National Association of Scholars Highlights from 2015

Contact: Peter Wood, President, [email protected] Ashley Thorne, Executive Director, [email protected] Contents

2 Summary

With the support of our generous donors, in 2015 the National Association of Scholars advanced our mission of uniting academics and citizens across the United States in commitment to intellectual freedom, the legacy of our civilization, and the pursuit of truth in colleges and universities.

NAS published two major research reports, one on the campus sustainability movement and one on the movement to divest from fossil fuels. These brought national attention to the efforts of radical activists to recruit and raise up thousands of college students for deeply illiberal causes.

We joined with historians across the country and succeeded in bringing the College Board to mitigate the anti-American slant in its Advanced Placement U.S. History course standards. NAS president Peter Wood’s books on the Common Core State Standards presented a new scholarly case of evidence against the standardized curriculum for K-12 schools. Dr. Wood’s letter to scientists in the National Academy of Sciences has begun a conversation in the scientific community about the rights of dissenters to publish evidence outside “consensus.”

NAS balanced our budget, gained new members, and reached new audiences in print, TV, and radio. We built alliances with organizations including the Heritage Foundation, the Heartland Institute, the Alliance for Liberal Learning, the American Council on Science and Health, SAVE (Stop Abusive and Violent Environments), Heterodox Academy, Claremont Institute, Spiked, and Virginia Thomas’s alliance of conservative leaders.

We thank our supporters for their generous giving in 2015 which helped make all this possible.

3 Budget and Actual Revenue and Expenses

Revenue Budget Actual Grants $ 650,000.00 $ 784,415.75 Contributions $ 325,000.00 $ 349,403.72 Dues $ 100,000.00 $ 107,005.00 Earnings $ 25,000.00 $ (16,641.52) Springer Royalties $ 14,000.00 $ 19,688.00 TOTALS $ 1,114,000.00 $ 1,243,870.95

Expenses Budget Actual Salaries & Benefits $ 700,000.00 $ 651,311.53 Insurance $ 15,000.00 $ 9,665.92 Travel $ 20,000.00 $ 42,467.58 Sponsorship & Honoraria $ 15,000.00 $ 14,100.00 Occupancy $ 75,000.00 $ 72,979.98 Equipment & Supplies $ 17,000.00 $ 20,636.58 Advertising $ - $ 15,037.31 Legal & Accounting Fees $ 26,000.00 $ 27,694.37 Fundraising Consultant $ 35,000.00 $ 53,730.57 PR Consultant $ - $ 71,296.74 Springer Subscriptions $ 75,000.00 $ 56,872.00 Computer Technician $ 15,000.00 $ 3,289.09 Phone, Postage & Misc. $ 85,000.00 $ 59,236.35 Fundraising Mailings $ - $ 95,242.56 Other Operating Expenses $ 20,000.00 $ 5,565.72 Website $ 15,000.00 $ 16,511.78 TOTALS $ 1,113,000.00 $ 1,215,638.08

4 Reports

In 2015, the NAS published two major research reports:

Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism is a comprehensive 260-page account and critique of the sustainability movement in higher education. The report details the history and anatomy of the movement, its intrusion into the curriculum, its costs, the psychological manipulation involved, and its growth into the fossil fuel divestment movement. Although the report does not take a position on the theory of dangerous anthropogenic global warming, it describes the global warming litmus tests imposed on professors and students.

Our report comes at a critical time. Academic freedom is under attack from prominent leaders such as Representative Raul Grijalva (D-AZ), who in February 2015 demanded emails and financial information from seven prominent skeptics of various parts of the dangerous anthropogenic warming hypothesis, and from Sony Pictures, which just a few weeks before the launch of our report released in the US the “documentary” Merchants of Doubt, which smears well-respected scholars for dissenting from the global warming “consensus.” Professors often face an ideological litmus test in promotion and hiring decisions. Students are coached, from the moment they step foot on campus to their graduation marked by a “Green Graduation Pledge,” that a “sustainable” lifestyle is the only right way to behave and think.

