Higher Ed Now

In October 2022, ACTA's ATHENA Roundtable Conference in Washington, DC was highlighted by two panels featuring extraordinary higher education thought leaders. Today we present the first of those panels – headlined as DIVERSITY DONE RIGHT, and hosted by our good friend Jonathan Rauch – Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. Joining Jonathan are panelists Glenn Loury, Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences at Brown University; John Chisholm, former member of the MIT Corporation; Dorian Abbot, Associate Professor of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago; and Amna Khalid, Associate Professor of History, Carleton College. Together, they drill into the impact of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies on higher education, discussing how this trend has had an outsized influence on the courses that universities teach, the professors they hire, and the shared understanding of our nation’s history.

Steve McGuire, ACTA’s Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, hosts a conversation on modern liberal education with Jennifer Frey, who is set to begin a new appointment as inaugural dean of the honors college at the University of Tulsa in July 2023. Dr. Frey is currently Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she is also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland faculty fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is a faculty fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at the Catholic University of America, and holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Pittsburgh. Her academic research is primarily in moral psychology and virtue, and she frequently writes popular essays and book reviews in places like  First Things, The Hedgehog Review, Image, The Point,and The Wall Street Journal. She hosts a popular philosophy, theology, and literature podcast called Sacred and Profane Love.  

Across the nation, states are stepping up to reform higher education—in effect performing their intended role as laboratories of federalism and democratic governance. ACTA is seeing good progress on this front in North Carolina. While no state has achieved perfect academic accountability, academic freedom, or academic excellence in higher ed, recent developments in the UNC system in particular demonstrate crucial steps taken in the right direction.  ACTA's Emily Koons Jae and Bryan Paul recently sat down with Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a nonprofit institute dedicated to improving higher education in North Carolina and the nation, to discuss the successes and shortcomings of higher ed reform in North Carolina. At the time of this conversation, the UNC Board of Governors had scheduled a vote for February 23 on a resolution to ban compelled speech in admission, hiring, promotion and tenure decisions. That vote has since taken place, with the resolution passing. 

Today's episode features a conversation between ACTA’s Vice President of Policy, Bradley Jackson, and Amna Khalid, Associate Professor in the Department of History at Carleton College in Minnesota. Professor Khalid specializes in modern South Asian history and the history of medicine, and is also one of the nation’s foremost advocates of academic freedom and campus free speech. Having grown up in Pakistan under a series of military dictatorships, she has long harbored a strong interest in issues relating to censorship and free expression. She speaks frequently on academic freedom, free speech and campus politics at colleges, universities, and professional conferences. She has published some very significant and widely read pieces on bias reporting systems, trigger warnings, and the trouble with Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) training in college settings. Professor Khalid also hosts a podcast and accompanying blog called Banished, which explores censorship in the past and present. 

Higher Ed Now welcomes Matthew Hendricks, the founder of Perspective Data Science, a small data consulting firm that specializes in education finance and policy analytics. Professor Hendricks previously served as the Chair of the Department of Economics at The University of Tulsa. For over 12 years, he has been engaged in education policy research at all levels of education, including Head Start programming, pre-K-12 grade policies, and higher education finance policy. His research on the impacts of changes in base salaries on teacher productivity has been published in the Journal of Public Economics and Economics of Education Review. Professor Hendricks’s latest work intends to promote financial stability and improve student outcomes in higher education. To do so, he is working with struggling institutions to promote transparency among stakeholders and help school administrators and board members make better policy decisions. Part of that work includes creating college benchmarking dashboards, interpreting the data, and disseminating key findings.  Anna Sillers, ACTA's Data Analyst Fellow for Trustee & Government Affairs, met with Professor Hendricks to explore how his innovative dashboards can help faculty, administrators, alumni, and trustees better understand an institution’s finances – ensuring that when educational dollars are spent, they can provide the best outcomes for students.

In this episode, Bryan Paul, ACTA’s director of alumni advocacy, hosts a conversation with Lauren Noble, founder and executive director of the William F. Buckley, Jr. Program at Yale University. It’s no secret that America's colleges and universities are facing a troubling decline in viewpoint diversity and the willingness of students to openly express their opinions. Elite institutions like Yale sadly lead in this trend, with more and more students exercising self-censorship for fear of being attacked or ostracized by their peers. In her role at the helm of the Buckley Program and as alumni leader of Fight for Yale's Future, Lauren Noble knows this phenomenon firsthand and is working vigorously to expand political discourse on campus and expose students to often-unvoiced views.  She seeks to foster open political discussion and intellectual engagement on campus and transform the culture of her alma mater into a haven for free expression. Her efforts and commitment to academic freedom and excellence make her an indispensable ally for all those who are dedicated to promoting genuine intellectual diversity.

Higher Ed Now kicks off 2023 with a conversation between Steve McGuire, ACTA's Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, and KENNY XU, president of the raceblind advocacy group Color Us United, an organization that investigates and takes on corporations whose woke policies are potentially harming employees and our culture of excellence. Mr. Xu authored the book An Inconvenient Minority, and hosts the podcast Inconvenient Minority, which deeply investigates race, identity, and culture. He has written commentary for the Wall Street Journal, City Journal, Quillette, Newsweek, The New York Post, National Review, The Federalist, and many more.  His journalism is beloved by communities of all races who share his passion for making the United States a more fair and meritocratic society.  He has spoken on colorblindness and critical race theory in front of groups as diverse as the nationally renowned Pacific Legal Foundation, the Boston Rally for Education Rights, and the all-Black Connecticut Parents Union. Mr. Xu's commentary has propelled him to interviews with Fox News, Newsweek, and features in the New York Times Magazine and NPR. As the youngest board member of the Asian-American Coalition for Education and Students for Fair Admissions and an identity politics journalist for nearly two years, he has unique and unprecedented access to the major players fighting the deep racial ideologies propagated within academics today.

Former U.S. Attorney General Edwin Meese served on ACTA's Board of Directors for many years. At age 90, he is as insightful and thoughtful as ever. In November 2022, he graciously invited ACTA President Michael Poliakoff and Chief of Staff Armand Alacbay to his Northern Virginia home for a far-reaching conversation about the influence of governing board leaders on higher education, and how colleges and universities can best prepare students for engaged citizenship.

ACTA president Michael Poliakoff interviews Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of Constitutional Studies at the Manhattan Institute. Previously, Mr. Shapiro was vice President of the Cato Institute and director of the Robert A. Levy Center for Constitutional Studies, where he published the Cato Supreme Court Review. Earlier in his career, he served as a special assistant/adviser to the Multi-National Force in Iraq on rule-of-law issues. In this penetrating conversation, Mr. Shapiro unpacks the widely publicized controversy over his hiring, suspension, and reinstatement as a senior lecturer and executive director at Georgetown University’s Center for the Constitution.

Higher Ed Now welcomes a return visit with Jonathan Zimmerman, Professor of History of Education at the graduate school of the University of Pennsylvania. One of the foremost education historians on the scene today, Professor Zimmerman has published numerous books, written for The New York Times, Washington Post and The Atlantic among other major outlets, and is one of the foremost advocates for academic freedom and free speech in the higher education space today. ACTA's Vice President of Policy, Bradley Jackson, hosts the conversation.