Cynthia M. Allen
Fri, November 12, 2021,
When a diverse group of intellectuals this week announced the formation of a new university in Texas — one “committed to open inquiry, freedom of conscience, and civil discourse” — the response from detractors in the media (social and traditional) was predictable.
There was almost an immediate attempt to shut down any discussion over the academic and cultural value of such an institution and disparage all of those involved.
“Will it be a proper institution of higher learning or Troll State?” opined a Washington Post writer.
The question that should have been asked instead is: Why has an institution that identifies the pursuit of truth as its highest priority become a novelty among American universities?
Pano Kanelos, the new president of the nascent University of Austin, didn’t mince words in his explanation.
“Many universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized,” he wrote in the newsletter of former New York Times columnist and fellow university founder Bari Weiss, announcing the university’s formation.
Consequently, he continued, 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 isn’t wrong.
The state of American higher education has been in peril for years.
Universities, once bastions of free and diverse thought, have become places that inhibit intellectual curiosity and exploration to an alarming degree.
Kanelos cites survey data that find high levels of intolerance among university professors for colleagues who have a “wrong opinion” about a controversial subject such as immigration or gender differences. A surprising number of academics report that they have been threatened with disciplinary action for their views.
It’s no surprise that this thinking has been absorbed by university students who overwhelmingly acknowledge that the campus environment stifles them from speaking their minds but also admit that they have no problem reporting professors if the professor says something students find offensive.
There are innumerable campus incidents of the latter, in which students have complained to administration about faculty and in many cases insisted upon groveling public apologies, termination or capitulation to a list of unreasonable demands.
And students are increasingly reporting their peers based on some perceived offense, sometimes threatening the accused’s academic future.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has documented many such incidents through the years.
Some of the Austin university’s founders have endured harassment, vicious attacks and ostracization for holding or even attempting to discuss heterodox views about subjects elite institutions suddenly deem too fraught to study.
But elite academe’s loss is the new institution’s (and its future students’) gain.
Its board of advisers includes Lawrence H. Summers, a former Harvard president and economic adviser to Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama; Glenn Loury, an economist at Brown University; and Nadine Strossen, law professor and former president of the American Civil Liberties Union. It’s an embarrassment of riches.
Kalenos said more than 1,000 professors have expressed interest in participating — a clear indication that there is no short supply of academics seeking to extricate themselves from presumably toxic environments.
But founding universities is expensive, especially when they draw the caliber of intellectual power the University of Austin has so far.
If higher education has another seemingly insurmountable problem, it’s cost.
Part of the university’s mission will be to provide a top-notch liberal arts education at a more affordable price ($30,000 or less a year). Kanelos said it will forgo some of the superfluous bells and whistles that contribute minimally to a student’s intellectual experience.
And presumably, the kind of student who is interested in an intellectually focused environment won’t care too much about having a state-of-the-art rec center or fancy food court.
When you’re a truth seeker in an academically free environment, who needs football?
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