The president of a prominent Christian college in Michigan reacted Thursday to President Donald Trump's battle with Harvard University - and the billions it stands to lose due to a federal funding freeze over its response to on-campus antisemitism.
"We all have a right to free speech, but if you join the academic community, you don't get to say whatever you want. You can't go to physics class and talk about English Lit. Also, you can't spit on people because they're Jews or denounce them… because that breaks down the friendship that is necessary to the partnership of a college," Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn told Fox News Digital in an interview.
"Now, having said that, of course - you shouldn't say 'dirty Jew.' It's perfectly legitimate to say, 'I don't agree with it.' But to say, 'Israel took that land, and they don't have a right to it,' and the response would be, 'OK, see if you can prove that.' That's an academic undertaking," he said.
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"Shouting, preventing people from going to class, threatening them personally. That breaks down the academic community. They shouldn't be doing that. And it's, you know, because the [1964] Civil Rights Act is written in a certain way; if they permit that kind of activity, Harvard is in violation of that act, and that act applies to every organization in America."
A college, being an incubator of learning, should especially be an organization to prohibit such virulent behavior outright, Arnn added.
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Earlier this month, the Trump antisemitism task force froze $2 billion in grants to Harvard, and Trump later floated stripping its tax-exempt status after the school's administration released a statement saying it would not comply with demands.
Arnn said that, antisemitic behavior or not, there are thousands of stipulations a college must agree to in order to receive funding from the federal Department of Education.
"The government has changed so much since 1960, and it's all over everything now, including education. And Harvard doesn't like some recent things it's been demanded to do, but it's obeying hundreds of pages of rules that are detailed, and they have to comply with because they have a lot of money from the government," he said.
"So the obvious solution would be, don't take the money from the government, which is what we do," he said, referring to Hillsdale.
Arnn said Hillsdale, founded in the mid-19th century in part by friends of then-Illinois attorney Abraham Lincoln, has never been as wealthy as Harvard but remains an exceptional institution.
"The fact that they are defending [themselves] is good, and maybe they should have the complete courage of their convictions and just give [the funding] up," he said.
If the frozen funds account for the school's annual federal contribution, it would calculate to $90,000 per student, Arnn added, noting the school also has a large endowment.
"Maybe they could make it on their own," he said.
"Every transaction at Hillsdale College… is a voluntary transaction… [N]obody comes here unless they want to, they have to sign an honor code to come."
Arnn compared Hillsdale's connections to a politically budding Lincoln to Harvard's title as the oldest college in the country, and Princeton University's ties to Founding Fathers like President James Madison.
"If James Madison had come to college here, I would never shut up about it, right? Frederick Douglass spoke on our campus twice. I never shut up about that," he said.
Arnn cited how the first Trump administration investigated Princeton after figures there publicized its supposed racist structures.
"[Madison] personally took pride in the fact they had kept the word 'slave' out of the Constitution, because although they had to make a compromise and not abolish it in certain ways, and that compromise is for a very big reason," he said.
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"The problem is, we have a set of principles that are perfect, but we will never serve them perfectly," said Arnn. "[T]he attempt to do so can do a lot of harm depending on what the attempt is."
"My suggestion [to Harvard] would be to go in the right direction. It's written in your own history. And you should probably do it with your own resources if you don't like bureaucrats in Washington telling you what to do," he said.
In a statement, Harvard President Alan Garber said Harvard will "not surrender its independence or relinquish its constitutional rights," and "no government… should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can admit and hire…"
