Why Hillsdale? The Christian liberal arts school hosting Erika Kirk for commencement

(RNS) — Charlie Kirk usually dismissed college as a waste.

The far-right activist and Turning Point USA co-founder by no means earned a school diploma, a reality he proudly touted in his 2022 ebook “The College Scam.” But in a February 2025 speak, I described one exception.

“There is no place like Hillsdale College,” Kirk said. “The students are different. They’re focused on the right things.”

It wasn’t simply Hillsdale’s resume. The Christian school’s political affect, he added, had made it a “cultural powerhouse.”

“The philosophical basis of this new administration is largely an outgrowth from the hard work that Hillsdale has been doing over the last couple of decades,” Kirk stated.

Months later, longtime Hillsdale President Larry Arnn praised Kirk at his September 2025 memorial service, noting that Kirk, who was assassinated on Sept. 10, 2025, had accomplished over 30 on-line Hillsdale programs. Arnn awarded Kirk and his widow, Turning Point USA CEO Erika Kirk, with honorary levels. Now, Erika Kirk will ship Hillsdale’s commencement tackle on Saturday (May 9).

“Hillsdale represents something rare in our time — a steadfast devotion to faith, learning, and the principles that sustain a free nation,” Erika Kirk stated within the press release asserting she would communicate on the school’s commencement.

In latest a long time, Hillsdale, which has an endowment of more than $970 millionhas gained recognition for his efforts to fight “activist,” left-leaning training by itself campus, in Okay-12 constitution faculties and in state-level training insurance policies; simply this week, Florida launched particulars of a controversial Advanced Placement US History alternative that solely recommends Hillsdale historian Wilfred McClay’s “Land of Hope” textbook. The textbook goals to acknowledge the faults of America’s previous with out making them defining options of the nation’s story — McClay has rejected the concept slavery is “part of America’s enduring makeup.”

On the nationwide degree, Hillsdale has been repeatedly enlisted by the Trump White House to form narratives about American historical past and civic engagement. As a part of President Donald Trump’s Freedom 250 initiative, the school has labored with the Trump administration to provide “The Story of America“educational video series and to curate content for a fleet of mobile historical exhibits. The efforts frame the president as part of the lineage of American leaders who made the nation the “greatest republic ever to exist.”

Hillsdale spokesperson Emily Stack Davis attributed Hillsdale’s nationwide affect to rising curiosity within the school’s mission, which she summarized as a dedication to “teach and defend the principles of the Declaration of Independence.”

“What has changed is that more Americans are now asking serious questions about education, citizenship, and the country’s founding principles,” she advised RNS. “The College’s broader work, including online courses, Imprimis, K-12 classical education, our Washington, DC presence, and our 250th anniversary programming, grows out of the same conviction: self-government depends on citizens who know their history and can reason carefully about public questions.”

Some welcome Hillsdale’s burgeoning affect as a part of a much-needed return to patriotic training, whereas others worry the school is endorsing an incomplete, ideologically pushed model of America’s previous. While observers debate the objectivity of Hillsdale’s curricula, they agree that Hillsdale’s mental repute is a part of its enchantment to the Trump administration.

“They’re trying to bring some academic heft to the Make America Great Again movement,” stated John Fea, distinguished professor of American historical past at Messiah University in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.

Founded in 1844 by Baptist abolitionists, Hillsdale is residence to roughly 1,600 undergraduates on a campus nestled within the hills of southern Michigan. It’s recognized for its rejection of each federal funding and id politics and for attracting achieved college students focused on its classical liberal arts mannequin, which emphasizes the “spiritual and intellectual inheritance of the Western Tradition.”

Caroline Welton, a 26-year-old Hillsdale pupil, described the school as “a place with serious people, with deep thinkers, with people who are good-hearted and ambitious and generous.” She stated the school’s embrace of main texts and small, seminar-style lessons is a part of what inspired her to maneuver from Texas to attend.

Despite its religion origins, Hillsdale lengthy had a repute for prioritizing its liberal arts and conservative identity over its spiritual ties. It has framed its rejection of federal funding as a option to keep away from authorities management, and it does not supply particular programming to girls or racial and ethnic minorities. Per its websitethe school rejects “the dehumanizing, discriminatory trend of so-called ‘social justice’ and ‘multicultural diversity,’ which judges individuals not as individuals, but as members of a group.”

But recently, Hillsdale stakeholders advised RNS they’ve seen a renewed religion emphasis. In 2019, the school opened a $28.5 million, 27,000-square-foot chapel with a dedication that featured an tackle from Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. The school has expanded the Christian choices in its free on-line course catalogand in 2021 his chaplain, a minister ordained within the Anglican Church in North America and employed in 2016, went from half time to full time. While the school has no faith or chapel requirement for its college students, it has the reputation of hosting a religious, majority-Christian pupil physique — a lot in order that the school has attracted a church plant from Christ Church, the Moscow, Idaho-based church of stridently conservative pastor Doug Wilson.

In July 2025 podcastWilson stated he hoped the church plant would attain Hillsdale college students, though the church advised RNS it has no affiliation with the school.

