eastern here on c-span. today on c-span3 and the efforts to prevent polio around the world. the world health organization is the host of this event. see it live starting at 1:30 p.m. eastern on c-span3. >> people like to have the books. it is a very sticky medium. we have seen this medium be sticky throughout time. .

>> dr. larry arnn, president of hillsdale college. in hillsdale, michigan. let me read the first three sentences of the wikipedia site for your school. it is a co-educational liberal rights college known for its refusal of goved funding. the national review has described it as the citadel of

skevbtism. -- conservatism. let's stop there. is that right? >> it is an old college. it is 165 years old now. the reason it is a bastion and fortress and citadel of conservatism is, it is very stiff and stern about its old document. we stick by that. that is conservatism in a way, but what that document says, it repeats in different words some of the principles in the declaration of independence. that conservatism is tied to the liberalism of the american founding. >> what about this refusal of government funding? >> that is a modern phenomenon. as is government funding a modern phenomenon. the government funding of college, direct aid to college

and the students is the late 1950's or early 1960's thing that has grown rapidly since then. it was sparked in part by the sputnik soviet launch. the idea was to help us get to the moon. that was the public statement about why they did it. we didn't think it was a good idea for the simple reason that our country is very unusual. this society is separate from the government. sovereignty is located outside the government. that never really happened before. they take huge pride in the federalist papers in the idea that is the first purely representative form of government ever started. that means that places that trained leadership of the country had always been outside the government. there was a hesitation on our part about that. we did not take any direct money for a long time. in the 1960's there was a debate at the college about it in the members of our board.

richman said you are going to go bankrupt if you do not take it. i recommend on the basis of a task force report that we have to start taking this money. the vote was 16-2 against it. this was in 1966 or 1967. i have the minutes. there was a prayer for the college after they voted that day. there is always that. in the 1970's we reached a decision that the aid to the students was student aid, so they were allowed to have that at hillsdale. in the carter administration it happened that they wrote to all the colleges that were not title iv compliant and said you have to be if you are going to take the student aid. we got into an administrative hearing and a lawsuit and finally the supreme court. we got beat, so we do not take that money either. even though that was not originally designed to be aid to the college, but to the student. so we rely on private sources alone. >> how many students?

>> 1350. >> what is the tuition? >> about $19,000. >> how many professors? >> about 130. it's about 10 to one. >> where is it physically located and why? >> south-central michigan. it was put there -- it was on the frontier in 1844. there were mostly new england preachers who were also evolutionist. ours is one of the early and my asht is greatest of the evolutionist colleges. we think our charter is the first one ever written that guarantees men and women, black and white, all alike. they came out to the northwest territories and founded this college. it was first in jackson, michigan, about 30 miles from us. they moved down to hillsdale after 11 years to get to a big town. it was on the railroad, and that was the way back then. hillsdale was a very large, a thriving community of probably

4,000. now it is a metropolis. it's 10,000. >> how many other colleges or universities in the u.s. have the same basic rule of taking no federal or state money? >> i have heard of grove city and others that make claims. grove city college in pennsylvania, an old college, a nice college, a good place, i think. i've not been there but i know good things about them. >> i want to show you an excerpt from 1991. i will ask you to tell us about the individual, but listen carefully to what he says. >> is there such a thing that has built up over the years as a martin gilbert inc.? in other words, have you got a big force behind you that helps you do research? and secretaries and -- >> i have always believed in doing to it myself. i have always done my own research. i was very lucky indeed. i always had one person to help me and go with me to the archives. if only because under the british system, one person can only call for three files, but two can call for six.

one of my assistants, larry arnn is running a policy in claremont, california. he was extremely good but unfortunately he fell in love with my secretary and married her and she is now in california. >> tell us about martin gilbert. >> he is a very great man. he is the official biographer of winston churchill. he has published 81 books. he happens to be here in washington right now because last night he got a bradley prize. the bradley nougs milwaukee gives prizes to distinguished individuals. he won one last night. i went there when i was a graduate student in 1977. i have a rotary fellowships and i had an introduction to him. >> in oxford? >>i met him in london at the london school of economics. i was very charmed by him.

