Tuesday Talk*: Is A New University The Answer?

If anything is a sign of the times, it’s that the announcement by Pano Kanelos, the putative founding president, of a new university was made on Bari Weiss’ substack.

So much is broken in America. But higher education might be the most fractured institution of all.

There is a gaping chasm between the promise and the reality of higher education. Yale’s motto is Lux et Veritas, light and truth. Harvard proclaims: Veritas. Young men and women of Stanford are told Die Luft der Freiheit weht: The wind of freedom blows.

These are soaring words. But in these top schools, and in so many others, can we actually claim that the pursuit of truth—once the central purpose of a university—remains the highest virtue? Do we honestly believe that the crucial means to that end—freedom of inquiry and civil discourse—prevail when illiberalism has become a pervasive feature of campus life?

There’s certainly no doubt, progressive rationalizations and denials notwithstanding, that there are serious issues on campus precluding speech and ideas that stray from woke orthodoxy, and that both academics and students feel as if they must self-censor to survive the authoritarian control over heretics. But that’s hardly new.

But we are done waiting. We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew.

I mean that quite literally.

As I write this, I am sitting in my new office (boxes still waiting to be unpacked) in balmy Austin, Texas, where I moved three months ago from my previous post as president of St. John’s College in Annapolis.

A new university? Maybe new colleges sprang up on farmland a couple hundred years ago, and maybe there are some digital schools that exist mostly on the internet and TV commercials, but a new university?

Our project began with a small gathering of those concerned about the state of higher educationNiall Ferguson, Bari Weiss, Heather Heying, Joe Lonsdale, Arthur Brooks, and Iand we have since been joined by many others, including the brave professors mentioned above, Kathleen Stock, Dorian Abbot and Peter Boghossian.

We count among our numbers university presidents: Robert Zimmer, Larry Summers, John Nunes, and Gordon Gee, and leading academics, such as Steven Pinker, Deirdre McCloskey, Leon Kass, Jonathan Haidt,  Glenn Loury, Joshua Katz, Vickie Sullivan, Geoffrey Stone, Bill McClay, and Tyler Cowen.

We are also joined by journalists, artists, philanthropists, researchers, and public intellectuals, including Lex Fridman, Andrew Sullivan, Rob Henderson, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Sohrab Ahmari, Stacy Hock, Jonathan Rauch, and Nadine Strossen.

A curious and not-insignificant mix of serious and dubious people are behind this new idea, even if it never occurred to any of them to check on whether the name of their new real-life-campus school, University of Austin, was already trademarked. Not yet accredited, and unable to confer a degree, and many of the founding advisors won’t be teaching there, but still.

We expect to face significant resistance to this project. There are networks of donors, foundations, and activists that uphold and promote the status quo. There are parents who expect the status quo. There are students who demand it, along with even greater restrictions on academic freedom. And there are administrators and professors who will feel threatened by any disruption to the system.

We welcome their opprobrium and will regard it as vindication.

And, indeed, there was mocking aplenty on social media, both as to the people involved as well as the very concept. But then, mockery on social media is hardly the metric for much of anything given how the gnats love to swarm.

Meet the University of Austin. Crazy or brilliant? Necessary or nonsensical? And as a tangential question, does this mean that heterodox intellectuals have given up on elite universities and will no longer waste their time trying to take back the classroom, provide rigorous (white male) education and fight against the capture of higher education by the unduly passionate?

*Tuesday Talk rules apply.

32 thoughts on “Tuesday Talk*: Is A New University The Answer?

  1. delurking

    Apparently there have been over 1000 colleges or universities founded in the US since 2000. I am shocked at this number, but there it is. Some young universities (though not < 20 years) have made some tremendous gains in quality in the last few decades (Florida International University and George Mason come to mind), so a century of history isn't a requirement. A whole bunch of universities have gone out of business in the last 20 years, also. On the surface, at least, there appears to be a competitive marketplace in higher education. Some twitterati howl at the creation of this particular university? Whatever. The market will speak.

    1. James

      That 1000 new colleges since 2000 stat is very surprising. Is there a source for it as I can’t find anything that says that?

        1. James

          2000, Degree-granting institutions — 4,084
          2018, Degree-granting institutions — 4,313

          I’m no math whiz, but the difference between those number is fewer than 1000 new universities.

          1. delurking

            From that very page:
            Degree-granting institutions
            1999-2000: 4084
            2012-2013: 4726
            2018-2019: 4313

            So, from 2000-2013 there was a net gain of 642 institutions (i.e., # founded – # that closed). It is implausible to you that between 2000 and 2021 there were 1000 founded? The point stands; there is a competitive market.

            Sorry, I can’t figure out what I seached for to find the article that quoted 1000 founded, but it is entirely plausible based on the data on the page you posted.

