President & Chief Executive Officer
Request an Interview Follow on Twitter/XDr. 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.
It is a relief that the government will now lift the freeze on much of the 1.3 billion dollars that sustain Columbia’s vital research and medical training. That a storied center of learning and research can continue its work is a blessing for everyone.
To understand the crisis in American higher education, it is necessary to hold two thoughts at once. American higher education remains the envy of the world, with seven of its universities in the top 10 of Times Higher Education’s World University Rankings. Yet the behavior on many campuses has caused public confidence in higher education to plummet.
The University of Florida must not make a mistake in hiring the president who will replace Ben Sasse. To do so could destroy one of the crown jewels of American higher education, a model of excellence and the plain common sense so sorely lacking on campus.
Dear Governing Board Members, Your institution—and the nation—needs your leadership as never before. Shared governance means shared. Institutions properly should challenge government when it exceeds its statutory authority. Institutions properly should remind the public of their contributions to medicine, science, industry, and defense that have made this nation strong and prosperous. However, higher education has many […]
Columbia University appears to have agreed to undertake a major, overdue cultural change. Implementation […]
Last week’s storming and takeover of an academic building at Barnard College by 200 anti-Israel protesters—the second such time in a week, shutting down the library, relocating classes, and finally being cleared in response to a bomb threat—again brings into focus the need for colleges and universities to be prepared to enforce their codes of conduct to prevent similar events on their campuses.
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