The mission of Hillsdale College is to further “learning, character, faith and freedom,” but attorneys with the politically influential Christian school took part in efforts to create a slate of fake Michigan electors in an effort to overturn the 2020 election in favor of Donald Trump, according to The New York Times.
“How a Conservative Christian College Got Mixed Up in the 2020 Election Plot,” an article in the Times’ Sunday magazine, details efforts by school attorney Robert Norton and others to “deploy fake Trump electors.”
Larry P. Arnn
The article also says Larry P. Arnn, Hillsdale’s president, counseled U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, his “longtime friend,” to block certification of the vote in the House of Representatives.
Reporter Danny Hakim uses more than 6,600 words to answer the question: “How did a small college in Michigan, self-defined by the idea that the project of American democracy is the realization of millenniums of Western wisdom, get mixed up in a plot to subvert it?”
Hillsdale generates lengthy articles. Last April, Emma Green profiled the school in a 7,000-word piece for The New Yorker: “The Christian Liberal-Arts School at the Heart of the Culture Wars.”
Robert Norton
The school says Norton, its general counsel, along with Ian Northan, another attorney who has worked with Hillsdale, were both working in a “personal capacity” when they collaborated with Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer and the leader of Trump’s efforts to stay in office.
Hillsdale, which enrolls 1,600 students, is not as big or influential as Liberty University, but it has hosted many key conservative political and legal leaders, including Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Amy Coney Barrett, Federalist Society Co-chairman Leonard Leo, and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell.
Conservative conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza also has spoken at the school. D’Souza tried but failed to halt a defamation lawsuit brought against him over claims he made in the popular election denial film 2,000 Mules.
Arnn, who became the school’s leader in 2000 following a scandal, is well connected to key conservative and Christian political groups. He’s the vice chairman of the Claremont Institute, a board member at the Heritage Foundation and a member of the Council for National Policy, a leading conservative group.
Arnn’s predecessor, George Roche III, resigned after having an affair with his daughter-in-law, who killed herself in the school’s arboretum.
Reporting on Hillsdale associates’ efforts to keep Trump in office probably won’t lessen its influence or slow its efforts to spread its version of education to colleges and K-12 “classical academies” nationwide.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis hired a Hillsdale leader to help him convert a liberal school, New College of Florida, into a “Hillsdale of the South.” Florida is home to at least nine Hillsdale-affiliated schools.
While President, Trump asked Arnn to lead his 1776 Commission, or 1776 Project.
In 2022, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced a plan to launch Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools across the state. Lee called Hillsdale “the standard-bearer in quality curriculum and the responsibility of preserving American liberty.”
While President, Trump asked Arnn to lead his 1776 Commission, or 1776 Project, which was designed to promote “patriotic education.” The commission’s “1776 Report,” which was released just before Trump left office, cited five challenges to America’s principles: slavery, progressivism, fascism, communism, and racism and identity politics.
Hakim also reports that two fellows at Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C., campus are associate directors of Project 2025, a Heritage Foundation effort to prepare the next Republican president to lead a conservative administration unfettered by government employees who are said to lack sufficient loyalty.
For decades, Hillsdale has rejected federal aid rather than comply with federal rules governing race and gender discrimination. But according to the student paper, a lawsuit that says the school failed to establish policies to deal with sexual abuse on campus “could threaten Hillsdale College’s religious freedom by placing its policies under the authority of the federal government.” The lawsuit says Hillsdale’s tax-exempt status is a form of federal financial assistance.
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