  2. orthodoc

    According to Duke professor Michael Munger, there are three important buildings/rooms on campus besides the classroom: the dorms, the student union/stadium and the admissions office. That is, the value proposition for college is that, in return for tuition and opportunity cost, you get the education in the classroom, the experience of living in the dorms, the networking at the student union and the prestige conferred by the admissions office. I am pretty sure you can get the Austin education part for free or close to it. (One can learn a lot just by reading SJ in silence and I can think of at least three regulars here who will gladly “critique” your logical writing at no charge when you post ). So it boils down to the other three realms, and I can’t see how this place will deliver.
    (And then there is the paradox of heterodoxy: if the entire faculty is chosen for allegiance to heterodoxy, you get the very kind of monoculture of thought these people decry elsewhere. I don’t recognize all of the names cited above, but with rare exceptions, the political philosophy of the many I do know can be summarized as “liberal–before that term was stolen by the progressives.” A person who staunchly opposes abortion because a 1 cell zygote is a person reflecting the image of God, say, is unlikely to feel at home in the faculty lounge, no matter how much he hates the orange man for other reasons.)

  3. PseudonymousKid

    Breaking away and founding something new on stated principles feels very American, so I’m not eager to mock it even though there’s so much in that announcement hanging there to be plucked. One proto-university is hardly a capitulation by “heterodox intellectuals” whatever you mean by that. There are still hearts and minds to be won yet.

    If you cared so much about the heterodoxy you should have represented those purged from universities and public life during the Red Scares. I’m assuming you’re old enough to have done so. Whoever is in control gets to remove whomever they don’t like and decide what’s taught. We already established that rule. All that is left is to live it again.

  4. JR

    It is rare for a university to have one frequently cited, well published, faculty member, having a career built on academic rigor and intellectual pursuits. Most universities are cesspools of tenured fossils who nobody knows or cares to be taught by them. Glenn Loury, Jonathan Haidt, Lex Fridman, Larry Summers, Dorian Abbot, Tyler Cowen…..dahyum. Good for UTAX. Nothing like the free flowing exchange of ideas sans university admins bending both knees to political winds. The Jesuits taught me to be open to all ideas, challenge each, and be ready to defend one’s personal beliefs as well. Students today need to learn how to think critically of everything including / especially themselves

    Bring on more universities that practice such pedagogy

    1. Jeff Davidson

      I don’t know if any of those folks are actually going to do anything with this new “university” besides be names on a letterhead. The president “counts them among our number” but doesn’t indicate that they will have any role besides being impressive names. It’s way too early to draw any conclusions about whether this is a genuine school or just a grift machine, and at any rate there are hundreds of existing college and universities that provide quality education and span the ideological spectrum. Picking out a few bogeymen like Harvard, Yale, and Stanford isn’t an impressive start to me.

      1. JR

        I forgot to mention Kathleen Stock because I did not scroll down the page. That makes 4 out and proud scholarly homosexuals (Weiss, Rauch, Sullivan and Stock), incredibly talented from various ideological spectrums and have on numerous platforms advocated for a truly liberal public square of free flowing ideas. Wow. Outstanding.

        As for grifters, if you were on staff at a state university like me (medical researcher), you would not be defending the existing cesspools to which I referenced. Cut out government backed student loans, and most universities would shudder their ‘safe spaces, ‘gender studies, Latinx/African American studies, and too many to list meaningless, unmarketable, worthless degrees. Bring back VoTech schools as a viable option for students. Grifting is what public universities do best, and not a few for profit private schools as well

        1. Jeff Davidson

          I don’t know where or how I defended any school. My point, which I must not have made very well, is that it’s easy to pick out a few high-profile schools and claim that they are representative of all of academia and therefore we must start our own high-profile school with big names to counter their pernicious influence. People on the left and the right do this all the time. There are, however, many excellent smaller schools across the ideological spectrum that no one has heard of and, thus, no one cares about. I went to one of them. While many students of intercultural communication at the big schools read and studied an excellent textbook, I took classes at all academic levels with the author of that text. This happens a lot at small, private, non-elite, and not incredibly expensive, schools.

          I agree w/you about vocational training, which would serve many students far better than college. Some schools, such as McPherson College, offer academic majors that have a vocational component to them. I also think students as a whole would be better served if we helped promote existing good schools than point fingers at the usual suspects and try to build yet another allegedly elite university where the big-name profs will likely not interact much at all with students in the 100 level courses. An Ivy education might have been a little better than my own, and for someone who’s very gifted academically it might have been significantly better than mine. For most students, though, my small school in Indiana would provide a better education at a lower cost with greater actual access to faculty who were more than just names on a letterhead. Whether the names in this press release are willing to actually work full-time at this school and provide the kind of education that I was able to receive remains to be seen.

          1. Jeff Davidson

            I would add that Sohrab Ahmari will probably not be teaching on the virtues of free-flowing ideas in the public square, although he is an indicator of ideological diversity.

        2. PseudonymousKid

          But it takes five homosexuals minimum to reach critical mass. They are so close, and yet so far away. Who these people prefer to fuck doesn’t really matter here, does it? Or do you like them enough that you’re interested in something more?

