Assuming that the other 30% of the summer reading books advance and promote the views of the fascist right, isn't that sufficient for the National Association of Scholars -- at least outside of Texas?

Excuse me, but the fascists are leftists - statists, one and all.

Hi dnewton137, I'm Ashley Thorne at the NAS and I helped compile the list of reading programs. The percent breakdown as we calculated it was 70% liberal, less than 2% conservative, and 28% neither. But we don't seek an artificial "balance" of liberal and conservative books; instead we urge colleges to choose books of intrinsic educational importance. See http://www.nas.org/documents/Beach_Books.pdf for more details.

I really wish the Chronicle would operate according to standard journalistic conventions.

I'm assuming you looked up who the National Association of Scholars was? They are not a "scholarly group". They are one of a number of right wing false-fronts that were created in the mid-80s and early 90s by the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, the Koch Family foundations, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Scaife Family foundations and the Adolph Coors Foundation.

The way they operate is they release phony reports, usually with some attractive arbitrary number in them that would look tasty to a journalist: "90% of students can't pass a civics exam" or "70% of summer reading is liberal". They rely on reporters to be too lazy to check into who they are or to look up who funds them or to ask what it could possibly mean to say something like "70% of summer reading is liberal" in the first place.

By finding gullible reporters who don't know the history of these organizations and don't bother to check, they are able to feed conservative press releases into the media fairly cheaply, and by doing it at the Chronicle, they are able to acheive their real dream -- giving ideological thought experiments a veneer of research. They can now go on TV and say "As reported in the Chronicle of Higher Education..."

And thus, any conservative activist group can take a free afternoon and create out of whole cloth something that will appear to the average reader to be "research" by "scholarly organizations". And the Chronicle ably assists, doing their part to launder the "research".

If you would like to read more about the history of how these organizations came to be, and how their express purpose is create false equivalencies with real research, you can read a short PDF called Buying a Movement:

http://www.pfaw.org/sites/default/files/buyingamovement.pdf

It's from 2003 or so, but it will give you the basic story. You'll see a lot of the Chronicle's

You should have never run a story like this, period (did you even read the "report"? -- the methodology wouldn't rate a C in undergraduate work). But to run it without reporting who NAS is and why powerful right-wing interests created NAS is beyond the pale. A reasonable reader could walk away from your article not knowing the express purpose of the National Association of Scholars is to advance a right-wing anti-diversity agenda in higher education. The way you present it, it could just be a professional organization of scholars, who looked at this issue not knowing what they would find.

At the *very* least, you could have said "Now a _right-wing_ scholarly group". The fact you didn't makes me wonder if you even bothered to look up who these people were. Did you?

What is exceedingly irritating is that the Chronicle is not alone in making this grade-school journalism error. I've seen this article all over the internet and cable news. Perhaps I'll found an organization entitled "National Coalition for Reporters in Education" and then put out slick media materials boasting "90% of higher education reporting is inaccurate and biased towards [insert demon-of-the-now]." Sadly, I'm confident that the Chronicle would pass it on as actual news.

Even a peek at the lazy scholar's go-to source, Wikipedia, would have revealed NAS for what it is: "The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is a non-profit organization in the United States that opposes multiculturalism and affirmative action and seeks to counter what it considers a "liberal bias" in academia".

Very disappointed in the Chronicle.

Can anyone explain the following passage from the NAS report? I find the content illogical and confusing.

Almost all the “This I Believe”  statements likewise set out a positive point in strong, confident language; but most of them are also 
sharp rejections of what the authors posit as the usual course of American life.  Generally they amount 
to vignettes of self‐definition by way of disdain for traditional values, casting off accepted ideals, or 
ironically re‐appropriating such values and ideals for some counter‐cultural goal.  

And what books are our students reading? Those that are reading books? After all, this is an era where the one person who has contributed more than ANYONE else to literacy in this age group is undoubtedly J. K. Rowling. So...

The amazing thing is that these right wing types think that students are going to be brainwashed by their professors when the biggest challenge is getting students to PAY ATTENTION to their professors. And left wing propaganda poses little threat to students who never actually read it.

