December 19, 2025
Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens and promoting civil and religious liberty by covering cultural, economic, political, and educational issues. The content of Imprimis is drawn from speeches delivered at Hillsdale College events. First published in 1972, Imprimis is one of the most widely circulated opinion publications in the nation with over six million subscribers.
https://imprimis.hillsdale.edu/
Interview with Jerry Leeman: Today we bring you a story about a handful of fishermen rallying against a billion-dollar green industrial project, shady foreign corporations, and our own federal and state government. All are conspiring to generate a cash cow for…
2023 Commencement Address The following is adapted from a speech delivered on May 13, 2023, at Hillsdale College’s 171st Commencement Ceremony. Congratulations to the Hillsdale College Class of 2023. It is a thrill to be here at Hillsdale, which I have heard about for…
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on April 24, 2023, in Irving, Texas. In a recent survey of Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development countries—i.e., all the rich countries in the world—…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on February 22, 2023, at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar in Indian Wells, California. Just about everybody on Wall Street knows, despite what you read in the financial press, that the Biden administration’…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on March 5, 2023, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Big Pharma.” I developed a serious cardiac arrhythmia, ventricular tachycardia, seven years ago. It worsened over the p…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on February 7, 2023. Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last October and the subsequent reporting on the Twitter Files by journalists Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, and a handful of others beginning in early D…
By Christopher Flannery Host, The American Story The following is adapted from an online presentation recorded at Hillsdale College on October 18, 2022. On the mezzanine floor of the Parker House Hotel in Boston hangs a mirror, still today. In the late fall of 1867,…
The following is adapted from remarks delivered on November 3, 2022, at a Hillsdale College reception in Santa Clara, California. If you want to see the problem with American education, look at a chart illustrating the comparative growth in the number of students, teach…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 20, 2022, sponsored by the student group Praxis. On April 15, 2020—a full month after President Trump’s fateful news conference that greenlighted lockdowns to be enacted by the states for…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on November 7, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “The Great Reset.” Is the Great Reset a conspiracy theory imagining a vast left-wing plot to establish a totalitarian…
The following is adapted from a lecture delivered on February 28, 2022, at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C. campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. For several years prior …
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College National Leadership Seminar on February 24, 2022, in Naples, Florida. When I was researching my biography of economist Thomas Sowell, I kept coming across Sowell’s own descriptions of scholars h…
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at Hillsdale College on April 5, 2022, during a two-week teaching residency at Hillsdale as a Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Fellow in Journalism. Why do I say that we need to lay siege to our institutions? Because of wha…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered on July 20, 2022, at the Allan P. Kirby, Jr. Center for Constitutional Studies and Citizenship on Hillsdale’s Washington, D.C. campus, as part of the AWC Family Foundation Lecture Series. Complaints by veteran soldiers …
The following is adapted from a speech delivered on September 16, 2022, in Washington, D.C., at Hillsdale College’s Constitution Day Celebration. The seal of the U.S. Department of Justice reads, “Qui Pro Domina Justitia Sequitur”—“Who prosecutes for Lady Just…
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on October 4, 2022, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on the topic of Russia. According to what we hear from the White House and from the television networks, the issues at stake …
The following is adapted from a talk delivered at Hillsdale College on September 20, 2021, during a Center for Constructive Alternatives conference on “Critical American Elections.” Sixteen years ago, in 2005, the Carter-Baker Commission on Federal Election Reform i…
The following is adapted from a speech delivered at a Hillsdale College reception in Overland Park, Kansas, on November 18, 2021. Here are two questions pertinent to our times: (1) How would you reduce the greatest free republic in history to despotism in a short time? …
For several years prior to 2020, violent crime in America’s major cities was on the decline. But since the riots that summer following the death of George Floyd, it is heading in the opposite direction.
Inflation is an economic concept that refers to the overall increase in prices of goods and services in an economy. It is usually measured as an annual percentage change. Inflation can be caused by various factors, including excess money supply, high government spending…
–John R. Lott, Jr.Founder and President, Crime Prevention Research Center The Following Article is shared from the October 2021 Issue of Imprimis. “Imprimis is the free monthly speech digest of Hillsdale College and is dedicated to educating citizens…