BY JOHN K. WILSON
The National Association of Scholars today issued its 11th annual “Beach Books” report critiquing common reading programs.
The NAS press release is shockingly titled, “Study Finds College Common Reading Programs Indoctrinate Students.” And it declares, “American colleges and universities run common reading programs designed to indoctrinate students with progressive propaganda….” Exactly how do completely voluntary programs that encourage students to read and discuss a book thereby “indoctrinate” them? The NAS doesn’t explain, and the word “indoctrinate” doesn’t appear anywhere in the 500-page report. This is all red meat for the right-wing media, and not a serious engagement of ideas.
I’ve been critiquing these reports since 2010, and 2011, and even debated the NAS on Fox News in 2011. Most of the ideas and recommendations in the NAS report are simply reprinted from past years, so I’ll reprint a few of my critiques of the 2017 “Beach Books” report:
yes, it is true that centrist liberal approaches dominate the reading lists, unfortunately. However, the core reason for that is the stupidity of conservative books nowadays. Why does the NAS hate contemporary books? Perhaps it’s because conservative books are so dumb. The NAS couldn’t seriously recommend books by Ann Coulter or Milo or Bill O’Reilly, which dominate conservative best-seller lists today. So they turn to the safety of the past, to find the familiar old books that can be safely discussed without the “activism” of talking about the real world.
The NAS treats common reading programs as if it were a test of ideological purity rather than a pragmatic effort to encourage reading.
It’s difficult enough to get college students to read books in classes where they are called upon to discuss them and are graded for their understanding. That’s why common reading programs are designed to appeal to students by addressing current issues and bringing authors to campus to speak to them directly about their work. Having real living authors on campus talking about current issues is a valuable thing, but the NAS condemns the idea outright.
The NAS proposals are very expensive: the NAS wants faculty put in charge of programs (which is a good idea), and then proposes to give all faculty on these committees a course release every semester, which would be an enormous expense.
The NAS Report is awful: It makes recommendations that violate principles of academic freedom, it refuses to suggest any contemporary books that colleges overwhelmingly prefer for common reading programs, it smears these programs with false accusations in a tendentious report, and it provides few useful suggestions to improve the intellectual rigor and success of common reading programs.
In the new report, the NAS denounces the six most frequently assigned books of 2017-18: Bryan Stevenson, Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption (2014); Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me (2015); Margot Lee Shetterly, Hidden Figures: The American Dream and the Untold Story of the Black Women Mathematicians Who Helped Win the Space Race (2016); Rebecca Skloot, The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (2010); Wes Moore, The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates (2010); Jennine Capó Crucet, Make Your Home Among Strangers (2015). But the NAS never explains why these books are bad, except that apparently there’s too much thinking about racism going on.
The new recommendations added by the NAS this year are particularly bad, such as this one: “External oversight committees, such as the Committee on Free Expression authorized by North Carolina’s Campus Free Speech Act, should inspect common reading programs and recommend ways to render them politically impartial.” The notion that politically imposed committees should be forcing common reading programs to be “impartial” is deeply disturbing, and a series threat to the free expression they should be supporting.
The NAS also recommends, “Seek books that encourage bipartisan American unity” (by which they mean, don’t pick any books critical of Trump). That’s immediately followed by “Seek books that encourage debate” with no awareness of the glaring contradiction between debate and unity.
Even the recommendation to “seek books that encourage debate” really just means selecting conservative books: “Selection committees should select books that challenge students precisely because they do not endorse ‘institutional values’—which all too often nowadays are statements of progressive dogma.”
The NAS is right to advise, “Seek challenging books rather than inoffensive ones.” The problem is that the politicized recommendations of the NAS seek to silence challenging books from a progressive point of view.
