ACTA @ ISFLC16: “A Students’ Guide to Working with Trustees to Protect Academic Freedom”

A Students’ Guide to Working with Trustees to Protect Academic Freedom
Anne D. Neal, Esq., President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni

Communicating with the trustees on your campus can be more effective than communicating with university administration—after all, the administration is accountable to the trustees themselves. Listen to Anne Neal, President of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA), talk about the role of trustees on campus, how students can communicate with them to effect change, and how ACTA has reached victories in protecting academic freedom on college campuses by working with trustees.

Anne D. Neal co-founded the American Council of Trustees and Alumni and has been president since 2003.

For over 15 years, Ms. Neal has been a prominent national player in higher education reform, publishing widely and appearing frequently on radio and television, including the PBS NewsHour, Fox Business News, CNN, Fox News, WGN, and National Public Radio. She has authored or co-authored numerous ACTA studies on historical illiteracy, accreditation, governance, intellectual pluralism, and cost, and contributed chapters to Reforming the Politically Correct University (AEI Press, 2009), Accountability in American Higher Education (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), and Intellectual Property Rights and Capital Formation in the Next Decade (University Press, 1988). She has also convened higher education conferences under the auspices of the Philanthropy Roundtable. In 2007, and again in 2010, Ms. Neal was appointed to the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity which advises the U.S. Secretary of Education on federal accreditation.

Prior to joining ACTA, Ms. Neal served as General Counsel and Congressional Liaison for the National Endowment for the Humanities. She also worked as a First Amendment and communications lawyer for Rogers & Wells and Wiley, Rein & Fielding and as Senior Vice President of the Recording Industry Association of America.

Ms. Neal graduated Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude from Harvard College with an A.B. in American history and literature. She received her J.D. from Harvard Law School where she was president of the Harvard Journal on Legislation. She also holds an honorary doctorate from Colorado Christian University. She has served on the boards of many cultural and civic organizations, and currently is a director of the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, The Garden Club of America, and the Alexander Hamilton Institute.