So if any left-wing universities actually get students to read The Communist Manifesto, the Qu'ran, and (good heavens!) The Omnivores Dilemma should give lessons for the rest of us. Meanwhile, someone should take the NAS out of la-la-land and introduce them to real classrooms.

-----GL McColm
pointy-headed professor whose been trying trying to brainwash students for YEARS and has hardly gotten any brains more than a little damp...

In reference to Pollan's book, I did not realize that wanting to avoiding needless harm to the environment or animals was 'liberal.' Does being 'conservative' really mean active support for pollution and animal suffering? Not only is this insulting to the concept of conservatism, it is nonsensical. This is like asserting that wanting to eradicate a deadly disease is a 'liberal' idea.

This is an example of the intellectual poverty of these kinds of studies, which exhibit no rigor at all in distinguishing between 'liberal' ideas and supposedly mainstream non-liberal ideas.

I guess we would have to assume that the NAS is somehow in favor of destroying our environment.

If you can't fault with the message (unless you twist Pollan into "the truth" rather than a point of view) then attack the messenger. I applaud the Chronicle for trying to give us something else besides the indignation of the righteous.

Does the Chronicle seem to be getting more and more like a grocery-store tabloid publication?

To commentor "tachuris":

Just to clarify, the NAS opposes "race preferences" in admissions and hiring, not the original intent of affirmative action. The organization is also non-partisan, counting among its ranks scholars of all political stripes -- and some of the finest minds known to academe, I might add. But how would "tachuris" know -- since his judgement of what the NAS stands for appears to be based solely on a definition by Wikipedia? That aside, here are some comments as to why the NAS opposes today's version of "affirmative action."

The NAS does not object to what was the initial and intent of affirmative action: providing "equal opportunity" to all Americans, regardless of background or race. Alas, this initial and noble intent has long morphed into a racial spoils system, the aim of which is not equal opportunity but equal outcomes --- outcomes determined not by qualifications or "content of character", but through social engineering by color, gender and race. The NAS opposes this perversion of Martin Luther King's dream, and so does the majority of Americans.

"Tachuris", and the likes of you, the fact is that when you "prefer" some individuals or groups on the basis of race, you automatically "disadvantage" others. What is shocking is not that the National Association of Scholars opposes this indefensible practice, but that academics, claiming to be guided by logic and reason, still defend it. Not even the cloak of "diversity" or "inclusiveness" can hide what race-based affirmative action is: DISCRIMINATION, pure and simple.

Kudos to the NAS for advocating "reasoned sholarship" -- and for continuing to debate leftist bias in academe that runs the gamut from race based admissions and hiring to the sustainability doctrine, race and gender-focused curricula and, yes, an ideologically tainted summer reading lists for freshmen. Bring on the debate -- and open, unfettered debate is what the academic Left prides itself in fostering, or not?

Dr. S.W.

Facts have an inherent liberal bias.

LOL. So many readers want to kill the messenger. So few offer any refutation. Probably because in their hearts, they know it's true that most of the "good" books come from lefties. Now if only they could admit it in their heads.

@12111360, I have to admit that the level of your neoliberal, false "reverse discrimination" rhetoric is most impressive in its degree of invective. What is most noticable, however is your abject failure to respond to mikecaulfield's suggestion about the actual purpose of the NAS as a covert right-wing false front, rather than berating someone for reaching for the easily accessible information about NAS which is far more tantalizing and intellectually vulnerable to scrutiny...

I looked at the list, and I'm happy to report I've heard of fewer than 10% of the titles. Why?:

"Every time I hear about one good new book, I go read 10 great old books" (google and I can't remember the author)

My only critique of the list is, what is a New Jersey college doing reading a *Hollywood* novel??? (Admitedly, it is the greatest Hollywood novel. A bit like being the best Jai-Alai player in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. (Yes, I've been there, and yes, they can play the game.))

[Now I'll be called an anti-Canadian racist. :-( ]

I think we learned everything we needed to know about how NAS works when Ashley Thorne, the Communications Director for the organization, revealed up-page in a comment that she had helped compile the initial book list.

I imagine a few readers here are familiar with research, maybe have even done some in their career? Let me ask you this -- how much of your research starts with a call to your Communications Director to compile your material?

Is that a report, or is it a PR stunt?

