The Facebook page of Hillsdale College’s online courses was unexpectedly shut down as the college launched a new course that is critical of communism and Marxism.
In a post on X, the college claimed that its Facebook page was shut down on Monday night at the same time it launched the course, writing that “Facebook is denying people access to our course on repressive ideologies. Such issues are usually resolved within 24 hours, Meta told us.”
The school then clarified in a statement to Fox News that ads promoting the new course had been taken down from Facebook on Monday night, along with the entire online course page and all related advertising content.
Emily Stack Davis, executive director of media relations and communications at Hillsdale College, criticized the timing of the shutdown, noting that the ads in question had been running unchanged for over a year. She also pointed out that these ads were not even hosted on the page that was taken down.
“Meta claims that Hillsdale’s entire online course page was taken down for almost 100 hours because of ads they mistakenly flagged on Facebook. But those same ads had been running unchanged for over a year,” Davis said. “And we don’t even run them on the page they took down! They are on our main Hillsdale College page. The timing of this censorship — right as we launched our new course on Marxism, socialism, and communism — was particularly inopportune.”
In response to the incident, Meta, Facebook’s parent company, claimed that the page was “taken down in error” and restored before any formal inquiry was received.
The course in question focuses on “cultural Marxism” and its impact on “racial tensions, radical feminism, transgender ideology, open borders, fiscal irresponsibility, the unequal protection of the laws, and the loss of our basic rights.”
Hillsdale College, a conservative Christian liberal arts institution, has been vocal in its opposition to what it describes as “woke” curricula adopted by other universities. The college’s online course page boasts over 300,000 followers.
The news of this incident comes shortly after reports that Facebook had also throttled advertising for an upcoming Ronald Reagan biopic, raising further concerns about the platform’s moderation practices.
