WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - Collegian Week in Review: November 6th, 2025

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

This week on the Collegian Week in Review, hosts Catherin Maxwell, Alessia Sandala, and Megan Li first talk to Ellie Fromm about FIRE's decision to exclude Hillsdale College from their free speech rankings. Then, they talk to Moira Gleason about recent remarks made by Heritage president Kevin Roberts about an interview Tucker Carlson did with internet commentator Nick Fuentes. Finally, they talk to Thomas McKenna about the results of the Hillsdale mayoral election. 

Welcome to the Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale, 101.7 FM. Here are your hosts, Alessia Sandella, Catherine Maxwell, and Megan Lee. Welcome to Collegian Weekend Review, where we give you an inside look into Michigan's oldest college newspaper. We're your hosts, Alessia Sandella, Megan Lee, and Catherine Maxwell. Today, we're talking to news editor Ellie Frum about Hillsdale being removed from free speech rankings, executive editor Mora Gleason about Heritage President Kevin Roberts' speech during the CCA, and editor-in-chief Thomas McKenna about the mayoral election results. I'm Catherine, and today I'm here with news editor Ellie From,

Ellie, you wrote about Hillsdale College being removed from some free speech rankings this week. What are those rankings, and what's the situation? So Hillsdale was removed from the foundation for individual rights and expression, and they're called fire. And they rank schools based on free speech policies and such. Hillsdale's actually never been ranked by them. They've always been given a warning label, but this year they decided to not even label us a warning school. so they just left us off entirely. What does it mean for a school to get a warning label from fire?

So for a school to get a warning label, it's usually private institutions because all public schools have to have a free speech, like a very clear free speech policy, but private schools, because they're not public, they don't necessarily need to have that. And so the way they assess the private schools is just do they have a free speech policy

that is above other values? And if the school holds other morals or values higher than free speech, or doesn't have a very, very clear free speech policy they're given a warning label, just so that they claim so that prospective students know that other policies are held higher than that one. Hillsdale conducted a survey in 2024 measuring how students felt about free speech on campus. What were the results of that survey? So Hillsdale's survey that they used the same methodology as fire found that, quote, 97% of Hillsdale students feel very or somewhat comfortable discussing controversial topics in public

campus spaces far exceeding the national average of 50%, end quote. And so when Hillsdale conducted this study, they did find that Hillsdale is actually the freest school in the nation for freedom of speech. In 2023, college president Larry Arne wrote an opinion for the Wall Street Journal talking about free speech on college campuses. What did he? he have to say? So Arndt said that there is more to education than free speech. That was the title of his Wall Street Journal opinion. And basically he said, yes, Hillsdale does not have a written free speech policy that is above its other values. But just because we don't have that, that doesn't mean we don't allow freedom of speech. It just means we allow freedom of speech while also recognizing other

things. He said, quote, Hillsdale's purposes as described in its founding document, are learning, character of faith and freedom. We often argue about the meaning of these things, but we consider them transcendent, a sin in FIRE's book in which only freedom of speech is transcendent. And how did FIRE respond to that opinion? Fire wrote a press release in 2020, responding to that, just restating the fact that they hold freedom of speech to be the top value for which they look and they are not recognizing other values. So they're not looking to see how freedom of speech is practiced in Hillsdale's classrooms, and they're only looking at policy.

You talked to some people in the administration about fire leaving Hillsdale off the rankings this year. What did they have to say? So they basically said that the fact that other schools need to have written policies for this type of thing, mean that their campus has broken down. Their campus culture is broken down to the point where it's not recognized without documentation. And so the reason why Hillsda doesn't have one is because our campus culture is strong enough.

Students recognize that this exists without a written policy. It's just very natural to us. Whereas other schools, the reason they need this policy is it's not natural to them. They don't have that shared heritage. Since this has been a back and forth with fire for a few years now, Is anyone in the administration offended that Hillsdale got left off?

Obviously, they said it was frustrating because when people go and look up Hillsdale or they go search through these rankings, they have to really, really dig to find Hillsdale. So it does hide the school and that part is frustrating. But I think at this point, after, you know, the Wall Street Journal has continuously left us off their rankings, I think at this point, it's just a case of, oh, this happened to. again and not necessarily shock. Ellie, thanks for joining us. Thank you. You're listening to the Collegian Week in Review. I'm Megan, and today we have executive editor, Mora Gleason, talking about Heritage President Kevin Roberts' opening remarks at the Center for Constructive Alternatives Lecture on Monday night.

