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Echoing right-wing media, Trump education nominee Linda McMahon casts doubt on legality of Black history courses

Written by Helena Hind

Published 02/14/25

During her February 13 Senate confirmation hearing, Trump nominee for education secretary Linda McMahon cast doubt on the future of Black history courses in American public schools, saying she’s “not quite certain” if Black history instruction would violate an executive order banning “critical race theory in the classroom." During Biden’s presidency, some right-wing media figures called for the end of Black history curriculum, with one Fox News personality calling it a “Trojan horse.”

Black history courses in public schools may be on the chopping block

On January 29, Trump signed an executive order blocking federal funding for schools that teach “gender ideology and critical race theory in the classroom.” The executive order, “Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling,” also reinstates the 1776 Commission, which promotes Republicans’ vision of “patriotic education."}: Politico, [1/29/25; MSNBC; 1/30/25]|

* ## Right-wing media have demonized African American history instruction in public schools for years

Watters said Black history after the 1950s shouldn’t be taught because “it’s all activism."}: Watters: “You get to about 1960 in here and it's all activism. It's all ideology. It's no history. A good chunk is really good stuff, and then it goes into white supremacy, patriarchy, abolish the prisons, overthrow capitalism, queer theory, intersectionality." Fox News, *The Five*, [1/24/23]|

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12 24 see hurric NC BS fema

Joe Biden addresses America’s ‘original sin’ of slavery on Angola visit

US president remembers 'stolen men and women and children brought to our shores' and lauds American investment in country.

.

1 week ago](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/dec/03/us-history-of-enslavement-in-spotlight-joe-biden-angola)

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BBC

Biden in Angola: US president 'proud' to be there for unprecedented visit

US President Joe Biden has said he is “very proud to be the first American president visiting Angola” at the start of talks with his...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3rqlwlxxpeo)

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thom

-- Trump calls for Cheney's execution - by firing squad

-- Crazy Weird Alert! Tucker Carlson says a demon attack while he was sleeping and left him bleeding with ‘claw mark’ scars...Can it get any stranger?

-- A pregnant teenager died because she was pregnant and ill - she was turned away by 3 emergency rooms

-- Rudy says what Republicans across the country mumble under their breath about the Black Haitian immigrants...

-- The national archives are removing displays and information about MLK, etc., because it may upset Republican legislators...say what?

-- This is what LeBron James posted on X about Trump

-- Europe’s Greens ask Jill Stein to pull out of US election to prevent Trump victory10 24

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AN 7 24

Do you know about Donald J. Trump’s Executive Order 13950? If you don’t, be afraid. Be very afraid.

Just weeks before he was fired by America’s voters in 2020, President Trump issued this piece of nastiness which was quickly rescinded by just-inaugurated President Biden.

The Executive Order is a “DCL,” what the right-wing brilliantly calls a, “Divisive Concepts Law.” These DCL’s terrorize teachers with the threat of losing their jobs if they dare teach the truth of America’s racial history: That white people enslaved Africans, that the Klan enforced racial vote suppression with the hanging rope. And God forbid, they teach that women were banned from the vote until the 20th Century. The Executive Order bans teaching any historical facts if,

“….any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex….”

As a practical matter, it means teaching the truth of America’s racial stain will get you fired. In 2021, Tennessee high school teacher Matt Hawn lost his job because a student accused him of teaching—cover your children’s ears—“Critical Race Theory.” Hawn said he’d never heard of Critical Race Theory when he was canned.

(Critical Race Theory, taught in law schools, says many of America’s laws and their enforcement, contain a racial bias. Well, D’oh!].

On Thursday, Vice-President Harris told the American Federation of Teachers convention in Houston, epicenter of the anti-CRT hysteria,

“While you teach students about our nation's past, these extremists attack the freedom to learn and acknowledge our nation's true and full history; including book bans! Book bans — in this year 2024! Just think about it: we want to ban assault weapons and they want to ban books.”

It was a century ago, that Tennessee was the laughingstock of the nation for prosecuting a schoolteacher for telling his class about human evolution, a story recounted in the film, Inherit the Wind. Now, a hundred years later, Trumpsters are again passing wind over Tennessee.

