Editor's Note: This comment was submitted by Teresa R. Manning on behalf of the National Association of Scholars to the Department of Education. View the comment here, or download here.
[Docket ID: ED-2025-OPE-1009]
My name is Teresa R. Manning; I am the Director of Policy at the National Association of Scholars (NAS), which seeks to reform higher education to restore academic rigor, intellectual freedom, the free exchange of ideas and the promotion of virtuous citizenship.
NAS's main concern about accreditation is politicization. Accreditors and bodies which oversee accreditors are increasingly demanding political conformity, almost always from the political left, as a standard of accreditation. NAS therefore recommends that the Handbook clarify the need for depoliticization in accrediting agencies, institutions seeking accreditation, and any oversight entity. Depoliticization must be a top priority for the Education Department's work at the post secondary level. Political thought control cannot be supported by the federal government, which is to say, cannot be subsidized by American citizens and taxpayers.
Over the past 50 To 60 years, the faculty and administrations of American colleges and universities have been purged of traditional academics who reject leftwing political ideologies such as feminism, socialism, communism and globalism. For example, many academic departments do not have a single Republican professor. The standard ratio of Democrats to Republicans in law school is 50 to 1 with most of the Democrats "closer to the left edge of the Democrat party." Even in disciplines viewed as less political, such as business schools, the imbalanced ratio holds.
Imbalance is always a sign of pathology. It results in unchecked excesses and is especially egregious and indefensible for legal education since the justice system itself is adversarial—that is, it presumes that the truth will only prevail if the courtroom has counsel for one side, and opposing counsel for the other side.
Imbalance breeds intellectual conformity at all levels in a domino-like effect which ends up being anti-intellectual. Leftwing professors not only skew class readings to favor their political views but devise entire courses to promote them. In fact, many current academic programs and majors, such as the proliferation of what are now called "grievance studies"—Women's Studies, Race Studies, Gender Studies—are just outgrowths of the purge of traditional academics in faculty and administrator hiring.
Traditional academics seek to understand and impart universal truths in science and the humanities which govern all; today's ideological academics engage in narcissistic navel gazing with a focus on self interest ("empowerment") for the individual academic and the identity group he or she represents. Publications also disproportionately reflect the left-of-center worldview, by definition opposed to healthy and particular nation states, such as America, and to the universal values of Western Civilization.
Diversity ideology, for example, has become a religion of sorts within much of academia, government and corporate America. This ideology goes by a variety of names such as multiculturalism, affirmative action, critical race theory (CRT), concern for the "marginalized" or the "underrepresented," equity and inclusion (DEI). It requires obsession with skin color, racial groups and also sexual and gender identities that undermine healthy marriage and family life.
The result is a destructive tribalism that not only hates and disfavors traditional Western peoples, including Americans (by favoring everyone else said to contribute "diversity") but displaces the focus on excellence. In 2021, for instance, Virginia's James Madison University required freshmen to watch an orientation video dividing the country into "oppressor" and "oppressed" classes. On the list of "oppressors" were Americans!
Allegiance to diversity ideology is now routinely demanded in applications for professorships and also by accreditors for schools seeking to maintain accreditation as well as for practicing attorneys seeking to maintain their law licenses.
Not only should American citizens never be told what to think in this way, they should never be forced to subsidize ideologies that hate them.
Accordingly, the Accreditation Handbook should insist upon depoliticization by:
- Clarifying that top-down political ideologies such as DEI, by whatever name, have no place in American education as they prevent real learning, are anti-American and should never receive taxpayer support from American citizens.
- Demanding that all current and future accrediting agencies as well as schools seeking accreditation drop reference to diversity ideologies again by whatever name, and focus instead on academic excellence without regard to identity politics.
- Enforcing depoliticization by adopting an audit system whereby a division of the Education Department, or of another Department if the Education Department disbands, regularly monitors both accreditors and schools to ensure efforts are underway to restore political balance, academic rigor and depoliticization.
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