Heterodox thinkers start new University of Austin 'devoted to the unfettered pursuit of truth'

A new university is coming to Austin, Texas. The formation of the University of Austin was announced on Monday by Pano Kanelos on Common Sense, the substack publication run by Bari Weiss. "We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew," Kanelos writes. Weiss is on the Board of Advisors.

Weiss writes that "this university will welcome witches who refuse to burn."

Kanelos, who is the founding president of the new school, writes that "we can't wait for universities to fix themselves, so we're starting a new one." He was formerly the president of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland. The goal of this new educational venture is to build a university that is "dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth."

"There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education," Kanelos writes, noting that in top schools, like Yale and Harvard, "the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university" is no longer the highest virtue. Instead, Kanelos writes that "illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life."

Professors are treated like "thought criminals," Kanelos writes, and the censoriousness that had been believed by academics and intellectuals to only be possible "under oppressive regimes in distant lands" has fully come for the American university system. Fear, Kanelos said, "can become endemic in a free society," and he believes that it has "become most acute in the one place—the university—that is supposed to defend 'the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable."

But now, he writes, "the reality is that many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized. At our most prestigious schools, the primary incentive is to function as finishing school for the national and global elite." Most of the concerns of these long-established universities is "simply to avoid financial collapse.".

The University of Austin seeks to change that, and as such, they will be bringing in professors who have shown their own commitment to the pursuit of truth, often at the expense of their own careers. Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and Kathleen Stock are all among the founding faculty fellows. Each of these thinkers has faced outrage, cancellation, and vitriol for speaking their minds and expressing their views.

The list of heterodox thinkers who are involved with this new venture includes Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, Gordon Gee, Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt,  Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, Tyler Cowen, Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.

The University of Austin will not be accepting undergraduates until 2024, but as they gear up to the admittance of that first class, they will be running summer programs, and will launch graduate programs. Once established, the undergraduate school will be on a fully residential campus.

The undergraduate program will draw on liberal arts elements that used to be the bread and butter of prestigious universities. "The first two years of study will consist of an intensive liberal arts curriculum, including the study of philosophy, literature, history, politics, economics, mathematics, the sciences, and the fine arts."

Additionally, "The College will feature an immersive, in-depth and personalized learning experience with interdisciplinary breadth."

The first summer program will be in the summer of 2022, and will be called The Forbidden Courses. It will invite students to discuss "the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities." The goal of this course is to enable students to "become proficient and comfortable with productive disagreement."

Masters programs that will be on offer include an "Entrepreneurship and leadership MA program," "Politics and applied history, "Education and public service," and programs in technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Kanelos writes "to those of you who share our sense that something fundamental is broken" and asks that they join in the "effort to renew higher education." No word yet on the tuition cost.