As far as all the messenger/message rhetoric here -- Once you look at the methodology of the report and look at the organization releasing it, the story here is apparently "Right Wing Organization thinks summer reading is too liberal, according to self-devised classification system."

Given that, it's hardly worth my time to argue the point. I suppose I could follow the lead of NAS and say under my super-duper classification system summer reading largely reflects the centrist, shared values of the students the colleges serve, particularly around current issues which our students find interesting -- issues around the environment and the clash of different cultures in America. But what would be the point?

I'd really encourage people to skim the "report". It's almost comical with lines like these:

"The nine colleges that chose books about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina neatly capture both elements: the disaster serves to indict America for its callous treatment of the mostly poor and black residents of New Orleans and at the same time celebrate the heroic contributions of outside‐the‐system saints. (It will be interesting to see in a few years whether the Nashville floods of 2010 warrant a similar level of attention from authors and common reading committees.)"

The whole report is like this -- this roaming thinly veiled political polemic. Books about Africa are liberal, books about Katrina are liberal (Books about the Nashville flood, presumably, would be centrist for reasons you can probably figure out). Books about alienation are liberal. (The report authors graciously admit alienation has been a popular theme in world literature for quite some time, but are perturbed that these are books about alienation from Western Culture).

Even so, the "report" would make a pretty interesting editorial or blog post. It's an opinion, but it is argued, in part, by pointing to evidence. But its not really research, and its certainly not news.

12111360 describes "the initial and intent of affirmative action: providing "equal opportunity" to all Americans, regardless of background or race."

Really? My understanding -- it may be flawed -- has always been that the somewhat Orwellian named "Affirmative Action" program originally and intentionally allowed for the use of race (i.e. African American race) to be treated as a benefit when all other criteria were equal. It went beyond "equal opportunity" to redress discriminatory practices to allow for enhanced opportunity for African Americans.

Does the NAS support this vision of Affirmative Action?

Why have Summer Reading Programs for Pre-Freshmen at all?

To 19,
I don't know whether NAS supports your characterization of the original Affirmative Action or not. I know I don't. When all other things really are equal, you flip a coin.

My understanding of the original Affirmative Action was that one made extra effort to advertise open positions so that worthy candidates from historically against-discrimminated groups could learn about them and be encouraged to apply. With that I have no difficulty. But it rapidly transmogrified into first your characterization, and then into what we came to know it really as--reverse discrimmination.

To Jffoster (#20, "Why have Summer Reading Programs for Pre-Freshmen at all?"),

Excellent question. Judging from my daughter's experiences, some schools use a summer reading assignment as a lead-in to a required year-long freshman course. Students in small classes participate (it's hard to hide under these circumstances) in a common academic experience and the book(s) is(are) used as a focal point to discuss various topics that the faculty believe a well-educated person should be concerned with: social justice, class interactions, environmental stewardship, etc. An apology to our right-wing friends is probably due here, as making a killing in the stock market and how to maximize one's status, rank, and privilege are topics that are usually left out (conspiracy indeed!) - but I digress.

At the small (but getting larger as more "customers" are recruited) public college where I work, we have an "Academic Day" as part of Fall freshman orientation (which begs the question of what the h@$$ goes on during the regular semester, as it implies it's not academics). As our version of instilling virtue via summer reading, "Academic Day," was centered around discussion of a summer book in small (30-40 students) faculty-led groups. Attendance was not monitored, so only about two thirds of the kids would show up, and of those that did it quickly became obvious that only a handful had actually read the book. The "discussions" that resulted came off like that Ben Stein commercial where he plays a teacher asking and (because the students remain silent) answering his own questions. So the "solution" was to ditch the book and go to short articles which (based on reports) hasn't worked any better. This all played out years ago; I'm not sure what we're down to at present- films?, comic books?, role playing with sock puppets? I do know that "Academic Day" lives on.

So the message here - as noted by GL McColm (#8) above (I feel your pain) - is that the rabid right can rest easy, only in some situations are the assigned (and presumably liberal) readings actually read and the students held responsible for same. The cult of "me first" has less to fear than it might think (assuming it does-?).

21 writes "My understanding of the original Affirmative Action was that one made extra effort to advertise open positions so that worthy candidates from historically against-discrimminated groups could learn about them and be encouraged to apply."