The demonization of free markets and the fossil fuel industry reached new heights in spring 2015, as students at Harvard, Yale, Swarthmore College, Bowdoin College, and eight other universities staged sit-ins demanding divestment from fossil fuel. Under pressure, the administrations of Syracuse University, University of Hawaii, and Western Washington University gave way, making them the twenty-second, twenty-third, and twenty-fourth American universities to divest its fossil fuel holdings. We predicted these events in our report, because we’d been out in the field talking to the activists.

Media attention Our sustainability report attracted widespread media attention, including from the Wall Street Journal, which published an excerpt of the report in the “Notable and Quotable” section of the April 3, 2015 opinion page. Mary Kissel interviewed Peter on WSJ Live, and Kimberley Strassel wrote an accompanying op-ed, “The Campus Climate Crusade.”

5 George Will devoted one of his nationally syndicated columns to our report, writing that “Sustainability, as a doctrine of total social explanation, transforms all ills and grievances into environmental causes, cloaked in convenient science.”

In June, Rachelle Peterson appeared on WSJ Live to discuss fossil fuel divestment with Mary Kissel, and in July the New York Times invited her to participate in a “Room for Debate” forum on fossil fuel divestment.

The report has been widely noticed in the press, including New York Post, Investor’s Business Daily, Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Education, National Review Online, Breitbart, Bloomberg Business, and more.

The report was covered in

 74 articles in 62 different publications

 18 radio programs

 3 online TV segments

One professor of sustainability, Dr. John Krygier at Ohio Wesleyan University, also assigned our sustainability report in his senior-level sustainability class, “Geography 499 Sustainability Practicum.”

Launch event We launched Sustainability on March 25, 2015 at a luncheon at the Millennium Hotel at One UN Plaza across the street from the UN headquarters in New York City. At the same time as our event, members of a UN working group met next door to discuss the new Sustainable Development Goals. About 50 NAS members and donors attended our event, along with several members of the press, including John Stossel from Fox News.

Arthur Brooks, president of the American Enterprise Institute, gave the keynote address. Other speakers included Herb London, the chairman of our board and president of the London Center for Policy Research; Neil Ross, Spiked magazine’s U.S. program director; Rachelle Peterson, lead author of the report; and Peter Wood.

6 Praise for the report Our report has attracted admiration from a wide variety of sources.

George Will, speech at the William F. Buckley Foundation’s “Disinvitation Dinner”:

Recently, the National Association of Scholars, a wonderful outfit of right-minded, and, therefore, small, group of academics published a wonderful report that you all should read.

Stanley Fish:

Let me congratulate you on the report's comprehensiveness, clarity and tone. You never descend to the hectoring and bullying that characterize debate on these issues. You lay out the case in great detail and you anticipate and respond to the objections you imagine issuing from some of those whose positions you oppose. Moreover your treatment of those "on the other side" is always respectful even when you report arguments and actions you find distressing.

Joanna Williams, Spiked magazine:

The NAS report provides a timely and badly needed corrective to the illiberal campus sustainability movement.

Steven Hayward, Powerline Blog:

The report is entitled Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism, and I heartily recommend it.

Matt Briggs, Breitbart:

Anybody interested in the future of the Western university should read it.

Doug MacEachern, Arizona Republic:

A pretty comprehensive take down of higher education's "new fundamentalism."

7 Inside Divestment The NAS followed up on the publication of Sustainability with a report on the sustainability movement’s cutting edge: the centrally organized national campaign that aims to use students to pressure their colleges and universities to divest all endowment holdings in fossil-fuel energy companies. The leaders of the divestment movement use the campaign as a tool to manipulate a generation of college students toward unreasoning antipathy to the fossil fuel industry, and in pursuit of their ends they try to cut off all reasoned inquiry and open debate in colleges.

In November 2015, NAS published Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels. The report received national media attention including in the National Review, U.S. News & World Report, and The Huffington Post.

The Inside Divestment report was covered in

 43 articles in 41 different publications  13 discussions on 11 different radio shows  3 online TV segments

The report was also listed in the syllabus for one class, SSM2020H: Sustainability Ethics at the University of Toronto Mississauga.

