A group of distinguished scholars, iconoclasts and activists, alarmed “by the illiberalism and censoriousness prevalent in America’s most prestigious universities,”will establish a new university dedicated to free speech.”
It will be called the University of Austin, or UATX. Next summer the project will begin modestly with “Forbidden Courses,” a noncredit program designed to offer a “spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.” The next phase will be masters programs and if all goes well, undergraduate degrees will follow.
The campus, a real one, not a virtual campus, will be set in the Austin, Texas, area. The new university’s president is Pano Kanelos, the former president of St. John’s College in Annapolis. Several famous dissenters from the current culture of woke conformity and campus censorship that has poisoned the university experience in the U.S. led him to this point. Bari Weiss, the exiled Opinion editor for The New York Times; historian Niall Ferguson of the Hoover Institution; Heather Heying, an evolutionary biologist; Joe Lonsdale, a technology entrepreneur and co-founder of Palantir Technologies, the data analytics firm; Lawrence H. Summers, the former Harvard president; Steven Pinker, a Harvard linguist and psychologist; David Mamet, the playwright; and Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown are among those involved.
Naturally, the enterprise has been scorched on social media by students and professors who are dedicated to crushing non-conforming ideas rather than nurturing them.
The university thought it would need six months or more to raise the $10 million in seed money needed for strategic planning and start-up programs. The target amount was raised in just six weeks. The new goal is $250 million. Among other aspects of the school’s mission, the University of Austin will work to create an affordable education, with a yearly tuition of $30,000 or less.
Dr. Pinker, the provocative Harvard professor who will serve on the Board of Advisors, says, “I think new models for a university are important because current universities are locked into a strange business model: exorbitant tuition, a mushrooming bureaucracy, and obscure admissions policies that are neither meritocratic nor egalitarian, combined with plummeting intellectual diversity and tolerance for open inquiry (which is, after all, a university’s raison d’être).”
I suppose “strange” is one word for it. Read the new university’s new presidents’ article about the project here.
I urge everyone to find ways to support this crucial effort, I plan to. Next job: creating a hundred new schools with similar missions.
There is hope.
Ethics Alarms 
If I didn’t already have the degrees I want, I would consider going here just to help it get off the ground. Even in 2005 when I went to college, there was much more robust debate (even though the majority of profs were still left). Something has changed.
I’m thinking of asking if they will allow me to make a symbolic trade: my Harvard degree for theirs…
How about offering an course on Ethics, from Ancient Greece to modern day, discussing history and current trends.
jvb
nexy
Don’t change. Define it.
… The next sexy step in a process as in “the next phase”, esp. when applied to a revolution against the great stupid.
Nexy is fixed. The T is nexy to the Y, you know…
I’ve reached out to them. I’ll definitely give them some money. I hope the campus is spartan by today’s standards. No indoor rock climbing walls. No Starbucks. Guys dorms and girls dorms. No diversity administrators. No safe spaces.
I wonder why the guy from Hillsdale is joining. Isn’t Hillsdale okay?
I wish they hadn’t picked a depressingly smug, lefty town such as Austin. I asked their development guy about that and he said they are going to “take back Austin” and “it’s where lots of entrepreneurs are located.” Hmm. I worry Austin is simply too woke a place to try this. I fear Austin will crush the place.
They should buy a campus from some failing college. Maybe they’ve targeted a failing school in Austin for purchase. There have to be tons of campuses available for the asking.
F*uckin’ A BUBBA!
Austin is the state capital and the home of University of Texas – Austin, and some small colleges. Austin is very liberal but the surrounding areas tend to be more conservative. I suspect that the UT resources and land values it doesn’t surprise me they would focus on Austin.
jvb
>Next job: creating a hundred new schools with similar missions.
I’m all in for similar efforts, and would personally support one near my geographic location by teaching a free class or something. Will happily send my kids to one of those.
I think the University of Austin could use a great ethicist professor to help teach students in the finer points of ethics to round out their college education. I bet there is grant money out there to support the program. Heck, maybe they could start an Undergraduate and Masters degree program specifically devoted to ethics and even offer scholarships to ethically outstanding High School graduates.
Does anyone around here know of someone that could teach the ethics classes?
Things that make you go, Hmmmmmmm………
I contacted the University of Austin directly and offered a suggestion…
If they’re going to start this new University, they might as well build it from the ground up with a strong ethical foundation.
Kind of you, and I’m flattered. Almost certainly futile, but if they call, I’ll answer. (Bari Weiss knows me.)