NAS Blog

I’m pleased to introduce Jason Fertig as a new contributor at NAS.org. Dr. Fertig is an NAS member and assistant professor of management at the University of Southern Indiana. Dr. Fertig brings a depth of perception and lively anecdotes from his own experience in the classroom to speak to some of the  most real issues in higher education today.

He has written three articles for NAS so far:

More Millennials Need to Work at McDonalds advises recent college graduates: get a job, anywhere.

Real Sustainability: Saving Our Sense of Culture asks, “Are we failing to hand down our cultural legacy to the next generation?”

Dangers of Credentialing the College Degree: A Real-Life Example is a case study that illustrates the popular idea that students are entitled to get a passing grade – even if they don’t earn one.

I especially recommend the third article, which received attention from blogs such as Phi Beta Cons and Joanne Jacobs.

Also check out his essay at the Pope Center on the gap year, The Gift of Academic Maturity. Fertig spoke about the gap year this morning on Wisconsin Public Radio.

You can look forward to more NAS articles by Dr. Fertig in the weeks ahead.

Adam Scrupski, a former board member of the NAS, is quoted in today’s Wall Street Journal in the article “The Fog Over Katyn Forest” by Bret Stephens. Stephens quotes a blog post by Scrupski for the National Association of Scholars, where he wrote that the “OWI [U.S. Office of War Information] implicitly threatened to remove licensure from the Polish language radio stations in Detroit and Buffalo if they did not cease broadcasting the details of executions.”

“A lack of intellectual diversity hurts both left and right,” contended John Ellis in a statement last week to the Joint Committee on the Master Plan for Higher Education of the California Legislature. John Ellis is president of the California Association of Scholars.

The Arizona Association of Scholars will be hosting a talk by Robert Maranto on “The Politically Correct University” (his most recent book) next week at the University of Arizona. I have been busy sending out emails to folks to let them know about this. I just hit the Student Life website. Just so you know, Sarah Casares is in charge of Student Behavioral Education, Hannah Lozon is in charge of Social Justice Education, and Jill Burchell is in charge of Sustainability Education. I wonder if these residence employees will attend?

Cross posted from www.NAS.org

NAS members, have you been getting your issues of Academic Questions on time? We have received some complaints from members who did not get issues or who have received issues bizarrely late.  In February, for example, our publisher, Springer, apparently sent copies of our Winter 2008-09 issue on Liberal Arts and the Family more than a year late to some members.  Other members report not receiving the Winter 2009-10 issue on Academic Revisionisms, mailed in November 2009.  If you have had either of these problems or other lapses with your subscription to Academic Questions, let us know by emailing nasonweb@nas.org.

We want to make sure you receive the issues, and we want to get to the bottom of the problem with Springer’s handling of our subscription fulfillment.

Today the Academy of Arts and Letters announced its 2010 music award winners. NAS is pleased to report that Daniel Asia, gifted composer and our Arizona affiliate president, has received the Academy Award in Music, which ” honors outstanding artistic achievement and acknowledges the composer who has arrived at his or her own voice.” Dr. Asia contributes to this blog and the opening notes of his piece, Gateways, currently grace NAS’s homepage.

THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS

THE CUNY ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS

INVITE YOU TO ATTEND OUR FIRST EVENT OF 2010

James Piereson

will discuss

Reflections on the Kennedy Era

James Piereson is  president of the William E. Simon Foundation, a private grant making institution with charitable interests in education, religion, and the problems of youth.  He is also a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute in New York, where he is director of the Center for the American University.  Prior to joining the Simon Foundation, he was executive director of the John M. Olin Foundation, and has served on the Political Science faculties of several prominent universities, including Iowa State, Indiana University  and the University of Pennsylvania.

Mr. Piereson is the author of Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Encounter Books, 2007), as well as the co-author (with J. Sullivan and G. Marcus) of Political Tolerance and American Democracy (University of Chicago Press, 1982). He has in addition  published articles and reviews in Commentary, The New Criterion, The American Political Science Review, The Public Interest, the Journal of Politics, Philanthropy, The American Spectator, The Wall Street Journal, and The Weekly Standard.

Mr. Piereson also serves on the boards of the Center for Individual Rights, the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Donors Trust.