Launch events, debates, and speaking opportunities NAS launched Inside Divestment in both New York City and, partnering with the Heritage Foundation, in Washington, D.C.

We released Inside Divestment on November 10, 2015, at the Sheraton Times Square Hotel in New York. George Gilder, senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, gave the keynote address. Herb London, president of the London Center for Policy Research and chairman of the NAS board, also spoke, along with Peter Wood and Rachelle Peterson. About 60 guests attended the New York launch, including one of the co-founders of 350.org, the international activist group that launched the fossil fuel divestment movement.

Three days later we partnered with the Heritage Foundation for a launch in D.C. Rachelle spoke along with Stanley Kurtz, senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and Brendan Williams from the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers. 8 We timed the launch for November to release our study strategically in the midst of the activists’ “escalation season.” The day before our NYC launch, a thousand millennials rallied in the streets of DC for fossil fuel divestment. One week later, 100 Stanford students began a sit-in for fossil fuel divestment.

Rachelle Peterson was invited to a four-way debate on fossil fuel divestment at Hamilton College in September 2015. Three days after the release of Inside Divestment, Peter spoke on sustainability at Harvard. He also spoke in fall 2015 at Case Western Reserve University and the Cleveland City Club. A student group at Cornell invited Rachelle to participate in a divestment debate in spring 2016.

Praise for the report Joanna Williams, a columnist for Spiked magazine, wrote, “The NAS’s Inside Divestment is a clarion call to debate. It provides the badly needed, dispassionate, detailed and rational account of the divestment movement that, to its shame, has failed to emerge from within academia.”

Scott Walter wrote in Philanthropy Daily, “Luckily, the National Association of Scholars has just released a very thoughtful, thoroughly documented demolition of this crude effort to manipulate academe and the broader public.”

Projects

Drilling Through the Core National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood edited and wrote the introduction for a new book, Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core Is Bad for America, released in September 2015. C-SPAN filmed and broadcasted the book launch at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.

Drilling through the Core addresses questions about the Common Core State Standards often asked by three main groups:

9 - For parents, are the Common Core standards academically rigorous? - For states, how much will it cost to implement? - For Congress, are the Common Core standards and federally funded tests legal?

Published by the Pioneer Institute, Drilling through the Core includes thoughtful contributors from experts on K-12 education such as NAS board member Sandra Stotsky, Ze’ev Wurman, R. James Milgram, Mark Bauerlein, and Anthony Esolen.

National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood said, “Much has already been done at the grassroots level to push back against the Common Core. This book is a major work that gives scholarly authority to critiques of these standards.”

In 2014 Dr. Wood published another book opposing the Common Core, Common Core: Yea and Nay (Encounter). He noted, however, that “There are NAS members who oppose the Common Core State Standards, and there are those who favor it. We welcome a robust exchange of perspectives and arguments. NAS maintains an open forum for debate as to the standards U.S. schools should use.”

St. Francis College sponsored a debate on Common Core on February 26, 2015. Peter Wood debated Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer at the Partnership for Inner-City Education Kathleen Porter- Magee. This debate was organized by Fred Siegel, a St. Francis Scholar in Residence and a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute.

Improving AP U.S. History In 2012, the College Board quietly released a new framework for the Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) curriculum for high school students, but the changes were not widely known until 2014, when they went into effect in the classroom, and NAS published “The New AP U.S. History: A Preliminary Report.” That preliminary analysis caught fire, drew other scholars and writers into the fray, and led to several high-profile critiques of the new APUSH curriculum, including the Texas Board of Education’s demands for an alternative.

10 The APUSH curriculum encouraged students in college-level courses to think of themselves as “citizens of the world,” and was framed as a refutation of the idea of America as distinctive. The U.S., in the view of the APUSH curriculum, is “just another nation,” and one driven by the self- interests of its ruling elite.

