Peter Wood is president of the National Association of Scholars and author of “1620: A Critical Response to the 1619 Project.”
Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Doc Emet Productions on April 8, 2024. With edits to match MTC’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. As a young man, I was invited to dinner at the home of a senior professor at a respected liberal arts college. A man of conservative views and polished […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on March 31, 2025, and is crossposted here with permission. I have been asked by several members of the National Association of Scholars, as well as by members of the NAS staff, whether we have an official position on the recent developments at Columbia University. […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal on March 17, 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Many of America’s large corporations are beating a retreat from their former commitments to saving the planet from catastrophic climate change. They are also […]
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The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is a classic 1948 Western directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart as Fred Dobbs, one of three desperate men hoping to strike it rich digging for gold in the mountains of Western Mexico. They indeed find gold but at high price. Murder, madness, and banditry ensue. Ultimately […]
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It is immensely encouraging to see state legislatures proposing and, in some cases, passing bills that would end “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) indoctrination in public colleges and universities. DEI programs are widespread in higher education, and they do profound harm to students, faculty, and the quality of education. Getting rid of them, however, is […]
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President Trump is determined to repair American education. He has started out with bold moves, including the demolition of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) ideology, the elimination of men from women’s sports, and taking steps against campus anti-Semitism. Yet much remains to be done. Now that DEI has been called out as a form of […]
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Aaron Sibarium at the Washington Free Beacon reports that Michigan State University (MSU) has swept aside charges that the dean of its College of Education, Jerlando Jackson, is a serial plagiarist. MSU’s actions appear to fall short of a formal exoneration, but the university’s student newspaper, State News, quotes a letter from the MSU president, […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Docement Productions on January 10. 2025. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. Can Western civilization survive? One wonders. It is mostly the small things that fuel the disquiet. An illegal immigrant sets a woman on the F train […]
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On Wednesday, January 15, President Joseph Biden gave his farewell address to the nation. In it he claimed success on a variety of policy matters and also warned of dangers that face the nation in coming years. The National Association of Scholars stands in circumspect silence towards this speech. We note that many observers expressed […]
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Inside Higher Ed reports on a new trend: universities creating programs that combine two academic programs. This might not seem particularly new to anyone who attended college in the last fifty years, but it is spiced with a bit of novelty now. The emphasis this time is on combining any of the various subjects with […]
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Editor’s Note: This article has been updated to clarify the roles of Rand Simberg and Mark Steyn in the legal disputes involving Michael Mann. The original text suggested that Steyn himself made the comparison between Mann and Jerry Sandusky. In fact, the comparison originated with Simberg, and Steyn quoted and commented on Simberg’s remarks while […]
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The pricing of higher education is always a bit mysterious. In the past, colleges and universities have gotten into considerable trouble for price-fixing when it emerged that they had colluded to set their tuition rates or financial aid packages. But sometimes colleges and universities can read the situation without colluding. I doubt that the University of Pennsylvania, Brandeis, Carnegie Mellon, MIT, and the […]
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The demographic cliff is not news to anyone who has been paying attention to college enrollment or workforce needs. Nothing can be done about all the children who weren’t born in the last two decades, and it is unlikely that much can be done to improve the birth rate in the near future. Many colleges […]
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What drives colleges and universities to offer dual enrollment classes for high school students? Well, many colleges and universities have experienced significant declines in freshmen enrollment in the last ten years—accelerated by the COVID-19 shutdown but continuing since. Some have regained ground by enrolling more transfer and graduate students, but the outlook remains bleak. This […]
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Editor’s Note: This statement was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on November 20, 2024. With edits to match Minding the Campus’s style guidelines, it is crossposted here with permission. The National Association of Scholars (NAS) welcomes the nomination of Linda McMahon to serve as the next Secretary of Education. Her character, her experience, […]