Mora, welcome to the show. Thank you, Megan. So Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts came to Hillsdale for a pre-scheduled speech at the CCA conference on U.S. economic policy. But he came right after some controversy had erupted at the Heritage Foundation after Tucker Carlson interviewed Nick Fuentes, who is a far-right political commentator who openly says anti-Semitic things. and has said he's a fan of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, a pretty controversial guy. Carlson gave him what many think is a pretty friendly interview, kind of a softball, didn't ask a lot of hard questions, and Roberts responded in a video statement for the Heritage Foundation in which he said that he condemns anti-Semitism, but Tucker Carlson is and will always be

a good friend of the Heritage Foundation and that conservatives should be focusing on adversaries on the left rather than fighting their friends on the right. That video caused a lot of backlash from the conservative supporters of Heritage, both their board of trustees, a lot of their experts. And Roberts came to Hillsdale just a few days after all of this house. happened. So he addressed a good portion of his remarks actually to that video and made an apology. What were Roberts comments verbatim at the CCA? Yeah. So the quote that we included in the story is probably the most important part of what he had to say. Roberts brought up the video in his speech and said, quote, let me say loud and clear the Heritage Foundation, which has always not only

stood against anti-Semitism, and I, if you know anything about my career, have done the same, we will never, ever stop fighting against anti-Semitism in all its forms. He offered some other remarks about how he is concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism on the right, particularly among young men, and he warned Hillsdale students to be aware of that phenomenon and to guard against it. What was college president Larry Arne's reaction to the whole? Tucker Carlson, Kevin Roberts, situation. So Dr. Arne was at the event.

He was at the speech on Monday, and he didn't make any remarks there, but I asked him about it later for the Collegian, and he said, Kevin has been scheduled to speak at the college for some months. In light of the controversy, he decided to make some remarks about it. I understand that Kevin will have more to say about this in the coming days. For my part, I support the U.S. alliance with Israel and abhor the nutty Nick Fuentes, as does Kevin. I did not like the Tucker Carlson interview with the Nietzsche and Fuentes. So Roberts has come out with more remarks about the issue in the past couple of days. He spoke to Heritage staffers, I think, yesterday.

But this is really the first reaction that we've gotten from Larry Arne about the Heritage Foundation, but mostly about the Carlson, Nick Fuentes, review. He said he did not like it, which is pretty, pretty conclusive. What was the reaction of members of the staff at the Heritage Foundation to what happened? So we saw a few people resign, and I don't know the details of this quite as much, but I know the chief of staff to the President of the Heritage Foundation stepped down, and someone else who was also involved in, like, the executive office there took him. his place and a few members of the anti-Semitism task force stepped down. So that's been going on

kind of in the background for this whole thing. What were some of the comments that Hillsdale College students and professors had? Yeah, so I asked a couple of professors for their reactions to the whole Fuentes-Carlson interview as well as to what Dr. Kevin Roberts said on Monday. Professor of Philosophy Nathan Schleeder said that he respected Robert's willingness to make a public apology. He said that's what statesmen and gentlemen do, and we don't seem to have many today. And he also drew a further distinction that I thought was helpful. Robert said that the Heritage Foundation refuses to cancel Tucker Carlson. And Schleader pushed back on that just a little bit and said criticism is not cancellation.

The problem was that Carlson interviewed Fuentes. The problem was not that Carlson interviewed Fuentes. The problem was his failure to challenge Fuentes by asking and pressing hard questions. I thought that was a helpful clarification. Our visiting professor of Jewish studies, Michael Weingrad, also had some thoughts. He was at the speech on Monday. And he said that the statement declaring anti-Semitism was well. but it did not explain why he said, why Robert said in his original video, that Christians

and Jews who reject repugnant ideologies such as those espoused by Fuentes and insinuated by Carlson are engaging in cancel culture or why he said they act at the behest of what he described as a venomous fifth column. So Weingrad had some outstanding questions there, but welcomes the statement of condemning anti-Semitism. The students had a couple of varied reactions to Roberts' apology. We had one student who said that the right-wing criticism of Carlson for the interview is cancel culture. This is senior Will Deaton. He said that he was disappointed that Kevin Roberts felt the pressure and caved to the cancellation of Tucker Carlson.

He was definitely in the minority. We had some other voices in the piece. Sophomore Pierce Lehman. said, he thinks it's important there's a difference between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but in practice and in dialogue, the line often gets blurred. He had a really good quote at the end of the piece. Too often, cogent debates about foreign aid get derailed into blatant attacks on the Jewish race or religion. This has no place in the conservative movement. And if it takes over the discourse, the right will be no different than the radical woke Black Lives Matter left

who blame problems on ethnicity and people groups, not individuals. Young, Conservatives should have an open mind towards the issue and state their opinions without resorting to the dark rhetoric of a Fuentes or increasingly a Carlson. Moret, thank you so much. Of course. Thank you. This is the Collegian Week in Review. I'm Alessia, and we're now talking to the Collegians editor-in-chief, Thomas McKenna, about Tuesday's mayoral election. Thomas, who ran in this race? And what were the major issues?

So the two candidates in this race were former mayor Scott Sessions and Ward 2 Councilman Matthew Bentley. Scott Sessions defeated Bentley on Tuesday night in the Tuesday election for mayor by about six percentage points here in 53% of the vote. They were only separated by 67 votes, so a pretty close margin there here in the city. Sessions mainly campaigned on trying to calm a negative culture that he says has arisen on city council. and he blamed his opponent Matthew Bentley for that. So, you know, it'll only be a one-year term since it was a special election to fill the seat left by Adam Stockford, our former mayor when he moved out of city limits. So we'll, you know, do all this over again in a year. But for the next year, the mayor of Hillsdale is Scott Sessions.

