Ronald Reagan
A Brief History
Ronald Reagan devoted his presidency to the defeat of Communism and the renewal of America’s founding principles. A popular former governor of California, Reagan promised to shrink the federal bureaucracy, to cut taxes to spur economic growth, and to defend the “consent of the governed” against the Progressive vision of an unelected administrative state. Reagan also declared the Soviet Union an “evil empire” that would be relegated to die on the “ash heap of history.”
Joining the Liberty Walk
Our statue of Ronald Reagan was sculpted by Tony Frudakis, associate professor of art at Hillsdale College. To gain insight into creating a likeness of Reagan, Frudakis spent time reading biographies as well as Reagan’s autobiography, An American Life, before beginning work on the sculpture.
The statue was inspired by a 1984 photo of Reagan leaning against a White House colonnade – a photo Hillsdale College President Larry P. Arnn especially liked. As Frudakis said, “I think he [Arnn] felt that Reagan, in a sense, had given us a solution as to how to represent himself. The pose captures his innate elegance. There’s an easiness about the pose that sort of reflects his style as a president, where he achieved great things in an almost — it would seem to be — effortless way.”
Arnn explained why the statue deserves a place on the campus: “There’s something fundamental that we need to be reminded of, and that is, the College is conceived as a certain kind of service to the principles of freedom, civil and religious liberty.” Arnn said that Hillsdale students have an obligation to study and understand those principles, and he defended the bronze figure as a reminder of them. “Reagan is more or less a contemporary statesman, and he was very successful … I admire him very much. But more important than that, we admired him very much during his time, and he admired us, and he was here. We had a connection with him, and so those things make it right that he be here,” Arnn said.
Welcoming His Statue to Campus
British historian and biographer Andrew Roberts gave the speech for the statuededication. Roberts said Reagan “was characterized as a man of tremendous courage, who followed what was right, in spite of stereotypes and criticisms.” Roberts called him a “conviction politician” who was “infused with common sense and an implicit trust in the American people,” who still had “the best sense of humor of any American president since Abraham Lincoln.”
“As to whether it belongs on campus or not, I say absolutely,” Professor of History Brad Birzer said of the statue. “Reagan stood for almost everything we believe in at Hillsdale. He was certainly one of the foremost defenders of Western and American civilization of the past 100 years. Given his role in challenging (and, ultimately, bringing down) the Soviet empire and his natural communication skills, he will be remembered as a great in Western history.”