February 28, 2010 3:30 PM

at the home of Nahma Sandrow and Bill Meyers

180 Riverside Drive. apt 3A

Entrance on West 90 Street
New York, NY

RSVP  – David Gordon    (718) 289-5658      dmgordon@mindspring.com

Reposted from NAS.org

Dear California members and readers (and anyone happening to visit California this spring),

Don’t miss the following events hosted by the California Association of Scholars at UCLA, UC Berkeley, and UC Santa Cruz:

Thursday, January 21, 7:30 PM
Dinesh D’Souza
What’s So Great About Capitalism?
University of California, Los Angeles, Kerckhoff Grand Salon

Tuesday, March 09, 4:00 PM
Victor Davis Hanson
War in the Postmodern World: A Review of New Laws of Conflict
University of California, Berkeley, Lipman Room, Barrows Hall

Thursday, April 22, 7:30 PM
Dinesh D’Souza
What’s So Great About Capitalism?
University of California Santa Cruz, Room to be determined

Dinesh D’Souza events (January 21 and April 22):

The California Association of Scholars and the Intercollegiate Studies Institute cordially invite you to a free lecture, open to the public.  Dinesh D’Souza will address the moral arguments for and against capitalism in our age of Obama. He will show why the free market system is not only efficient but also moral, and will address topical applications to health care and financial regulations.

Co-sponsorship: American Freedom Alliance
For more information: 310-569-0853 or www.isi.org

Dinesh D’Souza has been called one of the “top young public-policy makers in the country” by Investor’s Business Daily. The New York Times Magazine named him one of America’s most influential conservative thinkers. The World Affairs Council lists him as one of the nation’s 500 leading authorities on international issues. Newsweek cited him as one of the country’s most prominent Asian Americans.

A former policy analyst in the Reagan White House,  D’Souza also served as John M. Olin Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, and the Robert and Karen Rishwain Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1983.

Mr. D’Souza’s books have had a major influence on public opinion and public policy. His 1991 book Illiberal Education was the first study to publicize the phenomenon of political correctness. The book was widely acclaimed and became a New York Times bestseller for 15 weeks. It has been listed as one of the most influential books of the 1990′s. (www.dineshdsouza.com)

Victor Davis Hanson event (March 9):

Using ancient Greece and military history as commentary, Professor Hanson will analyze the legal dilemmas faced by democracies when defending themselves against terrorist entities.

For more information: 310-569-0853

Victor Davis Hanson is a Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution and Professor Emeritus of Classics at theCaliforniaStateUniversity at Fresno, noted historian of ancient Greece and preeminent military historian. He is author of more than 170 articles, 16 books, and recipient of many awards, including the National Humanities Medal.

Via Professor David Gordon, president of NAS’s New York affiliate, an announcement specifically for NAS members:

THE NEW YORK ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS

THE CUNY ASSOCIATION OF SCHOLARS

INVITE YOU TO ATTEND OUR SECOND EVENT OF FALL 2009

Emil Draitser

will discuss his recent book

Shush!

Growing Up Jewish Under Stalin

Many years after making his way to America from Odessa in Soviet Ukraine, Emil Draitser made a startling discovery: every time he uttered the word “Jewish” — even in casual conversation — he lowered his voice. This behavior was a natural product, he realized, of growing up in the anti-Semitic, post-Holocaust Soviet Union, when “Shush!” was the most frequent word he heard: “Don’t use your Jewish name in public. Don’t speak a word of Yiddish. And don’t cry over your murdered relatives.”  This compelling memoir conveys the reader back to Draitser’s childhood and provides a unique account of mid twentieth-century life in Russia as he struggled to reconcile the harsh values of Soviet society with the values of his working-class Jewish family.

Draitser, today a professor of Russian at Hunter College, in addition examines Odessa’s social fabric as exemplified in film, literature, humor, headlines, holidays and vernacular to offer valuable, poignant snapshots of this turbulent, terrifying time in a work that one reviewer called “whimsical, heartfelt and candid,”  and another found “a wonderfully evocative memoir of childhood and adolescence during one of the most tragic epochs in Russian history. As grim as the historical background of the memoir is, the mood is redeemed by Draitser’s perfectly Odessan Jewish humor, sad yet optimistic, compared with that of another great Odessan, Isaak Babel.”

December 13, 2009 3:00 PM

at the home of Nahma Sandrow and Bill Meyers

180 Riverside Drive. apt 3A

Entrance on West 90 Street
New York, NY

RSVP  – David Gordon    (718) 289-5658      dmgordon@mindspring.com

In this week’s Pope Center Clarion Call, Carey Stronach, president of the Virginia Association of Scholars, explains why the crusade for “diversity” by the administration at Virginia Tech is unacceptable to scholars.

Academic promotion should no more depend on “diversity accomplishments” than on “religious accomplishments” or “chess accomplishments” or “gardening accomplishments.” If the administrators can’t see that by “privileging” (to use a favorite leftist term) the diversity mindset over everything else they’re undermining real academic work, they should be summarily dismissed.