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My street in the Upper West Side of New York City takes Halloween seriously. A week or more before the kids go trick-or-treating, our block features an abundance of ghoulishly carved pumpkins, life-sized plastic skeletons, and enough gauzy cobwebs to set the stage for a dozen Boris Karloff movies. My forays to the suburbs and […]
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The First Continent Congress was not known for taking radical measures. When it met in Philadelphia in the autumn of 1774, it first rejected the plan but was forwarded by Pennsylvania representative Joseph Galloway, Speaker of the Pennsylvania Assembly. Galloway favored a “solid political union” between the colonies and Britain as the best way to […]
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New York subway scene. Two women. The one with Swedish braids and wearing an army jacket is cradling an umbrella and two flags. One looks like the flag of Yemen, and the other is probably Palestinian. The other woman rests three printed yellow and black poster signs on the floor. One reads “Stand with Palestine. […]
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The First Continental Congress convened on September 5, 1774, in Carpenters’ Hall, Philadelphia. It brought together delegates from twelve of the thirteen North American British colonies to discuss what they might do collectively in response to the “Intolerable Acts” passed by the Crown in May and June. The Congress was not a revolutionary act. Indeed, […]
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The National Association of Scholars (NAS) mourns the loss of Adam Andrzejewski, the visionary Founder and CEO of OpenTheBooks. Adam was a friend to the National Association of Scholars. He inspired our vigorous use of freedom of information requests to pry important information from public universities that are often reluctant to divulge facts that belong […]
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Editor’s Note: The following article was originally published by the National Association of Scholars on July 16, 2024. It is crossposted here with permission. The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, by a 20-year-old man from suburban Pittsburgh has riveted the nation’s attention. I have no wish to clutter the […]
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In April, I published a tiresomely long explanation of why the newly popular idea of “institutional neutrality” is a dead end. My essay, “The Illusion of Institutional Neutrality,” took up so much space because I wanted there to be at least one easily available account of where this idea came from, why it was about […]
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On June 15, 1774, Boston citizens held a meeting in Faneuil Hall to debate how the townsmen should respond to the blockade that the British had just imposed on the port of Boston. At issue was whether the citizens should pay for the tea that some radicals had dumped in the harbor back in December. […]
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Stacy Hawkins, a former vice dean and law professor at Rutgers Law School, recently wrote an article for the Chronicle of Higher Education. The article’s subtitle reads, “If critics have a problem with the goal of diversity, they should say so”—I’ll come to the main title later. As one of these critics, I’ve been vocal […]
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The nation’s 250 Anniversary is only 29 months away. The National Association of Scholars is commemorating the events that led up to the Second Continental Congress officially adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is the sixth installment of the series. Find the fifth installment here. “His Majesty trusts that no opposition […]
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The nation’s 250 Anniversary is only 29 months away. The National Association of Scholars is commemorating the events that led up to the Second Continental Congress officially adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is the forth installment of the series. Find the third installment here. Joe Biden — Photo by Gage […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by Blaze Media on March 7, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. The Sunshine State is now the test case of whether anti-DEI laws can have a meaningful effect in turning back these neo-racist programs. The University of Florida boldly advanced to the front of the academic line last […]
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The nation’s 250 Anniversary is only 29 months away. The National Association of Scholars is commemorating the events that led up to the Second Continental Congress officially adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is the second installment of the series. Find the first installment here. In December, we celebrated the anniversary […]
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The nation’s 250 Anniversary is only 29 months away. The National Association of Scholars is commemorating the events that led up to the Second Continental Congress officially adopting the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. This is the second installment of the series. Find the first installment here. Last month, we celebrated the anniversary […]
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Editor’s Note: This article was originally published by National Association of Scholars on January 24, 2024 and is crossposted here with permission. In the aftermath of Claudine Gay’s defenestration as president of Harvard, many conservatives, libertarians, and un-woke liberals see an opportunity to rally public support for an operation to rescue higher education. The idea has caught […]
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