NAS' call to action; nearly 300 academics and others met recently at the annual conference of the National Association of Scholars. Topping the agenda were the dangers of political correctness to the American academy and academic self-absorption in time of war

0 Comments | Insight on the News, July 1, 2002 | by Stephen Goode

And in what probably was the feistiest speech of the conference, State University of New York trustee Candace de Russy called for "uprooting the multicultural lie." De Russy described multiculturalism in time of war as "a clear and present danger" and said "we cannot afford to be silent in the face of ... indoctrination in multiculturalism" because it undermines national unity in a time of crisis. She urged Americans to support a national policy that would make "the acquisition of a common sense of nationhood [among all Americans] an urgent priority."

Has NAS made a difference in academia? It is difficult to say. The hold the politically correct has on campuses still is strong. NAS members are far more likely to emphasize the difference the organization has made in their own lives than they are to cite changes it's made in academic culture as a whole.

"To have NAS around was a shot of mental health for all of us" Evelyn Avery, an English professor at Towson State University in Maryland tells INSIGHT. This magazine had interviewed Avery at the first NAS national conference in 1988 when she had been new to the organization. "To be able to be around a group of like-minded people who share our own ideas has been so very important in all the madness that's passed through academia over the years" she said.

What is genuine patriotism? It again was Lincoln who supplied the conference its best answer to that question. Quoting from Lincoln's "Eulogy on Henry Clay" delivered on July 6, 1852, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow Walter Berns caused many a head to nod in agreement. "Whatever he did, he did for the whole country" Lincoln said of Clay. "Feeling, as he did, and as the truth surely is, that the world's best hope depended on continued Union of these States, he was ever jealous of, and watchful for, whatever might have the slightest tendency to separate them"

The echoes of that statement, now 150 years old, were clear to everyone present: Academic fads such as multiculturalism and diversity separate Americans from one another as deeply as did the question of slavery, and are as dangerous to the future of the country.

STEPHEN GOODE IS A SENIOR WRITER FOR Insight.