And he’s baaaaack! Trump has put his fixation with censoring “divisive concepts” into the GOP platform. Details are provided in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 master plan for the master race.

This ill wind originated in Georgia when Gov. Brian Kemp signed HB1084, threatening the jobs of teachers for teaching ‘divisive concepts’ that could make a white child feel “discomfort.”

Who would feel “discomfort” about the uncensored history of Georgia? Well, maybe it’s Gov. Kemp himself. Because it was the Kemp family, then known as the Habershams, that first brought Africans in chains to Georgia.

Maybe Kemp and family should feel a bit of discomfort. I spoke with Janie Banse, who told me she is she is heartsick that her cousin, Gov. Kemp, won’t admit that their family’s wealth originated in the African slave trade. Kemp’s ancestors held the largest auction of human beings in American history, still remembered by Black Georgians today as “Weeping Time,” when 436 men, women and their children were separated and sold.

Georgia’s HB 1084, passed in 2022,

Prohibit[s] the use of curricula that addresses the topics of slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, or racial discrimination, including topics relating to the enactment and enforcement of laws resulting in racial oppression, segregation, and discrimination in a professionally and academically appropriate manner and without espousing personal political beliefs;

And what if a teacher expresses a personal distaste for slavery?

Since Georgia was among the first to pass a “DCL,” and at least 16 states have followed.

In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis, dubbed his DCL the “Stop WOKE Act.”

He banned the College Board’s AP African American Studies course and supported new Black history standards that include the requirement to teach, “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.”

I can’t make this up.

Since 2021, at least 27 states have imposed or proposed bans or restrictions on teaching topics related to race and gender. Mississippi, Alabama, Arizona and Oklahoma all passed these Divisive Concepts laws. What do these states have in common? According to rankings by US News and World Report, they are all in the nation’s bottom third in educational achievement. Apparently, they won’t teach uncensored history—but then, it’s not clear that they teach much history at all.

Trump’s DLC brigade is not just putting a blindfold over students regarding slavery and Jim Crow. Oklahoma’s Divisive Concepts Law has effectively silenced the true story of the state that was once known officially as, “Indian Territory.”

Jim Gray, former Principal Chief of the Osage Nation, told me that teachers throughout the state have been yanking copies of David Grann’s book Killers of the Flower Moon off their classroom shelves. Killers, on which the Martin Scorsese/Leonardo DiCaprio movie is based, tells the true story about how, in the 1920s, over 100 Oklahoma Osage were murdered for their oil rights.

The insidious brilliance of the Oklahoma law is that it has a fuzzy general prohibition on “divisive” concepts—with teachers facing loss of their teaching credentials and the entire school district losing funding. Because teachers have to guess which books or films will get them fired, the result is mass self-censorship, with Killers culled from classrooms across the state.

A RAND corporation study found that a breathtaking two out of three K-12 teachers, “have decided on their own to limit instruction about political and social issues in the classroom.” Can you blame them?

Any student or parent can put a legal gun to a school principal’s head. But when the law says, “students,” as a practical matter, they don’t mean young kids on the Reservation. Every year, on April 22, Oklahoma celebrates “Sooner Rush Day”, the day in 1889, when any white man could simply stand on a plot of land and seize the surrounding 160 acres of what was, by treaty, Indian Territory. Indigenous kids have to re-enact the theft of their property whether they feel discomfort or not.

I have included this story of the Sooner Rush land grab in my documentary, Long Knife: the Osage Nation, Koch Oil and the new Killers of the Flower Moon. And for that alone, says Chief Gray, the chance it will screen in an Oklahoma school, even a state university, is zilch.

But some states are not shy about creating Black Lists of books to ban. Assigning anti-racist classics Huckleberry Finn or To Kill a Mockingbird, could kill a teacher’s career. PEN America counted 3,132 books banned in nine states in the 2022-23 school year.

Cui Bono? Who benefits from historical amnesia? Kemp alone was not the only white boy to make his fortune from a slaver’s whip. Historic amnesia is a profit center covering many historic misdeeds from Jim Crow to union busting to corporate corruption.

