Raleigh, NC (December 9, 2019) — On December 6th at a launch event co-hosted with the James G. Martin Center, the National Association of Scholars (NAS) released Social Justice Education in America, a report analyzing the influence of social justice advocates at 60 colleges and universities nationwide. The report finds that these advocates have insinuated themselves into the university system to propagandize students, politicize the most basic college courses, create administrative and teaching positions for like-minded advocates, and transform universities into training camps for progressive activism.
David Randall, the report’s author said, “NAS has watched this growing trend with concern for many years. Social justice advocates and their allies have dramatically changed the way in which our universities train tomorrow’s leaders. Social justice education subordinates every discipline from accounting to zoology to the pursuit of progressive political activism.”
The report documents the means that social justice advocates have used to establish themselves: altering university mission statements, seizing internal graduation requirements, capturing existing disciplines and creating pseudo-disciplines, and ultimately capturing the university administrations. Social Justice Education in America provides detailed charts and a wealth of examples of classes, departments, events, jobs, journals, and administrative offices that teach social justice to unsuspecting students and secure jobs in higher education for social justice advocates.
“Social justice education directly contributes to the skyrocketing cost of tuition,” said Randall. “Once social justice advocates capture university bureaucracies and administrations, they divert student tuition to pay the salaries of more and more fellow social justice advocates. Offices such as First-Year Experience, Community Engagement, Diversity and Multicultural Affairs, Sustainability, and Equity and Inclusion have larded higher education with hundreds of thousands of jobs. Students, parents, and taxpayers pay exorbitant tuition fees to fund social justice patronage. Social justice education is why administrative bloat is suffocating our colleges.”
The report also recommends nine general reforms to disrupt higher education’s ability to provide careers for social justice advocates, decrease the cost of college, and return universities to the pursuit of truth instead of social justice’s pursuit of political power. These basic reforms promote intellectual freedom and protect academic freedom and viewpoint diversity.
NAS President Peter W. Wood said, “We are proud to publish this detailed report of higher education’s takeover by social justice advocates during this important moment for American higher education. As voters head to the polls in 2020, it is imperative that voters know how to tell the snake oil salesmen from the honest brokers.”
NAS is a network of scholars and citizens united by a commitment to academic freedom, disinterested scholarship, and excellence in American higher education. Membership in NAS is open to all who share a commitment to these broad principles. NAS publishes a journal and has state and regional affiliates. Visit NAS at www.nas.org.
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If you would like more information about this issue, please contact Chance Layton at 917-551-6770, or email [email protected].
