UPDATE: Hillsdale College issues statement, says "no offense was intended"

LANSING -- What was expected to be additional debate about Michigan's adoption of the Common Core State Standards took a detour into race Wednesday after Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn used what some state lawmakers called "offensive" language in an opening statement at a legislative hearing.

In discussing a letter he received from Michigan Department of Education officials shortly after becoming head of the college in 2000, Arnn said the letter indicated the department had concerns about racial diversity at the institution.

"They said we violated the standards for diversity because we didn't have enough dark ones, I guess is what they meant," Arnn said.

Hear Arnn's opening statement:

At least one state legislator on the committee didn't wait until Arnn had finished his testimony before commenting on the statement, as Rep. Sam Singh (D-East Lansing) expressed his opinion on Twitter while the hearing was still going.

When Arnn and Terrence Moore, a Hillsdale professor, finished their testimony -- which focused largely on the need to teach classical literature -- both Rep. Adam Zemke (D-Ann Arbor) and Rep. David Knezek (D-Dearborn Heights) criticized Arnn for what they called "offensive" language.

Arnn seemed unapologetic for his choice of words, saying that education department officials had visited the campus before he became president to collect demographic data on students, as the university did not record that information.

“The State of Michigan sent a group of people down to my campus, with clipboards ... to look at the colors of people’s faces and write down what they saw," Arnn said. "We don’t keep records of that information. What were they looking for besides dark ones?"

The college's website states that the school "was the first American college to prohibit in its charter any discrimination based on race, religion or sex, and became an early force for the abolition of slavery."

The testimony from Arnn and Moore capped what had been a calmer hearing than the first hearing earlier in July, when legislators squabbled with State Superintendent Mike Flanagan and Michael Cohen, president of Achieve Inc., the non-profit group which helped lead the development of the standards.

Rep. Tom McMillin (R-Rochester Hills) and Rep. Ellen Cogen Lipton (D-Huntington Woods), two of the legislators who were most involved in questioning Flanagan and Cohen, were absent for Wednesday's meeting.

The hearing opened with testimony from Joy Pullmann, an education policy analyst from the Heartland Institute and a Hillsdale College graduate, who argued that Common Core posed a threat to state sovereignty and was developed without real input from Michigan officials.

Pullmann claimed that while data collection requirements were not present in the standards documents themselves, they were included in a memorandum of understanding states were required to agree to as part of the development of the standards.

A Washington Post investigation earlier this year uncovered a copy of the memorandum of understanding between states and Achieve which does not appear to reference data collection on students or their families.

Pullmann also accused another witness at the hearing, Michigan State professor William Schmidt, of "deceptive presentations" to legislators about the mathematics standards based on a review of his research on math education worldwide.

Schmidt responded later in the hearing, accusing the authors of the review of his research of incorrectly interpreting his work. “I’m not sure if the authors of that simply didn’t read what was in a refereed journal or if they just didn’t understand," Schmidt said.

The committee briefly took public comment at the end of the hearing, but committee chairman Rep. Tim Kelly (R-Saginaw) said before the hearing began that the next two hearings, on August 14 and 28, will offer the best opportunity for the public to weigh in.

Brian Smith is the statewide education and courts reporter for MLive. Email him at bsmith11@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter or Facebook.