Was St. John's College Not White Supremacist Enough?

[Celerity]

https://www.gawker.com/culture/was-st-johns-college-not-white-supremacist-enough

It has come to my attention that my alma mater, St John’s College, is in the news because its former president, Pano Kanelos, quit his post to start the University of Austin, an unaccredited school co-founded by Bari Weiss and her various loud yet silenced-identifying friends, which will forever appear beneath The University of Texas at Austin on Google.

Because I don’t think one should dwell on college for the rest of their life, I don’t. I have not used Facebook since 2011, but I have heard, against my will, that Kanelos has been a contentious figure in the college community since joining as president. It’s also possible that he left the liberal arts college in more financial turmoil than when he joined it, as if you needed more evidence that someone joining arms with the likes of Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan to found an educational institution with less legitimacy than the University of Phoenix is an intellectual grifter.

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If you went to St. John’s, please do not contact me. I do not care. I’m still waiting for a refund to be honest. The only reason I am writing this blog is because my editor saw me tweet “Was St. John's College not white supremacist enough???” in response to the news and asked me to. The thought that I could make someone’s life better by convincing them not to attend St. John’s College is what made me say yes.

St John's is known as an offbeat school because of its minuscule student body that rarely exceeds 500 on either of the two campuses in Annapolis and Santa Fe, and its non-traditional educational ethos. Everybody takes the same classes and reads the same books based on the core selection of classics that are said to be responsible for Western civilization. The Great Books — take a look — are bolstered by math classes where you can spend up to an hour proving a proposition about the motion of the planets on a chalkboard and a requisite study of Ancient Greek among other scholarly things. Other schools teach these books and topics as well, but other schools also teach stuff like Adobe and computer programming, I think so you can get a job after graduation, as well as non-European history, as a result of violent woke mobs.

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Kathleen Stock: Professor accused of transphobia takes job at ‘anti-woke’ University of Austin

‘I accepted with alacrity. It’s an exciting looking project, focused on free inquiry,’ Ms Stock says of her new post

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/kathleen-stock-transphobia-university-austin-b1954486.html

Kathleen Stock, a philosophy professor who resigned from a UK university amid accusations of transphobia, has found a new job at a nascent university that prizes “free thought”.

“Delighted to be invited to be a Founding Faculty Fellow of the University of Austin, a new initiative announced today by @bariweiss alongside several other stellar individuals,” Ms Stock announced on Twitter. “I accepted with alacrity. It’s an exciting looking project, focused on free inquiry.”

Ms Stock had previously taught at the University of Sussex in England. But her controversial public comments on gender identity – including saying “the claim ‘trans women are women’ is a fiction” – angered many students, who demanded her removal in a series of protests. The university refused to fire her, but Ms Stock eventually quit.

“This has been an absolutely horrible time for me and my family,” the professor – who says she is not transphobic – said last month. “I’m putting it behind me now. On to brighter things soon, I hope.” For Ms Stock, that “brighter thing” appeared to arrive on Monday, when a group of like-minded intellectuals unveiled the University of Austin, a still-in-formation school in Texas devoted to “the fearless pursuit of truth”.

[Tomconroy]

1. My wife was invited to lecture at St. John's just before the

Plague set in. They could still afford to put us up and throw us a nice dinner. I think the dinner was hosted by the President. At least it was some high mucky muck.

[jimfields33]

2. I went to interview to be a student at St. Johns in annapolis

It was the weirdest interview I’ve ever witnessed. Incense all through the office. Beads everywhere. Talked a lot of flowery words and told I’d read and read the entire time I was there. I just felt it was some bad trip or something. Anyway chose George Washington and was glad for it. I’m sure the education is fine at St. John’s but definitely not for me.

[Klaralven]

3. I don't see how a college with 500 students can be economically viable

[SYFROYH]

4. It's spendy at $35000, but not sports teams to speak of.

No expensive research either.

And of course donations.

[Celerity]

5. total cost (tuition, fees, room, board) is $50K per year, they are not a capital intensive research

uni, and are not expansive in terms of their physical plant. Their courses are very unique and strictly limited in structure, and focus on a very specific set of literature, with reading, writing and group discussion as the primary epistemological tools. Low tech, low overhead.

[SYFROYH]

6. I'm sad to hear St Johns picked a wretched President

I almost went to St Johns in Sante Fe back in the 80s. I loved the campus and the vibe. It’s actually one of my life’s regrets.

I just wasn’t confident enough that I could handle 4 years of primary sources after my good but very mainstream high school education.

It also saddens me that St Johns hasn’t evolved to include work outside of the Western cannon.

But I was never under the impression that St Johns was going to teach me how to use computer software.