NAS Blog

Abigail Alger at Reformer’s Blog has a good article on “Why Fat Studies (and All Identity Studies) Hurt Higher Education“:

But Fat Studies, like all identity studies, begins with the end in mind. The conclusions have already been determined: fat people are oppressed and down-trodden, victims of an insert-terrible-adjective-here system and insert-another-terrible-adjective-here society.

In a closed system like this, there can be no debate or disagreement.

NAS’s own Glenn Ricketts is quoted on the emergence of fat studies here.

A reader from Australia commented on Tom Wood’s article “The Marriage of Affirmative Action and Transformative Education“:

This year, I was in a compulsory BA class that used transformative education. Without warning us, the teachers tried to transform us into adopting their political worldview, using all the passion they could muster. Since then I have been searching the web for critiques of transformative education, and found one of your articles, and I will read more. I have written many arguments against transformative education, but I am keen to find arguments from education professionals, lawyers, etc.

I thank you for speaking out. I am astounded that a university would force all BA students to be transformed “to create a better world”. I thought I was purchasing knowledge and skills, but instead they considered me to be mere fodder for political transformation.

University should be about teaching critical thinking, but instead I’ve had to teach my teachers critical thinking! Their main problem is unquestioned assumptions. They assume students have been brainwashed by society, that education is about the whole person, that teachers have the answers to the meaning of life, that globalisation is all bad, that the West (particularly USA) is colonising the world, that everything is basically political, etc. On the good side, they are idealistic and enthusiastic. But idealism and enthusiasm based on unquestioned assumptions leads to spreading delusion, not to improving the world. It seems to me that transformative education teachers do not trust that freely chosen unbiased knowledge can produce good results. So they force students to study the teachers’ worldviews.

Check out my article at NAS.org, “Sustainability Skepticism Has Arrived.” I juxtapose two news stories from this week on challenges to the sustainability doctrine:

These stories are parallel. Both Michael Pollan and Richard Steiner were caught off guard when challenged, then played the victim in the name of academic freedom—a skewed version of academic freedom. When David Wood sought to open Cal Poly’s eyes to the ideological agenda Pollan proselytizes, Pollan and others accused the university of cravenly capitulating to demands from the big bad corporate world. And when NOAA identified Steiner as going outside Sea Grant parameters by engaging in advocacy, Steiner said the University of Alaska had put a “gag order” on him.

If you are interested in helping the NAS expose the truth about the campus sustainability movement, send our list of “10 Reasons to Oppose the Sustainability Movement on Campus” to students, parents, faculty members, administrators, and news media.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) today celebrates ten years ofdefending Constitutional rights on college campuses. Alan Charles Kors and Harvey Silverglate founded FIRE in 1999 to combat “the systematic violation of freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, due process, and other basic rights on campuses across the nation.” Ever since then, FIRE has done great work, fighting – and often winning – battles on behalf of students, faculty members, and administrators whose freedoms were under attack. Tonight FIRE is hosting an anniversary gala, where NAS members Dr. Jan Blits and Dr. Linda Gottfredson will be honored with a special award for their efforts in exposing the abuses of the University of Delaware residence life program since 2007.

The National Association of Scholars salutes FIRE’s good work, and we are proud of the competent and influential organization it has become.

In this article, Ashley Thorne discusses the continuing vitality of the “social justice” crusade on many American campuses.

I’d be willing to bet my last dollar that in these “social justice” programs, students are never led to question whether the term actually has any meaning. Are students ever called upon to read, for example, any part of Hayek’s fabulous book The Mirage of Social Justice in which he argues that the term is not only meaningless, but leads to dangerous policy ideas? I doubt it. Rather, “social justice” is treated as an unquestionable if vague ideal.

Today is the seventh annual Campus Sustainability Day (CSD), a celebration invented by the Society for College and University Planning (SCUP), in collaboration with Second Nature. Second Nature, remember, considers sustainability a tool to redress “past, present, and future maldistribution of resources, privileges and rights of endangered communities, of poor people, and of communities of color.” It believes that the university is the best place to foster sustainability advocacy, and that “The myth of the value-free university, that knowledge is attained for its own sake, stands in contrast to the reality that special interests always play a greater or lesser role.”

As we speak, SCUP is streaming a live webcast on “Sustainability Strategies for Vibrant Campus Communities” to colleges that paid the $195 registration fee.

Should a college lose accreditation just over a shaky financial situation? Should we use accreditation as the touchstone for eligibility for federal student aid funds? In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, I take a look at a battle in North Carolina involving St. Andrews Presbyterian College. The school is in serious financial trouble, and the threatened loss of accreditation would probably kill it.

I answer both questions in the negative.