No -- that was merely one of many ways employers could meet the goal of equal opportunity. It was Lyndon Johnson who, in 1965, said that equal opportunity of not enough, and in two executive orders expanded equal opportunity to the more proactive notion of race being a positive feature for employment, etc.

In 2010 such discriminatory practices may seem unnecessary and, well, discriminatory, but as someone who remembers the segregated south or 50 years ago all too well, the push represented by Johnson's executive order was a welcome effort.

Sorry -- I meant to write "...equal opportunity was not enough..."

@ barbarapiper, thank you for that excellent clarification. I think many would do well to read Bonilla-Silva's text, Colorblind Racism or Tim Wise's White Like Me, for a more thorough, but excellent elaboration on the distinctions about Affirmative action's origin and current deployment in the US economic system.

PR Stunt from a well-known Right Wing lobbying group.
Print it, report on it, link to it, but at least identify the source for what it is, please, Chronicle.
NAS hasn't been able to integrate it's fringe positions into Higher Education, yet, but not for lack of trying.

Hey don't worry, NAS, you still have a nation full of straight English-speaking Christian angry white male rednecks hanging on every fair and balanced word from the Almighty Rush and the Fox Republican News Network, so you can still have all of your Teabagger Parties without all those elitist snob intellectual college kids anyway.

BarbaraPiper, 21, writes:

"It was Lyndon Johnson who, in 1965, said that equal opportunity of not enough, and in two executive orders expanded equal opportunity to the more proactive notion of race being a positive feature for employment, etc."

So Lyndon Johnson was a dictator and governed by executive decree?

Mr Mars, 22 -- thank you for that summary of a particular case of "prefreshman reading" and its results. As I suspected and as I learned when they tried it at my university (with a book extolling Communitarianism), it's mostly a bunch of crap and is really about something else -- pushing a mild to very left wing agenda may be a apart of the something else, but I don't think that's the primary underlying motive. BTW -- I would oppose it if it were pushing a conservative agenda too.

@jffoster writes "So Lyndon Johnson was a dictator and governed by executive decree?"

Huh? All presidents issue executive orders. "Dictator" is non sequitur.

What exactly is the point of your comment????

The point 29 is that a President can't just willy nilly issue executive orders and tell the Congress to go home for four years. Affirmative action didn't transmogrify just because of a Presidentlai executive order. If it did, it was unconstitutional. If what really happened is what you characterized as having happened, then LBJ was a dictator.

@jffoster

Who comments "If what really happened is what you characterized as having happened, then LBJ was a dictator."

Well, that is exactly what happened -- and the origin of what we call "affirmative action" was another executive order, by Jack Kennedy, in 1961. Johnson expanded it. By executive order.

All presidents issue executive orders, and have done so since 1789, using constitutional authority (Article II, section 1, clause 1) to back them up. Some have been challenged successfully, others have withstood challenge (You might check the history of executive orders that either ban or allow the use of U.S. foreign aid for "family planning" -- i.e. birth control and abortion services.) Frankly, your comment "then LBJ was a dictator" sounds simply naive.

This article is rubbish.... Reading is just one part of the learning process (not the content piece this article suggests)... Comprehension, retention and application should be privileged as well as critically challenging multiple view points... If learning were approached in this way, the content wouldn't matter as much...

Just read baby, just read.... the rest will come (unless your a braindead corporatist looking suck the profit out of the rotting corpse we call undergraduate education sold to students by University Debt Inc...

ms. Piper (31), Article II Section 1, Sentence (and since it is a simplex sentence, Clause 1) simply reads "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."

It doesn't make the President an Absolute Autocrat. As I can determine, the executive order in question issued by Lyndon Baines Johnson, based on and derived from one issued by John F Kennedy, applied only within Federal departments and with businesses doing more than limited Federal contracts. It did not apply to private citizens or private businesses or certainly not private schools and colleges. Whether it was taken then legally to apply to public colleges I don't know. I know many of them jumped on the bandwagon, whether they had to or not. If your claim is that that XO by LBJ was the first use of the term Affirmative Action in a way that entailed such things as minority race in hiring, there is a good chance you are right, although I suppose the very first proto-origin was someebody on his staff. But he had no authority to extend or compel its use into the public at large.

