AT FIRST GLANCE, THE UNIVERSITY OF Austin (UATX) looks more like a buzzy Silicon Valley outfit than an academic institution. Its entire campus is the renovated 30,000-square-foot third floor of downtown Austin's historic, art deco-inspired Scarbrough Building. The space is full of exposed concrete, interior glass walls, minimalist tables, and tufted leather armchairs. On a balmy day in late January, about eight months before the nonprofit university's first class of 100 students is set to arrive, the hallways are quiet, save for the occasional clattering of a keyboard coming from a faculty member's office. The library's shelves are still sparse.
"For the first three or four months it was like your typical startup," says founding president Pano Kanelos, recounting those days in the summer of 2021 when he left his post as head of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, to begin scouting real estate opportunities for the recently announced UATX. Three years later, Kanelos is in his office, reviewing curricula vitae for the few remaining open faculty positions.
UATX, Kanelos says, will be "dedicated to the pursuit of truth and open inquiry"-two tenets he claims are largely missing from higher education these days. Its founders include controversial writer Bari Weiss, entrepreneur and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, and several high-profile academics who aren't exactly shrinking violets when it comes to cultural debates: historian Niall Ferguson, philosopher Kathleen Stock, and economist Lawrence Summers. All of them believe that contemporary college campuses suffer from a rampant illiberalism that stifles free speech, favoring liberals over conservatives. Many Americans agree: A 2023 poll by the University of Chicago and the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs and Research found that 47% of respondents felt liberals had "a lot" of freedom to express their opinions on campuses, compared to just 20% for conservatives.
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