University of Austin
Private liberal arts university in Texas, US From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The University of Austin (UATX) is a private liberal arts university located in Austin, Texas.[3][4] The university has established a campus in downtown Austin's Scarbrough Building, and enrolled its first undergraduate cohort in the fall of 2024.[1][5]
 | |
| Motto | Dare to Think |
|---|---|
| Type | Private liberal arts college |
| Established | November 8, 2021 |
| Founders | Joe Lonsdale Pano Kanelos Niall Ferguson Bari Weiss |
| Accreditation | Unaccredited |
Religious affiliation | Nonsectarian |
| Endowment | $200 million (2023)[1] |
| President | Pano Kanelos |
| Provost | Jacob Howland |
Academic staff | 23 |
| Students | 100[2] |
| Location | Austin , Texas , 78701 , U.S. 30.2850°N 97.7453°W |
| Website | uaustin.org |
UATX is not accredited, and its students are not eligible for Federal Student Aid. However, it is approved to grant bachelor’s degrees by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. The founding class has been offered free tuition.[6][7]
According to the school's website, the University of Austin was conceived in May 2021 when venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, St. John's College president Pano Kanelos, scholar Niall Ferguson, and journalist Bari Weiss met in Austin, Texas.[8] The proposal was publicized six months later in an article by Kanelos in Weiss's Substack newsletter Common Sense (now The Free Press).[9][10]
Founding faculty fellows included Peter Boghossian, Ayaan Hirsi Ali (Hoover Institution), and Kathleen Stock.[11] Other advisors included former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, former ACLU President Nadine Strossen, and former president of the American Enterprise Institute Arthur Brooks.[10] UATX reported that they were seeking accreditation[4][9][11][12][13] through the Higher Learning Commission.[14]
In November 2021, the university's website listed 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, and Tyler Cowen as advisors to the university.[15] Writing in The Week, Samuel Goldman noted that no prominent members of the board of advisors had resigned their academic appointments to join the UATX faculty, suggesting that their "lack of personal commitment casts doubt on the value of their support."[16] Kathleen Stock clarified that her role was not full-time, and that she would not move to Austin.[11] Pinker said that although he was part of the advisory board, he had no plans to teach there.[17] Gee said "Serving in an advisory capacity does not mean I believe or agree with everything that other advisers may share. I do not agree other universities are no longer seeking the truth nor do I feel that higher education is irreparably broken."[18]
On November 11, 2021, Robert Zimmer announced his resignation from the university board, saying that UATX had made statements about higher education that "diverged very significantly from my own views".[19] Shortly thereafter, Pinker followed suit.[20] UATX apologized for creating "unnecessary complications" for Pinker and Zimmer by not clarifying [sooner] what their advisory roles entailed.[21]
According to the Austin Chronicle, as of November 2021 the University of Austin planned to have 3,000 to 4,000 students by 2024.[22]
On June 9, 2022, the University of Austin was taking applications for its "Forbidden Courses" program with two-week-long sessions in the old (pre-1954) Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas, Texas.[23] Despite the name of the university, UATX first offered classes in Dallas, Texas and not Austin. Conservative philanthropist Harlan Crow provided office space in Dallas for UATX. Crow is a major donor to the university.[24] On July 6, 2022, the school announced that Richard Dawkins had joined its advisory board.[25] In December 2022, board member Heather Heying resigned stating that the school was not adequately invested in scientific inquiry and "does not represent my scientific and pedagogical values."[26]
In October 2023, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board gave the university certification to award degrees. The school lacked accreditation at that time. The two-year certification to grant degrees can be extended for up to eight years, by which time it must achieve accreditation to continue.[1][27] A month later, UATX began accepting applications for its first four-year undergraduate cohort enrolling in Fall 2024, and established a campus in Austin's Scarbrough Building. The entire class of 100 students would receive full four-year scholarships, paid from private donations the university had raised. By November 2023, UATX had reportedly raised $200 million from 2,600 donors and received over 6,000 inquiries from potential faculty.[1] In Bloomberg, UATX reported a surge in interest from donors "horrified by the response at top-tier universities" to the 2023 Hamas-led attack on Israel.[28]
In March 2024, UATX reported that they had formed a student debate society, the Austin Union, modeled after the Oxford Union.[29] In June, the University of Austin announced a $5 million bitcoin endowment with cryptocurrency platform Unchained.[30]
The stated mission of the University of Austin is to prepare "thoughtful and ethical innovators, builders, leaders, public servants and citizens through open inquiry and civil discourse."[31]
UATX plans to be a selective institution using standardized testing. It will not use race, gender, or class in its admissions decisions, stating this is because the school "stands firmly against that sort of discrimination".[10] The school does not plan on establishing traditional majors. According to President Kanelos, the undergraduate program will start with two years of general education requirements that include classes in philosophy, history and literature and students will take courses in the same sequence. Students will become fellows in particular areas of study during their third and fourth year.[1] Jacob Howland is the Provost.[32]
The initial announcement of the project received some positive reception,[33] including praise from Law & Liberty for ushering in "a new era in educational reform,"[34] and applause from The New Criterion for its efforts to "keep that old flame of free inquiry alive."[35] New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat saw the launch of a new university as a positive development, pointing out how few major universities have been established since the nineteenth century, but acknowledged how expensive doing so would be. He also saw conflicting forces in the project, including the "tension between the desire to promote great academic seriousness and the culture-war flag-waving that might be necessary to rally donor support".[36]
The project also garnered criticism. Initial responses to the project included criticism of the lack of a plan to achieve the project's goals.[4] The New York Times journalist Anemona Hartocollis questioned in 2021 whether the founders would be able to "translate a provocative idea into a viable institution" while The New Republic's Alex Shephard described the plan as "largely half baked".[17][37] Jennifer Wunder, a professor at Georgia Gwinnett College who participated in the process of obtaining her institution's initial accreditation, considered the 2021 business plan timeline to establish accredited graduate and undergraduate programs to be nearly impossible to meet.[38] The proposal for a University of Austin was described in 2021 by Gabriella Swerling in The Daily Telegraph[12] as "anti-cancel culture" and by Alex Shephard in The New Republic as "anti-woke".[37]
After initially holding silent about the reasons for his resignation, Pinker told The Harvard Crimson that UATX had (as the journalists put it) "confused freedom of speech with the political right" — that it had staffed itself primarily with people on the right, regardless of their position on free speech, extending to some opponents of it.[20] He was unhappy with the fact that UATX’s “entire faculty and board of advisors were people who had been canceled.”[20] “A viable university can’t be the university of the canceled, the department of politically incorrect, or the faculty of the un-woke,” he stated. “I don’t think universities should be committed to some doctrine, like left-wing political correctness, but that doesn’t mean that un-left-wing, un-political correctness, un-wokeness is a coherent basis of a university”, he said.[20]
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