I may have misunderstood your original claim. I had in mind a comparison -- which you did NOT make and may likely not have intended -- with Abraham Lincoln who did usurp authority unconstitutionally, as for instance in preventing the Maryland legislature from meeting. He WAS a dictator.

GW Bush Exec Orders:

Blocking Stem-Cell Research
Executive Order 13435 (PDF)
June 20, 2007

Allowing VEEP to Classify Information
Executive Order 13292 (PDF)
March 25, 2003

This article is silly for several reasons:
(a) It is pretentious to try and tell new students to read anything before they start university. They will not do it unless it is examinable.
(b) As pointed out above "The National Association of Scholars" has an agenda of its own and is apparently a right-wing front organisation. It is certainly not answerable to anyone.
(c) The Right hyperventilates over the Leftists corrupting young minds and the Left is always deluding itself that "education" will turn everyone into sensitive souls who care about the oppressed. Both groups are fooling themselves. Both groups forget that the likes of Stalin and Mao had total control over the media, newspapers, books and the education system and yet all such 20th century experiments were a miserable failure and simply created mass graves. They thought thay had total control and it turned out they had none at all.
(d) In Europe, Canada and Australia the conservative parties are full of former left-wing student radicals who simply grew out of it. They make better conservative politicians because they have heard and read all the progressivist twaddle and know from experience that it is all a fraud. They know, often from personal experience, that more often than not radical teachers simply innoculate the student against the disease.

A note to Ashley - Go to your website's page and look at the "Contacts" section. Look at who you are pictured with. Take a long hard look. Listen to the folks who wrote the comments above. Think about what you want to do with your life - you seem fairly young still...choose your path wisely, because at the moment, I would say this probably isn't the best organization to be associated with.

I'm curious as to Dr. S.W.'s (#13 above) opinion that NAS includes among its members "some of the finest minds known to academe." Following #36's advice, I looked at the "Contact" section and didn't see any people on the NAS Board whom I would be tempted to characterize in this manner. That point aside, however, my reaction to the NAS report is not so negative as that of many of the commentators above. The report doesn't make any pretense to be "scientific," and it freely admits that its categories are arbitrary to a degree and that the books surveyed could be classified in many different ways. Its anti-liberal bias is not disguised in such a way as to be misleading, even to someone who doesn't know what the NAS is. I have no problem at all with its call for better choices of more intellectually challenging books that have gained respected status over time, and I sympathize generally with its hope that colleges could do more to create a common core of knowledge for all of their students. I attended Princeton in the early 1960s, and though I benefited from the flexibility in its program (allowing me to change from being an engineering student to majoring in philosophy), I know retrospectively that it would have helped me, even as a philosophy major, to have had more of a structured path of learning rather than being given total freedom to pick from a smorgasbord of courses. The NAS report identifies four books among the 180 as "classics" and doesn't seem to object, despite its anti-liberal bias, to having "The Communist Manifesto" as one of the classics (though the report goes on to suggest that this isn't one that American students really need to read). In a reply to a critique by John K. Wilson on its web site, NAS makes some intriguing suggestions about pairing some "classics" together, such as "Rousseau and Burke or Nietzsche and Cardinal Newman." Another such pairing might be Burke's "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790), Mary Wollstonecraft's "Vindication of the Rights of Men" (1790), and Thomas Paine's "The Rights of Man" (1791), the latter two of which were responses to Burke. Now that combination could provoke some wonderful discussion about the French and American revolutions and the intellectual heritage of the Enlightenment! But I fear that would be too much reading to expect incoming freshmen to take on. For a really short but highly stimulating book by the late Oxford philosopher G.A. Cohen, I would suggest "Why Not Socialism?" (in Princeton's series of mini-books), which should help students better engage with debates over whether Obama's policies really amount to socialism. Perhaps even more directly beneficial to them, because of the requirements of the new higher education act mandating colleges to educate students more about intellectual property, would be assigning Judge Richardf Posner's wonderful "Little Book of Plagiarism" (Pantheon, 2007).---Sandy Thatcher, past president (2007/8) of the Association of American University Presses

I do wish the reading lists included more of the classics. I daresay It would make the dictionary viable again.