“They’ve definitely, over the past 10 years, turned more back to their Christian roots,” stated Jennifer Burns, head of school at American Faith Academya Christian classical training on-line school that has despatched a handful of scholars to Hillsdale.

Hillsdale’s spiritual flip occurred underneath the management of Arnn, who was named president in 2000. Well-connected in right-wing political circles, Arnn is co-founder of the right-wing Claremont Institute and has served on the Heritage Foundation board since 2002. He has framed training as a “battleground” over the “American way of life,” and underneath his presidency Hillsdale entered the Okay-12 training area with the 2010 launch of the Barney Charter School Initiativewhich enabled dozens of Hillsdale-approved constitution faculties to open throughout the US These faculties supply classical curricula and are sometimes embraced by conservative teams as public-school options with stronger pedagogy and with out what they see as left-leaning approaches to race, id, sexuality and citizenship.

Hillsdale additionally made its Okay-12 curriculum available to current faculties, and in 2011 began providing free, on-line, not-for-credit college-level programs that have been famously marketed on “The Rush Limbaugh Show.” Its repute as a resume builder paid off. In 2020, when Trump fashioned a 1776 Commission — an advisory board supposed to fight vital race principle and the 1619 Project by “restoring patriotic education” — Arnn was tapped to be chair.

“The 1619 project became a kind of symbol of all that was wrong with education and American history,” stated Fea, of the Pulitzer Prize successful challenge by The New York Times Magazine and Nikole Hannah-Jones that explored American historical past by way of the lens of slavery and the Black expertise. Fea defined that Hillsdale marketed itself as a supply of stability rooted in Western values ​​amid a quickly altering cultural panorama. “Hillsdale was uniquely positioned to supply another curriculum.

The fee, although short-lived, culminated in a report that slammed “identity politics” and “group rights” as “dividing Americans into oppressed and oppressor groups.”

The following 12 months, Hillsdale publicized its personal free, Okay-12 1776 curriculum, which promised an unbiased remedy of American historical past.

The resume drew criticism for saying early‑twentieth‑century Progressivism “strongly criticized the principles of the Declaration of Independence,” and for a 2021 version that stated the Civil Rights Movement “almost immediately turned to programs that ran counter to the lofty ideals of the Founders.” The American Historical Association has criticized the challenge as “erasing the complex and contested voices that together made the United States,” although Hillsdale has defended its 1776 resume as “comprehensively” protecting “points of shame.”

By Trump’s second time period, Hillsdale had grow to be the administration’s go-to academic partner. The school is a part of the America 250 Civics Education Coalition that features greater than 40 organizations, together with Turning Point USA, the Heritage Foundation and Moms for Liberty. Alongside the US Department of Education, these teams aim to craft civics programming that can “reignite the fires of patriotism.”

Charlie Kirk, left, with Dr. Arnn from Hillsdale College through the National Leadership Seminar hosted by Hillsdale College on the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown in Phoenix, Ariz. on Feb. 18, 2025. (Photo © Hillsdale College)

As a part of the Trump-aligned Freedom 250 initiative, Hillsdale has co-created the White House’s American historical past video series — which incorporates cameos from Trump, Arnn, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Vice President JD Vance — and offered enter on the Trump administration’s “freedom trucks,” a fleet of cellular reveals that presents the nation as grounded in Western and Judeo-Christian rules. In common, the Hillsdale method to US historical past favors triumphalist narratives that remember American exceptionalism and depict shameful episodes in American historical past because the exception, not the rule.

“I think Hillsdale has cornered the market on sort of the Trump version of conservatism, so that the White House trusts Hillsdale to produce ideologically convenient content, especially including history,” stated Adam Laats, distinguished professor of training and historical past at Binghamton University. Laats stated that when Hillsdale’s curriculum is backed by the White House, it legitimizes deceptive historic interpretations.

“It’s really fundamentally dangerous to teach this kind of history and this kind of civics, especially when it is done as a patriotic alternative to the kind of teaching that allegedly goes on in most schools and colleges,” he stated.

Those in Hillsdale’s orbit body the school’s political partnerships not as political technique, however as a pure outgrowth of its experience. Burns described Hillsdale as “synonymous with a learned American citizen.”

“It doesn’t surprise me at all that the administration would look at them to be part of that conversation,” Burns stated. She added that in her view, Hillsdale’s involvement within the Freedom 250 effort is about conserving American historical past, not partisanship. (Freedom 250 is the Trump-aligned initiativeto not be confused with the bipartisan America 250 efforts.)

As Hillsdale’s model of mental patriotism continues to be platformed by the Trump administration, its rise and accelerated spiritual messaging appear parallel to the trajectory of TPUSA, which has additionally ramped up its faith programming lately. But to Welton pupil, Hillsdale is extra about pupil influence than about political clout. And to her, that is what makes Erika Kirk a logical selection for commencement speaker.

“Charlie and Erika represent a belief that young people can be serious, that they can make a difference, that there is hope for our future,” she stated.