University of Austin

[Manderleyagain]

Some people in America are trying to launch a new university. It will have a physical campus in Austin Texas.

Kathleen Stock is listed as an academic advisor. Their advisory board is very impressive.

The many gc feminists who post here who work in academia might be interested in this development.

They have published a blog on Bari Weiss Web site.
bariweiss.substack.com/p/f0ee620b-e8f7-43f0-a9b9-0caff5d76d55

It is a response to the censorious and group think prone nature of American Unis.

"Universities are the places where society does its thinking, where the habits and mores of our citizens are shaped. If these institutions are not open and pluralistic, if they chill speech and ostracize those with unpopular viewpoints, if they lead scholars to avoid entire topics out of fear, if they prioritize emotional comfort over the often-uncomfortable pursuit of truth, who will be left to model the discourse necessary to sustain liberty in a self-governing society?"

Their Web site.
www.uaustin.org/our-principles

My instinct is its too difficult a thing to pull off, but still worth watching I think.

I wonder if attending this university would actually scupper a student's chances of working in certain fields or being accepted at other universities? Can you imagine the NYT or ACLU employing someone who has actively avoided their required ideological indoctrination? Would Berkeley or MIT accept a student who has done a summer course at the University of Austin?

As for Kathleen Stock, I hate this idea that women should endure life rather than thrive. Why shouldn't she try to improve her intolerable working situation? If transactivists don't succeed in completely destroying you, they see their failure as evidence that no harm was done in the attempt.

What's that expression - the best revenge is a happy life?
Closely followed by a severance package (I imagine seeing as she thanked her solicitors) and a new job offer.
Go forth and shine Kathleen.

@Floisme

What's that expression - the best revenge is a happy life? Closely followed by a severance package (I imagine seeing as she thanked her solicitors) and a new job offer. Go forth and shine Kathleen.

Absolutely.

20 years service, a to do of this size, rape and death threats going back several years, a paper trail showing no action against anyone who has bullied her ever, including several colleagues.

I am ouching internally at the potential size of that 'please don't take this to tribunal' offer. That's the stuff HR people wake up in a cold sweat about.

I really hope so. I want Kathleen to have a nice condo in the sun with a huge palm fringed pool. I suspect she rocks a bikini like a feminist icon.

She is not actually going to Texas. Her name is being used because she is in the news. Anyhow I look forward to seeing how this unfurls. Forwards to the right wing university with truth written on its banner and Palantir doing its data extraction.

Again, it's pretty naive and reductive to preemptively label the institution "right-wing" when most right-wing conservatives in the US have other HE options already.

It does smell a little libertarianish to me and I don't have much fondness for that viewpoint, but I think time will tell if that can be detected in its output.

There is definitely a problem with academic freedom at the moment if there are entire areas that are considered #nodebate (sensible areas, not Holocaust-denying fringe beliefs). I will at least give this group credit for trying to do something practical to resolve this.

Oh, and also. I have no idea whether Kathleen Stock will go to Texas, obviously some posters have inside information. But even if she doesn't reside there full-time, the pandemic has increased the number of academics who take a more desirable job at X University while residing elsewhere for quality of life. Whether that's a grand idea or not is debatable, but it's not actually a "gotcha" against Stock if it's the case.

And major backer Joe Lonsdale is a vile misogynist, as can be seen in recent comments. Though no doubt women in the home is consistent with some feminist viewpoints. And yes, it might be the case that Lonsdale gives the money with no strings attached in terms of ideas and programme. But I am sceptical. I speak as someone who is involved in an institution partfunded by another billionaire, George Soros. I think it is interesting to compare, as his motive was also freedom of thought, after fascist repression of his CEU, but it pans out utterly differently and to my mind much more progressively in terms of developing thought and countering oppression.

I do agree that it's concerning when a significant chunk of funding comes from corporate or individual sources that are .... ethically questionable. This is also widespread at mainstream US unis (coughcough petroleum industry at my Alma mater) and I wish I knew a solution. I'm in complete agreement with you there.

‘it pans out utterly differently and to my mind much more progressively in terms of developing thought and countering oppression.’

Since this hasn’t panned out at all or in any direction yet how on earth can you say that?