I found this out when I was physically ejected from the Georgia Historical Society in Savannah. I was having a polite interview with the Society’s in-house historian, Dr. Stan Deaton, who was explaining that the Klan took over control of the South when, in 1876, Republicans lost both the popular vote and the Electoral vote—yet a pact between the Klan-backed Southern Democrats and northern Republicans used a sly maneuver to overturn the vote and install the GOP candidate as President. It came down to one official, Dr. Deaton noted, then added, “We saw Mike Pence in that situation recently.”

The second the historian uttered the words, “Mike Pence,” the door flew open and the Society’s PR man halted the interview and expelled me from the building, saying, “We have to protect the new corporate donors on our board.”

I was curious. Who were these “donors” needing protection from history? I found their gala dinner on YouTube with their tuxedoed corporate money men: Georgia Pacific (owned by Koch Industries), Home Depot (owned by right-wing union buster Ken Langone), and Southern Company, whom I investigated some years ago for racketeering and the inexplicable death of whistleblowers. And the Chairman of the Historical Society? Gov. Brian Kemp.

Just below Savannah, at the Kemp family’s old plantation, I spoke with caretaker and Councilman Griffin Lotson whose own great-grandmother was sold at Weeping Time by Kemp’s progenitors.

Lotson emphasizes the connection between this legally enforced historical amnesia and the fight for voting rights. He says, “Suppressing history is suppressing the vote.”

Back in Oklahoma, the current Principal Chief of the Osage, Geoffrey Standing Bear, explained that if Oklahoma were to admit that its “Sooner Rush” was simply theft from the indigenous owners of the land, then it would force open eyes to what he calls, the “military occupation [of Native land] that continues today.”

Napoleon famously said, “History is a set of lies agreed upon.” Trump’s DCL crusade sees history as a set of truths silenced.

*Greg Palast (Rolling Stone, Guardian, BBC) is the author of The New York Times bestsellers including The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. His latest film is Vigilantes Inc.: America’s New Vote Suppression Hitmen to be released in September. GregPalast.com

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moms-for-liberty-silent-on-having-registered-sex-offender-in-leadership

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judd ymail 1 24

Activists from a South Carolina chapter of Moms for Liberty — a group best known for opposing LGBTQ rights, pushing for the removal of library books, and fighting racially inclusive curriculum — are starting their own public charter school. The new school, to be known as the Ashley River Classical Academy, will be fully taxpayer-funded, but is structured in a way that effectively avoids any state oversight or accountability. The school will use the 1776 Curriculum, created by Hillsdale College, a small right-wing institution with close ties to former president Donald Trump. Adam Laats, a historian at New York's Binghamton University, described the 1776 Curriculum as "the red [MAGA] hat in textbook form."

Three of the seven board members for Ashley River Classical Academy are leaders in the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter, including chair Tara Wood, treasurer Janine Nagrodsky, and education committee head Nicole McCarthy. In 2022, Wood wrote that a "significant amount of the Charleston County School District's budget is spent on third-party consultants who are trying to sexualize our children through inappropriate books and lessons." Wood's background, according to Ashley River Classical Academy's charter application, is not in education but in "real estate and facility development." The school is planning to open for the 2024-25 academic year and the children of board members will be given priority admission.

In general, charter schools in South Carolina are approved and overseen by the state's Public Charter District or the local school board where the school is based. These entities sponsor the school's application, allowing them to open and monitor their performance. If a charter school is not meeting the needs of students, the sponsor is obligated to revoke the charter.

In 2017, the Public Charter District was poised to close several South Carolina charter schools that were "abysmal failures." The schools were "started by people who clearly didn't have the academic heft to run a school or the business acumen to run a business" or "private companies more interested in turning a profit than educating children.

But those charter schools were not closed. A provision was written into the South Carolina charter law to allow colleges and universities to also serve as charter sponsors. It was included to allow South Carolina State University "to open its own charter school." But, in 2017, a small Christian institution, Erskine College, declared itself a charter school sponsor. The only thing required for Erskine College or another institution to become a charter school sponsor is to "register," there are no standards or oversight from the state. Erskine College promptly became the sponsor for the schools the state was planning to close.

