U of Austin

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

University of Austin will welcome its first class of students next fall. It is not the University of Texas at Austin, but a new university altogether, designed to allow students and faculty to think and speak freely while pursuing truth. You know, like the university system which thrived for centuries doing that until today's disastrous corruption.

Six hundred professors applied for the initial fifteen faculty positions, six hundred who want to escape the oppressive culture of other universities to join this new one. Maybe they are afraid (of course they are) to speak their opposition to the mono-culture on their current campuses.

In the words of one of the founders, "Independent thinkers are repelled by intolerant and rigid intellectual environments. When universities are obsessed with hunting heretics, they become incapable of real creative achievement and fall behind."

 The founders and faculty (including Peter Boghossian) are optimistic that this can succeed.

from "Why I'm Co-founding a New University Dedicated to Freedo of Thought and Study"

U of Austin 2

 Follow up to this post

As Konstantin said, "there are people whose brains have been broken by an excess of education who believe that our history is evil, that we do not deserve to be great . . that we must be punished for the sins of our ancestors. To them our past is abominable, our present must be spent apologizing, and our future is managed decline." 

It's a disaster to this country and to the West that our colleges and universities, yes, are "breaking brains." Peter Boghossian (yesterday's post) said that they're beyond recovery, that the system should be burned to the ground.

But a few people decided to try to return sanity to our higher education system, and Boghossian joined them in the effort. They created the University of Austin to be different, not woke, and they just opened their doors to the Class of 2028 last week.

New president Pano Kanelos explained three years ago why they want to do this: our universities today tend to pursue emotional comfort rather than pursue knowing truth, the essential goal for a university.

"We can't wait for universities to fix themselves. So we're starting a new one."

from Free Press

(cont'd tomorrow)

Tuition free 2

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

For many college graduates, the cost of their education wasn't justified by the results: 85% last year said, "I wish my college had better prepared me for the workplace." They paid the high price but didn't get the result they hoped for.

So, who loses when a college fails to deliver job-ready graduates? Everyone.

One wealthy individual is willing to try to change that dynamic by investing $100 million to make University of Austin tuition-free, with a vision as to how keep it free in the future:

"UATX will prepare students to become the next generation's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, scientists, and philanthropists. In turn, these successful graduates will financially support future generations of students . . ."

"UATX will live [or] die by the excellence of their graduates and the success they achieve in the world . . . If UATX doesn't deliver--in the eyes of its graduates and society--it will cease to exist. And it should."

"I'm Betting $100 Million on a New University"

UATX not Harvard

Follow-up to these posts

No phones or laptops in class, no grade inflation, no TA's leading discussion instead of professors. Students planted 2,977 American flags on 9/11 without anyone telling them to. They debate Aristotle, dress up for the symphony, and cook for each other.

This is the University of Austin (UATX). It was founded because places like Harvard totally dropped the ball in educating our young adults, and something had to be done. UATX was created to be what a university ought to be: "dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth."

Last year was their first year and they've just started their second. They've begun well. Time will tell whether they can survive the critics and establish success.

from If You Don't Want to Go to Harvard

(cont'd tomorrow)

U of Austin 3

(cont'd from yesterday's post)

UATX was founded to be the right kind of university, where truth is pursued with respect for each other, with humility, with honesty. As one of the founders, Bari Weiss, put it, "grievance and resentment define the current cultural moment. It’s a dead end. We must get back to gratitude." 

In his convocation address, President Kanelos didn't just complain about the degraded state of our existing universities. He tried to clearly express what this new one was created to do.

"We are returning to the very roots of the Western . . civilization that brought forward these extraordinary institutions called universities.

"This university is dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth."

"Human beings have freedom and agency, and . .  we will learn how to use our freedom well. [Our] purpose is not simply knowledge, but wisdom."

Hopefully this new attempt at higher education will help to create a new generation of Americans dedicated not to grievance and resentment (photo), but to goodness and truth and beauty.

Slavery legacy?

 (cont'd from yesterday's post)

"Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves," and he did that in 1863, 160+ years ago. But issues remained, and still remain today. 

According to our left-wing, America's unique slavery guilt is everlasting and unforgivable, deserving of contempt and punishment. 

This black author (photo) sees it differently. He teaches a course called "Legacy of Slavery" at University of Austin where he informs students--to their surprise--that slavery was never a "white person thing," that it was global and nearly unopposed until a couple centuries ago. It's news to them, and maybe it's news to you.

The experience of slavery throughout the world was never limited to the black race, and was never uniquely perpetrated by the white race. If you have any interest in understanding it, read his article.

To take this position in our current cultural moment shows courage.

from The Free Press