i had taken up the study of churchill, and i loved churchill. he is the man. he is a very great man. he is a wonderful human being, and a friend of mine today. i met my wife working in his house. she is still my wife after all that time. when i first met him, i notice in the clip he is a younger man than he is now, but he is still great. >> what is the connection between winston churchill and hillsdale college? >> after i went to hillsdale, he and i had preserved our friendship for a long time now, and i have proof read his books off and on for decades. i see him when i go over there. when he came to america, he would come to claremont and spend an extra day. >> where is claremont? >>it is outside los angeles, in

southern california. we have a big history department. teaching history at hillsdale is our big thing. it is our largest department, which almost no college can say. he came to visit, and he was there over the weekend of september 11, 2001. he was there on that day. we got to talking, and i told him about an ambition i had. i want to see the great biography of churchill completely finished. i worked on it. he has been working on it really since 1962. this great biography is very large. it is almost too large to read, although he would kick me for saying that. it is many volumes of documents. what is not finished is the document volumes. the narrative volumes are finished. there are eight. most of those are out of print. i have always thought that it was something i should do if i got the way to bring all that back into print and to help him

finish those document files. we are doing that together, and it is a very big job. we are up to volume 5 now. very soon, volume 5 will come out. volumes 1 through 5, you can order from hillsdale college. that means they have these associated documents. you can read the stuff yourself. it is kind of like c-span on paper. he has got seven more volumes of documents to do, to finish up to the end of churchill's life. that means the original source material about the life of this very great man will be complete. we are doing that together, hillsdale college and martin gilbert. >> how old is sir martin? >>he is 72 or 73. 72, i think. maybe 73 in october. >> you also have the archives of william f. buckley jr. >> no, we do not. they went to princeton. we have his articles and all of his published essays are online

at the hillsdale college website. we did that work with him. >> how vast is that? >> thousands. it is very big. it is searchable. you can find anything you want. it just so happens i knew him for a long time and admire him very much. late in his life i actually went after him to get his papers, because i thought someone should put them on line where you could find them and read them. he was a very interesting man. they were committed. he said, how about these articles? i said i would take what i could get. i like the articles. they are good. >> we like to make connections here. go back to claremount institute. what is that and who funds it? >> is a think tank in southern california. it was started by a bunch of graduate students. of whom i happen to be one. it still goes. we had the idea, we were

studying at an exciting time in our lives. we were studying with very great teachers. led by a man named harry jaffa. we got into the american revolution through lincoln. he actually wrote a very good book. the implication in the book is that lincoln saved and corrected things in the american revolution. that it was flawed when it was put together. later, working backwards from lincoln, he came to see that lincoln never said that. lincoln was right in what he said. an abstract truth to all men in all times to be a stumbling block. to the harbingers of reappearing tyranny.

lincoln said that and it is a paraphrase of what he said. it is close. we thought, read this stuff. the united states of america had a beautiful beginning, and is being forgotten. so we had the idea that we would start a think tank. what do we know about anything? we did that, and we would teach people and remind people, including in the context of policy disputes, about the meaning and tradition of america. that has been going on for a long time now. who funds it? a lot of people. the bradley foundation, that davis prize last night is a founder of it. the john olin foundation, which is dissolved now, was a big funder of it. henry salvatore, the man who got ronald reagan into politics was a big funder. a lot of people. there are thousands of people who give support. >> i want to run an old recruitment video. it is not great video but it will make a point for hillsdale

college. >> hillsdale deserves the appreciation of all who labor for freedom. your creative outreach on national issues enables hillsdale cast such a long shadow. >> hillsdale's in independence opens the door for educational advancement and personal development. >> hillsdale college is truly unique. we're unique because we will not take government money and we will not take government control. we are unique because of a special educational experience which is at once highly personal and deeply rooted in the values of western civilization, the american tradition, and the judeo-christian heritage. this place represents a liberal arts tradition at its very best. >> we teach you not only what to learn but how to learn and why to learn. >> so how did you get the president to do that? >> i was not there then, but i knew him, too. reagan was interested in hillsdale. there are some letters in which he mentions it.