The purpose of having entering students read a book or books in common, is so that when those students matriculate they engage in the conversation that the book or books provoke. The purpose, I repeat, is conversation, not indoctrination. The fulcrum of the process, therefore, is neither those who selected the texts nor the texts themselves, but those who facilitate the discussions. And such conversations should be facilitated, not led, with a list of issues that a given text raises, but with no predetermined set of conclusions.

If, under such circumstances, a school's academic leadership gerrymanders the discussion to lead to a predetermined set of conclusions, shame on that leadership. But on the other hand, shame on those who assume that such an outcome is in the offing without information to support such a conclusion. And, above all, shame on those who patently assume that reading a "liberal" book results in being "converted" to its premises and beliefs. The partisan yammering that backgrounds the present discussion speaks iller of the present state of intellectual debate in the nation than it does of the politics of the nation per se.

Why not let students pick the books, and everybody read, read, read... (From a former English major). There is such a gap that we academics refuse to realize between today's student and anyone who is old (according to my 17 year old, which is anyone above 35!)

Next, I notice that when the origins of Affirmative Action are mentioned, many of the commenters seem to rely on their memories. Maybe we should, starting with me, review this piece of American history; it is so easy to lose sight of the original intent when we rely only on memory. Or is "losing sight" the actual purpose?

Mass literacy has always had a liberal bias. Perhaps a summer talk radio program could counteract the effects.

I think that we should probably disregard the politics of the pro and anti list goon squads and concede that of the top 49 assigned books, most are sub-literate crap. This I Believe? God almighty! I'd rather drink a cup of battery acid. Outliers? The Last Lecture? Neither of those titles is even remotely worth ready by any stretch of the imagination. Three Cups of Tea? That book is a turd floating in tepid water compared to Moby Dick. I cannot stand the NAS, but let's all thank them for exposing the absolute banality of bridge readings. Maus? Yeah. That's worthy. Huck Finn? Page 194-195 is the moral center of America. But by jeepers there is a lot of unforgivable dreck on the nation's reading lists.

Instead, students should be encouraged to finish up the College Board's reading list. And if a common book is to be assigned, let it be a real book. Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Hugo, Melville... something that will make them smarter rather than dumber.

I agree completely with #42 above -- "... if a common book is to be
assigned, let it be a real book. Dante, Cervantes, Tolstoy, Hugo,
Melville... something that will make them smarter rather than dumber."
What a noble goal. Damn the politics.

Michael Pollan's book _The Botany of Desire_ taught me that Johnny
Appleseed was really a liquor distributor rather than a free spirit
with a pot on his head. The book made me "... smarter ..." and it was
a great read, too.

Isn't a primary goal in a college to expose students to new ideas and to generate greater empathy and understanding for wider ranges of people? Doesn't it bespeak, perhaps, the homogeneity of American college students that so few books deal, for example, with gaining understanding about the white, middle-class suburbanite? In other words, the diversity represented in the list--if universities are doing what they're supposed to--is inversely proportional to the diversity of the student body. How would it help middle-class white students to read books regurgitating values they already hold (apparently, the goal of the NAS)? Novels especially are meant--among other things--to increase the circle of identification and empathy. It seems only reasonable that one would therefore find a diverse range of texts, which is what one sees from this list. Authors of every gender, race, and ethnicity are found there. Isn't that the point of an education? Or is the NAS so jaded that the point of education is simply to reinforce existing beliefs?

And, to add to the list of "real books" by "real authors" (whatever that means), can we all agree on Toni Morrison, Ralph Ellison, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Hannah Arendt, Anne Bradstreet, Jane Austen, Hannah More (no doubt too liberal--hahahaha--for the NAS), Confucius, and Kenzaburo Oe? Strange how the knee-jerk classicists, almost without fail, only throw out white dudes (real or honorary) when lamenting the loss of "real books" from the curriculum.

Great idea, anonscribe. Hannah Arendt, Hannah More, and Hannah Montana. Capped off with Kenzaburo Oe Weh!

To me colleges that have pre-freshman reading "requirements" are presumptious and pretentious. And what will they do to the freshman who report for orientation without having read them? Pre-expel them?