          You got any Marxists or should I go fish instead? How is a university that only provides “marketable” degrees also devoted to challenging the unchallengeable? Is capitalism sacrosanct? How devoted to this concept of diversity are you really? Do you really want free inquiry or would you rather I stop?

          What I mean is your opinion is so shallow I hit my head on the bottom when I tried diving in and now I’m dumber for having to contemplate what you think, how, and why. You aren’t the arbiter of what is meaningful or worthwhile and don’t you dare “free market” me because that ain’t it either.

          1. JR

            Or do you like them enough that you’re interested in something more?

            Well I did fuck Sullivan at a leather event in DC years ago with his boyfriend watching, so there is that. Because you asked and I just had to answer

            Free markets rule

            1. PseudonymousKid

              You’re right I did ask, and I deserve that even if I didn’t want to know. I shouldn’t have gone in without checking the depth first. Since that was fun, I’ll spare you the rhetoric except to say that I don’t think there will ever be or ever has been a market free enough for your lot.

    1. PseudonymousKid

      You only get points for using “Masters” and “white grievance” together because it adds a fun layer to your otherwise lame joke.

    2. Scarlet Pimpernel

      You must not have been looking very hard. The upper north west is full of universities whose business model is based on exploiting whiny white kids.

  5. Richard Parker

    Accreditation will be the crux. Last time I was involved there was no national accrediation organization. There were multiple regional accreditation organizations.

    As far as I know, no new college is fully accredited the day it opens its doors. Accreditation is conferred over time in stages. I was involved at a low level with accreditation issues more than a decade ago so maybe my information is not fully correct.

    My guess is that the threat of withholding accreditation will be used to try to make the new UA die in the crib.

    Many of our institutions of higher learning would collapse quickly with the withdrawal of federal subsidies and student loans. Higher educational is becoming a form of subsidized youth unemployment. “Keep them off the job market as long as possible.”

    Meaningful reform of our existing systems is no longer possible through the normal political process. Maybe hyper-inflation will collapse our systems allowing real reform, but many (particularly seniors) will go hungry and cold.

    No historical comparison is a perfect match, but we are starting to resemble elements of the Weimar Republic and the late Soviet Era.

    1. Scott J Spencer

      There are national accreditors but those of us that work in places with regional accreditation don’t really take them entirely seriously. Its been a huge bone of contention between regionally accredited schools and the feds. They want us to accept transfer credits from these places, but the standards are allegedly markedly lower so we don’t want to accept them because there is no way any other school can teach English 101 or Intro to Computers better than us…..

      And yes, many schools, mine included would go away quickly should the federal funding dry up. I do not think this is a bad thing. There are far too many schools out there and far too few students in the pipeline.

      1. Rengit

        There’s a lot of schools in small towns where the school is a major, if not the dominant, employer as well. Take Oberlin for example. What would happen to the town of Oberlin if the college had to close its doors? Even in big cities, colleges are significant, stable employers. While Oberlin isn’t exactly a mid-low tier school that would go out of business, there’s a lot of schools that are and wouldn’t exist without the student loan business. Do we just let the communities built up around these schools over 100, 150+ years rot? That hasn’t turned out well for all the former steel and auto mill towns that still exist, while the mills are long closed.

  6. Richard Parker

    Many years ago while attending UCSB, I had some sustained contact with Stanford liberal arts undergrads. I liked them but my takeaway was that it appeared to be a lot harder to get into Stanford than to stay at Stanford.

  7. Andy

    Donald McCloskey is in on it, yet it is supposed to be independent of the woke pieties? It’ll be interesting to see how that works out.

  8. Ray

    And everyone laughed at Trump University. A man ahead of his time. Why bother with accreditation if you can slap the Trump name on the Diploma. That’s accreditation enough, right?

  9. Drew Conlin

    Because I’m in Michigan I have some knowledge of Hillsdale college. Hillsdale is one of a few institutions that does not take federal aid. Hence no dictates about equity etc. Hopefully any newly created institution follows suit.

  10. Quinn Martindale

    The University of Austin does not exist right now and doesn’t appear to have taken any of the steps to actually become a post-secondary school in Texas. Unless you are a religious institution, you cannot be a “university” in Texas without permission from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, which the University of Austin isn’t shown as having applied for. The accreditor they said they’re applying for, the Higher Learning Commissions, doesn’t operate in Texas. They haven’t bought any land to buy the school. They hasn’t even reserved the name or formed as a legal entity in Texas. All they’ve done is to publish a wide appeal for donations which are being handled by their fiscal sponsor, a 501(c)(3) whose only physical existence is a lawyer’s office.

    If you want to avoid the “woke orthodoxy” in Texas, you can just go to Texas A&M, SMU, or a dozen other smaller schools. There’s no problem to be solved here and no attempt to solve it.

    1. Jeff Davidson

      IOW it may not in fact be too early to judge whether it’s a real effort to build a real school or just a grift machine.

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