Higher Ed Now

Author and educator Colin Diver joins ACTA's president, Michael Poliakoff, to deconstruct the conventional model of college rankings (exemplified by U.S. News & World Report). During his distinguished career in higher education, Mr. Diver served as the Dean of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and from 2002 to 2012 was the president of Reed College. His book, Breaking Ranks: How the R...

Jacob Mchangama is human rights lawyer in Denmark. He is the founder and executive director of Justitia, a think tank which aims to promote the rule of law and fundamental human rights and freedom rights both within Denmark and abroad by educating and influencing policy experts, decision-makers, and the public. From 2018-2020, Jacob hosted a podcast, “Clear and Present Danger: A History of F...

ACTA's VP of Academic Affairs, Jonathan Pidluzny, interviews entrepreneur and business leader John Dana Chisholm about the concept of holistic diversity and its potential to influence higher education policy. Mr. Chisholm is a member of the Free Speech Alliance at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and was previously a member of the MIT Corporation (or board of trustees). He has four decades o...

Just an hour before they launched a Braver Angels student debate together on campus, ACTA's Doug Sprei interviewed Deondra Rose, Associate Professor of Public Policy, Political Science, and History at Duke University. As the Director of Polis: Center for Politics, Professor Rose leads research into higher education policy, American Political Development, political behavior, identity politics, and...

Author and Emory University professor emeritus Mark Bauerlein sat down with ACTA's Michael Poliakoff to talk about his new book, "The Dumbest Generation Grows Up: From Stupefied Youth to Dangerous Adults."  Bauerlein has publicly argued that the lack of general civics knowledge by millennials poses a threat to America's political and social institutions. He previously worked as a director of Resea...

Higher Ed Now delves into issues of merit, fairness and equality, academic freedom, and more with Dorian Abbot, associate professor in the department of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago. It’s now well known that Dr. Abbot was invited last year to give the prestigious Carlson Lecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology—and then, in September, he was disinvited by M...

Nadine Strossen is one of the nation's leading champions of free expression, a renowned author and educator, and a long-time close friend of ACTA. From 1991 to 2008, she served as the first woman and youngest person to lead the American Civil Liberties Union. Today she is a professor at New York Law School, and in 2018 she authored the book Hate – Why We Should Resist It with Free Speech, No...

ACTA's Doug Sprei interviews Paul Carrese, Founding Director of the School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership at Arizona State University. Professor Carrese shares the underpinnings of this influential program, which aims to prepare the next generation of young leaders through the study of great works of civic, economic, political, and moral thought.

For six decades, Dr. Gordon S. Wood’s scholarship has advanced the understanding of the formative years of our nation. His work on the American Revolution and the creation of the American Republic is not only renowned for its meticulous accuracy and groundbreaking insight but also for its elegant and effective presentation, which has made it resonate among professional historians and a much...

ACTA’s president Michael Poliakoff has a bracing conversation with Ed Yingling, a co-founder of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA)—a new consortium of alumni groups dedicated to preserving free speech on their college campuses. Yingling and ACTA Board member Stuart Taylor, also co-founders of Princetonians for Free Speech, launched the project with an explosive op ed in the Wall St...

ACTA's president Michael Poliakoff joins author and editor Robert McCrum to explore his latest book, Shakespearean, an inspiring portrait of one of the most influential writers in history. Their conversation celebrates Shakespeare's genius, why his plays and sonnets reverberate centuries after they were written, and why it is paramount to keep his works alive and strong in the modern college curri...

ACTA's Jonathan Pidluzny and Nathaniel Urban interview George Harne, Executive Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of St. Thomas in Texas. "Liberal education is almost like becoming a conductor in training," Dr. Harne says. "The goal is to be able to get a vision of an integrated whole, to know the natures of things, the essences of things, and then to know their objective re...

The acclaimed author, journalist, and activist Jonathan Rauch sat down with ACTA's Doug Sprei to explore the social and political vectors that led him to write his remarkable new book, "The Constitution of Knowledge." Rauch is a research fellow at the Brookings Institution and a contributing editor at The Atlantic; he's also a champion of civil discourse, and a longtime friend of ACTA who sparked...