The National Association of Good Scholars (NAGS) has determined that half of all liberals are below average in intelligence, while half of all conservatives are above average in intelligence (obviously, they were born in Lake Wobegon). The implications are clear: conservatives are smarter than liberals. NAGS also has concluded, based on rigorous methodology, that conservative policies are successful 26.78% of the time, while liberal policies are successful 27.32% of the time. Therefore we can conclude that less intelligent policies are more successful than more intelligent policies. Which proves once again that there is massive discrimination against conservatives in academe. Although, when it comes to conservatives, I don't know half of them half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of them half as well as they deserve.

P.S. Bilbo gets credit for that last bit.

#16 (mjohnso9): Your comment is full of assumptions, coupled with name calling. I am not surprised in the least.

As a senior academic at a large California college I have become accustomed to the sad fact that simple logic -- such as "if you prefer some individuals or groups on the basis of race, you automatically disadvantage others" -- makes devotees of race preferences simply irate. It's probably too logical a statement to swallow, hence it must be imbued with invective intent. "Mjohnso9", you might be shocked to know that several of my "colleagues of color" find preferences based on pigment utterly condescending. All it says to them is that you and the likes of you believe that they need a crutch to compete. They don't. They want you to put color aside and let the chips fall where they may. They don't want your "highminded help" in the form of preferences. They, and all fair-minded Americans (including the late Dr. King), believe that true equality is achieved when the following occurs: the government neither prefers nor disadvantages any individual or group on the basis of race. But I forgot: that's too simple, too logical a concept to grasp. There must be some ulterior motive, some clever "degree of invective" lurking in that logic, right? And of course the NAS is a "covert right-wing false front", right? A done deal. Got it!

44... no no no. What the students need *are* the foundational western texts, and so what if they were written by dead white or honorary white males? Students need to know Homer and Virgil and Dante and Cervantes and Shakespeare and Melville way way way more than they need to know Morrison or Bradstreet or Arendt. These foundational texts provide the very framework of every single action and reaction in western literature.

"Excuse me, but the fascists are leftists - statists, one and all."

Just like the American left is where all the racism in America is, right? But then that would make the 60 books on the NAS list which talk about racism examples of *right-wing* political bias! Doh!

I'm interested to know which of the "scholars" at the National Association of Scholars came up with the "New Age/ Spiritual/ Philosophy" category of books. Maybe the NAS should propose that as a major.

The majority of the comments on this post clearly illustrate the truth of the very assertion they are reacting against. There is an obvious leftist bias in academe, and the only people who can't see it are the leftists who constitute the majority in academe. Why is that? It is because the Left is very good at questioning the prejudices of the Right, but very bad at questioning their own prejudices. Why is that? It is because their self-concept rests in their initial reaction against prejudice. Do you see the irony? Because they see themselves as opposed to prejudice (and I don't necessarily mean bigotry, just prejudice), they imagine themselves as immune from it--they do not think they have any prejudices of which to be aware in the analysis of their own decision-making. This is how it is possible for one commentator above to say, "The facts have an inherent bias toward the left" or something along those lines. It is why the NAS is discredited, ad hominem, because they have a bias, but the left-leaning commentators do not discredit themselves for the same reason. So what if they have a bias? Does that mean that they do not have anything valid to contribute?

There are some islands of insight here in a sea of vitriol. Attacking the NAS for the sources of its funding or because People for the American Way and Wikipedia have nasty (and inaccurate) things to say about us does not refute our report. A good many of these comments look more like expressions of political pique than efforts to deal with the issue at hand. I have replied at the NAS website,under "Shut Up, They Explained." http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?Doc_Id=1353 Peter Wood, President, National Association of Scholars

Of course, the real problem with this discussion is that the terms liberal and conservative have become what my high school English teacher referred to as "rubber bag words." They stretch to fit whatever you put in them. Political talk has become so filled with lies and distortions that it often makes no sense. I can't even figure out if I'm liberal or conservative any more. I have to ask what issue we are talking about and who is defining the terms. When George Bush is routinely described as conservative and Barack Obama is described as Marxist, we know we are living in Wonderland.

If the biggest challenge to life as we know it that NAS can come up with is that new students are reading too much... I'd say we're doing pretty well!