“I’ve never felt my speech was so chilled as it was in the classroom at UATX.”
That’s one student quoted in an article at Politico by Evan Mandery that describes how things have gone at the University of Austin (UATX).
UATX was announced in November 2021 as a “fiercely independent” institution of higher education dedicated to free expression and “the fearless pursuit of truth.” Claiming to be unbound by the political pieties of the day, it bragged about offering courses that covered “the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.” Its inaugural class of students began in the fall of 2024.
As the end of the school year approached, in April of 2025, a member of the university’s board of trustees (and one of its major donors) summoned all of the faculty and staff for a meeting and reportedly told them that they must all subscribe to “the four principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics, and anti-Islamism.” Whether he had the institutional authority to issue such a command is disputed.
That episode is just one in this fascinating history of the university. I recommend you read the whole thing.
(For fun, you may also want to check out my initial post about the University of Austin from back in November, 2021.)
Who would’ve thought that a university co-founded by the billionaire who also co-founded a company named after the treacherous surveillance orb in the Lord of the Rings, and who rants about “anti-merit, and anti-white BS, and race communism,” would be a ramshackle operation incapable of staying true to the principles it loudly espouses. I am shocked—shocked—to find that gambling is going on in here.
Animal Farm is a masterwork in psychology.
I am shocked! Shocked!
Well not that shocked.
Who could have predicted that this would be a cover for censorious conservatism?!!
This is why conservatives are so underrepresented in academia. Even when they self-deport to their safe space, they get cancelled.
Read the whole piece:
– The profs, holding fast to UATX’s mission of open inquiry, were uncomfortable with the donor’s (Lonsdale) speech pushing an agenda.
– One prof asked tough questions then resigned on the spot.
– It was made clear that he donor communicating his wish-list had no real institutional power.
– One senior faculty member (Fergusson) reassured his colleagues that they weren’t about to be bullied into anything by anyone.
That’s perhaps the part where the piece fails to live up to its potential: Instead of recognizing UATX for what it was from the outset, it adds unnecessary complexity to narrativize about the organization’s principles and mission—a step that tees up the inevitable “downfall” story the author clearly wants to tell. A more interesting, and in my view, more honest, analysis is that this wasn’t an organization that had “become something more conventional,” but one that functioned exactly as intended. It was always a right-wing project, and the only reason it momentarily succeeded in capturing any signification attention was because it seized upon the right rhetoric at the right time—both benefiting from (and itself further stoking) the “cancel culture” panic.
Basically, it was gamergate for academics. It had its own “ethics in video game journalism” in “cancel culture” and brand-name “heterodoxy.” And much like gamergate wasn’t about ethics in video game journalism, UATX wasn’t about any of the principles it emptily gestured at. Was everyone on the same page with what UATX was and is? Presumably not. But then again, as with gamergate, some people only read what was on the tin and presumed that that’s what they were getting.
You forgot the parts where Peter Thiel gives a series of lectures on the antichrist and there is a bust of Bari Weiss in the library.
Like any legitimate institution of higher learning.
Sorry, I can’t be bothered to read these articles. I wouldn’t waste a single page on these tech bros. I understand that in a perverse way we must deal with them, but I really prefer to read something that actually increases my quality of life. Listening to self-appointed prophets and people who follow them makes no such contribution. Couldn’t we just cancel them or even better, as they apparently did in this case, let them cancel each other until nobody remains?
This seems like an opportune moment to remind folks of this: https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/latin-mottoes-for-the-university-of-austin
Say what you will about UATX’s (many) sins, it IS comedy gold.
“Platonem et Ciceronem restituere”
“Uncancelling Plato and Cicero”
Oof, that didn’t age well.
There comes a point in every scam when not even the Conceptual Penis keep it up any longer.
can keep*