(sorry I'll shut up in a minute) especially ironic when you consider that Texas has no state income tax, which is why a lot of asshole entrepreneurs locate there (or maybe for the food...). Taxes which could fund education in a nonpartisan way this university itself could end up producing perfectly good academic work and may be of value to the wider discourse, but I absolutely hate this stranglehold that rich assholes seem to have on everything

Universities accept all sorts of dodgy or potentially ethically compromising money. Wasn't it an Oxford college that recently accepted a generous donation from the Mosley estate? I know someone who teaches at a British university where some lecturers have to submit their lectures, teaching plans and teaching materials to be vetted, and possibly vetoed, by some commissar-type from the CCP because of a lucrative connection to China. This university is super-woke in its PR and has had some infamously TWAW lecturers on its staff.

Yeah, I agree--it's very widespread and by no means limited to this new institution.

It's an interesting question of purity. Can you stomach an educational institution (or any other institution) employing or being funded by some very questionable sources? Or do you accept that that's the context of the real world and you just have to work with reality? There's not a single university that's going to be completely free of all "tainted" funding or staff who have been guilty of misogyny or abusive behaviour or other problems at some time. How do you balance speaking up against injustice or corruption with accepting that the real world is imperfect?

@Obakarama

I think Stock has lost credibility with this. I had heard on grapevine she wanted to jump and students provided the springboard on cue. Clearly this was lined up, so not so heroic really. Also getting on board with a number of decidedly unfeminist thinkers. Nit impressive

Unfeminist thinkers? You mean the ones who say biology isn’t real and irrelevant to women? Quite.

@EsmaCannonball

I wonder if attending this university would actually scupper a student's chances of working in certain fields or being accepted at other universities? Can you imagine the NYT or ACLU employing someone who has actively avoided their required ideological indoctrination? Would Berkeley or MIT accept a student who has done a summer course at the University of Austin?

It's not at all impossible.

There was a fairly new, private evangelical Christian university that opened not that many years ago in western Canada. Students and faculty were expected to conform to fairly traditional Christian lifestyles including no sex outside of marriage, no SSM, that sort of thing. (This kind of private institution is fairly unusual here, but a few exist.)

The university included a law school which jumped through all the hoops to get accreditation to produce lawyers, and were about to begin to grant degrees. But some other law schools and lawyers took exception to the views of the institution and tried to have their law school lose their accreditation. And they were successful in this, despite the fact that the school did not receive any public funding, they were not allowed to train lawyers.

Anyway - I have thought for a while that universities have been shooting themselves in the foot in the way they were going. People who want education, and scholars, the people who really care, will begin to abandon the institutions if they don't allow for real research and ideas to be discussed, and real teaching to occur.

hmmh, I think what I do is real teaching. Also all my colleagues do real teaching and real research. This is all a bit of a fiction for people to splutter over their cornflakes. Reminds me of when it was considered outrageous to study English Literature at university (province of weak minded women....) Would be useful if all the snarky liberal-conservatives were gathered in one place though. The rest of us could get on with our real research and teaching.

Why on earth would anyone want all people sharing the same outlook - snarky or otherwise - in one place? What a revealing comment.

I will tell you why. Because the clown at my uni is one who would be welcomed at Austin and he provides research that racists love to use to prove the end of 'whiteness' and he spends loads of his time tweeting about wokeness and free speech. This means a lot of our time is taken up with reassuring students, explaining that employment law means he can't be sacked, trying to rebuild our reputation as a place where people of different ethnicities are welcomed, reeling from aftermath of resignations because he makes the department an intolerable place to work.It is distracting and dispiriting and intellectually suspect, if not deleterious. I would be so delighted if he left for Austin. At least there students will know what they are buying into.

Are you saying you think that person and Kathleen Stock and anyone who agrees with her views on sex and gender all belong together?

I am saying there are plenty who would put them together and he certainly supports her, in name of free speech and anti woke. I don't expect she supports him, as he is not a classic liberal, as she is. But these days nothing surprises me.

And he has been very vocal in his support of Austin.

Well you haven't answered my question, which was whether you believed they all belonged together? Up to you of course if you'd rather not.

I think what I would have welcomed most as a student would have been teachers who gave me the tools to critique and challenge unwelcome views and difficult and unpleasant colleagues, not to reassure me or try to protect me from them.

They probably deserve each other. Yes, they belong together in their ever so risky university. That seems to be what they want.