New AQ: Academic Revisionisms 

November 24, 2009

By Peter Wood

The best issue ever of Academic Questions (vol. 22, no. 4) is hot off the press and in the mail to our members.  It focuses on academic “revisionisms”—the attacks on supposedly stale orthodoxies that have been the stock-in-trade of progressive scholars since the 1960s. We’ve also grabbed the term and proposed some revisions we’d like to see. The issue includes the first in-depth examination of the ideas of George Lakoff, the Berkeley linguistics professor turned Democratic Party consultant, who argues that rational persuasion is passé, and that the political party with the best imagery wins.

The National Association of Scholars is revising itself too. We’re re-energized and expanding.  We’ve staked out new issues, such as our skeptical approach to the campus sustainability movement. We found new ways to recruit members and supporters. And we have become a significant website (and blog) for the reform movement in higher education. 

Don’t be left behind. Join NAS – now is the moment. NAS membership means something important: it is the single best forum to stand up those in the academy who want to revise intellectual freedom into political conformity. Membership includes a yearly subscription to Academic Questions.     

To join the National Association of Scholars, click the blue “Join Now” box on our homepage. We recently opened our membership to those who are not in the academic world but care about the future of higher education. We haven’t yet added the category “public member” to our online form, but if you are in that category, simply select “Full-time Faculty, Administrators, and Independent Scholars.”

We truly need you.