The National Association of Scholars (NAS) has been keeping busy lately—and with good effect. We’re trying to reform higher education as our central mission, but that necessarily requires a fair bit of public policy work. And public policy work—well, you don’t want to boast too much, because it’s not sensible to try to hog credit. Besides, if anything does happen, it’s because people listened to you and made a decision, and the people who listen and decide are the ones who deserve the most credit. Still, it’s nice to say now and then where we’ve been involved, with an eye toward braggin’ rights.

NAS cares centrally about the reform of higher education. Therefore, we’re delighted about some of the reforms happening in Iowa. The University of Iowa’s new Center for Intellectual Freedom was chartered by legislation informed by our model School of Intellectual Freedom Act. Just this month, Iowa enacted reforms establishing General Education Requirements (GERs) in American History and American Government, with the Center for Intellectual Freedom assuming responsibility for these courses at the University of Iowa. That’s in the spirit of our model General Education Act, and of the research we did in The Ideological Capture of General Education. The state of Iowa has begun building a core curriculum to educate a virtuous citizenry, and it has taken steps to ensure these courses are taught appropriately. It’s wonderful that NAS could play a role in this—and on our nation’s 250^th anniversary to boot. (Read NAS’s The Road to the American Revolution series).

NAS cares about reforming the federal role in higher education, whether or not that’s done through the U.S. Department of Education (ED). Last year, we published a major report on the ED’s inadequacies, Waste Land: The Education Department’s Profligacy, Mediocrity, and Radicalism. Since then, we’ve published a bunch of follow-up White Papers, with associated Zoom webinars: The Tale of Title IX, Special Education, Case Resolution Agreements, Higher Education and the National Interest, and Systematic Reform of American Education. We’re continuing to think through the federal role in higher education and K-12 education, and making policy reform suggestions. Cross fingers, some of what you read in those White Papers will be federal policy a few years from now.

We’re continuing to work on the foreign influence beat—to keep an eye on how China, Qatar, and other unfriendly powers work to exert soft power via American higher education. A good deal of our suggestions have been embodied in the Defending Education Transparency and Ending Rogue Regimes Engaging in Nefarious Transactions Act (DETERRENT) Act, which we hope will be enacted into law. Meanwhile, we’ve been uncovering new avenues of foreign influence: Behind the Climate Curtain reveals how China has inserted itself into California’s environmental regulatory system. China uses green policy to exert influence over the Golden State. Policymakers are taking notice!

NAS has done an extraordinary amount of work on science in the last year. Of course, we’re pleased about the continuing influence of our work on the irreproducibility crisis of modern science, which informed the Executive Order Restoring Gold Standard Science. But recently we’ve had work on “diversity, equity, and inlcusion” influence in science education (Case Studies of DEI at America’s Technical Institutes), the deleterious effects of federal funding on scientific culture (Rescuing Science), a culminating examination of how the irreproducibility crisis affects federal policy (False Positives: The Irresponsibility Crisis of Science Policy), critiques of politicized science in the Federal Judicial Center’s Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence, and a comprehensive survey of how to reform American science policy (Prometheus Program). We’re firing on all pistons as we work to rededicate American science to the pursuit of truth.

We’ve also been working to reform state policy in K-12 education, above all to reform state academic content standards. In the last year, our model History of Communism Standards have informed standards in Florida; our model American Birthright social studies standards and our Franklin Standards (science) have informed Oklahoma; and the Archimedes Standards (mathematics) have informed South Dakota. We’ve just published The Cather Standards (English Language Arts), and now we can push for all four model standards as The Four Foundations: America’s Model School Standards.

Oh, there’s loads more we’ve been doing at NAS! But this is some of the work I’m proudest of. We shouldn’t boast too much—any time we have influence, it’s because somebody listened to us and made their own decision. And we’ve got good peers pushing in the same direction and doing important work of their own—the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, the Goldwater Institute, and many more. But we can do some braggin’—and everything I’ve just mentioned I think gives us cause to feel proud of our work.

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