Higher Ed Now

ACTA’s College Debates and Discourse (CD&D) Alliance has launched more than 300 Braver Angels debates and workshops, engaging 11,000 students at colleges and universities across the nation. CD&D employs a highly collaborative approach that engages students and faculty to lead civil debates on controversial topics. In this episode of Higher Ed Now, CD&D Program Director Doug Sprei interviews professor Mark Dalhouse and student Ari Miller, who are leading CD&D programming at Duke University in conjunction with ACTA’s two-year research project funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Professor Dalhouse and Ms. Miller share what motivated them to become involved in promoting civil discourse on Duke’s campus.

ACTA's president, Michael B. Poliakoff, and vice president of policy, Bradley Jackson, engage scholar, author and Professor Emeritus of Michigan State University, William B. Allen in candid conversation about his lifelong love of books and learning, the Founders, the philosophical thought leaders whose seminal works cut a path for the emergence of our American Republic, and why he remains optimistic about the future of higher education.  

ACTA President Michael Poliakoff interviews Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center and professor of law at George Washington University Law School. In this vibrant conversation, they explore Dr. Rosen’s new book, The Pursuit of Happiness: How Classical Writers on Virtue Inspired the Lives of the Founders and Defined America. They also cover the critically important role that the classics play in the intellectual and personal development of today’s college students, as well as their own personal experiences reading the work of Greek and Roman thinkers.

On today’s episode, Higher Ed Now producer Doug Sprei interviews Jennifer Keohane, associate professor in the Klein Family School of Communications Design at the University of Baltimore, and Justin Eckstein, associate professor of communication at Pacific Lutheran University. Both of these remarkable professors advise and support the College Debates and Discourse (CD&D) Alliance, a joint initiative between ACTA, Braver Angels, and BridgeUSA. This conversation was captured in March 2024 during the Wang Center Symposium at Pacific Lutheran University, where the CD&D Alliance engaged more than 400 students and local community members in a dozen campus and classroom debates.

Immediately after she delivered an electrifying keynote speech at Pacific Lutheran University's Wang Symposium on March 7, 2024, ACTA's Doug Sprei interviewed Monica Guzman, the best-selling author of I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times. Ms. Guzman's influential work in the civil discourse movement has expanded through her leadership at Braver Angels for the past several years. More recently, she became the inaugural McGurn Fellow at the University of Florida, working with researchers at UF's College of Journalism and Communications to explore ways to employ the techniques described in her book to boost understanding and intellectual humility.

John Bolton served as the 25th United States Ambassador to the United Nations from 2005 to 2006, and as the 26th United States National Security Advisor from 2018 to 2019 during the Trump Administration. He is the author of The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir, as well as Surrender Is Not An Option. Always an erudite figure in politics, Ambassador Bolton is an attorney, Republican consultant, political commentator, and a staunch defender of free expression. ACTA's President Michael Poliakoff spoke at length with Ambassador Bolton to explore his unique outlook on the trajectory of free speech at universities, his experience as a student in the 1960s, and the fundamental differences between that era and today with regard to free speech on campus.

Dr Anika T. Prather is a nationally-recognized speaker and advocate for the relevancy of classical education for the Black community. She has served as a lecturer at Howard University’s Classics and English departments and, most recently, as a Director of High-Quality Curriculum and Instruction at the Johns Hopkins Institute for Education Policy. She has authored two books on Blacks and the classics: Living in the Constellation of the Canon: The Lived Experiences of African-American Students Reading Great Books Literature, a self-published book; and The Black Intellectual Tradition(with Dr. Angel Parham of UVA), as well as many articles. She is the founder of The Living Water School, a DC-area Christian and classically-inspired for independent learning. In her free time, she’s also a jazz musician and fiber artist.   In a conversation with ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and Academic Affairs Fellow Veronica Mayer Bryant, Dr. Prather discusses the relevance and inclusivity of a classical education, her perspective on faith and learning, and how classical education prepares students for college and human flourishing. 

Tony Banout, Executive Director, and Tom Ginsburg, Faculty Director of the University of Chicago's New Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression join Steve McGuire, ACTA's Paul and Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, to discuss institutional neutrality -- the idea that universities should not take official positions on social and political controversies. While explaining how this position supports the truth-seeking purpose of the university and free expression on campus, they also explore its history at the University of Chicago, tracing it from the 1967 Kalven Report to the University's founding. Finally, they discuss various exceptions to the rule and times when universities might be obligated to speak up, even while adhering to a general policy of institutional neutrality.

ACTA's President Michael Poliakoff joins Paul Levy, a member of ACTA's board of directors and the creator of the Levy Forum for Open Discourse at the Palm Beach Synagogue. Together they interview Dr. Glenn Loury, the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences in the Department of Economics at Brown University. Dr. Loury is one of the nation's leading social critics on topics of racial inequality, the Black family, affirmative action, and identity politics.

George Will is a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and political commentator whose twice-weekly column has appeared in the Washington Post since 1974. His works cover subjects ranging from baseball to statecraft. In this episode, he sits down with ACTA President Michael Poliakoff for a sweeping conversation on the state of American higher education. From the fact that American English majors can now graduate without having ever read The Bard, to how the free market is regulating the production of Ph.D.’s and the stark difference between being highly educated and highly credentialed, Will offers biting and erudite remedies on how to bring about a course correction in higher education.