funny thing happened. The college’s stand for its values brought it many new supporters—and donors.
Then there’s Columbia. Dr. Armstrong’s statement this weekend is typical of the modern academy: lofty, clichéd and maddeningly unspecific. She declared that “Columbia will do the right thing,” without spelling out what the school thinks that is.
Her statement makes it seem that Columbia is dying to tell the Trump administration to get stuffed—but is afraid of losing that $400 million. If she and her colleagues say what they really think, the taxpayer-funded party’s over. The school once boasted of its commitment to “diversity, equity and inclusion,” but its colleges and departments have been busy deleting or fiddling with their DEI statements on their web pages. Anything to keep the gravy train flowing.
In the unlikely event that Columbia decided to follow Hillsdale’s lead and forgo federal funding, the university would be freer to defend some of its practices on speech grounds. It would be liberated from Title VI and Title IX, which prohibit discrimination by educational institutions that take federal money.
But even without federal dollars, Columbia wouldn’t solve all its legal problems. It would still be subject to Title VII, which governs employment discrimination. On March 5, the acting chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that she would “hold accountable universities and colleges which have created a hostile-work environment for their Jewish employees.” New York state and local civil-rights laws also apply regardless of federal funding.
But breaking up with Uncle Sam would still be smart. All government dollars come with strings attached. If Columbia wants more freedom to live out its values, it will have to cut the federal funding cord.
“The word ‘college’ means partnership,” Mr. Arnn says, “which Aristotle writes requires the pursuit of a common good. If you cannot name the good, you have no partnership.” Columbia has much to learn from Hillsdale.
Write to mcgurn@wsj.com.
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