<\/p>\n
Larry Arnn, the president of Hillsdale College, is an outspoken proponent of race-blind admissions. Hillsdale was the first college in the country to ban discrimination in admissions. (Hillsdale College)<\/p>\n
A century before Martin Luther King\u2019s dream of a United States where his children would \u201cnot be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character,\u201d Michigan\u2019s Hillsdale College was\u00a0the first college<\/a>\u00a0to\u00a0prohibit discrimination in admissions<\/a>.<\/p>\n An early force for the abolition of slavery and\u00a0Abe Lincoln\u2019s presidential campaign<\/a>, more Hillsdale students enlisted to fight the Civil War for the Union than any western school, with 60 dying on the battlefield. So formidable was its equal rights reputation that it was a magnet for black, abolitionist speakers like Frederick Douglass. Under current President Larry Arnn, Hillsdale has continued to be a progressive voice, including its role in advancing access to better education for inner-city black students via charter schools.<\/p>\n Its reputation has attracted talented youth to Michigan like\u00a0Kayla Cash, an African-American from Rochester, N.Y.\u00a0<\/a>\u201cI came to Hillsdale because race is not a factor,\u201d she says. \u201cThey see me for my talents as a student.\u201d<\/p>\n So at a public hearing on Common Core state standards and on front pages last week,\u00a0Democrats and their media stooges<\/a>\u00a0tried to smear Hillsdale\u2019s reputation by framing its president as a bigot. I\u2019m not making this up.<\/p>\n \u201cHillsdale president blasted over race remark,\u201d screamed the Detroit Free Press\u2019s A1 headline, trumpeting Democratic attacks on Arnn for allegedly using a racial slur. \u201cIt\u2019s absolutely unbelievable to me that the president of an institution of higher learning would utter such a derogatory statement,\u201d roared Rep. David Knezek, D-Dearborn Heights.<\/p>\n But\u00a0the hearing transcript reveals<\/a>\u00a0that Democrats willfully took Arnn\u2019s comments out of context. Arnn\u2019s use of the term \u201cdark ones\u201d was clearly a description of Michigan education bureaucrats\u2019 crude practice of walking around campus counting Hillsdale students by the color of their skin. The real outrage here is the Michigan Education Department\u2019s (MDE) treatment of one of the state\u2019s most upstanding colleges. Arnn\u2019s contempt is understandable. In a 1999 visit to Hillsdale, the MDE criticized Hillsdale for not having a \u201cdiverse\u201d student body because it did not record racial criteria for its students \u2014 that is, it did not discriminate to achieve racial admissions quotas.<\/p>\n According to page 10 of the MDE\u2019s own 16-page report, \u201cthe team had to respond to this standard based on observation of the students on campus.\u201d That is, MDE bureaucrats took their clipboards and began literally recording which students were light-colored and which were dark-colored.<\/p>\n \u201cThat makes me uncomfortable,\u201d says Cash, who is a senior at Hillsdale. \u201cIf I had seen that, I would have been offended that they were judging students just by their skin color.\u201d<\/p>\n When Arnn\u00a0exposed this outrage<\/a>, an MDE spokeswoman\u00a0initially claimed the visit<\/a>\u00a0never happened. No wonder. Its report of the visit is disturbing evidence of how government has turned civil rights on its head into a quota system.<\/p>\n Arnn\u2019s real sin is that he\u2019s a prominent conservative who has opposed the Democratic education establishment on expanding charter schools and ending racial preferences. So Democrats got out the long knives. These McCarthyite tactics are all too familiar to conservatives who cross the Left\u2019s agenda.<\/p>\n Last year, Michigan Democrats tried to punish ex-Republican Party Chair Ron Weiser for his leading role in making Michigan a right-to-work state. After the successful vote, Weiser \u2014 like Arnn \u2014 awoke to a front page headline twisting months-old comments he made in Detroit to make him appear insensitive to minorities. The charge was absurd given that Weiser \u2014 a minority himself (Jewish) \u2014 is a longtime Detroit benefactor and ex-chairman of Washtenaw County\u2019s\u00a0United Negro College Fund<\/a>. Oh.<\/p>\n These Democratic smear campaigns hurt Michigan\u2019s image. The manufactured Arnn story was picked up by national media outlets like USA Today, bruising the image of a college that competes across 50 states for top students. In a state that has a long history of racial conflict, Hillsdale has been an ambassador of racial equality.<\/p>\n As president, Arnn<\/a>\u00a0has continued the school\u2019s tradition of advancing education for all. This summer, it hosted charter school principals ensuring all Americans have equal access to good schools. Arnn helped draft the 1996 California Civil Rights Initiative, which banned admissions discrimination and has led to an increase in California\u2019s black graduation rates. The college is a participant in inner-city student outreach programs like the\u00a0Detroit Compact<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Camp Enterprise<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cAt the highest goal of education, (it does not) make the slightest difference what color someone is. Any other view … reduces the human being to incidental and material characteristics,\u201d writes Arnn in his book \u201cLiberty and Learning.\u201d<\/p>\n That is welcomed diversity in a Michigan college system that has too often discriminated by race. It\u2019s a standard that Michigan\u2019s Left should celebrate, not denigrate.<\/p>\n