National Association of Scholars

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The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is an American non-profit organization which describes itself as "an independent membership association of academics working to foster intellectual freedom and to sustain the tradition of reasoned scholarship and civil debate in America’s colleges and universities."^[1]

Originally called the Campus Coalition for Democracy, the National Association of Scholars was founded in 1987, shortly after the release of Allan Bloom's book The Closing of the American Mind, by its current president, Stephen Balch.^[1] The organization's goal was to fight what its founders believed was excessive political correctness in American education.^[2] The group's stance on race and gender studies has been controversial; in 1990, the opening of an NAS chapter at Duke University led to a major dispute among the university's faculty over allegations that the NAS promoted racism, sexism, and homophobia.^[3]

NAS has been funded extensively by politically conservative think tanks, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation.^[4] Prominent board members of NAS have included conservatives Jeane Kirkpatrick and Irving Kristol. The Association's motto is "For Reasoned Scholarship in a Free Society."

Contents 1 Issues and journal 2 Membership, affiliates, leadership 3 Honors 4 Controversy 5 Writings About NAS 6 References

[edit] Issues and journal

The National Association of Scholars opposes campus speech codes, which they argue violate the First Amendment. While NAS does not oppose all forms of affirmative action,^{[citation needed]} it strongly opposes racial and gender preferences in college admissions. NAS describes its main work as the defense of "the core values of liberal higher education".^[1] To this end NAS publishes original material, pursues research on controversies in higher education, and offers services to its members.

Chapters of the NAS have been involved in a number of campus controversies related to affirmative action and multicultural studies programs. According to People for the American Way, NAS faculty at the University of Texas, Austin blocked the inclusion of civil rights readings in an English course; the readings had been proposed to address concerns about racial and sexual harassment on campus. Simultaneously, the NAS encouraged a successful campaign to defund the university's Chicano newspaper.^[5]

NAS' quarterly journal, Academic Questions, presents original articles and interviews on higher education as a whole, with a focus on the perceived excesses of "political correctness" in academia. In a review in The Times Literary Supplement, Jonathan Rauch noted the journal's strident ideological tone, writing, "Though written mainly by scholars, it is a missionary journal, not a scholarly one." Rauch concluded: "If at times hectoring, Academic Questions is that rare and useful thing among journals—a live wire."^[2] William Donohue, leader of the politically conservative Catholic League, praised Academic Questions in his book on American conservatism, writing: "Academic Questions is generally regarded as one of the most authoritative voices in higher education today."^[6]

[edit] Membership, affiliates, leadership

Membership in the National Association of Scholars is open to anyone who pays a yearly fee, and includes a subscription to Academic Questions. ^[7] According to the association, it has affiliates in 46 states, as well as in Guam and Canada. ^[8] Founder Stephen Balch is the president, and Peter Wood is the executive director ^[9] Notable board members in the past have included Jeane Kirkpatrick and Irving Kristol.

[edit] Honors

At the White House on November 15, 2007, U.S. President George W. Bush awarded the association's founder and president, Stephen Balch, the National Humanities Medal for his contributions to higher education reform. Balch received the medal in recognition “for leadership and advocacy upholding the noblest traditions in higher education. His work on behalf of reasoned scholarship in a free society has made him a leading champion of excellence and reform at our nation's universities.” ^[10]

[edit] Controversy

Since its founding, NAS has been in the midst of numerous controversies in higher education. It was an early critic of "political correctness," engaged the American Association of University Professors over some of its policies, and complained to the secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, Lamar Alexander, who ruled that the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools eliminate its "diversity" standard. NAS's stands on issues such as these has led critics to label NAS "conservative" or even "reactionary"^[11] although NAS denies that the views it advocates are conservative, as its executive director Peter Wood wrote: "Both Left and the Right produce their share of intellectual obtuseness. The NAS is not a partner with either. We are not a political organization, but a body of scholars who hope to sustain a vision of the university as a fundamentally good institution that deserves to be sustained." ^[12]