After our preliminary report, NAS responded to the new framework by inviting historians to write about it and providing a forum for them to publish their views. NAS also published on our website a letter signed by 56 historians – eventually signed by 122 – opposing APUSH. This prompted a second round of publicity, with dozens of further articles in venues including the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Education Week, Fox News, History News Network, Huffington Post, National Review Online, the Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post.

The College Board responded to this firestorm by falsely deriding the critics as people who favored jingoistic, flag-waving pseudo-history. It then found various academic historians to carry its water, and attack the NAS and other critics from such heights as the op-ed pages of The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and such hedgerows as the History News Network. But after months of this, the College Board abruptly shifted tactics. It announced that the critics had made some good points and that the College Board would pause, gather comment, and revise APUSH 1.0. The result—APUSH 2.0—was released July 30, 2015. This retreat by the College Board has also received significant publicity—perhaps the most publicity of the entire campaign —in CNN, Fox News, The Huffington Post, Inside Higher Ed, The Los Angeles Times, The National Review, Newsweek, NPR, Slate, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.

Many of the changes to APUSH are superficial, but some are deeper, and nearly all are for the better. For example, the new version includes important individuals (e.g. James Madison) omitted from APUSH 1.0; it significantly reduces the exam’s progressive bias; and it gives greater attention to American inventiveness.

There is still much room for improvement. APUSH 2.0 pays lip-service to “American exceptionalism” but leaves the idea undefined and undescribed, indicating genuine incomprehension by the College Board of a central component of American history. The College Board writers are so attuned to the progressive worldview that they literally cannot make sense of key ideas that are repudiated by that worldview. They are similarly incapable of taking on board the importance of military and religious history as autonomous modes of American historical study, writing of non-whites as essentially anything but innocent and ineffective victims, or of conveying intellectual history as more than the propaganda of power.

David Coleman, the head of the College Board, has been civil in his response to our criticism of APUSH 2.0, and seems willing to consider further criticisms. Yet there is very large bureaucratic and ideological inertia within the College Board, and we cannot be sure that more than cosmetic changes will be made. While we are continuing to work to reform APUSH, through both friendly dialogue and public critique, we are also considering whether to work toward constructing a viable alternative to APUSH outside the purview of the College Board. The threat of such competition has already served to focus the minds of the directors of the College Board marvelously, and has helped make possible the reformed APUSH 2.0. We will continue to work

11 to reform APUSH, with the option, and perhaps the reality, of a rival to APUSH as part of our tactics to effect real educational reform.

Upholding the Integrity of Science Beginning in December 2015, the National Association of Scholars worked with epidemiologist James Enstrom to identify ways that the National Academy of Science - the gatekeeper of American scientific scholarship - has suppressed the research of scientists who seek to present evidence contrasting with scientific “consensus.” Peter Wood’s letter to individual members of the National Academy of Science (the original NAS) went to over 900 scientists across the country.

Resisting Racial Preferences The case of Fisher v. University of Texas, which challenges the use of racial preferences in college admissions, came before the Supreme Court for the second time in 2015. NAS signed an amicus brief on behalf of Fisher, and NAS board member Gail Heriot, a professor of law at the University of San Diego, authored a major study that finds racial preferences often hurt the students they were intended to help. NAS mailed copies of Professor Heriot’s study to all our members.

Defending Due Process NAS endorsed the Safe Campus Act, which ensures that campus sexual assault allegations be judged by law enforcement agencies. Peter Wood wrote a Weekly Standard cover story, “The Meaning of Sex,” on the how the hook-up culture harms stable relationships and leaves students —especially women—with regret that in hindsight they interpret as evidence of sexual assault. We devoted the spring edition of our journal Academic Questions to the so-called “rape culture on campus.”

12 Advising New Faculty: Dear Future Professor As a way to offer seasoned NAS faculty members an opportunity to advise rising generations of academics, NAS solicited and published a series of “Dear Future Professor” letters by nine scholars.

Nuggets of wisdom in their letters included the following:

George Mason university economist Walter E. Williams: “The best way to learn a subject is to teach it.”

Ohio State University psychology professor Hal Arkes: “Do not get discouraged by or participate in department politics.”

