Conservative academics are decamping from their positions at top American universities to escape the ravages of wokeness and cancel culture. At the new University of Austin, progressives will no longer call the shots – donors will.
AUSTIN – Pity the academic conservative. Having enjoyed tenure at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and New York University, and now a steady gig at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the historian Niall Ferguson now plays the victim. He will soon decamp, he lets us imagine, to “a new kind of university – the University of Austin.”
What is the very first thing that Ferguson highlights about UATX? That its founders are “diverse.” To ensure that there is no mistake about the meaning of this word, he follows up: “in 1975, universities everywhere were still predominantly white, male, and middle-class. The process whereby a college education became more widely available – to women, to the working class, to racial minorities – has been slow and remains incomplete.”
So that is the big problem that mainstream, liberal, conservative-oppressing American universities have been ignoring! It’s great that Ferguson plans to help us out. How will UATX achieve diversity? According to Ferguson, admissions will be strictly by competitive examination, to avoid the “corrupt racket” of college admissions in other places nowadays. But what will the competitive examination examine? He does not say.
AUSTIN – Pity the academic conservative. Having enjoyed tenure at Harvard University, the London School of Economics, and New York University, and now a steady gig at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, the historian Niall Ferguson now plays the victim. He will soon decamp, he lets us imagine, to “a new kind of university – the University of Austin.”
What is the very first thing that Ferguson highlights about UATX? That its founders are “diverse.” To ensure that there is no mistake about the meaning of this word, he follows up: “in 1975, universities everywhere were still predominantly white, male, and middle-class. The process whereby a college education became more widely available – to women, to the working class, to racial minorities – has been slow and remains incomplete.”
So that is the big problem that mainstream, liberal, conservative-oppressing American universities have been ignoring! It’s great that Ferguson plans to help us out. How will UATX achieve diversity? According to Ferguson, admissions will be strictly by competitive examination, to avoid the “corrupt racket” of college admissions in other places nowadays. But what will the competitive examination examine? He does not say.