Attempts to smear the college are not just dishonest but betray a misunderstanding of why critical race theory has no place in the classical liberal arts. //

By the inflexible logic of critical race theory, Hillsdale’s abolitionist past does not matter, its efforts to improve private and public schools do not matter, its financial aid to underprivileged students does not matter. All that matters is that the school does not go out of its way to categorize students by race, does not practice affirmative action, does not accept the terms of debate about race set forth by the progressive left, and refuses to repent of all these sins. //

Indeed, the only remotely substantive criticism of Hillsdale Whyte levels is that it refuses to categorize students by race or practice race-based affirmative action in admissions. What Whyte may not realize—or simply refuses to acknowledge—is that Hillsdale eschews racial categorization on purpose as a matter of principle.

Hillsdale’s refusal to comply with federal affirmative action requirements resulted in a series of court cases in the late 1970s and early ‘80s that ended with the college withdrawing from all federal financial assistance programs. Today it is one of the few colleges in America that accepts no federal funds—and no federal mandates.

Indeed, Hillsdale has always considered such mandates tantamount to racial discrimination. In contrast to the race-obsessed thinking of the Black Lives Matter movement, Hillsdale has always hewn to the thinking of Frederick Douglass and Martin Luther King, Jr., who understood that race was not the most important thing about a person, and that the promises of the American Founding transcend race and national origin.

If the college’s leaders have “pooh-pooed diversity,” as Whyte says, it is because the diversity she has in mind is utterly hollow. Unlike progressives, classical liberals believe race itself is an incidental feature of the human condition, neither essential nor determinative, and in many ways merely a construct. At a college especially, the only kind of diversity that should matter is intellectual diversity, which is sorely missing from most colleges and universities today but alive and well at Hillsdale.