Friday, March 22, 2013

My College


http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF02683104#page-1 

Academic Questions December 1991, Volume 4, Issue 4, pp 10-12 

Hillsdale college - Warren Treadgold, Ralph Hancock, Rodler Morris, Thomas Payne

To the editor: As former professors at Hillsdale College who a few years ago formed half of its division of history and political science, we feel compelled to respond to John Reist’s article, “Hillsdale College: Holding Fast to Principle” (Winter 1990-1991). In our experience, neither Dr. Reist nor Hillsdale’s President George Roche cares much for academic excellence, that traditional liberal arts, or freedom of expression. Hillsdale is gravely deficient in all three.

For years the Hillsdale administration has neglected its academic program to pay for “outreach” activities designed to promote Dr. Roche, maintained a curriculum that requires no appreciable knowledge of Western culture, and used every possible means, including dismissals and threats of lawsuits, to silence dissent of any kind among faculty and students.

Hillsdale’s athletic and pre-professional programs receive so much more emphasis than traditional subjects that US News and World Report classes it among colleges where fewer than half the students are liberal arts majors. Within this category of colleges that give a back seat to the liberal arts, Hillsdale’s regional ranking seems mostly to reflect memories of the time before 1986.

Along with several other Hillsdale professors, three of us resigned in despair within a year after Dr. Roche decided in the Spring of 1986 to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for academic programs on construction of a new field house.

During that year the administration began the student newspaper, the Collegian, for its disagreement with college policies, threatening lawsuits and other reprisals against the student staff and any facility who defended it.

In Spring 1987, after the dean heading the publications board arranged for the appointment of a new Collegian editor over strong student protest, that dean filed suit for slander against one of us who has already resigned, citing remarks that he denied (and denies) making, but that Dr. Reist attributed to him in a conversation when no one was present. This suit was dropped three months later, after inflicting high legal costs, though not on the dean, whose husband is a lawyer.

That spring the one of us who had not resigned composed and circulated a letter to the Collegian, signed by fifteen other faculty members, deploring the use of lawsuits to settle disagreements within the college community. That summer Dr. Reist notified him of his dismissal, declaring that no explanation for it would ever be given. After an investigation the American Academy of University Professors concluded that the letter to the Collegian was “the determining factor” in that dismissal and censured Hillsdale for violating “generally recognized principles of academic freedom”.

Since then, with further dismissals, demotions, and other such actions, the administration seems to have silence most of Hillsdale’s present faculty, though the Collegian has found its choice against.

For example a recent editorial noted:
It seems as if certain professors who may not embellish themselves with the exact Hillsdale; mode of thinking are sinking to the depth of their departments, whipped with the iron chains of restrictions, or flat out fired … We know that some of our professors would like to open all the doors of a liberal arts education. However, it seems as if they are not allowed to do so by the administration. 
Administrators have reacted to this and similar columns by accusing the Collegian of “libel” and demanding prior review of its copy. We are members of the National Association of Scholars. We accepted positions at Hillsdale in the belief that it did indeed stand for academic excellence, the traditional liberal arts, and freedom of expression, as it claimed it did. But people who value these things should be warned that Hillsdale is not what it claims to be.

Warren Treadgold
Ralph Hancock
Rodler Morris
Thomas Payne

P.S. After this letter was drafted but before it was sent, we learned that the Hillsdale administration had forced the editor of the Collegian to resign, and that the rest of the student staff has resigned to express its support for her.

What 30 Years War?
 http://continuingcounterreformation.blogspot.com/2007/06/hillsdale-college-what-30-years-war.html

1 comment:

  1. The Right's hypocritical defense of free speech is exemplified by Hillsdale College and its outspoken president, George Roche. Hillsdale, a small liberal arts college in Hillsdale, Michigan, recommended by the National Review College Guide for "its commitment to academic excellence and intellectual integrity", is a darling of the conservatives. Thomas Sowell praises colleges like Hillsdale as the ones with "backbone" who have fought the lonely fight for traditional academic values and standards".

    In 1991, however, four former Hillsdale College professors, all members of the NAS, dared to criticize Hillsdale and its president:

    "For years the Hillsdale administration has neglected its academic program to pay for outreach activities designed to promote Dr,. Roche, maintained a curriculum that requires no appreciable knowledge of western culture and uses every possible means, including dismissals and threats of lawsuits, to silence dissent of any kind among faculty and students."

    According to these professors, in 1986:

    "the administration began to attack the student newspaper, the Collegian, for its disagreement with college policies, threatening lawsuits and other reprisals against student staff and any faculty who defended it."

    The editor of the Collegian was forced by the administration to resign, and the rest of the student staff resigned in protest.

    Roche also urged a student, Mark Nehls, not to publish the Hillsdale Spectator, an independent newspaper. When Nehls went ahead with his plans and began criticizing Roche in editorials, Roche forbade distribution of the paper on campus and hen expelled Nehls. One editorial in the banned Hillsdale Spectator claimed that "Hillsdale is a cult of personalty and not of principle. Roche is the divine monarch.

    Faculty at Hillsdale have also been victims of Roche's conservative correctness. When a dean sued a faculty member, accusing him of committing slander in a private conversation with another administrator, assistant history professor Warren Treadgold was one of sixteen faculty who signed a letter to the student newspaper protesting the use off lawsuits. Three months later Treadgold was dismissed. Hillsdale officials reportedly said that Treadgold did not "fit in" at Hillsdale and called his letter "unwise, unbecoming and unprofessional".

    Hillsdale, which has no appeals or grievance procedures, refused to five any reason for Treadgold's dismissal. Treadgold said: "I am a conservative, and my disagreements weren't with their policies. Basically Hillsdale is a feudal manor run by George Roche."
    An investigation by the AAU found that Treadgold was one of the top scholars at Hillsdale. He had a PhD from Harvard and had written a book that was being published by Stanford University Press. A 1987 evaluation of Treadgold at Hillsdale declared that "his scholarship is of the highest quality as well as of superior quantity" and called his teaching "clearly above the average." The AAUP concluded that the letter he signed "was the determining factor in the administration's decision to issue notice of non-reappointment when it did." All of this is a far cry from the National Review College Guide's description of Hillsdale as a utopia where "top notch" faculty "express a sense of joyful release at their departure from the stiffing atmosphere of the official ideologies of their old schools." Yet, the conservatives who condemn the PC thought police fail to mention Hillsdale, except as a model college in the fight against political correctness.

    The Myth of Political Correctness The Conservative Attack o Higher Education by John K. Wilson pp 33-34

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