Erskine College is controlled by the Associate Reformed Presbyterian (ARP) Church. Both Erskine College and the ARP Church have taken a fundamentalist turn in recent years. Today, "anyone applying to work at Erskine must sign a form affirming their religious views align with the ARP Church." They must also affirm "abortion is a sin, that 'in all instances, one should seek to preserve the life of the unborn child,' that homosexuality is a sin and monogamous marriage is 'God’s intended design for humanity.'" The extreme policies, according to the Index Journal, have "alienate[d] faculty and students and has resulted in a drop in alumni giving." The school's mission "is to glorify God as a Christian academic community where students integrate knowledge and faith." Total enrollment has dropped from over 1,000 in 2008 to about 850 today.

As a result, Erskine College has faced severe financial distress, running a deficit and quickly eating into its modest endowment to pay the bills. The money woes have threatened the accreditation of Erskine College by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC). In December, the SACSCOC announced that Erskine College was "denied reaffirmation" of its accreditation due to a failure to "manage its financial resources in a responsible manner." The deficiency could result in the revocation of Erskine University's accreditation by SACSCOC in less than a year.

Erskine College has a compelling financial incentive to sponsor South Carolina charter schools since, as a sponsor, it receives "2 percent of the school’s state appropriations." Erskine currently sponsors 28 charter schools, generating millions of dollars in revenue.

Erskine College is sponsoring Ashley River Classical Academy, one of seven charter schools in the university's "pipeline." So even though Ashley River Classical Academy is being funded by state taxpayers, Erskine College will be the sole arbiter of whether the school founded by Moms for Liberty activists is meeting its obligation to students.

Ashley River Classical Academy has hired Alexandria Spry to serve as its first Head of School. Spry previously ran a charter school using the 1776 Curriculum in Florida, Jacksonville Classical Academy East. For the 2022-23 school year, when Spry served as Head of School, Jacksonville Classical Academy East received a grade of "F" from the Florida Department of Education. The school, under Spry's leadership, saw a low percentage of students receiving passing grades in state assessments for English (29%), math (23%), and science (12%).

Spry is scheduled to address a meeting of the Charleston Moms for Liberty chapter this Thursday. Also appearing at the same meeting is a member of the local school board who "allegedly threatened violence against a transgender teacher" and a representative from the South Carolina chapter of Gays Against Groomers (GAG), an anti-trans group. Among other things, GAG lobbies for the removal of books with LGBTQ characters from school libraries. “The school is not a political project,” Spry told the Post and Courier. “We are just trying to provide the best education we can.”

A request for comment, sent to the email address listed on Ashley River Classical Academy's website, bounced back as undeliverable.

Meet the board

The website for the Charleston County chapter of Moms for Liberty states that the group is “dedicated to the survival of America by unifying, educating and empowering parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government.” Wood, who founded the chapter in August 2021, decided to start the group after attending a meeting where an “education expert spoke about critical race theory [CRT].” While Wood reportedly “does not think that critical race theory is being taught in schools,” she does think that its “tenants” are “trickl[ing] down into K-12 curriculums.” In an interview with the Post and Courier, Wood said, “Anytime you make the narrative ‘White man bad, dark man good’ that’s CRT and that’s horrible.” (CRT is a complex legal theory that is not taught in K-12 schools.)

Wood has been “talking to the Trump campaign about meeting with the former president” and “has already met with Trump’s state director.” Last April, Wood introduced Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) at an event in South Carolina.

Wood is reportedly friends with right-wing influencer Corey Allen. According to the Post and Courier, Wood has been seen on multiple occasions with Allen, who helped organize a rally that Proud Boys attended and was “on the steps of the U.S. Capitol livestreaming the Jan[uary] 6 insurrection.” Allen has since appeared with Wood at fundraising events and meetings for Moms for Liberty. On Facebook, Wood thanked Allen for attending a fundraising event in a comment, saying, “Thank you again for being there, Corey.”

Nagrodsky has also promoted posts by Allen on social media. Nagrodsky posts anti-trans memes and conspiracy theories about the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. On January 1, Nagrodsky reposted a Facebook post stating, “Well, I’m off to knock down the pyramids, because Egyptians had slaves 5,000 years ago. Wish me luck!”

The Board of Directors also includes Joel Schellhammer, who received his Bachelor’s Degree from Hillsdale College and was hired in February 2022 as CEO of “[a] new charter-school management organization associated with Hillsdale College.” Another board member is Elizabeth Crocker, who attended Erskine College, “served on the Erskine College Teacher Education Committee” and also worked at Erskine College as an adjunct professor.

