General Discussion

Nevilledog

(51,120 posts) Thu Nov 11, 2021, 12:12 PM Nov 2021

Have the Founders of the University of Austin Been in a Classroom Lately?

Link to tweet

https://newrepublic.com/article/164363/university-austin-uatx-myth-illiberalism

No paywall
https://archive.ph/WZE6o

Earlier this week, a varied but like-minded group of public intellectuals and entrepreneurs announced the founding of a new university, one they consider wholly unique. Located in Texas’s booming capital—because, a FAQ tells us, “If it’s good enough for Elon Musk and Joe Rogan, it’s good enough for us”—the University of Austin should not be confused with the University of Texas at Austin (though it surely will be, not least by Google). UATX, as its founders hope we’ll call it, is fashioned as a free-thinking start-up meant to disrupt the status quo of hidebound, ideologically rigid higher education. The closer one looks at UATX’s self-important literature, however, the clearer it becomes that its founders aren’t faithfully representing what actually occurs in university classrooms like mine.

Founding president Pano Kanelos, formerly the president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, wrote in a mission statement on Monday that “illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life” and that our very Republic is at stake. “Our democracy is faltering, in significant part, because our educational system has become illiberal and is producing citizens and leaders who are incapable and unwilling to participate in the core activity of democratic governance,” he wrote. There’s no mention of Republican voter suppression or Trumpian authoritarianism.

UATX does not yet have a campus or accreditation or even any students. What it does have is a roster of the “world’s great thinkers but also … its great doers”: The founding trustees and advisers are a who’s who of the Intellectual Dark-cum-Substack Web: historian Niall Ferguson, former Harvard president Larry Summers, psychologist Steven Pinker, Palantir Technologies co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and journalists Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, among others. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has called for the “defeat” of Islam itself, is among its three founding faculty fellows. UATX plans to offer a “Forbidden Courses” summer program and a graduate program in “Entrepreneurship and Leadership,” and eventually an undergraduate college in 2024.

So what makes UATX different? They’re glad you asked. Three things: a “commitment to freedom of inquiry,” a “new financial model,” and an “innovative curriculum.” “Our students and faculty will confront the most vexing questions of human life and civil society,” their site declares. “We will create a community of conversation grounded in intellectual humility that respects the dignity of each individual and cultivates a passion for truth.” We’re told that in UATX’s eventual in-person classroom, “every opinion will be heard” and “every opinion must be supported by evidence.”

*snip*