#uatx — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #uatx, aggregated by home.social.
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This piece was very thorough (and therefore long) and while I don't expect everyone will read the whole thing, if you're inclined to do so please do. It's eye-opening.
As for the writer's portrayal of #UATX as 'not really right-wing until the end', I disagree. Just because it included people who _believed_ lest rigidly right-wing ideology was at play and would be inculcated into the school doesn't make it so.
Those people were quickly routed or they left as soon as they realized there was no ideology but that of The Right. It wasn't right-wing only in name and statements, but it was where it counted: in the governance. Those others were for show, presumably with the idea that they would 'come around' when they saw how awesome and 'free' (see previous point about the meaning of 'freedom') things were further to the right. A lie and self-delusion by the right wing that never bears out.
UATX is a failure in every way but financially. and then only because these ideologues have money and wealthy friends who share their selfish ideologies. They are a scourge and cancer to society.
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Gee, that sounds familiar. Right-ism leads to authoritarian-ism.
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The meaning of "freedom", as is often the case with the right-wing, is an illusory term that really means 'our ideology and authority's ideology are aligned, so we foresee no clash if you don't deviate'.
#UATX -
Clown Shoes College #UATX
"The math classes go over algebra you learned in ninth grade,” a student told me. “There was just nothing there."
A Foundations of Science course talked about 'ensoulment', the Catholic bean-counting concept as to when a soul enters or leaves a body.
"Others thought I was the token liberal," [Heather] Heying told me, "but I came to understand myself as the token scientist."
[a quick reminder that Heying was anti-vax and took ivermectin thinking it would ward off Covid-19]Wildly and unexpectedly, they DID cover Kelly and Zach Weinersmith's 'A City on Mars', an excellent illustrated book on why the idea of modern day humans going to Mars is laughably naive and flawed.
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Also
1 - I loathe most of these kids
and
2 - This whole situation just sounds like 'Libertarian Island' all over again, but it's a uni and it's not libertarian at all. -
The right-wing's idea of free speech/thought/ideas really just boils down to 'everyone else should be forced to listen to my views, but not vice versa'. That's it. That's the whole of it.
Aside: Mike Lind cannot write worth a figurative or literal shit. FFS. Someone get that man into a high school-level writing class. Introduce him to some punctuation while he's there. But I digress.
"Because so many of its leaders lean conservative, UATX has been portrayed in some quarters as having been a right-wing project from the start. However, the truth is vastly more complex."
Hard disagree. It seems to loudly quack just like a bog-standard billionaire-owned duck with no left wing. Ferguson, Heather 'ivermectin anti-vax' Heying, Lonsdale, Bari fucking Weiss... Summers, Steven 'also an Epstein pal' Pinker... if it were a ship it would list to the right and sink after it burnt through the libertarians it used as cord wood ballast to prop itself up.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2026/01/16/civil-war-university-of-austin-bari-weiss-00729688
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“According to Niall, under the constitution of #UATX Joe Lonsdale, as chair of the board, had no authority to tell those of us at the meeting:
“That all staff and faculty of UATX must subscribe to the four principles of anti-communism, anti-socialism, identity politics, and anti-Islamism (this is the first time I heard of these four principles); (1/2)
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Bari Weiss’ Tiny Fake Austin College Sees Mass Staff, Advisor Exodus
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Reactionary speech police in U.S. Academia: What else is new?
"That morning, I got onto what I thought was a casual call with a senior colleague, someone who spoke with me regularly in order to keep the university updated on Mill Institute activities. Once we were past the opening pleasantries, it immediately became clear that something was wrong.
My colleague told me that we needed to talk about a social-media post of mine that “had become a big problem.” I rarely post anything online, so I was confused about what he meant. Apparently, it had something to do with DEI, and had angered a major funder. “We’re trying to slow things down,” my colleague told me. I got the impression that he was upset about the message he was delivering.
I dimly recalled that I’d written something about DEI on LinkedIn. But I was still confused, because it had seemed like such an innocuous post (to me, anyway); and I couldn’t imagine how it would upset anyone in the UATX community, let alone lead to this ominous phone call.
In that post (reproduced below), I’d thanked writer and Yale professor Michael J. Strambler for mentioning the Mill Institute in a magazine article titled The False Binary of the DEI Debate. The piece, which struck a liberal tone, walked readers through the pros and cons of DEI programs, concluding that regardless of one’s position on DEI, none of us should lose respect for those who hold different opinions."
https://quillette.com/2025/05/16/is-the-university-of-austin-betraying-its-founding-principles/
#USA #DEI #Universities #HigherEd #Academia #UATX #Texas #FreedomOfExpression #FreedomOfSpeech
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Sadly but not surprisingly, the University of Austin has turned out to be nothing but a culture war vehicle for US conservatives.
https://quillette.com/2025/05/16/is-the-university-of-austin-betraying-its-founding-principles/
#UniversityOfAustin #Texas #HigherEducation #Universities #UATX
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"The Pursuit of Truth" only when it conveniently enables us to suppress speech we don't like.
How a Free-Speech University Sidles Up to Orbán’s Strongman Rule
Bari Weiss’s University of Austin, touted as a haven for free academic inquiry, has a dozen scholars and officials with ties to Hungary’s speech-suppressing regime
#Education #Politics #FreedomOfSpeech #Academia #AcademicFreedom #UATX #Hungary #Orban
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Bitcoin firm, Texas university partner for $5M endowment fund - Bitcoin financial services firm and UATX plan to raise $5 million to inv... - https://cointelegraph.com/news/unchained-university-austin-partner-launch-5m-bitcoin-endowment-fund #alternativefinancialmodels #bitcoinendowmentfund #universityofaustin #custodysolutions #cryptoeducation #highereducation #josephkelly #unchained #uatx
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> If anything is novel about UATX’s model, it is the creation of a rightwing monoculture in the form of a university, rather than a thinktank or policy institute. The university model carries certain advantages. Major investment firms and tech companies have long aimed recruiting efforts at select schools based on reputation and social connections.
https://web.archive.org/web/20240219233718/https://thenewinquiry.com/an-american-education-notes-from-uatx/
#UATX #MoronU Why think when you got money and power?
/HT @jgordon via
@RunRichRun
#ThinkTank #CessPoolThought -
#VenalEnthusiasts
> Andreessen is an even larger #TechGiant. After co-designing one of the most successful early web browsers in 1992, he co-founded software company #Netscape in the mid-nineties and VC firm #AndreessenHorowitz in 2009. His net worth is approaching $2 billion. Last summer, #Andreessen praised #UATX as “a very big advance.”
#MarcAndreessen -
#VenalUtopias ?
> Lonsdale helped found #Palantir —a data analytics company that contracts with Amazon, ICE, and the CIA—with #PeterThiel in 2004, and he currently leads #8VC , a venture capital firm that invests in AI, defense, and biomedicine. (If it’s not already obvious, Thiel—Gen X’s very own Charles Koch—is in league with many of #UATX’s members: he mentored Lonsdale, champions #Hanania, and has spoken on #BariWeiss’s podcast.)
#JoeLonsdale -
Their servers are getting hammered, but this is a wild read (I've linked the Archive.org mirror). Ever wonder what that nutjobbery University of Austin ended up looking like?