In 2001, it was reported that the Colorado Commission on Higher Education had paid the National Association of Scholars $25,000 to generate a report on several Colorado universities with education programs. The NAS report criticized diversity curricula and recommended that the University of Colorado's education program be suspended and new admissions to other programs be halted.^[13] University of Colorado, Boulder dean William Stanley resigned in protest of what he called "teacher-bashing" by the NAS,^[14] while regent Bob Sievers deplored "anti-teaching, anti-C.U./Boulder, anti-women and anti-minority bias." Questions were also raised regarding why money was paid to a partisan organization like the NAS^[13] rather than simply using the free services of non-ideological organizations.^[14]

[edit] Writings About NAS

• In a 1990 commentary, Harvard's Thomson Professor of Government, Martin L. Kilson, Jr., writes that "NAS represents an overkill neoconservative response to some measure of fouling of the atmosphere of open and creative discourse on some campuses consequent to overzealous behavior by supporters of ethnic studies and women studies." Cautioning against free speech-chilling excesses by all, Kilson worries that the NAS has succumbed to "anxiety and maybe phobia" of left-wing elements espousing some multicultural causes. He asks, "why shouldn't persons on our campuses go to great lengths to avoid the tag "racist"? Or the tags "homophobic," "sexist," "anti-Asian," etc.?"^[15]

• "The National Association of Scholars: Who Are These Guys Anyway?" by Jacob Weisberg, appeared in April 1991 in the journal Lingua Franca^[16] (discontinued), and in the 1992 anthology, Beyond PC: Toward a Politics of Understanding. ^[17] In the article, Weisberg questioned NAS's portrayal of the university and wrote, "The NAS is also prone to conflating its admirable ideals with far less compelling political prejudices." ^[18]

• In his 1997 book, Political Correctness: A Response From the Cultural Left, Richard Feldstein calls NAS a "group of reactionary scholars" (page 158) and "a leading vehicle for the conservative attack on multiculturalism and political correctness" (page 218). ^[19]

• Julius Getman's book, In the Company of Scholars: The Struggle for the Soul of Higher Education, mentions the National Association of Scholars' 1990 advertisement in the Daily Texan (the University of Texas student newspaper) that called for the rejection of proposed multiculturalism curriculum to be implemented into an English course at the University of Texas. ^[20]

• The encyclopedia American Conservatism states that the prime purpose of the National Association of Scholars "is to foster renewed respect for the proposition that rational discourse and scholarship are the basis of academic life." The author of the entry, William Donahue, writes that "NAS wants to recall higher education to its classic function of grounding students in the heritage of their civilization. In particular, members want to stimulate an informed understanding of the Western commitment to freedom and democracy." (page 599) ^[21]

• "Buying a Movement," a 1996 report published by the advocacy organization People for the American Way, discusses NAS's funding by foundations such as the John M. Olin Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. ^[22]

• Time magazine hailed NAS as "the cutting edge of faculty opposition to the excesses of multiculturalism" in an April 1, 1991 piece by John Elson called "Academics in Opposition." ^[23]

• Following the formation of an NAS chapter at Duke University, Stanley Fish, chairman of the English department at Duke, wrote a letter to the University's student newspaper, The Chronicle, saying that NAS "is widely known to be racist, sexist and homophobic." This dispute was covered by the New York Times.^[3]

• The Chronicle of Higher Education has mentioned the National Association of Scholars in 272 articles. In 1997, the tenth anniversary of NAS, the Chronicle ran a piece by Denise Magner titled "10 Years of Defending the Classics and Fighting Political Correctness." ^[24]

• Reporting in 2001 on a controversy concerning money the NAS was paid to evaluate local schools in Colorado, the Colorado Springs Independent noted that "NAS advisory board members include Jeane Kirkpatrick, Chester Finn (one of the education policy gurus of the conservative movement), and Irving Kristol, who has characterized multiculturalism as 'a desperate strategy for coping with the educational deficiencies and associated social pathologies of young blacks.'"^[13]

[edit] References