Professor Abraham Unger has a unique vision for liberal arts education. Long before before spending a decade as Director of Urban Programs at Wagner College in New York, he was an undergraduate student concentrating on classical guitar at the prestigious Manhattan School of Music. In this episode of Higher Ed Now, he sits down with ACTA's Michael Poliakoff and Doug Sprei to reflect on the precario...

ACTA's Armand Alacbay sits down with John W. Altman -- distinguished entrepreneur, business leader, educator, and veteran trustee at several college universities -- to explore the distinct strengths that trustees should bring to any institutional governing board. Having recently stepped up as ACTA's board chairman, Altman brings a lifetime of experience and insight into helping higher education in...

ACTA's Armand Alacbay sits down with John W. Altman -- distinguished entrepreneur, business leader, educator, and veteran trustee at several college universities -- to explore the distinct strengths that trustees should bring to any institutional governing board. Having recently stepped up as ACTA's board chairman, Altman brings a lifetime of experience and insight into helping higher education in...

Pano Kanelos, the noted educator, Shakesperean scholar, and champion of campus discourse, goes one on one with with ACTA's Michael Poliakoff to reflect on his tenure as the 24th president of St. John's College in Annapolis. Kanelos unpacks a pedagogical tradition where all students are immersed in conversation and the study of 200 great books.

As campuses reopen, how can college leaders help students who have struggled with alcohol and drug use and mental health issues during the pandemic? In ACTA's webinar, The Pandemic and Campus Substance Use: What Colleges Need to Know Now, four distinguished health experts explored this topic in all of its dimensions, from research to practical solutions on the ground. Panelists included Robert L....

ACTA president Michael Poliakoff sits down with Jodi Shaw, an alumna and former employee of Smith College who took a courageous stand against critical race orthodoxy at Smith. Her story, reported in The New York Times and major news venues, prompted ACTA to award her with a Hero of Intellectual Freedom Award, to be presented later this year. In our podcast, Shaw outlines the events and reasons lea...

For most students, a college education is one of the biggest investments they’ll ever make in their lifetime. What if colleges and universities could take the risk out of that monumental investment by insuring future income for graduates? ACTA\'s Armand Alacbay explores this model with Wade Eyerly, the co-founder and CEO of Degree Insurance, which guarantees a student’s earnings in the...

Margarita Mooney, Associate Professor at Princeton Theological Seminary and founder and executive director of Scala Foundation, explores the value and vitality of liberal arts learning in conversation with ACTA's Nathaniel Urban and President Michael Poliakoff.

Since 2018 Braver Angels has teamed with ACTA to launch civil debates for students across the nation. College leaders applaud the program's depolarizing, transformative effects on students as they learn to engage respectfully around divisive social and political issues. Program leader Doug Sprei unpacks the magic with college instructors David Dagan of The George Washington University; Mark Urista...

Emily Koons Jae, who leads ACTA’s Fund for Academic Renewal (FAR) initiative, has been keeping close tabs on the controversy around a $30 million gift to Ohio State University by the late Michael Moritz. In this episode, Emily explores this provocative story with Mr. Moritz’s wife, Lou Ann Ransom, and his son, Jeffrey Moritz.

On Constitution Day, ACTA co-sponsored Civic Engagement for All – a virtual event with the Office of Engaged Learning at Baylor University. Moderated by Professor David Corey, the director of Baylor in Washington, a panel of prominent Baylor alumni and senior leaders discussed how students can envision a more robust approach to civic engagement, and why doing so is essential to the health of...

Jeremy Wayne Tate founded Classic Learning Initiatives in 2015 to provide high school students with alternative standardized tests that are rooted in tradition while taking advantage of modern technologies. Featuring passages from great works across a variety of disciplines, the Classical Learning Test (CLT) suite of assessments provides an accurate and rigorous measure of reasoning, aptitude, and...