Inside Hillsdale's "patriotic" education

The 1776 Curriculum, which Hillsdale claims “seeks to tell the entire grand narrative of the American story,” promotes a biased and often inaccurate version of American history.

For example, the 1776 Curriculum claims America's Founding Fathers “expressed regret and fear of divine retribution” about slavery. In reality, Thomas Jefferson wrote about his belief of “biological differences between blacks and whites” and reportedly had a relationship with his slave Sally Hemings. Instead of freeing his slaves in his will, James Madison chose to leave them to his wife, who “sold them off to pay debts.” George Washington left instructions to not free his slaves after his death until after his wife had also passed, and “aggressively pursued runaway” slaves. None of this is mentioned in the 1776 Curriculum.

A lesson in the 1776 Curriculum also encourages downplaying the history of slavery in America and emphasizing slavery in other areas of the world instead, stating that “of the nearly 11 million Africans who survived being brought to the Western Hemisphere, around 3 percent, or about 350,000, were brought to the North American continent” and that the “rest of all Africans [were] taken to other colonies in the Caribbean and South America.”

The 1776 Curriculum includes misleading information about the history of women’s rights in America, arguing that by saying “all men are created equal” in the Declaration of Independence, “the Founders meant that men and women share equally in human dignity and in possession of natural rights or freedoms.” The reality is that women at the time could not vote, were granted limited property rights, and could not earn their own income if they were married. The 1776 Curriculum is also circumspect about the cause of the Civil War, arguing many Southerners were motivated by “states’ rights” instead of “preserv[ing] the institution of slavery.”

According to a November report by the Collegian, Hillsdale College’s student newspaper, “the Hillsdale K-12 Education program [currently] has 23 member schools, 14 candidate member schools, and 69 curriculum schools across 33 states.” But some Hillsdale-affiliated schools have struggled with performance issues. According to a report by WFTS Tampa Bay, in the 2021-2022 school year, “three of Hillsdale’s member charter schools” in Florida “earned an overall ‘C’ by Florida’s Department of Education.” Other Hillsdale-affiliated schools have “complain[ed] of interference in individual school management and high fees charged by Barney Charter School Initiative, [Hillsdale’s] support arm.”

In some states, Hillsdale has had difficulty finding support or sponsors for new charter schools. In 2022, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee (R) announced that he planned to open “50 Hillsdale-affiliated charter schools,” but was faced with opposition after a video showing Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn at an event with Lee was released. In the video, Arnn says that teachers “are trained in the dumbest parts of the dumbest colleges.” Arnn later tried to walk back the comments, stating that he did not “mean ‘unintelligent’” but instead meant “ill-conceived” or “misdirected.”

Arnn, whose yearly compensation is reportedly over $1 million, objects to teaching about race and sexuality in schools. In an email obtained by News Channel 5 Nashville, Arnn said that “highly-charged subjects like racism and sexuality” should not be taught in the classroom, but instead teachers should focus on “classes of substance.”

In 2020, Arnn was named the leader of Trump’s 1776 Commission, which was created to advance a “patriotic education.” Hillsdale’s 1776 Curriculum was released “[s]ix months after President Joe Biden dissolved the commission,” although Hillsdale denies any “formal connection” between the two.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2023/01/31/florida-new-college-conservative-trustees-00080541

taLLAHASSEE, Fla. — The newly-installed conservative board of trustees at New College of Florida ousted its current president in favor of former state education commissioner Richard Corcoran Tuesday, launching the initial move in reshaping the campus under the vision of Gov. Ron DeSantis.

The decision came at the first board meeting since DeSantis appointed six new trustees with the idea of overhauling the liberal arts college in Sarasota into a more conservative-leaning institution. That track was accelerated Tuesday when the board paved the way for new leadership as students and parents protested the major changes that appear bound for New College.

“Some have said these recent appointments amount to a partisan takeover of the college. This is not correct,” said trusteeMatthew Spalding, a constitutional government professor and vice president at Hillsdale College’s D.C. campuswho was appointed by DeSantis. “It’s not a takeover — it’s a renewal.”