In the twentieth century, psychologists who studied  human resource management  realized that employment tests were the best way to select  job applicants.  Tests need to be verified or “validated,” though. Much of the personnel psychology literature is devoted to the study of whether one test or another is valid for various purposes.  One finding  is that IQ tests work.  They explain a fourth of the variance in job performance.

Despite the efficacy of employment testing it seems likely that the chief method of allocating human resources in the United States is the college or university attended. Graduates of prestigious institutions obtain jobs in high-end Wall Street, advertising and consulting firms.  Other college graduates get good jobs in corporations and government. Non-graduates often do not.

Baccalaureate institution attended is accepted by all as a human resource allocation method.  But it lacks validation.

Having recently been exposed to medieval history I learned a concept prevalent in the medieval world that seems to explain the fixation on college rankings–”the great chain of being”. In medieval times, it was believed that the social hierarchy reflected the celestial hierarchy. The king was like God, the nobles like angels, etc.

The interest in ranking colleges and universities and using them to allocate human resources is atavistic.   The twentieth century rejected the nineteenth century’s individualism in favor of medieval institutions.  The idea that higher education is first and foremost a liberal and learning experience seems to have been sacrificed in the interest of the great chain of being.

In a recent op-ed for the Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh defends his record (“I am not a racist”) and further points out the double standard allowing left-liberals off the hook for statements that are clearly racist. Mr. Limbaugh, be glad you didn’t go into academe!

Limbaugh’s defense highlights several problems for any one who dissents from the Leftist party line, particularly on race:

First, playing defense 24/7 is no way to move forward. It places dissenters in the untenable position of answering “when did you stop being a racist?” Repeated denials inspire the race hustlers to keep asking the same question. To Rush Limbaugh: You wanted to purchase a football team that played both offense and defense. There is a lesson here.

Second, the Left dominance of higher education really does matter. Many individuals are in a state of denial about the insidious influence K-16 education has on the professions that shape public opinion: schools of journalism, education, law, social work are monoliths of the Left. Add the power of left-wing accreditation bodies and you have “the sound of one hand clapping”–the left hand, of course.

Above all, there is the problem of ignorance and miseducation of our youth. Yes, surveys may show that graduates retain some of the values they had prior to entering college. Yet they are not educated well enough to refute left-wing attacks.

Let me give you an example: Since 1995, I have advised College Republicans and Campus Libertarians. The knowledge base of libertarian and conservative students has seriously eroded. If I ask “why are you a libertarian? Why are you a conservative?” The answer is superficial: “because I am not a liberal.” Oy vey!

These students may retain a vague belief in individual freedom, nondiscrimination, and meritocracy but they fail to argue effectively against the Left. Why? Because they have never been exposed to information subverting the smug assumption that Leftists have always have been “the angels of history.” Conservatives and libertarians are (and always have been) the villains, according to this fairy tale.

That brings me to my book Race and Liberty in America: The Essential Reader (University Press of Kentucky, in association with the Independent Institute, 2009). This reader debunks the crazy notion that belief in individual freedom, capitalism, and colorblind law = racism. The book highlights how Frederick Douglass, Branch Rickey, Zora Neale Hurston, Clarence Thomas and others consistently championed the bedrock belief that all discrimination is wrong–and they embraced a philosophy of limited government. They experienced first-hand how the State acts as sponsor of discrimination.

Back to the football analogy. Here is the offense: those “angels of history” on the Left–labor unions, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and LBJ–committed some of the worst racist actions in our history. Labor unions demanded a ban on Chinese immigration–the first race-based exclusion of an entire race. Wilson segregated the federal government. LBJ declared that an anti-lynching bill was worse than lynching itself. FDR defended quotas to keep Jews from overwhelming Harvard (where he sat on the Board of Trustees). Roosevelt also wrote that interracial “mingling” (marriage) produced “horrific results.” As president, FDR blocked Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany and interned Japanese Americans during World War II. Not surprising. In each of these cases, the classic liberals in my book fought against those typically portrayed as “angels” in history.

It is time for so-called liberals to give up the race hustle and learn their history. In so doing, they may discover some heroes of the classic liberal sort–neither Left nor Right–but committed to racial freedom and equality.

Most schools now compel students and personnel who desire to smoke to do so in designated outside areas, but that isn’t enough for a group that wants a complete tobacco ban. Inside Higher Ed has the story.

This ought to worry the “diversity” advocates. Smokers are a minority group with some distinct cultural traits. If colleges drive smokers away, as the proposed campus-wide bans would tend to do, won’t that deprive other students of the opportunity to learn about them and benefit from the perspective they’d bring to class discussions involving personal freedom and trade-offs?

Or do those concerns only apply to certain groups and not others?