Bruce Benson, who has been president of the University of Colorado for a year or so, may not be able to permanently rid his university of Ward Churchill, but he erased the job of Michael Poliakoff — one of the few people trying to restore respect for traditional education in that system. Poliakoff held the position of vice president for academic affairs and research. Benson eliminated the job in favor of a “team approach,” according to a university news release. (The announcement was made May 1; I just learned about it from an Independence Institute paper, “An Academic Arms Race,” which otherwise praises Benson for his cost-cutting moves.)

Poliakoff, who has a Ph.D. in classical studies from the University of Michigan, worked for the National Endowment for the Humanities and has held faculty positions at a number of schools. He had successfully introduced a freshman reading program at the Colorado Springs campus that included Socrates’s Apology and Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail.