Dr. Poliakoff became part of the ACTA team in March 2010 as the Vice President of Policy, and became ACTA’s third president on July 1, 2016. He previously served as Vice President for Academic Affairs and research at the University of Colorado and in senior roles at the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Council on Teacher Quality, the American Academy for Liberal Education, and the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
He has taught at Georgetown University, George Washington University, Hillsdale College, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and Wellesley College. He received his B.A. magna cum laude from Yale University and went on to study at Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and the University of Michigan, where he earned a Ph.D. in classical studies. He has been a junior fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies, and his research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and the Alexander Von Humboldt Stiftung. He is the author of numerous books and journal articles in classical studies and education policy and has received the American Philological Association’s Excellence in Teaching Award and the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Distinguished Service to Education Award.
At a time when public confidence in higher education has dropped sharply—14 percentage points in just two years—the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill is moving forward with purpose, civility and a can-do attitude. It is sad, though hardly surprising, that at least some members of the UNC faculty are challenging rather than celebrating the prospect of the proposed […]
“How do you bring about a free speech turnaround on campus? Maybe, just maybe, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is on the verge of that achievement. On Sept. 30, 2021, MIT committed what many in American higher education consider a grievous violation of its tradition of free speech and academic freedom. Having invited the distinguished […]
“Affirm and guarantee . . . that the institution will not use a diversity statement or any other assessment of an applicant’s commitment to specified concepts in any hiring, promotions, or admissions process or decision.” So reads Senate Bill 83, recently introduced in the Ohio Legislature. Its sponsor, Senator Jerry Cirino, remarked in our interview: “This bill is about what is best for students. It is about the quality of their education and about enabling them to become independent thinkers, ready for citizenship in a free society.”
Even in a year of disgraceful coast-to-coast shout-downs, stretching from Yale Law School to Stanford Law School, the persecution of Professor Amy Wax stands out. It should summon the legal profession and American higher education to action. If we fail to reassert the core values of academic freedom and plain, simple fairness, the consequences—especially for […]
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has unequivocally made clear that being a college trustee is a serious job for serious people. Some may say he is engineering a “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida (NCF); others will say he is saving higher education from “woke indoctrination” and wasteful spending through his new appointees to the […]
Higher education professionals are reporting feeling overworked and underpaid with no opportunities for advancement as colleges and universities “staff up.” In a recent open-ended survey of over 150 “college workers,” respondents expressed “frustration at the lack of clear career ladders, bitterness at being passed over for jobs, and bewilderment at seeing those on the outside, often […]
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