he was on the campus once and appeared at a college event another time, if i remember correctly. that is when i was not working. he took an interest in it because of this dispute had with the departed education. title 4 of the higher education act is four hundred pages long. we have a lawyer here in town who tries to keep the government from giving us money. i once asked him to send me a title iv, and he said it was not in use. i would not be able to read it. there are a lot of reasons why we do not want to comply with that, one being it is difficult to know what it says, and it changes all the time. reagan was interested in that dispute. i think the college originally got in touch with him because of that. >> i want to try to use some language, and you can correct me, but i want to ask about this.

the last person we saw was george roche, the president of the college. he died in 2006? >> he did. >> you replaced him? >> yes i did. >> hillsdale was in the national spotlight for a murder or suicide on the campus. >> i will explain it. his daughter-in-law, who was a college employee, committed suicide in 1999. she left a note saying that she had improper relations with him for 11 years. he denied that. no witness ever came forward to confirm it. a hard thing to confirm, and are yet to disprove. upon that breaking, he resigned, retired from the college, with the firmest and oft repeated assurances that he never did that. i myself do not much think he did. but there was trouble in his family, so it was right, in my opinion, for him to retire. that is that story.

>> how hard was it for you to follow that, and did you have problems raising money? or did he have problems during that time raising money? >> it happened pretty fast in regard to him. i think the suicide was in november, and he retired before the month was out, maybe in 10 days. in my own case, yeah, you do not remember your pains, that is one of the blessings of the human soul. to run a college is to worry. colleges are precious and fragile things. ours has been wonderfully successful. but think of all the trouble in the world. from 2001 to 2004, the worst years for the stock market since the great depression, until the last year. the first month i worked at hillsdale college, we lost $750,000. that is a lot of money.

i can remember once a colleague called the post office to make sure the mail was being delivered because we were not getting any. having said that, the first year i was at the college, the college year ends in june, we had a good year. it has been good. the american people are very generous people. we watch our costs very closely. i told you what our tuition number is. that is low for a college like ours. our cost per student has gone up less than the rate of inflation for some years now. >> what is your endowment? >>it was about $300 million and now is about $280 million. we lost 22%, which is a very good number, maybe the best. it is mostly because of native caution.

we have gifts and endowment and student revenues, and that is what we have got. >> i am holding up something called "imprimis." the last place i read you have 1.6 million subscribers. this is you back in 2008. did you write this? or do you speak it? >> i wrote it first. to be in "imprimis," which is 35 years old, it goes to a lot of people.

to get it, you have to want to get it. if someone watching this calls my office or goes to the website and signs up, they can have it for free. there is no obligation. we will not give your name to anybody else. we never do. it is kind of an institution now. to get into it, it is only once a month. you have to give a speech for hillsdale college. it has to be good. >> "imprimis" in latin means "in the first place." who named it that? how long has it been around? >> it started in 1972. someone working at the college. i have heard, the people involved, a really great guy who is a son of clark durant, who is still a businessman in detroit, who runs a charter schools and private schools for inner-city kids. those three guys really started building it. >> in this "imprimis," i saw somewhere there is a $608 million capital endowment campaign to run for 2012. my first question is, why is it

$608 million? why not just $600 million? >> that is an excellent question. i think it is because we add up what we think we need and multiply it by the number that it takes to get that much out for year. i think he came to that, and i think there was some demand that arose. it started out to be $500 million, and we have made that. we get gifts and pledges and all that, we have gone past that. not by much, but a little. we decided that it -- a bunch of stuff came up and we need some more money and so we are still working on it. when we redid the budget, that is what came up.

