Just say you’ll know, here’s another Arkie lurking on the list of mentionables for Donald Trump administration jobs: Larry Arrn, president of Hillsdale College, in Hillsdale, Mich.
He’s a native of Pocahontas and a graduate of Arkansas State University. He is, to put it very mildly, a conservative. He’s a trustee and was once offered leadership of the conservative Heritage Foundation. I once chanced to be on a cruise with a contingent of Hillsdale benefactors, hosted by the college. Keynote speakers included Phil Gramm. Breakfast table talk I overheard included fervently voiced fears about the threat Barack Obama posed to the U.S. way of life. A note from Wikipedia:
In 2013, Arnn was criticized for his remarks about ethnic minorities when he testified before the Michigan State Legislature. In testimony against the Common Core curriculum standards, in which Arnn expressed concern about government interference with educational institutions, he recalled that shortly after he assumed the presidency at Hillsdale he received a letter from the state Department of Education that said his college “violated the standards for diversity,” adding, “because we didn’t have enough dark ones, I guess, is what they meant.” After being criticized for calling minorities “dark ones”, he explained that he was referring to “dark faces”, saying: “The State of Michigan sent a group of people down to my campus, with clipboards … to look at the colors of people’s faces and write down what they saw. We don’t keep records of that information. What were they looking for besides dark ones?”[11] Michigan House Democratic Leader Tim Greimel condemned Arnn for his comments, which he called “offensive” and “inflammatory and bigoted”, and asked for an apology.[12] The College issued a statement apologizing for Arnn’s remark, while reiterating Arnn’s concern about “state sponsored racism” in the form of affirmative action policies.
Arrn is being talked up on a variety of conservative websites.