The New Yorker article served its purpose. Courtesy | Flickr.
When Hillsdale students were bickering with New Yorker readers in the comments section on Instagram last week, one thing was clear: only a small percentage of people had read Emma Green’s article in its entirety.
From the April 10 issue of the New Yorker, Green’s article “The Christian Liberal-Arts School at the Heart of the Culture Wars” was printed, more than six months after Green visited campus.
Some students were enraged by Green’s playful descriptions about freshman convocation being as dramatic as going off to battle or College President Larry Arnn’s shoes being described as “orthopedic.” But if you’ve ever stepped foot at a singular Hillsdale function, you can’t deny we’re inclined toward the dramatic. Hillsdale is a place that for better or for worse, takes itself very seriously.
This is why Green’s article felt like a personal attack on Hillsdale. Here was a woman who came to campus for only a few days, the place most of us will spend a significant portion of our young adult lives and whose professors and administrators have dedicated their careers. Making any sort of definitive claim about what Hillsdale is and the identities of those who compose its infrastructure is a catch-22. If it was all positive, it not only would’ve been a lie, but we still would’ve found some fault in it.
The article doesn’t have a cohesive storyline or singular point— it reads as a collection of thoughts, quotes, and research Green conducted while on campus. So to a Hillsdale audience, it seems lame and un-telling of anything new. But to the typical New Yorker reader, this article served its purpose. It captured a birds-eye view of an institution that to most of the country, is a mysterious, scary little city on an imaginary hill.
Another major criticism that was repeatedly brought up over the week following the article’s release was Green’s inclusion of Hillsdale’s past scandals.
“Why did they have to bring up George Roche III again?”
Because that’s our history. Shying away from mentioning very public scandals would be a disservice to both Green’s readers and Hillsdale as a whole. For a school that claims not to shy away from the past or eliminate evidence of it, why should the collective approach to our own institution be any different?
Green’s sharpest point was the distinction she drew between Hillsdale’s external image versus its internal reality. While some Hillsdale folks are gung-ho about all things GOP, others are merely drawn to the promise of a liberal arts education, what Green describes as “a devotion to the Western canon, an emphasis on primary sources over academic theory, and a focus on equipping students to be able, virtuous citizens.” Many students are weary of some of Hillsdale’s gaudy marketing moves, but as Green points out, they’re necessary to the survival of our school.
Of course Green’s profile was limited. A profile in a newspaper or magazine will never be able to capture the full, rich image of anything, let alone an entire institution filled to the brim with dynamic and strange characters. Green’s article was a charcuterie board of some of what Hillsdale has to offer and where its ingredients are found on a national level—Green didn’t write her article for us.
