Articles and Archives

Most recent posting below. See other articles in the column to the right.

2 comments - Last on 10/01/2009

Campus Reform Looks Forward

September 25, 2009 By Ashley Thorne

Last night was the premiere of a new ABC television series called FlashForward. The premise of the show is that in the first episode, every person on the globe blacks out at once, and that during the black out, each person experiences a vision—they see themselves six months in the future. Hours after the blackouts, FBI agents trying to put the pieces together decide to create a website where people around the world can compare their visions and seek answers.

The scope and detail necessary to create such a website is hard to imagine—until you visit CampusReform.org. This website does not try to make sense of a global disaster, but it does confront a problem in the world of higher education. It won’t be used by the whole world, but it’s big enough that it could. It doesn’t seek to reconcile 6.8 billion visions of the future, but it does unite one common vision: making the conservative voice heard on campus.

CampusReform.org was created by the Leadership Institute, which trains students in conservative activism, to be “a one-stop resource, networking, and instruction center for conservative activists to take back their campuses from leftist domination.” Students who want to create or sustain a conservative campus group can use the site to connect with like-minded others and “fight for the hearts and minds of the next generation.”

But is “leftist domination” putting it too strongly? Do conservative student groups really face that much discrimination and harassment? Numerouscases show that they most decidedly do. NAS is politically non-partisan. We do not take positions on issues such as health care, immigration, and foreign policy. And we believe that reason, civilization, intellectual freedom, civil debate, and the pursuit of the truth are principles that transcend the political lines that have traditionally divided most Americans. But we also believe that CampusReform.org has a potentially vital role to play in helping the beleaguered partisans of American conservatism get a fair intellectual shake at our universities and colleges.

The website itself is vast, comprising 2,376 subsites for each of America’s colleges and universities. The idea is that students will locate their institution’s site and network with others (students, parents, alumni, faculty members, and the broader community) to come up with new ways to combat leftism on campus. Each subsite, coordinated to match the school colors, has its own blog and listings of student groups, events, and conservative jobs in the area. At each college subsite, students can also identify “leftist faculty” and review “biased textbooks.” The success of CampusReform.org depends on its ability to attract thousands of students to fill its subsites. But it seems well positioned to do so, given the need of many conservative students for rallying points. Beyond the website, Campus Reform has created a powerful media storm, complete with its own Twitter-frenzy, YouTube-land, and Facebook fan following.

Historically, conservatives have favored the ways of the past—which is why they sometimes fall behind the left in using technology to get organized. But Campus Reform breaks out of the mold to help give this generation’s conservatives a forward-thinking cause. We can’t envision exactly what this movement will look like six months from now, but we imagine it will become an important tool to help students confront the frustrations of political correctness on campus.

Add a Comment

The recent article on CampusReform.org has the following statement: "NAS is politically non-partisan. We do not take positions on issues such as health care, immigration, and foreign policy. And we believe that reason, civilization, intellectual freedom, civil debate, and the pursuit of the truth are principles that transcend the political lines that have traditionally divided most Americans. But we also believe that CampusReform.org has a potentially vital role to play in helping the beleaguered partisans of American conservatism get a fair intellectual shake at our universities and colleges."

I strongly agree with the first two sentences, above. However, I have been increasingly disturbed that the NAS has a reputation of being a politically conservative organization, and the tentative endorsement of CampusReform.org will tend to strengthen this widespread belief .

Further, statements like, "At each college subsite, students can also identify 'leftist faculty' and review 'biased textbooks,' while they may be appropriate to a conservative organization, are not appropriate to ours. I think this endorsement should be rewritten to make it clear that we are not endorsing a witch hunt of any kind and that our kind thoughts towards this organization has nothing to do with its conservatism, but only seeks to bring some balance into what has become a growing tendency to make liberalism an approved doctrine on college campuses.

by John C. Wenger Posted on 10/01/2009

John C. Wenger’s comment raises some important points. NAS indeed has a reputation as a “conservative organization.” I’ve tried in numerous posts to address this, most conspicuously in an article titled, “Is NAS Conservative?” Plainly in the sense of the word used by most Americans when speaking of politics, NAS is not a conservative organization. We have been labeled “conservative” by opponents as a tactic aimed at de-legitimizing NAS in the eyes of fellow academics. The tactic itself displays the extraordinary level of bias in academe. Calling a person or a group “conservative” should on its face be neutral, but it is not. The matter is further complicated by the other, non-political meanings of the word “conservative.” NAS is not about to abandon its commitment to enduring principles, such as the foundational importance of the pursuit of truth in the university or the need for the university to find its place among free institutions, even if these principles are caricatured as dowdy and out-of-date by fashionable ideologues. So NAS is conservative in this larger civilizational sense.

I disagree with John C. Wenger on the question of whether, to prove our purity, we ought to distance ourselves even further from groups such as CampusReform.org. We declined an invitation to participate in CampusReform.org, just as we would decline to participate in any organization that defines its primary purpose as political. CampusReform.org, however, promises to bring a badly needed element of ideological balance to campus debates, and we welcome that prospect. NAS can stand on its own record on the question of “witch hunts.” We’ve been around for 22 years without ever engaging in behavior that could be credibly characterized that way.

