A Who’s Who of ‘canceled’ academics, journalists and entrepreneurs are teaming up to change the oppressive ‘wokeness’ on college campuses by launching their own right-minded university in the progressive Texas capital of Austin.
The newly-envisioned University of Austin will be led by Panos Kanelos, who stepped down as president of St John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, in June, and include controversial figures such as playwright David Mamet, fired Harvard president Larry Summers, booted New York Times op-ed columnist Bari Weiss, historian Niall Ferguson and journalist Andrew Sullivan on its 31-person board of advisors.
‘I left my post as president… to build a university in Austin dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth,’ Kanelos wrote on Bari Weiss’s Substack on Monday in making the announcement.
A website for the new venture lists an address near the University of Texas but Kanelos said the school is in the process of securing land in the Austin area for a physical campus.
It is also seeking millions in donations for scholarships and to help establish its programs as it seeks to get accredited.
Panos Kanelos, who resigned from St John’s College and left in June, announced on Monday that he was founding a new university
Journalist Bari Weiss is among those appointed to the board of the new academic institution
The University of Austin will launch in 2022 with a summer school for students at other institutions, entitled ‘The Forbidden Courses’
The school does not plan to offer undergraduate courses until 2024, but will begin in the summer of 2022 with a program entitled ‘The Forbidden Courses’.
‘Our summer program invites top students from other universities to join us for a spirited discussion about the most provocative questions that often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities,’ they state on the website.
‘Students will become proficient and comfortable with productive disagreement.
‘Instructors will range from top professors to accomplished business leaders, journalists, and artists.’
Ferguson, who wrote an op-ed in Bloomberg on Monday announcing the university’s founding, described the course as offering ‘the kind of content and instruction no longer available at most established campuses, addressing the kind of provocative questions that often lead to cancelation or self-censorship.’
Niall Ferguson, the historian and a fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, is also on the board. He was previously a professor of history at Harvard, New York University and Oxford
Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a founding faculty member. The Somali-born American activist and writer is known for her criticism of Islam
He wrote: ‘With a growing number of Republicans calling for bans on critical race theory, I fear the illiberalism is metastasizing.
‘Trigger warnings. Safe spaces. Preferred pronouns. Checked privileges. Microaggressions. Antiracism. All these terms are routinely deployed on campuses throughout the English-speaking world as part of a sustained campaign to impose ideological conformity in the name of diversity.
‘As a result, it often feels as if there is less free speech and free thought in the American university today than in almost any other institution in the U.S.’
Both Ferguson and Kanelos cited statistics showing how repressive the overwhelmingly liberal US academic institutions have become in their monolithic thinking.
‘Nearly a quarter of American academics in the social sciences or humanities endorse ousting a colleague for having a wrong opinion about hot-button issues such as immigration or gender differences,’ Kanelos wrote.
‘Over a third of conservative academics and PhD students say they had been threatened with disciplinary action for their views.
‘American PhD students are willing to discriminate against right-leaning scholars, according to a report by the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology.’
Dorian Abbot, a geophysicist with the University of Chicago, was disinvited from giving a speech at MIT because he has disagreed with affirmative action
Kathleen Scott left the University of Sussex after she was hounded and sent death threats for her work on gender and sex
Playwrite David Mamet, seen in December 2014 attending the Blithe Spirit opening night in Los Angeles, is another board member
Larry Summers, treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001, is another part of Kanelos’ team
Ferguson cited Heterodox Academy’s 2020 Campus Expression Survey, in which 62 percent of sampled college students agreed that the climate on their campus prevented them from saying things they believed, and 41 percent said they were reluctant to discuss politics in a classroom.
Peter Boghossian, who resigned from Portland State University over allegations of censorship, is another faculty member
Some 60 percent of students said they were reluctant to speak up in class, the survey found, because they were concerned other students would criticize their views as being offensive.
Kanelos said that academics were being ‘treated like thought criminals’ – referencing Dorian Abbot, a University of Chicago scientist who has objected to aspects of affirmative action; Peter Boghossian, a philosophy professor at Portland State University; and Kathleen Stock, a professor at University of Sussex, who resigned amid accusations of being transphobic for her work on sex and gender.
All are members of the board of his new institution.
Fees for his courses have not been published.
‘At some future point, historians will study how we arrived at this tragic pass,’ Kanelos wrote.
‘And perhaps by then we will have reformed our colleges and universities, restoring them as bastions of open inquiry and civil discourse.
‘But we are done waiting. We are done waiting for the legacy universities to right themselves. And so we are building anew.’
Who’s Who of the ‘anti-woke’ university?
Pano Kanelos – president
Was president of St John’s College in Annapolis from 2017 until June 30, 2021.
Peter Boghossian – founding faculty fellow
Boghossian was an assistant professor of philosophy at Portland State University until he resigned in September, citing a lack of academic freedom.
He was known for inviting a variety of controversial speakers to class, including, he said, ‘Flat-Earthers’, climate change skeptics and advocates of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
He was also known – and ultimately forced out – for writing a series of hoax academic papers on topics from canine ‘rape culture’ in dog parks, to ‘fat bodybuilding’ to an adaption of Mein Kampf. Boghossian said he did it to show how anything can get academic approval in journals, if the peers reviewing it shared the biases of the authors.
He was found by his institutional review board to have committed research misconduct.
Kathleen Stock – founding faculty fellow
The British professor of philosophy resigned in October from her post at the University of Sussex, following a relentless three-year campaign of what she said was bullying, harassment and character assassination.
Stock defines herself as a gender-critical feminist, meaning she believes that biological sex matters. She argues that being born a woman carries certain rights that should not automatically be extended to anyone who identifies as that gender.
She was accused of transphobia for her work on gender and sex, and resigned amid a volley of death threats and protest.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali – founding faculty fellow
A Somali-born Dutch American commentator, who is best known for her criticism of Islam, calling it ‘a nihilistic cult of death’. Born into a Muslim family, she was forced into genital mutilation as a child in Somalia, then fled to the Netherlands to escape an arranged marriage, and now describes herself as ‘an infidel’.
She told the National Conservatism Conference this year that ‘wokeism’ is ‘the ideology that threatens us today, and has the potential to ruin our societies.’
She is married to historian Niall Ferguson and teaches at the Hoover Institute.
Niall Ferguson – board of advisors
Scottish-born Ferguson has taught history at Harvard, Oxford, London School of Economics and New York University.
He is known for his positive views on the British Empire.
He, like his wife Ayaan Hirsi Ali, currently teaches at the Hoover Institute.
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