Three of the organizations that consistently uphold only our best values in higher education have redesigned their websites - they’re worth a look, whether it’s your first time or your fiftieth.
I’ll start with NAS - what they do, who they are, and why they matter.
National Association of Scholars
NAS describes their mission on their website:
NAS was founded in 1987, soon after Allan Bloom’s surprise best-seller, The Closing of the American Mind, alerted Americans to the ravages wrought by illiberal ideologies on campus. The founders of NAS summoned faculty members from across the political spectrum to help defend the core values of liberal education.
The NAS today is higher education’s most vigilant watchdog. We stand for intellectual integrity in the curriculum, in the classroom, and across the campus—and we respond when colleges and universities fall short of the mark. We uphold the principle of individual merit and oppose racial, gender, and other group preferences. And we regard the Western intellectual heritage as the indispensable foundation of American higher education.
The 2007 NAS report titled “The Scandal of Social Work Education” describes the politicization and intellectual conformity that has been systematically imposed on an important discipline in public life. Social work programs have become a vehicle for doctrine-based social engineering instead of remedy.
They’ve begun to raise awareness about “Little Delawares,” K-12 programs that, while less intrusive than the University of Delaware’s infamous Residence Life program, border on indoctrination - sometimes blatantly crossing that border - and betray even our most sacred liberal, Western values.
The NAS strolls purposefully and confidently where angels fear - and that often comes with a price. In response to, “Is it dangerous to join?” the NAS advises:
“It can be. We recognize that graduate students and untenured faculty members run a risk if they join an organization that is famous for challenging campus orthodoxies. So we won’t tell your colleagues — or your dean, and we’ll mail Academic Questions to your home if you wish.
Is joining NAS worth the risk? That’s a decision you must make for yourself — and something you should consider the next time you bite your tongue in a department meeting for fear of the consequences of expressing what you really think.”
I’m a member of the NAS. Even if you’d rather not join, you’d do well to stay abreast of their sober takes on contemporary issues in higher education.
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Stephen Downes 05.08.08 at 8:38 pm
I fail to see why you would take this transparently political lobby group seriously.
Matthew K. Tabor 05.08.08 at 9:15 pm
Stephen,
You know me - ye olde mindless tool for the right-wing establishment! Probably the patriarchy, too… and a few others.
The NAS Board of Advisors includes Jacques Barzun; Chester Finn, Jr.; John R. Silber; Shelby Steele; James Q. Wilson, et al. These are fine scholars who I respect a great deal - and whose scholarship history will likely judge the same way.
NAS Executive Director Peter Wood is also an exemplary scholar whose recent works on diversity are must-reads. I was fortunate enough to have a conversation with him when our times at Boston University overlapped - I found him incredibly intelligent, personable and committed to the same basic values in education that I hold.
I have found the NAS’ work to be of high quality and of the utmost seriousness - combine that with a fine set of advisors and sharp leadership and I’m sold.
That you fail to see why I take them seriously is indicative of why you might wonder, at times, why I fail to take you seriously.
Wood recently handled you well on an InsideHigherEd.com article titled “Sustainability’s Third Circle,” if I recall right.
And I do:
http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/28/wood