The National Association of Scholars (NAS) today is focused more than ever on public controversies and on public tools of communication. Where once NAS members were primarily concerned with debates within the academy, now they are equally concerned with debates about the academy. If the topics they address have changed, so too have the means by…

Now that Colonel Muammar Gaddafi is dead and his forty-two years as despotic ruler of Libya and fomenter of international disorder has come to a permanent halt, it is a good time for governments--both in and beyond the NATO alliance--to review accommodations and agreements made with his regime. It is also time for the academic social policy…

In scholarly terms, a "review of the literature" or "literature review" is a summation of the previous research that has been done on a particular topic. With a "dismissive literature review," a researcher assures the public that no one has yet studied a topic or that very little has been done on it. A "firstness claim" is a particular type of…

In this article, the authors talk about the relevance of American political science and America. Political science has enormous strengths in its highly talented practitioners and sophisticated methods. However, its disconnection from its host society, while not so severe as for fields like English and sociology, nonetheless poses an existential…

Numerous surveys and studies show that the faculty and administrations of America's major public campuses are, politically, well to the left of the typical American. This would not be cause for concern if these political preferences were merely expressed by faculty and administrators in their private activities as citizens and had no significant…

The claim that faculty conduct research is one of the main justifications for the modern university. Supposedly, academe carries out important, cutting-edge inquiries in which society has an interest. In fact, states this author, research at American universities is becoming narrow and artificial, out of touch with social realities, and of…

Academic publishing has already reached a point where too much material of too little substance is being published, and this trend is continuing. The ostensible reason for academic publishing is to communicate useful information to academic peers. But of all papers published in the "top" scientific journals, only 40.6 percent were cited at least…

Most members of the National Association of Scholars worry about the politicization of the university. Academia gives undue preference to racial minorities in student admissions and faculty appointments. Teaching and research is often slanted toward minority grievances and Third World claims against the United States. However, critics have largely…

This article presents an interview with Professor David Popenoe, author of the controversial book "Disturbing the Nest: Family Change and Decline in Modern Societies" (1988). Popenoe heads the National Marriage Project at Rutgers University, where he taught sociology for forty-five years until his recent retirement. Here, Popenoe discusses his…

Today's trustees have the central role of choosing university presidents, and often provide valued advice on management of the institutional fisc. But according to the now accepted gospel of "shared governance," when it comes to the heart of academic practice, curriculum, and scholarship, theirs, despite theoretic power, is mainly a task of…

Although the Vietnam War ended more than thirty years ago, historians remain as divided on what happened as the American people were during the war. Mark Moyar maps the ongoing battle between "orthodox" and "revisionist" Vietnam War historians: the first group, those who depict Vietnam as a bad war that the United States should not have fought,…

Social work should be founded on a powerful network of diverse practitioners applying the social sciences to advance social welfare today. Instead, social work education operates under the guise of identity politics, reserving its highest appointments for the politically correct and members of under-represented groups, with little concern for…

The National Association of Scholars (NAS) is now entering its twentieth year. The organization has grown over ten-fold since their national launch. When NAS made its debut, today's extensive infrastructure for higher education reform did not yet exist. In this article, the author discusses the contributions of NAS to the academe. The author also…

The effect of law on research and scholarship is amply illustrated by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and other statutes, which, when they impel reburial of archaeological discoveries, result in a very real sacrificing of our past. In this case, the Act seems driven by a misguided notion that anthropology is not the…

Judith Butler is a renowned and prolific scholar who is both the Maxine Elliot Professor in Rhetoric and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Berkeley and the Hannah Arendt Professor of Philosophy at the European Graduate School. In a substantial lead essay in the "London Review of Books," she examines whether charges of…