Former Blackwater CEO left the Naval Academy for the more principled academics of Hillsdale, served the community as a firefighter, loved learning.
In 1989, when student Erik Prince of Holland, Michigan moved in across the street from Professor of Religion Don Westblade, he and his wife mistakenly believed Prince was a wealthy European descending from royalty. Not a bad guess.
Prince would become a private military king. But before his rise to founder of billion-dollar private security contractor organization Blackwater, Prince was a Hillsdale student.
He first attended the Naval Academy, but soon began considering other academic paths. The Deputy Commandant of the Academy said if he left he would amount to nothing.
“Having to go to class at the Academy and having to be kind of on guard from the statist nonsense that was coming from some of the professors, it was nice to go to Hillsdale and be able to listen, relax, and not feel like I had to argue,” Prince said in an exclusive Collegian interview this month.
In his book, “Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror,” Prince writes, “I left the antics of Annapolis after three semesters and looked to get back to a serious academic path. I chose Hillsdale College.” The paperback edition publishes on Oct. 28.
He attributes much of his business and personal success to what he learned after transferring to Hillsdale.
“The economic and business education, even the politics side, gave me the ability to analyze economies, trends, and societies, to figure out what makes people upset, and what people will fight for,” Prince said.
The college’s celebration of free-market principles appealed to Prince, culminating in an economics major and political science minor. He enjoyed reading the Austrians and their passion for limited government intervention.
Prince took the Foundations of the American Government course, similar to the Constitution 101 course the college currently offers.
“He knew a lot about politics coming in,” said Professor of Politics Mickey Craig who had Prince in his student. “Erik had a good sense of humor, but a serious purpose in life.”
Former Hillsdale professor Aleksandras Shtromas inspired Prince. A Lithuanian, Shtromas was imprisoned during the Nazi occupation of Lithuania and then became a Soviet critic and was exiled during the Cold War. Shtromas went to law school with Mikhail Gorbachev. He died in 1999.
“Hearing Shtromas talk about the politics of the Soviet Union, the inner circle, and the Politburo, knowing many of the people that were there was a phenomenal insight into that major part of world history,” Prince said.
His love of world history inspired travel. Today Prince lives in the Middle East, conducts business in Africa, and, between his career as a Navy SEAL and Blackwater CEO, has visited seemingly every corner of the world.
While a Hillsdale student, Prince served as a volunteer firefighter at the Hillsdale City Fire Department and a rescue diver for the Sheriff’s Department.
“When he first came on, he was the first one to ever show any interest,” Deputy Fire Chief Kevin Pauken said. “Unless you go back to the horse and buggy days of firefighting, there had never been any college students on the department [before Prince].”
Prince’s interest in the Fire Department was initially met with tension. The other firefighters initially thought of him as a “snot-nosed college kid,” he said.
“I learned to be a leader by first learning to be a follower,” Prince said. “To convince them that I wanted to join the fire department, I had to earn their confidence. I was always the last one rolling up hoses while the other volunteers would sit back and crack open a drink after a call. I learned to relate to those guys better, which helped me to better relate to enlisted guys going through BUDS [Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training] and the SEAL teams.”
“You have to love what you’re going to try,” Prince said. “It’s going to consume your time and your mind and your passions. Doing it out of college is a good idea, because you’re generally single, unattached. And if it works, great! If not, there’s always the couch at your mom and dad’s house or at your buddy’s house you could sleep on. So there’s not that far you can crash.”
Prince said the best thing Hillsdale can do is “pluck kids out of their suburbia experience when they come to Hillsdale.”
“If they can send them abroad for a semester or a year, I would highly encourage that,” he said. “You just see how another society operates. What they find important, what works well, what doesn’t work well. It makes you appreciate certain parts of America and gives you an idea of what works and doesn’t work in societies.”
Although Prince has proved successful in the business world, he continues to pursue education, a passion he encourages to students maintain.
“Focus on learning, reading, and devouring information,” Prince said.