so we called it that. >> another issue is one with rush limbaugh. do conservatives need to get beyond reagan? here is one by mark steyn who lives in new hampshire. live free or die. there is one by a john o'sullivan margaret thatcher. a legacy of freedom. did i read you have a statue of her on campus? >> yes, we do. >> when did that happen? >> a year and a half ago. >> why? >>the college had a relationship with her. she spoke at the college on several occasions. it just so happened that i knew her for a long time. so i had a crazy idea -- we have a great art department at hillsdale college, including a great painter and a great sculptor who is from an old sculpting family. i saw some of his work and thought there needs to be a great bust of winston

churchill. i don't know of one. i asked him about it, and he said he would love to. he told me he would just do it. later i found out it cost money. i went to the board and said i would like to do some statues, just a few. not only did they love the idea, but they put money up for four of them on the spot. they talked me into it to modern, recent people who have lived in our recent memories. one is thatcher and one is reagan. and the argument because i'm sort of against it. i think churchhill is as modern as you should go. you find out about them as time goes on. those people had particular connections to the college. we settled that up that way. >> how many total years did you work with sir martin gilbert on churchill? >> three years full-time. >> of all the time you thought and read about winston churchill, what is the main thing you take away?

>> well, he was a very beautiful man. he was one of the very greatest men who ever lived. to study him in detail, like to study lincoln or washington, churchill once wrote and described how marron won his battles. it becomes a commentary, in my opinion. of course it is nothing asserted by churchhill. he says the mere aspirant type of character only shows his hopeless inferiority. nothing but genius can answer the riddles of war. because genius is more rare than the rarest of diamonds, wars are mainly tales of metal. that is like the thematic sentence in plato's republic. churchill is an example of a

very great soul meant to lead in politics. >> where are you from, originally? >> arkansas. >>where? >>i was born in the panhandle of texas. my dad was working for phillips petroleum. he went to college, which was an enormous fact in his family, but they were arkansas people. he decided to become a schoolteacher and move back to arkansas. i grew up where he taught most of his life and live until he died in pocahontas, arkansas. another large town. >> where did you go to college? >> i went to arkansas state university, the local place. i decided with three friends of mine, and i am in contact with all of them still. we just went to the nearby place. after i got there, i started finding out things i had not known, like how college works. i had always wanted to be a lawyer. i applied and got into some really good law schools. then my dad thought, my life is

complete. my son is going to be a lawyer from a good school. in my last semester at arkansas state university, i had a teacher with a terrible reputation. arrogant, difficult. he is a great man. i had to read plato's republic. i was reading in the first chapter of the first book. it was about the argument in the first chapter. show me, socrates, that justice is good -- injustice is wrong, even if by practicing it, you ruin the reputation for justice. injustice is wrong, even if by practicing it you win the reputation for justice. good for its own sake. i can remember thinking, i would like to know the answer to that question. so i did not go to law school.

i went to graduate school. >> where? >>claremount college. >> what was your thesis about? >> winston churchill. i wrote about him in the first world war. it is like dissertations, as good as they are. mine is not particularly good, but i was onto something there. partly because martin gilbert helped me, suggested it to me. churchill was desperately afraid of war. he took part in the last british cavalry charge. it was a glorious triumph, fighting arabs and muslims. the british had a grievance against him because the ruler of khartoum had killed the british hero. kitchener went down there to

avenge that and they won a massive victory with almost no casualties. churchill took part in that. in recounting this battle, which he was in the course of launching a political career -- he had every reason on earth to celebrate this overwhelming victory. he writes of it as a tragedy. when the dervishes come over the hill and the british -- there is a beautiful paragraph in a chapter of his book. "the river war." it is a commentary on what war has become. it says, little did they know the impending tragedy. then he describes metal whistling into flesh and the screams of the dying on one side, and back on the british side, the manufacturing process.

so if war becomes dangerous, and if it is made dangerous by technological advancements, if it is made dangerous by the increased degree of organization possible in modern countries, the increased devotion of people into the country in a democratic nation where we all get to own its, it is possible that the modern, free government contains the seeds of its own destruction in itself. all his life -- he writes in 1925 that mankind has ever been in this position before. without having improved appreciably in virtue or enjoying wiser guidance, he has got into his hands at last the means of his own destruction. this guy was terrified of war. he is the guy who confronts hitler.