At the same time, I have no objection to an explicitly partisan group such as CampusReform.org attempting to make its case by inviting students to identify “leftist faculty” and to review “biased textbooks.” The university left has made a central part of its activity over the last several decades the effort to identify (and often demean on spurious grounds) scholars who dissent from leftist positions, and fields such as women’s studies have long promoted the practice of combing textbooks for instances of “bias.” I don’t see a particularly good argument that these tactics should be allowable to the left but not to the right. They aren’t NAS’s tactics. Our ideal would be a de-politicized university. But the reality is that we now have a university that is overwhelmingly dominated by the political left, and with that in view, we welcome the challenge that CampusReform.org poses to the status quo.

Will this arm’s-length welcome deepen NAS’s reputation as a “conservative” organization? I doubt it. We are routinely mentioned in the Chronicle of Higher Education, The New York Times, and other publications as conservative. Nothing we say or do seems to shake this caricature. Not long ago, a liberal professor tried to involve us in a project to promote “civic literacy” on the terms that we would represent the “conservative” view of things. We declined on the grounds that we aren’t conservative and don’t speak for conservatives. He was incredulous, then angry. “Everybody knows…” Well, no everyone doesn’t.

Distinctions need to be drawn. That is supposedly what scholars are good at. No fair-minded scholar looking at the facts would say that NAS is politically conservative. The label is inaccurate, but I am not going to form NAS policy in a deliberate—and no doubt futile—effort to disprove it. We will continue to make decisions on the basis of where we see the most benefit for the core principles of higher education. On that ground, CampusReform.org looks to be, on balance, a wholesome organization, and we do indeed welcome it.

by Peter Wood Posted on 10/01/2009

↑ back to the top

Take Back the Classroom from PowerPoint
September 02, 2010 By Jason Fertig
Restrict PowerPoint use in teaching to pictures and videos, writes Jason Fertig. Too much PowerPoint usurps professors' authority and accustoms students to lazy thinking.

Collegiate Press Roundup 9-2-10
September 02, 2010 By Glenn Ricketts
Student journalists examine topics from presidential speeches to campus smoking bans.

Will You Promote Diversity? Virginia Tech Tests Faculty Candidates’ Commitment
September 01, 2010 By Peter Wood and Ashley Thorne
A major public university has fashioned a “diversity” litmus test for faculty hiring

FIRE Educates for Free Speech on Campus
August 31, 2010 By Glenn Ricketts
FIRE will offer a Free Speech Seminar in NYC on September 14.

University Speaker Series: Arab Feminism, Black Feminism, and "A Southern Queer Love Story"...No Comment
August 30, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
A program on gender and diversity at the University of Richmond will explore "emancipatory ideas of social justice" this fall.

How Scholarships Morphed into Financial Aid
August 30, 2010 By Jackson Toby
This excerpt from Jackson Toby's latest book, The Lowering of Higher Education in America: Why Financial Aid Should Be Based on Student Performance, will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3).

Common Reading Controversy at Brooklyn College
August 27, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
Is Brooklyn College using freshman reading for ideological goals?

Question of the Week: How Many Colleges Should You Apply To?
August 27, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).

Atlas Black Shrugs
August 26, 2010 By Jason Fertig
The first comic book textbook combines management jargon and theories and packages them into a story about a slacker student's attempt to become an entrepreneur.
1 comment - Last on 08/27/2010

Collegiate Press Roundup 8-26-10
August 26, 2010 By Glenn Ricketts
Student journalists have a look at the Ground Zero mosque controversy, reducing your carbon footprint and the pitfalls of "sexting."

A Regulatory Assault on For-Profit Higher Education
August 25, 2010 By Richard J. Bishirjian
How the attacks on for-profit higher ed are squashing needed competition.

New Excellent Programs: Tocqueville Program and Center for Statesmanship
August 24, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
Check out our list of excellent programs as we add new ones at Indiana and Richmond.

The Glut of Academic Publishing: A Call for a New Culture
August 23, 2010 By Stanley W. Trimble, Wayne W. Grody, Bill McKelvey, and Mohamed Gad-el-Hak
This article will appear in the forthcoming fall issue of Academic Questions (vol. 23, no. 3). A short version of this paper appeared under the title “We Must Stop the Avalanche of Low-Quality Research” in the June 13, 2010 Chronicle of Higher Education.
1 comment - Last on 08/25/2010

Building a 21st Century Syllabus
August 20, 2010 By David Clemens
Professors these days have to cover their backs when writing syllabi, writes David Clemens.
2 comments - Last on 08/20/2010

Question of the Week: Why Did You Choose Your College?
August 20, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
We're starting a new "Question of the Week" series. We'll have a new higher-education-related question every week. To answer, leave a comment on this article, email us, or respond via Facebook or Twitter (no more than 140 characters).
2 comments - Last on 08/20/2010

Dictatorships and Double Standards, Part II
August 19, 2010 By Robert L. Paquette
Professor Paquette responds to the controversy generated this summer after Hamilton College sought to censor his NAS article.

Real Ethics Education
August 19, 2010 By Jason Fertig
Ethics courses should make moral decisions personal, argues Jason Fertig.

Collegiate Press Roundup 8-18-10
August 18, 2010 By Glenn Ricketts
Student journalists tackle gay marriage, weird psycholgy studies and state liquor regulations.

5 Consequences of Administrative Bloat
August 18, 2010 By Ashley Thorne
What happens to higher education when universities are dominated by administrators?

Ravitch Repentant
August 17, 2010 By Peter Cohee
Peter Cohee reviews Diane Ravitch's book, a partial volte-face, The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education.