Peter Wood’s Call for a Blacklist

BY JOHN K. WILSON At Minding the Campus, Peter Wood’s essay about “The Case for Colonialism” article argues this: “And perhaps we should not forget the names of those thousands who signed the petitions.  It might be a good exercise for deans and provosts who have received from academic search committee recommendations to appoint candidates…

Response to Wilson’s Critique of Peter Wood

BY DAVID RANDALL David Randall, the Director of Communications at the National Association of Scholars, has written a response to John K. Wilson’s critique of Peter Wood’s “The Architecture of Intellectual Freedom.” We’ve decided to put it up as a guest post, since it’s a little long for a blog comment. It’s written in the…

Peter Wood’s Shaky Architecture of Academic Freedom

BY JOHN K. WILSON Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, has written a detailed 11,000-word theoretical account of what academic freedom means. In response, I want to examine some of his arguments in detail, although I don’t have time and space to address every point. But fundamentally, I think Wood takes academic…

How Not to Fix Higher Education

National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood has a column at Minding the Campus today arguing for an 7-point plan for what he calls “a real program for reform” of American higher education that would “take back the campus from those who are intent on making it a 24-7 taxpayer-subsidized indoctrination camp.” The notion that…

Why Freedom of Expression Isn't a Dangerous Mistake

At Minding the Campus, National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood calls the adoption by other colleges of the University of Chicago statement on freedom of expression “a dangerous mistake.” It is always dangerous when extremists imagine that freedom of expression must not be applied to their enemies, and that’s exactly what Wood does. Wood…

The Defenders of Daniels

Mitch Daniels’ attacks on the teaching of Howard Zinn have drawn widespread condemnation, even from the critics of Zinn that Daniels cited, and the conservative editor of Minding the Campus, John Leo (who condemned “politicians using their power to determine the curriculum or impose a version of history they happen to agree with”). But a few…

A Response to Peter Wood

By Allan Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University In his response to my critique of the National Association of Scholars report, RECASTING HISTORY: ARE RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER DOMINATING AMERICAN HISTORY?, at the recent conference of the AAUP, NAS President Peter Wood harps on a remark that comprised well under 1 percent of my…

Analysis of the NAS Report on “Recasting History”

By Allan J. Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History, American University This analysis examines the report of the National Association of Scholars: RECASTING HISTORY: ARE RACE, CLASS, AND GENDER DOMINATING AMERICAN HISTORY? (January 2013). The report studies courses as the University of Texas, Austin and Texas A & M University. It concludes that introductory history classes…

Peter Wood’s Attack on the AAUP

I invited National Association of Scholars president Peter Wood to speak at the AAUP conference this past weekend, and organized a couple of sessions with him on the Higher Education Bubble and the NAS report on the teaching of American history. Unfortunately, Wood may be accustomed to speaking before loyal supporters and friends, since he…

Limbaugh’s Lies about Bowdoin College

Yesterday on his radio show, Rush Limbaugh read a Wall Street Journal article summarizing the National Association of Scholars (NAS) study about Bowdoin, and quoted the finding that Bowdoin doesn’t require history majors to take an American history class. Limbaugh declared: So a history major at Bowdoin College is taught about the intrinsic discrimination against…