University of Arizona classical composer Daniel Asia: “It is incumbent on you when in academe to use your God-given and constitutional freedoms to make yourself heard—vigorously, rationally, and forthrightly.”

Southern Indiana University business professor Jason Fertig: “Don’t scrimp on your teaching because of the pressure to publish.”

University of Texas philosophy professor Robert Koons: “Don’t postpone marriage or children but make sure that your spouse is extraordinarily patient and 110% supportive before embarking on the academic track. Be prepared to live simply and to move frequently.”

Penn State’s Matthew Woessner, and the University of Arkansas’s Robert Maranto: “Begin by looking into less controversial topics. Know that your opportunities to tackle ever more difficult and controversial research topics will grow as you become established in your academic career.”

Membership

January 12 new members 55 renewals February 25 new members 153 renewals March 58 new members 253 renewals April 25 new members 253 renewals May 53 new members 104 renewals June 31 new members 151 renewals July 7 new members 77 renewals August 12 new members 8 renewals September 9 new members 128 renewals

13 October 15 new members 85 renewals November 11 new members 79 renewals December 7 new members 69 renewals Total 265 new members 1,415 renewals = 1,680 new and renewed members + 762 Members already paid through 2015 = 2,442 Total NAS Members in 2015

Retention rate = 87% (2,177 renewals and carry-overs / 2,505 total members in 2014)

Academic Questions

Volume 28 of Academic Questions contained thirty-seven articles, four review essays, eight reviews, four poems, and several letter exchanges. Each issue included at least one timely special feature or forum:

 Rape Culture on Campus? (Spring), with pieces by Robert Carle, KC Johnson, Glenn M. Ricketts, Cathy Young, and Peter Wood  Common, Readings, Uncommon Conversations (Summer), with pieces by Ashley Thorne, Jack Kerwick, Robert Maranto, Jeffrey Zorn, and Carol Iannone, as well as suggestions for “Better Beach Books” by David Clemens, Bruce Cole, Elizabeth Corey, Will Fitzhugh, Dana Gioia, Nathan Harden, David Lyle Jeffrey, Alan Charles Kors, Daphne Patai, R.R. Reno, Charles E. Rounds Jr., Diana J. Schaub, and Bruce S. Thornton  Verdicts (Fall), an occasional special section, with pieces by David Stoesz, Joseph E. Hartman, Stephen Eide, and Peter Wood  Disputing Deneen (Winter), a response to Patrick J. Deneen’s Winter 2014 “God and Guns” special section entry, with pieces by Matthew J. Franck, Timothy Fuller, C. Bradley Thompson, and Nicholas Capaldi  Stanley Rothman Festschrift (Winter), with pieces by David J. Rothman, Robert Maranto, Charles L. Robertson, Stephen H. Balch, Matthew C. Woessner, and Althea Nagai

Continuing with a recent trend, Academic Questions receives a growing number of submissions from new and “new to us” authors and poets, enhancing our practice of publishing a blend of frequent contributors, established scholars, and younger voices. Feedback on the substance and quality of our articles, reviews, and poems suggests that our readership is widening.

Highlights from each issue:

14 Spring: “The War on Due Process,” by KC Johnson “Academic Freedom on Trial: Adams v. UNCW and the Welcome Erosion of Garcetti,” by Mike Adams “How Postmodern Historians Have Helped Cripple the American Left,” by David Kaiser “The Future of (High) Culture in America,” by Daniel Asia

Summer: “The Liberal Arts as Conversation,” by Jack Kerwick “Experiencing the Common Core,” by Carol Iannone “Scrutinizing Diversity: Challenging the Premises of Affirmative Action,” by John T. Bennett “APUSH: The New, New, New History,” by Peter Wood

Fall: “Democracy and Sin: Doing Justice to Reinhold Niebuhr,” by Joseph E. Hartman “Camille Paglia’s Ambiguous Critical Legacy,” by Stephen Eide “The Medicalization of Misspelling: DSM and the Management of Life,” by Stewart Justman “Social Media, Civility, and Free Expression,” by Ashley Thorne

Winter: “Narratives of the Fall,” by Nicholas Capaldi “Stanley Rothman and the Dangers of Faction,” by David J. Rothman

AQ continues to publish on schedule. We typically work two issues ahead; our coffers now brim to overflowing with pieces by new and frequent contributors. We have worked hard to maintain constructive relations with our publisher Springer’s editorial and production team, while safeguarding our publication standards and organizational principles.

