Higher Ed Now

ACTA president Michael Poliakoff speaks to Ohio Senator Jerry Cirino, vice chair of the Senate's Higher Education Committee, on his promise to enact legislation to enhance the quality of higher education in the Buckeye State. Senator Cirino aims to safeguard open discourse and intellectual diversity for both students and faculty, mandate institutional neutrality at Ohio universities, and ensure that every post-secondary student receives a solid grounding in civics and American history. 

Focusing on the role of higher education in preparing young Americans for citizenship, ACTA's president Michael Poliakoff speaks with Mitch Daniels, former Governor of Indiana, who also served as president of Purdue University from 2013 to 2022.  

ACTA's president Michael Poliakoff speaks with the distinguished scholar and education leader, Joshua Dunn, who took on leadership of the recently established Institute of American Civics at the University of Tennessee-Knoxville in June, 2023. Professor Dunn was previously the executive director of the Center for the Study of Government and the Individual at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, where he was also professor and chair of the Political Science department. His book, From Schoolhouse to Courthouse - The Judiciary's Role in American Education, offers an important view of the complex relationship between courts and education. His landmark study co-authored with Jon A. Shields, Passing on the Right: Conservative Professors in the Progressive University, makes a strong case for why robust and uninhibited intellectual inquiry should be at the center of the American academy.

ACTA's Paul and Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, Steve McGuire, interviews Aaron Sibarium, a journalist who writes for the Washington Free Beacon. Sibarium graduated in 2018 from Yale University, where he was the opinion editor of The Yale Daily News. Much of his reporting for the Free Beacon focuses on issues in higher education, and he has authored numerous blockbuster investigative reports on plagiarism, race-based initiatives, and free speech issues on American campuses.

Higher Ed Now producer Doug Sprei interviews Peter Skerry, professor of political science at Boston College, who has served as a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He has been featured in a variety of scholarly and national media publications, and is the author of Counting on the Census: Race, Group Identity, and the Evasion of Politics (published by Brookings), and Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority (published by Free Press/Harvard University Press), which was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.  Sprei first encountered Professor Skerry while chairing a debate on immigration at the Braver Angels Convention at Carthage College in June, 2024. During that highly charged event, as he stood up to speak and address other speakers, it became apparent that he is deeply conversant with issues around immigration, a topic that has polarized and challenged society for decades. Professor Skerry is currently advising Braver Angels on framing constructive community dialogue around immigration. In this episode, he shares insights into why it has become such a weaponized topic in today's politics, and why educators should encourage students to embrace uncomfortable conversations around controversial issues.

For the past several years, ACTA has collaborated with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA) to defend free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity on college and university campuses. With hundreds of alumni advocates across 27 institutions, AFSA represents a national movement empowering alumni to exert positive, meaningful influence on their alma maters. One of the most active groups to emerge from this movement is the MIT Free Speech Alliance (MFSA). As they support activities from on-campus debates to off-campus mobilization, MFSA members have proven to be both friends and ardent critics of their alma mater. This fall, ACTA’s College Debates and Discourse Alliance curricular fellow, Dr. Bryan Paul, attended MFSA’s annual conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he moderated a panel discussion with senior administrators from several institutions on strategies to improve the free speech culture on college campuses. He also recorded this interview with MFSA President Wayne Stargardt and MFSA Executive Director Peter Bonilla, a deep dive into MFSA’s reform efforts at MIT and beyond. 

In this episode of Higher Ed Now, the second of two conversations devoted to core texts, ACTA’s Academic Affairs Fellow Veronica Bryant speaks in Spanish with Clemente Cox, classics and philosophy scholar and the Academic Director of the Center of General Studies at the Universidad de los Andes. Their conversation includes the differences between Anglo-Saxon and Hispanic higher education, core curricula, the “barbarism of specialism,” what we mean when we talk about Great Books, the humanities’ special relevance today, and the Hispanic Canon study abroad program that Clemente Cox will co-lead with Maria Jose Gomez in summer 2025. Clemente Cox holds a MA in Philosophy, with a concentration in Classical Languages, from the Universidad de los Andes, Chile. He received both his BA in Philosophy and his BA in Literature from the same university. He currently serves as academic director of the Center for General Studies at the Universidad de los Andes, Chile. In addition to coordinating the general education program, he teaches courses in anthropology, ethics and core texts in literature. His research focuses on the intersections between ancient literature and the practical philosophy of figures such as Aristotle, Plato and Xenophon. He is also interested in the tradition of rhetorical education and its potential uses in contemporary educational contexts. In Fall 2024, he will start studying for a Ph.D. in Philosophy at the University of Dallas. 

ACTA’s Academic Affairs Fellow Veronica Bryant is joined by two distinguished educators and advocates for core texts in liberal education: Dr. Charlotte Thomas, Executive Director of the Association for Core Texts and Courses, or ACTC, and Dr. José María Torralba, board member of ACTC. Dr. Thomas is a Professor of Philosophy at Mercer University, where she is also the Director of the Great Books Program and Co-Director of the Thomas C. and Ramona E. McDonald Center for America’s Founding Principles, an ACTA Oasis of Excellence. Dr. Torralba is a Professor of Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Navarra in Spain, where he used to direct the Core Curriculum Institute and currently heads the Civic Humanism Center for Character and Professional Ethics. He is the author of Una educación liberal. Elogio de los grandes libros (which translates to “A Liberal Education: In Praise of Great Books”). Together they discuss “core texts” or “Great Books”— what they are, how they are connected to core curriculum, and how they can bring a sense of meaning to today’s college students at colleges across America—and across the globe.

Those who listen to "The Glenn Show" will know that Professor Glenn Loury has published an extraordinary autobiography.  Late Admissions: Confessions of a Black Conservative breathes the spirit of candor, intellectual openness, and personal humility that has characterized his life and work. Professor Loury is a Paulson Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, which hails his new book as “a shockingly frank memoir from a prize-winning economist, reflecting on his remarkable personal odyssey and his changing positions on identity, race, and belief.” In the words of Professor Loury’s life-long friend John McWhorter, it is also a “page-turner.” ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and ACTA board member Paul Levy sat down with Professor Loury for a conversation about his illuminating new book. The three spoke about race, conservatism, and the remarkable intellectual journey that the author and scholar has taken over the course of his life and career, in all its complexity, human fallibility, courage, and perseverance.

Renowned legal scholar, professor, columnist, and commentator Jonathan Turley joins ACTA's Dr. Steven McGuire on Higher Ed Now to discuss why free speech has always been America’s most revolutionary and indispensable right; how academia spawned the latest, and perhaps most dangerous, campaign against free speech; and why an enriching college experience should resemble the famous bar scene from Star Wars: A New Hope. Turley's new book is titled The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.