A leadership switch from President Patricia Okker to Corcoran as interim leader is one of several moves made Tuesday by the board, which also signaled its intent to abolish diversity, equity and inclusion programs on campus — all policies pushed by DeSantis. The changes are major developments at the school spurred by the new appointees, including Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who has advised DeSantis on critical race theory, and Eddie Speir, the co-founder of Inspiration Academy, a Christian charter school in Bradenton, Fla.

Tuesday’s meeting was met with apprehension from dozens of students and parents who protested what they called a “hostile takeover” at New College. They urged Okker to stay on as president and push back against the new mandates from the DeSantis administration to model the school as a“Hillsdale of the South” in reference to the private conservative religious “classical“ college in Michigan.

Okker in an emotional address told the board — and the campus — that she couldn’t continue to serve as president amid accusations that the students are being inundated with liberal indoctrination.

“The reality is, and it’s a hard reality and it’s a sad reality, but the vision that we created together is not the vision I have been given as a mandate here,” Okker said.

In remaking the board at New College, the DeSantis administration said the school was “completely captured by a political ideology that puts trendy, truth-relative concepts above learning” and in need of change following downward enrollment trends. To move on from Okker, trustees agreed to a “generous” exit package that includes at least 12 months of paid professional development leave and benefits. Corcoran is unable to begin serving until March, leaving Okker’s chief of staff Bradley Thiessen in charge until then.

“New leadership is the expectation and I think it makes sense,” Rufo said at the meeting. “I don’t think it’s a condemnation of Dr. Okker, scholarship or skills or character.”

DeSantis’ changes at New College follow other efforts to reshape higher education in Florida. Earlier Tuesday, the GOP governor proposed several changes to Florida’s university system, including pressing the GOP-led Legislature to cut all funding for diversity, equity and inclusion programs and to allow university leaders to launch tenure review of professors. Last year, DeSantis and state Republicans placed GOP allies in top university posts and pushed legislation that could limit how professors teach race.

New College is also now set to review its Office of Outreach & Inclusive Excellence at the request of Rufo as part of the state’s stance against diversity, equity and inclusion programs in schools. Rufo originally pushed to abolish the office outright, including four positions, and take other actions tied to diversity and equity, but decided to request further details on the program for a discussion in February.

New College trustees also want former Senate President Bill Galvano to serve as their general counsel and attorney. They asked the interim president on Tuesday to enter negotiations with the former Republican lawmaker who practices law in Sarasota.

Tuesday’s meeting was tense at times, with audience members frequently shouting over and at the new trustees as they spoke. Several parents and students addressed the board before they huddled, often criticizing their plans to retool the university and asking them to leave the college alone.

Some faculty said students felt “hopeless” about what could happen at the school, which is a unique college of under 700 undergraduates where students craft personalized education plans and don’t receive letter grades.

“Many students came here to feel safe and access the education that is their right as Floridians,” Diego Villada, Assistant Professor of Theater and Performance Studies, told the board. “And the impulse to make this a place where race, intersectionality and DEI are banned indicates to them that you want everyone to be the same – to be like you.”

Trustees, though, made it clear that the New College overhaul is fully underway, a message that came the same day DeSantis pledged to invest millions of dollars into recruiting faculty to the school.

“The campus needs a deep culture change. You sat up here, you called us racists, sexists, bigots, outsiders,” said trustee Mark Bauerlein, professor emeritus of English at Emory University who was appointed by DeSantis. “We are now in a position of authority in the college. And the accusations are telling us that something is wrong here.”

sieg heil

left-leaning media outlets have villainized Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, painting his recent moves in the Sunshine State’s education system as a hostile takeover from the Right. So Matthew Spalding, a professor at Hillsdale College whom DeSantis recently appointed to the New College of Florida’s board of trustees, decided to set the record straight.

“DeSantis Allies Plot the Hostile Takeover of a Liberal College,” Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times. Goldberg referred to Hillsdale College as “the template for this reimagined New College” and noted that the conservative Hillsdale—based in southern Michigan—worked with then-President Donald Trump to create a patriotic education curriculum.

“DeSantis moves to turn a progressive Fla. college into a conservative one,” runs the headline on Valerie Strauss’s **Washington Post**story. The subheadline: “His administration says he aims to make it a ‘Hillsdale of the South.’” Strauss brands Hillsdale a “bastion of far-right conservatism.”

“A Tiny Christian College in Michigan Is Infiltrating Florida’s Schools” runs the headline on Mary Harris’ Slate story.

The New Republic‘s Jack McCordick also slammed DeSantis’ appointment of Spalding, writing that Hillsdale and the Claremont Institute “eagerly hitched their wagons to Trump” and are “home to some of the country’s most notorious coup plotters and insurrectionists.”

McCordick suggested that Spalding’s appointment by DeSantis represents a threat to the “uniquely proactive nature of the New College’s student body.” He quoted alumnus Derek Black, who credited that student body with his conversion from a “white nationalist activist,” implying that the governor’s new appointments might enable white nationalism to emerge at the school.

These media outlets eagerly cited remarks from Christopher Rufo, a Manhattan Institute scholar best known for combating critical race theory and homelessness. DeSantis also named Rufo to New College’s board. In remarks to The New York Times, Rufo said he aimed toreverse a Marxist “march through the institutions.”

“If we can take this high-risk, high-reward gambit and turn it into a victory, we’re going to see conservative state legislators starting to reconquer public institutions all over the United States,” Rufo told the Times.

The media outlets also cited James Uthmeier, DeSantis’ chief of staff, who told the Daily Caller: “It is our hope that New College of Florida will become Florida’s classical college … more along the lines of a Hillsdale of the South.”

“Florida is where woke goes to die,” DeSantis said in his victory speech following his nearly 20-point reelection victory in November.

The Republican governor has taken aim at critical race theory, a framework that claims to find “systemic racism” in American institutions and that critics say leads educators to treat white students as oppressors and treat black students and other minorities as oppressed. DeSantis also has opposed transgender ideology and signed a bill protecting parental rights in education and preventing institutionalized instruction of LGBT lessons in kindergarten through third grade.

Spalding, vice president of Washington operations and dean of the Van Andel Graduate School of Government at Hillsdale’s satellite campus in the nation’s capital, did not address DeSantis’ program but insisted that the political controversy is “overwrought.”

Spalding, a former director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at The Heritage Foundation, parent organization of The Daily Signal, also said he doesn’t aim to turn New College into a carbon copy of Hillsdale College. Rather, he told The Daily Signal, he intends to champion liberal arts and classical education at the historic Florida institution.

“The political controversy surrounding recent appointments to the board of New College of Florida is overwrought,” Spalding said in a written statement provided to The Daily Signal. “I am honored by the appointment and look forward to engaging in reform to achieve educational excellence.”

“As a professor, dean, and vice president at asuccessful liberal arts college, my focus is on the work at hand: restoring New College’s ‘distinctive mission’ as the ‘residential liberal arts honors college’ of Florida,” Spalding said. “I appreciate the complimentary nods to Hillsdale College, but we are not going to serve New College’s mission by remaking it into a carbon copy of another institution.”

“In the liberal arts, the college—which means a partnership, one between students and faculty—works together and comes into conversation with great thinkersand writers who’ve asked timeless questions about human purpose, about the good and justice, and how to live well,” he added. “The very aim of liberal arts education is to liberate the mind from current fads and popular ideologies by inviting students to address these questions in pursuit of the truth about what it means to be fully human. That pursuit transcends contemporary politics.”

Getting “such an education teaches one how to think, not what to think,” Spalding added. “The surging enrollment at my home institution and others like it shows that students hunger for such serious academic inquiry.”

The author of this article, Tyler O’Neil, is a Hillsdale College alumnus.

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the url or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state.

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am spect which covered itself in glory ark pjt [ref in monica biopic]

...the nation is in the debt of Encounter Books for rescuing from the memory hole the presidential commission report on the nation’s founding in 1776, prepared for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in July 2026. The report was submitted to President Trump and released as a public document on January 18, 2021, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but was abolished by an executive order of President Biden on Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021.

