When Race Trumps Merit
The Radio Free Hillsdale Hour
Hillsdale College
4.8 • 649 Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Guests: Heather Mac Donald and Richard Samuelson
Host Scot Bertram talks with Heather Mac Donald, the Thomas W. Smith fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal, about efforts by the Trump administration to curb DEI programs and her book When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives. And Richard Samuelson, associate professor of government at Hillsdale College’s Washington, D.C. campus, continues a series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States. This week, Thomas Paine’s Common Sense and Abigail Adams’ admonition to “remember the ladies.”
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the historic campus of Hillsdale College in Hillsdale, Michigan, where the good, the true, and the beautiful are taught, nurtured, and honored, this is the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, bringing the activity and education of the college to listeners across the country. |
| 0:26.1 | So they'll keep voting in the people that are bringing us this squalor because they don't blame the policies. |
| 0:35.2 | And that's a basic divide that is very hard to overcome. |
| 0:39.4 | This is your host, Scott Bertram. Welcome to the Radio Free Hillsdale Hour, part of the |
| 0:45.3 | Hillsdale College Podcast Network. That was Heather McDonald, author of When Race Trump's |
| 0:51.1 | Merit, how the pursuit of equity sacrifices excellence, destroys beauty, |
| 0:55.9 | and threatens lives. Now, in a revised paperback with a new preface by Heather, will go in |
| 1:01.2 | depth with her today. Also, later on in today's show, Richard Samuelson joins us from Hillsdale |
| 1:06.5 | in D.C. We'll talk about common sense and remember the ladies as we walk up to America 250. |
| 1:13.0 | First, happy to be joined now by Heather McDonald. |
| 1:16.0 | She is Thomas W. Smith Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a contributing editor at City Journal, |
| 1:21.4 | and the author of When Race Trump's Merit, How the Pursuit of Equity, Sacrifices Excellence, |
| 1:26.9 | destroys beauty, and threatens lives. |
| 1:29.4 | It is now available in an updated paperbank edition with a new preface by Heather McDonald. |
| 1:35.6 | Heather, thanks so much for joining us. |
| 1:37.3 | Thank you for having me, Scott. I greatly appreciate it. |
| 1:40.3 | We talked about the book upon its release, which I can't believe was three years ago, but I looked at the numbers, and that's true. |
| 1:47.3 | Much has happened since then. We could not have necessarily counted on or anticipated President Trump being reelected to a second term in the White House. |
| 1:56.8 | And part of what you say in the preface now is that we've seen President Trump attempting as much as possible through the administration to dismantle the racial equity infrastructure that had been created. |
| 2:07.5 | So how far have we come in these past 14, 15 months or so? |
| 2:13.3 | Well, I can't fault Trump on what he's trying to do. |
| 2:16.9 | The question is, are any of these changes going to stick? |
... |
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