Publications, Media Appearances, and Lectures by NAS Staff Members

In Print Peter Wood: New York Post, The Weekly Standard, Claremont Review of Books, Public Discourse, Huffington Post, PJ Media, Heartlander Magazine, the Library of Law and Liberty, American Thinker, National Review, The Stream, Intercollegiate Review, and Academic Questions; 18 articles in Minding the Campus.

15 Drilling through the Core: Why Common Core is Bad for American Education, Pioneer Institute, 2015.

Co-author, Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism (excerpt appeared in Wall Street Journal “Notable and Quotable”)

Ashley Thorne: Wall Street Journal, Breitbart, The Federalist, National Review Online, WORLD Magazine, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, and Academic Questions.

“Hate Crime Hoaxes on College and University Campuses” in Altschiller, Donald, Hate Crimes: A Reference Handbook, 3rd edition, ABC-CLIO, 2015.

Rachelle Peterson: New York Times, National Review Online, PJ Media, The Federalist, The Hill, Intercollegiate Review, Spiked, and Academic Questions; 7 articles in Minding the Campus.

Co-author, Sustainability: Higher Education’s New Fundamentalism (excerpt appeared in Wall Street Journal “Notable and Quotable”)

Inside Divestment: The Illiberal Movement to Turn a Generation Against Fossil Fuels

Glenn Ricketts: Academic Questions

TV/Video C-SPAN (Drilling through the Core launch at National Press Club, Washington, DC), Peter Wood, September 28, 2015 WSJ Live – Rachelle on Inside Divestment report, November 10, 2015 WSJ Live – Rachelle on campus divestment campaign, July 2, 2015 WSJ Live – Peter on sustainability report, March 26, 2015 Leaders with Ginni Thomas, Peter Wood and Rachelle Peterson, August 23, 2015

Radio Peter Wood: Armstrong & Getty—to discuss his Weekly Standard cover story “The Meaning of Sex,” April 30, 2015. Chicago’s Morning Answer—to discuss campus trends in political correctness, August 26, 2015. 2 appearances to discuss APUSH, on NPR’s Turning Point and the Lars Larson Show. 16 appearances to discuss sustainability, including CBS News.

16 Rachelle Peterson: 8 appearances to discuss fossil fuel divestment, including the Lars Larson Show. 4 appearances to discuss sustainability, including C-FACT.

Lectures and Debates Peter Wood: Debate on Common Core, St. Francis College, Brooklyn, NY, February 26, 2015.

“Monday Meeting,” New York City, March 2015.

“Versions of Academic Freedom,” AAUP conference, Washington, DC, June 11, 2015.

Reagan Roundtable, California, June 2015.

ALEC, July 22, 2015.

“Microaggressions and Angry America: The Consequences of Political Correctness,” Kennesaw State University, Georgia, October 8, 2015.

Case Western Reserve University, October 13.

Cleveland City Club, October 14.

Harvard Program on Constitutional Government, November 13.

Ashley Thorne: Conference on the First Year Experience, Dallas, Texas, February 2015.

“Social Media, Civility, and Academic Freedom,” AAUP conference, Washington, DC, June 11, 2015.

Rachelle Peterson: Smart and Sustainable Campuses Conference, with Gordon Evans, University of Maryland- Baltimore, March 30-31.

Hamilton College debate on fossil fuel divestment, September 21.

Conclusion

The National Association of Scholars concluded a successful year in which we brought new insights into patterns in higher education, documented trends in teaching and campus culture, and united faculty members, students, and citizens in commitment to the disinterested pursuit of truth in the academy.

17 We are grateful for our supporters’ generosity which sustained this work, and we look forward to advancing that work further in 2016.