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Michael Speaks is the Dean of the School of Architecture at Syracuse University. The former director of the graduate program at the Southern California Institute of Architecture in Los Angeles, Speaks has taught in the graphic design department at the Yale School of Art, and in the architecture schools at Harvard University, Columbia University, The University of Michigan, UCLA, Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., and the Berlage Institute and TU Delft, in the Netherlands. Speaks has published and lectured internationally on contemporary art, architecture, urban design and scenario planning. His essays and exhibitions in the 1990s were among the first to introduce a new generation of Dutch architects and planners to a broader audience in North America.

Speaks was founding editor of the cultural journal Polygraph, and former senior editor at Any in New York, where he also edited two books in the series, “Writing Architecture,” published by MIT Press. In addition, he served for many years on the editorial advisory board of a+u in Japan, and as a contributing editor for Architectural Record.

Originally from Mississippi, Speaks earned his B.A. from the University of Mississippi and his Ph.D. from Duke University.