VP Mike Pence at Hillsdale College on Saturday.
There's a college in Southwest Michigan that has a direct line to the Trump administration. It's a Christian conservative school called Hillsdale College and its president, Larry Arnn, backed Donald Trump in the presidential election and continues to show support.
Alice Lloyd of Politico writes:
Trump University never died. It’s located in the middle of bucolic southern Michigan, halfway between Lansing and Fort Wayne, 100 miles and a world away from Detroit.
It’s a place called Hillsdale College, and on Saturday, May 12, Vice President Mike Pence will bless the right-leaning college’s graduation ceremonies, delivering a commencement address to this year’s 367-strong crop of mostly young conservatives.
Maybe you’ve never heard of Hillsdale. Or maybe you hadn’t heard about the school before it precipitated a floor fight in the Senate during tax bill negotiations last fall. But the tiny Christian college with a graduate school in statesmanship, a strong conservative bent and roots in an anti-slavery Baptist church, has long been a treasured institution in right-of-center circles—known for its required classical liberal arts curriculum, its commitment to a principled conservatism, and its outreach in Washington, D.C....
The school, which takes no federal funds, benefits financially from public ties to Trumpism: It advertises on Fox News and in Trump supporters’ inboxes.
On Saturday, Pence speaking at the graduation ceremony, said the nation was indebted to Hillsdale College and its president for being a “beacon of liberty and American ideals," according to Beth LeBlanc of The Detroit News.
Pence called President Arnn a friend and mentor and remarked:
“We live in a time when too many disregard that wisdom of the past that Dr. Arnn spoke about so eloquently, but here you’ve been grounded in the traditions and teachings that are our greatest inheritance in America."