And what was the voter turnout? The voter turnout was about half of what we saw in the mayoral election in. 2022. That was an on-year election during the midterms. So about 21% of registered voters participated and 52% had participated in 2022. So the exact number was 1,109 voters. So, you know, less turnout than we've seen in regularly scheduled mayoral elections. But that was to be expected since this was a special election. What was Sessions' reaction to finding out that he won? He said, that he was relieved. It was a hard and tough race, he said, a roller coaster ride, their ups and downs. But he said he was grateful for people's support and excited to get to work

for people in Hillsdale. I asked him what has changed since he first won the mayoral election in 2013. He served as mayor of Hillsdale from 2013 to 2017 previously. And he said the thing that's changed in the past 12 years is the negative culture that he keeps pointing to on city council. What he keeps pointing to is the five city officials that have resigned since the spring. That's, you know, the airport manager, the city engineer, public utilities managers. They say that they're under criticism from members of city council, Matthew Bentley, as one of them, Scott Sessions says, as well as Mayor Pro Tem, Joshua Palladino and councilman Jacob Bruns. So Sessions is saying that that is what has changed, and that's what we're going. why he ran for mayor again after being out of city politics for a long time.

What are some of his goals for his second time in office? Well, mainly it's to try to rein in the negative culture that he says has developed in city government. But he's also pointed to a few other things. So one is that he's in favor of special assessment districts. Those are the funding mechanism that the city uses to fund road repairs. So if the city designates your street as a special assessment district, you can be charged up to $5,000 for road repairs to your street. And Scott Sessions isn't a favor of letting those move forward and stay in place as city policy. He's also said that he wants to work to try to alleviate the homeless crisis, but his main policy goal there is to reconvene a homelessness

task force that was recently disbanded. after it was started by Adam Stockford a few years ago. And then the other thing that I would mention that he said was a goal of this term is on the road diet. He's in favor of it going through. He was initially opposed to the road diet that would slim down a downtown street, the main drag of the town from two lanes on each side to one lane on each side with a bike lane running on each side of the road.

He's in favor of that plan now that it's passed through city council because he says that, you know, it will help the city use state grants to fund other road repairs that need to happen. So that's what Scott Sessions mayoral term will likely look like, but it'll only be, again, for the next year. And then the city will do this all over again. They'll have a primary in August and a general election in November. What was Bentley's reaction when he found that he didn't win? He told me that it was shock and then relief. He said he was surprised to learn that he had law.

He thought that he was going to win. But then he also said he was glad that he wasn't going to have to deal with the pressure of being the mayor. And he also said that it really didn't make much of a difference in terms of advancing the policies that he supports. So contrast Bentley with Sessions, right? Matthew Bentley is a councilman. He's got two other people on council that tend to vote the way that he votes and ask the same questions he asks. They're opposed to the current funding mechanism, special assessment districts. which is how the city funds those road repairs.

They want to lower the cost to individual residents on the streets where the city is repairing the roads. He was opposed to the road diet. It's unclear if he was going to be able to do anything differently as mayor to oppose the road diet. And he's also in favor of being

more critical of city staff, what he would term as holding them accountable, asking questions. But those are all things that he can still oppose as just a councilman rather than the mayor. The mayor in Hillsdale is pretty weak compared to other executives you might think of like the governor or the president in Hillsdale when you're the mayor. You basically just run the meeting and you're an extra vote on city council. So the way he put it to me when I was standing at his victory, or I should say, at his end of campaign party on Tuesday night was that instead of it being three of eight, being in his group on city council, instead of them having three of eight votes.

They now only have three of nine. It's not a huge difference in terms of what they're able to do on a council. But still, I think that he said he was still somewhat disappointed because it represented that the city hadn't picked him and his program to be the head of city council. Thomas, did any Hillsdale students get involved in this election? Yeah, we saw some Hillsdale students vote. I talked to a few of them outside of the polling place on Tuesday evening, just as the polls were about to close. One of them that I talked to is Ghei Kim. She's a senior at the college, and she told me that she thought if she was going to live here for four years, she should at least do her civic duty and go and vote.

So, you know, we saw some students take part in the election. My sense talking to them is that they generally supported Matthew Bentley. He's been more active talking to students leading up to the election than Scott Sessions was. and he has some more, you know, connections with the current student body. You were more likely to see him talking to students. So, you know, some students participated, but even if they tended to support Matthew Bentley, it wasn't enough to swing the election in the city. Great. Thanks for coming on, Thomas.

Thanks for having me. You've been listening to the Collegian Week in Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. I'm Catherine Maxwell. I'm Alessia Sandela. And I'm Megan Lee. You can find the Collegian Weekend Review online at cwir. dot transistor.fm. You can find more news at Hillsdale Collegian.com.

Our Instagram is at Hillsdale Collegian. Thank you for listening to Collegian Weekend Review on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM. So, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.