Misfire in Boulder
A brief reflection on a misconcieved attempt to address the problem of intellectual pluralism in academe.
Delaware's Amateur Hour or For Whom the Gong Tolls
A message from NAS President Steve Balch to American faculty about the residence life debacle at the University of Delaware.
The Shaggy Dog Story: Has 'Reading First' Flopped?
After the Department of Education released a study indicating the failure of federal initiative Reading First, NAS seized the moment to ponder such programs' efficacy in teaching children to read.
How to Defeat the Res Lifer’s Nouveau Indoctrination Program
It's not the university's job to save the planet.
Igloo Building: A Primer on the Financial Aid Fiasco
A glimpse at the student loan crisis and its implications for the academic world.
A Head Full of Headphones: The Rise of iTunes U
Smart AND fun: iTunes U combines higher learning with entertainment.
Human Nature: NAS Attends an Environmental Justice Conference
Ashley Thorne shares reflections on the "Race, Place, and Environmental Justice" conference held on campus at Princeton.
Miscarriage of Academic Freedom?
A Yale student's senior project raises questions about higher education's approach to art.
The Problem with Wikipedia
Wikipedia and Higher Education Online Forum
Buck Up
Wikipedia: peers, puppets, and dirty plates.
Getting at the Core
Georgia may be headed for a new "core" curriculum.
Help Yourself: How the Helping Professions Hurt Dissenters
When it comes to schools of social work, open inquiry is under severe pressure, and the actual limits of inquiry have shrunk so far as to exclude many legitimate ideas. But social work may not be an isolated case.
By No Means: Michigan Judge Turns Tables on Advocacy Groups Determined to Derail Civil Rights Initiative
Terry Pell gives the first public analysis of the recent court decision ending (for now) the legal challenges to the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative.
Street Knowledge
Wikipedia and Higher Education
Know It Alls
An invitation to an NAS online symposium on "Wikipedia and Higher Education"
Is NAS Conservative?
People for the American Way asserts that NAS is a "right-wing" organization. We take issue with this characterization and explain why.
Join us outside the charmed circle.
Freedom Bound: The AAUP Presidential Election
After interviewing AAUP presidential candidates Cary Nelson and Tom Guild, Ashley Thorne and Peter Wood conclude that one creed can be used with two opposite meanings. That said, NAS hopes to see the AAUP return to its original definition of academic freedom.
Preferring Merit: Why Racial Preferences Are Worse than Legacy Admissions
From Our Executive Director
Requiescat In Pace
Remembrance of William F. Buckley, Jr.
The Copyist: The Plagiarist and the Noose
Columbia Teachers College professor, charged with plagiarism, cries racism.
More on U.S. Commission: "Little Evidence" Diversity Improves Student Performance
We present an exchange of letters that corrects and otherwise amplifies our coverage of The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights' report, The Benefits of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Elementary and Secondary Education. This government study, released last fall, reached the startling conclusion: "there is little evidence that racial and ethnic diversity in elementary and secondary schools results in significant improvement in academic performance."
University Governance: Will Dartmouth Become Shutmouth?
Little Delawares All Over:
Diversity Indoctrination, K-12 Branch
Hans Bader, a lawyer with the Competitive Enterprise Institute, writes that the Delaware Indoctrination Syndrome has a k-12 counterpart. A common thread is the presence of what Elizabeth Lasch-Quinn in her 2001 book dubbed "race experts." In Delaware, it was Shakti Butler. As Mr. Bader points out, another expert, Glenn Singleton, is making a career of promoting similar themes in K-12 public schools. See Mr. Bader's postings at www.openmarket.org, e.g., November 16, 20, and 27, and December 3.
Media Opacity
A response to Media Transparency's characterization of NAS.
Startling Revelations: The National Association of Scholars Salutes Its Delaware Affiliate for Its Role in Exposing Abuses in the University of Delaware's Residence Life Program
Our Delaware affiliate exposes the University of Delaware's residence life program, known on campus as "the treatment."
U.S. Commission: "Little Evidence" Diversity Improves Student Performance
The United States Commission on Civil Rights has just issued a major report, The Benefits of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Elementary and Secondary Education. (Available in PDF here.) The Commission reached a startling conclusion: "there is little evidence that racial and ethnic diversity in elementary and secondary schools results in significant improvement in academic performance."
Imaginary Moderates: An Academic Report Boomerangs
"The Social and Political Views of American Professors," a working paper released recently at a Harvard symposium by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, is being vigorously spun by its authors as a new, sophisticated take on the intellectual alignments of American academe, undercutting exaggerated claims by conservatives of liberal/left hegemony. But if defenders of the academic status-quo expect Gross and Simmons's discoveries to rescue them, they're in for a crushing disappointment.
A Response to the AAUP's Report, "Freedom in the Classroom"
The American Association of University Professors released its Report on 11 September 2007.
In that document, the AAUP provides cover for teachers who introduce extraneous, often politically tendentious material into their classes. To rationalize such behavior, the AAUP argues that truth is whatever the members of an academic discipline say it is. In our response, the NAS executive director and president take issue with that and other AAUP contentions.
Academic Questions Samples
Breaching the Walls of Academe: The Purposes, Problems, and Prospects of Military History (Preview from Academic Questions)
Military history as a subject generally summons us to imagine lessons "learned from the past," phrased in abstract universals; or the entertainment value of the History Channel ("the male equivalent of the romance novel"). But perhaps there is a third arena encompassed by military history, one that now stands besieged and vulnerable.
This article by John A Lynn II is a sample from our next issue of Academic Questions, which focuses on the military and liberal education.
Vietnam: Historians at War (Preview from Academic Questions)
Has reasoned study of the Vietnam War been trampled by radical adherence to the politically correct? In this preview article from our forthcoming issue of Academic Questions (focused on the military and liberal education), Mark Moyar confronts the War's orthodox antiwar historians.
From Our Executive Director
After the Manifestoes: Building a New Reform Movement in Higher Education
NAS Executive Director Peter Wood addressed the annual meeting of NAS affiliate, the Minnesota Association of Scholars on April 19. He offered an overview of the various reform initiatives in higher education and proposed a way to gather many of them into a more broadly-based movement. This is his text.
Austrians in Vegas
An anthropologist investigates
Nobody Watching
We've reached the tipping point in human resources where administrators now outnumber teaching faculty. Things have been sliding quietly in that direction, aided by the addition of new positions such as Chief Diversity Officer and Dean of Multicultural Life. Although the trend has gone largely unbeknownst to the larger university community, NAS has been on task to end such disregard. To that end, we are organizing a core of academy watchers, who will penetrate the obscurity that veils such questionable practices. Keep the tipping point in mind as you hear of newly created positions at your institution, and please consider becoming one of those who will be "eyes" for us as the NAS tracks trends and events in higher education.
