# National Association of Scholars The **National Association of Scholars (NAS)** is a New York–based 501(c)(3) think tank and membership organization founded in 1987, focused on **higher-education reform from a traditionalist-conservative perspective**. NAS is the institutional center of the contemporary conservative critique of higher education — its programs include reports critiquing university curricula, opposition to [[DEI]] programming, opposition to [[Critical Race Theory]] (CRT) and "anti-racism" frameworks in academia, defense of "traditional" Western-canon civics curricula, and (since 2020) substantial work shaping state-legislative interventions in higher-education governance. In the contemporary culture-war landscape, NAS has become a **load-bearing institution for state-level higher-education-reform legislation** — its model legislation, expert testimony, and policy briefs have been substantially influential in the post-2020 wave of state laws targeting DEI offices, CRT-related curriculum, faculty hiring criteria, and university board governance. ## Founding and Trajectory NAS was founded in 1987 by Stephen H. Balch and Peter Shaw, both conservative academics frustrated by what they perceived as the post-1960s leftward drift of American higher education. The founding premise was that conservative-and-traditionalist faculty needed an institutional vehicle for mutual support, public advocacy, and the documentation of what NAS called the politicization of American universities. The early NAS focused substantially on documentation and rhetoric — annual reports on canonical-curriculum erosion, on speech-code adoption, and on faculty-political-affiliation statistics. Through the 1990s and 2000s the org operated as one of several conservative voices in the broader "culture war on campus" alongside the [[Manhattan Institute]] and the [[Federalist Society]]'s student chapters. The **major operational expansion** came under Peter Wood's presidency (2009–present), particularly after 2015 with the growth of campus-DEI infrastructure, the 2020 racial-justice protests, and the post-2020 state-legislative interest in higher-education reform. NAS positioned itself as a primary intellectual contributor to state laws (Florida HB 7 / "[[Stop WOKE Act]]", various Texas and Arizona DEI-restriction bills, multiple post-2023 state laws) — supplying model-language drafting, expert testimony, and policy briefs to friendly state legislators. ## Programmatic Focus - **Higher-education policy reports** — annual or periodic reports critiquing curricula, faculty hiring, admissions criteria, and accreditation practices - **Civics Alliance** — coalition project building "American Birthright" model civics standards as an alternative to the College Board AP curricula and to state-level civics frameworks influenced by the 1619 Project - **DEI restriction advocacy** — research and model-legislation work supporting state-level limits on DEI programming, training, hiring statements, and bureaucratic infrastructure - **CRT-curriculum critique** — work tracking and opposing what NAS characterizes as CRT-derived pedagogy in K–12 and higher education - **STEM-curriculum reform** — opposition to "equity-mindset" reforms in science, math, and engineering curricula - **Academic freedom advocacy** — defense of conservative faculty in tenure and hiring fights; a function structurally parallel to (and politically opposite of) the AAUP ## The Civics Alliance and "American Birthright" NAS's Civics Alliance project — launched 2022 — produced the **"American Birthright" K–12 social studies standards**, framed as a conservative-traditional alternative to civics curricula that NAS argues have incorporated CRT-derived frameworks. American Birthright has been adopted, in whole or in part, by South Dakota, Oklahoma, and Arkansas at the state level, with active campaigns to influence standards in additional states. The Civics Alliance is structurally important as the K–12 complement to NAS's higher-education work and connects NAS to a broader ecosystem of conservative civics organizations including [[WallBuilders]] ([[David Barton]]'s organization), [[Hillsdale College]]'s 1776 Curriculum, and various state-level conservative parental-rights groups. ## Funding NAS funding is consistent with the broader conservative higher-education-reform infrastructure: - [[Bradley Foundation]] (substantial historical and contemporary funding) - [[Sarah Scaife Foundation]] - [[John M. Olin Foundation]] (historically — Olin was an early systematic funder of conservative academic infrastructure) - [[DonorsTrust]] - Individual donors, especially those connected to the broader Federalist-Society-and-conservative-legal-movement infrastructure The Olin Foundation connection is structurally important: Olin's strategic giving in the 1970s–1990s was substantially focused on building conservative intellectual infrastructure in academia, and NAS is one of the surviving institutional products of that strategic giving program. ## KB Significance NAS matters to the KB for three reasons: 1. **The state-legislative higher-education-reform pipeline.** NAS is the principal intellectual contributor to the post-2020 wave of state laws targeting DEI, CRT-related curriculum, and university governance. Understanding the legislative architecture of that wave requires understanding NAS as a load-bearing institution. 2. **The Olin-strategic-giving legacy.** NAS is one of the durable institutional products of the John M. Olin Foundation's 1970s–1990s strategic giving program — a case study in how foundation strategy can produce institutions that outlive the foundation itself and continue to shape policy decades after the founding capital is gone. 3. **The K–12 civics-curriculum infrastructure.** Through the Civics Alliance and American Birthright standards, NAS is also one of the principal contemporary contributors to the K–12 civics-curriculum side of the broader conservative-education-reform agenda. ## See Also - [[Heritage Foundation]] — peer movement-right institution - [[Manhattan Institute]] — peer urban-policy / culture-war think tank - [[Claremont Institute]] — peer post-liberal cadre-development institution - [[Hillsdale College]] — peer conservative-education infrastructure ([[Hillsdale College]] 1776 Curriculum overlaps with the Civics Alliance work) - [[John M. Olin Foundation]] — historic funder; NAS is one of Olin's institutional legacies - [[Bradley Foundation]] — major contemporary funder - [[DEI]] — principal NAS target - [[Critical Race Theory]] — principal NAS target - [[Think Tank Ecosystem]] — broader ecosystem hub