As one of the fan favorite statues along the Freedom Walk, Sir Winston S. Churchill is no stranger to Hillsdale College.
Since 2012, the college has taken full ownership of the “Churchill Project,” a lifelong project of the official biographer of Churchill and former Hillsdale professor, Sir Martin Gilbert.
“To sustain and deepen a proper understanding of Winston Churchill’s statesmanship, and to promote the application of this understanding to current affairs, Hillsdale College seeks to complete and maintain in publication his official biography, host national conferences, and teach and disseminate this understanding, through every means possible, to scholars, opinion leaders, and citizens,” the project prospectus states.
The project has seven main components outlined in the prospectus: completing and maintaining publication of the Official Biography of Sir Winston S. Churchill, Churchill conferences, Churchill scholarships, an endowed faculty chair, online courses, other publications, and marketing.
For nearly three years, President Larry Arnn has overseen the project with the assistance of Kyle Murnen, assistant to the president, and Richard Langworth, senior fellow for the project.
In addition, participants in the George Washington Fellowship Program have helped with project research, document transcription, and compilation.
Currently, the research team is working on document volumes, the companion books to the biography. These documents contain materials referenced in the biography, including top secret letters, telegraphs, and diary entries from Churchill, his companions, and other leaders of the time.
“All these documents are only in hard copy,” said junior Emily DePangher, a George Washington Fellow. “My work, along with a few other Hillsdale students and employees, is to transcribe the hard copies of these documents into Word documents where they will be compiled into companion document books to each volume of the biography.”
DePangher has enjoyed having to read through all of the documents.
“It’s an enjoyable and interesting task, seeing the private musings of public officials and observing the important conflicts of interest displayed in strategic war decisions,” Depangher said.
Beginning in 1977, Arnn assisted Gilbert for three years on Gilbert’s Churchill work. Throughout the years, Arnn maintained a relationship with Gilbert, assisting with research, proofreading books, hosting lectures of Gilbert’s, and enjoying his company whenever either traveled.
“In 2001, on the very day of the fateful attacks, he told me how much he admired the college, having just spent a few days here,” Arnn said about Gilbert.“He thought he had made a mistake not teaching more. I told him we could help with that.”
Gilbert became a fellow in 2001, and taught history at Hillsdale for several years. That year, Hillsdale came to an agreement with Gilbert that the school would finish the document volumes – 23 in total – of the biography and that the Hillsdale College Press would be the publisher of the biography.
“In various agreements with Sir Martin and the Churchill family, the college undertook to finish the document volumes, and acquired the rights to the papers to do it, in the event of Sir Martin being unable to continue,” Arnn explained.
In 2012, Gilbert, overtaken by illness and unable to continue his work on Churchill, officially passed the duty to the college. Since that time, the research team has completed one document volume, is almost done with the second, and has four more to go.
“Gilbert is a man of tremendous intellect, character, and achievement,” Arnn said. “He was always so good to me and Penny, and we have always sought to be of service and friendship to him.”
Arnn sees the study of Churchill as an important endeavor for his lessons on statesmanship and the intellectual virtue of prudence, which are both integral within a liberal arts education. Churchill is a case study of these ideals with a long career to examine.
“One of my teachers long ago once proposed that every student, or every excellent student, should pick one great book and also one person or event important in history, and learn all about it and write a thesis on it. That has always seemed a fine idea to me, and we do versions of it here in several ways,” Arnn said. “History is important here, and Churchill is important to history.”