Alas, the new president must not have read this succinct statement of the first principles of the Founders. Abraham Lincoln described it during an 1857 speech in Springfield, Illinois, as “a standard maxim for free society,” which ought to be “familiar to all, and revered by all; constantly looked to, constantly labored for, and even though never perfectly attained, constantly approximated” resulting in “the happiness and value of life to all people of all colors everywhere.”Fortunately, Encounter’s newly published edition of The 1776 Report keeps this act of civic piety in the public domain for the benefit of all citizens.

the 1776 Report offers a preface, notes, and commentary co-authored by Larry Arnn, the estimable president of Hillsdale College; Carol Swain, retired professor of political science and law, Vanderbilt University; and Matthew Spalding, professor and dean of Hillsdale’s graduate school in Washington, D.C. Arnn and Swain served as chair and vice chair of The President’s Advisory 1776 Commission, and Spalding was executive director. The classicist and military historian Victor David Hanson served with 12 others on the full Commission.

The report opens with these fundamental axioms of the Founding: “The core assertion of the Declaration [of Independence], and the basis of the founders’ political thought, is that ‘all men are created equal.’ From the principle of equality, the requirement of consent naturally follows: if all men are equal, then none may by right rule another without his consent.” Properly understood, this does not mean we all have equal faculties or virtue. Rather, it means that we “are not by nature divided into castes, with natural rulers and ruled.” Thus, the Declaration rules out any formal or legal inequality.

Natural equality requires the recognition of fundamental human rights, universal and eternal, found in nature, not created by man or government. Indeed, “men create governments to secure natural rights.”

Turning to the Constitution itself, the report states that “The bedrock upon which the American political system is built is the rule of law.… [t]he idea that the law is superior to rulers.” So “the new government needed to be strong enough to have the power to secure rights without having so much power as to enable or encourage it to infringe rights.”

The Founders believed that the consent of the governed required a republican form of government to guarantee the people’s participation in the political process. Yet, to avoid what they perceived as the historic failures of republicanism — class conflict and the tyranny of the majority — they instituted bicameralism, federalism, the separation of powers, and the Bill of Rights.

Slavery was a sign of contradiction to the principles of the Declaration and was recognized as such by the Founders from the beginning. This truth contradicts the 1619 Project, promoted by the New York Times and criticized even by liberal historians like Sean Wilentz, Gordon S. Wood, and James McPherson. The authors of the report cite a revealing quote from John Quincy Adams, on the 61st anniversary of the Declaration:

Never from their [the Founders’] lips, was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country; and they saw that, before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day.

The principle of equality, in time, triumphed over bondage at a cost of 600,000 lives lost in the Civil War.

The great American historian Bernard Bailyn has observed,

What is significant in the historical context of the time is not that liberty-loving Revolutionaries allowed slavery to survive, but that they — even those who profited directly from the institution — went so far in condemning it, confining it, and setting in motion the forces that would ultimately destroy it…. A successful and liberty-loving republic might someday destroy the slavery that it had been obliged to tolerate at the start; a weak and fragmented nation would never be able to do so.

Many readers will be surprised how the progressivism of Woodrow Wilson, Theodore Roosevelt, and John Dewey have undermined constitutional principles and natural rights. They believed that society has the power, the obligation, to redefine rights to deal with contemporary problems. Hence the “living” Constitution and the rise of the managerial or administrative state of experts who direct a new system whereby “the functions of government are in a very real sense independent of legislation, and even constitutions,” as described by the future President Wilson.

Of particular note is Appendix IV of the report, “Teaching Americans About Their Country,” which calls for more honest, historically grounded teaching of the story of the Founding in civics, history, and literature classes. “What spectacle can be more edifying or more seasonable, than that of Liberty and Learning, each leaning on the other for their mutual and surest support?” wrote James Madison.

Unfortunately, as The 1776 Report states,

In most K-12 social studies and civic classes, serious study of the principles of equality and liberty has vanished. The result has been a rising generation of young citizens who know little about the origins and stories of their country, and less about the true standards of equality and liberty.

The report’s authors insist, “Students should not read the Declaration of Independence as archaeology but as the idea that animates our nation with claims that are true for all time.”

Arnn and his co-authors argue that we need a restoration of atruly liberal education — the liberal arts or “the arts of liberty”— to free students “from ignorance and confusion, from prejudice and delusion, and from untamed passions and fanciful hopes that degrade and destroy us as civilized persons.” American education must, once again, take up “the hard but essential task of character formation” to form truly free men and women.

Buy a copy of The 1776 Report for your child’s teacher today.