page_title: National Association of Scholars
section_title: History and organization
hierarchical_section_title: National Association of Scholars / History and organization
caption_attribution_description: Stephen Balch receives National Humanities Medal
context_page_description: The National Association of Scholars is an American non-profit politically conservative advocacy group, with a particular interest in education. It opposes a perceived political correctness on college campuses and supports a return to mid-20th-century curricular and scholarship norms, and an increase in conservative representation in faculty.
context_section_description: Originally called the Campus Coalition for Democracy, the National Association of Scholars was founded in 1987 by Herbert London and Stephen Balch with the goal of preserving the "Western intellectual heritage". Peter Wyatt Wood is the president. The advisory board of the NAS has included several notable conservatives, such as Jeane Kirkpatrick, a former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and adviser to Ronald Reagan. Chester Finn helped to form the conservative movement's education policies. Irving Kristol, founder of the neoconservative movement, "characterized multiculturalism as 'a desperate strategy for coping with the educational deficiencies and associated social pathologies of young blacks.'" According to the association, it has affiliates in 46 U.S. states, as well as in Guam and Canada.
  NAS has received funding from politically conservative foundations, including the Sarah Scaife Foundation, the John M. Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation.
  NAS has disputed the conservative label. Writing in 2007, the NAS's current president Peter Wood said: "Both Left and the Right produce their share of intellectual obtuseness."
caption: NAS founding president Stephen Balch receiving the National Humanities Medal from US President George W. Bush
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