Reform College · works
Works offered to the liberal arts
A dossier of original work in Hillsdale’s register. Aimed at the education they teach. Not a counterfeit Hillsdale degree. Not an application they did not invite.
Candor first. Hillsdale College confers honorary doctorates at commencement, by the President and the College — typically Doctor of Public Service, sometimes Humane Letters or Fine Arts. Recipients in the last decade include Clarence Thomas, Roger Scruton, Jordan Peterson, Bishop Robert Barron, Victor Davis Hanson, major friends and donors of the College, and, in 2026, Charlie and Erika Kirk. There is no public form that turns a stack of essays into that hood. Completing their free online courses does not produce it. Hosting their films, as this hall already does with citation, does not produce it. PXD2 will not print a Hillsdale seal, will not say “honorary alumnus,” and will not tell a reader we can purchase or hack the honor. If the works below are ever noticed, that is their decision. If they are not, the works still had to be written.
What they actually honor
From their own commencement notices, three kinds of life show up under the hood:
- Public teaching of first principles at scale — Thomas on the bench; Scruton in philosophy; Peterson in print; Kirk in the country. The College is recognizing a teacher, not grading a term paper.
- Friendship and provision for the College — trustees, scholarships, chapels, advancement. That is a different road (money and years), and it is real.
- Local office well kept — a county prosecutor, a long servant of Hillsdale itself.
PXD2 is on the first road if it is on any: public teaching of the compact, Euclid, resistance theory, and the arms cases, without stealing their courseware. The second road is not this catalog. The third is Michigan, not a website.
What we will do anyway — because it is the work
Hillsdale’s own online table is the map of a liberal education: Constitution (Declaration as end, Constitution as form), Euclid as logic, the Federalist, chemistry as nature, Aristotle’s ethics. A person who wants to be taken seriously by that faculty does four things they can verify:
- Enrolls, in his own name, and finishes the free courses — Constitution 101, Mathematics and Logic, the Federalist, Great Principles of Chemistry, Aristotle’s Ethics. Certificates they issue for those courses are theirs. Keep them. They are not honorary doctorates. They are proof you sat still.
- Writes original work they do not already have on the syllabus — not a paraphrase of Arnn, not a mirror of Treloar.
- Teaches that work in public, cited, without pretending to be the College.
- Binds the work and sends one copy, once, to the Office of the President, Hillsdale College, 33 East College Street, Hillsdale, Michigan 49242 — as a gift of scholarship, not as a demand for a hood. One letter. No campaign.
Original contribution (what they do not already teach)
Hillsdale already has the Declaration and the Constitution, Euclid, Publius, and Jackson in American Heritage. The work that is ours, and therefore the only work worth sending:
- North Carolina’s withheld consent until a Bill of Rights moved — the compact as a fact, not a metaphor.
- Alexander Craighead in the Piedmont as the American restatement of Knox and Rutherford.
- Lincoln’s eleven weeks with Congress out, and the August 6, 1861 “legalized as if” formula, read against Lex Rex.
- The arms cases after Bruen as applications of “the people,” including 18-to-20-year-old adults (Reese, Lara v. Evanchick) and as-applied lifetime disarmament for a paid debt (Cockerham).
- Reform College as a restoration of Witherspoon’s Princeton BA, not as a department store.
The works — a finite list
Enough, if they are finished, to be a small book. Not a thousand blog posts. Hillsdale reads books and lectures. So do we.
| # | Work | Status |
|---|---|---|
| I | The Compact Withheld — North Carolina, the Bill of Rights, and demonstration from first principles | On this hall |
| II | Resistance theory classes — Knox, Rutherford, Craighead, Witherspoon | On this hall |
| III | Federalist and Anti-Federalist: two complete accounts; Lincoln’s retroactive legality | On this hall |
| IV | Master amicus on the right to keep and bear arms (coalitions deposit) | On this hall |
| V | Reform College catalog — 120-credit BA against Witherspoon’s Princeton | On this hall |
| VI | Euclid as the logic of consent — companion to a mathematics course, not a copy of it | On this hall |
| VII | Witherspoon’s moral philosophy — a reading edition | On this hall |
| VIII | Printed octavo of I–VII — title, gift letter, contents. Bind once. Send once | On this hall |
The octavo is the only object a president’s office can hold. Print the title leaf, then works I–VII. Do not email a Google Drive. One letter. No campaign.
What we will not do
- Print a Hillsdale diploma, seal, or “honorary class of.”
- Call a finished online-course certificate an honorary doctorate.
- Spam trustees, faculty, or Arnn’s office.
- Host their paid or login-walled lectures as if they were ours.
- Promise anyone that this dossier yields a hood. It yields a book, if we finish it.
The College’s own sentence is enough: they honor public service to the principles of free government and to liberal education. Serve those. If they ever put a hood on it, that is grace. If they never do, the BA in this catalog is still the education Witherspoon recognized, and it does not require their stationery.
Hillsdale honorary degrees are described in the College’s commencement notices (Thomas 2017; Scruton 2012; Peterson 2022; Barron 2023; Kirk 2026). Course enrollment: online.hillsdale.edu/courses. President’s office: 33 E. College St., Hillsdale, MI 49242. This page is PXD2’s, not Hillsdale’s.