Higher Ed Now

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 curricu

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.

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 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 perspe

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.  

Jay Bhattacharya is a professor at Stanford University Medical School, a physician, epidemiologist, health economist, and public health policy expert focusing on infectious diseases and vulnerable populations. During the Covid pandemic, Dr. Bhattacharya co-wrote the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a “focused protection” approach in pandemic policy. His public stance against “lockdowns” won him both plaudits and criticism from policymakers, lawmakers, academics, and scientists. ACTA’s Steven McGuire interviews Dr. Bhattacharya on his experience of being in the eye of the COVID public health policy storm and the light it casts upon the state of free expression in higher education.

Nadine Strossen is the John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita at New York Law School, and served as president of the American Civil Liberties Union from 1991 to 2008. ACTA has long admired her tireless advocacy and devotion to free speech and is proud to have featured her as a keynote speaker and panelist at many of our conferences. In October 2023, Nadine authored her latest book on free speech for Oxford University Press’s What Everyone Needs to Know® series. In this episode, she sits down with ACTA’s president Michael Poliakoff to discuss current societal challenges to free speech and how they are manifesting on American college campuses.

ACTA's President Michael Poliakoff interviews Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born, Dutch-American writer, human rights activist and former politician and long-time friend of our organization. She is the author of best-selling books like Infidel (2007) Nomad (2010) and Heretic (2015).  Now a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and Founder of the AHA Foundation, she regularly comments on today's issues and offers a platform to exchange perspectives that lead to real solutions.

In this episode, former Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker speaks with ACTA's President Michael Poliakoff. Governor Walker is now leading Young Americans for Freedom -- an organization committed to ensuring that increasing numbers of young Americans understand and are inspired by the ideas of individual freedom, a strong national defense, free enterprise, and traditional values.

In March 2023, ACTA’s second annual Alumni Summit on Free Expression brought together alumni free speech activists and higher education nonprofit leaders from across the country to share knowledge, experiences, and resources related to campus reform efforts. In partnership with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA), this special gathering was designed to further motivate and equip alumni as guardians of the values that shaped their own education, including free expression, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity. Today’s episode features a panel from the Summit, headlined as A HIGHER ED REFORMATION: CHANGING CAMPUS POLICY AND CULTURE. Along with ACTA's Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom, Steve McGuire, the discussion featured Lindsey Burke, director of the Center for Education Policy at the Heritage Foundation; Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal and AFSA board member; and Dawn Toguchi, executive director of the Open Discourse Coalition at Bucknell Unive

In March 2023, ACTA hosted its first Alumni Summit on Free Expression in Washington, DC, in partnership with the Alumni Free Speech Alliance (AFSA). More than 100 individuals from various AFSA member groups and other higher education nonprofit organizations attended to support the growing movement to motivate and equip alumni in their efforts to advance free speech at their alma maters. Panelists and speakers addressed the serious challenges facing free speech advocates and how alumni can effectively work with students, faculty, and off-campus allies. Today’s episode presents the first of two panels recorded at the conference, headlined as "Free Speech Barriers and Legal Remedies: Changing the University." Moderated by Samantha Harris, attorney and partner at Allen Harris Law, the conversation features Joe Cohn, Legislative and Policy Director for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE); Ilya Shapiro, senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute; and Cheri

ACTA's Steven McGuire interviews Carole Hooven, whose book titled T: The Story of Testosterone, the Hormone that Dominates and Divides Us,  was published in 2021. Hooven is currently an associate at Harvard University and a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where she works on issues related to sex and gender, human evolutionary biology, health, and psychology — as well as the underpinnings of academic freedom in higher education.