Illiberal Learning 🏫

 Sure, whatever:

“This is an opportunity for students to not only go to a university but help us build the university or build the culture of the university, create the institution with us,” UATX President Pano Kanelos told The Texas Tribune. “We thought that there would be a wonderful way to reward them for being part of this project by offering these scholarships.”

The culture of UT Austin (literally down the street from this bold venture in conservative intolerance) is beer, sex, and football. 🏈 

The culture of the faculty, at least when I was in graduate school there (admittedly, 40+ years ago), was to have as little to do with the great unwashed and many-headed as possible. In liberal arts, anyway. I knew one full professor who still taught Freshmen English. He was considered a harmless crank by his peers.

In a seminar class I took, several professors attended just to pontificate with the students.  The memorable discussion was when one professor waved an arm toward the football stadium (we all knew where he was pointing) and proceeded to declare us all residents of the Ivory Tower preserving the treasures of civilization from the barbaric hordes.  

I laughed.  Out loud.  Alone. It was then I knew I was a "crank," too, but being a graduate student of no particular merit, not a harmless one.  I got my paper, as the Indigo Girls sang, and I was free.  It's the primary reason I never pursued a career in academia.

So I don't know what "culture" they are talking about, but it's completely one of their own imagining.

You can get the why's and wherefore's of this brave new venture (sarcasm alert) from the article.  I'm more interested in stuff like this:

UATX’s undergraduate program is the latest offering since the university announced its launch. It started with a non-credit program for the past two summers called Forbidden Courses, which was open to students from other universities to participate in discussions about topics that “often lead to censorship or self-censorship in many universities.” Sessions this past summer had titles like “Science and Christianity,” “The Psychology of Morality” and “Writing Sexual Politics.” The school also created a summer program in New York, Austin and San Francisco where high school students can take college-level courses over a three-day period. (emphasis added)

Now, I have nothing against a topic like "Science and Christianity."  But I wonder what version of "Christianity" is on offer in such a class?  The kind I learned in seminary, where we regularly referred to sociology and psychology (especially with regard to the healing "acts of power/signs" in the gospels.  "Miracle" is a later interjection; like, centuries later.)? So, that kind of "science"?  Or maybe it focusses on a "Christianity" that a fundamentalist would be comfortable with?  I don't mean to disparage or belittle fundamentalists, but I don't want their bullshit in my beer, so to speak.  I wonder how rigorous the theological credentials, or philosophical (philosopy of religion is an entire field of philosophy studies) credentials, their scholars bring to the classroom?

Well, consider their advisors:

The announcement two years ago received national attention due to the school’s board of advisors, which include former New York Times columnist Bari Weiss, former Harvard University president Lawrence H. Summers and playwright David Mamet. Founders include Weiss, Kanelos, historian and Hoover Institution fellow Niall Ferguson and Austin entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale. Critics panned the announcement as a reactionary response by a group of people who had previously been at the center of controversies. 

People with an axe to grind, IOW.  This school is not about academic achievement, or adding to the human store of knowledge and understanding.  It's Donald Trump's imagined second term:  Vengeance Boogaloo.  Lawrence Summers wants to teach Harvard it can't fuck with him.  David Mamet (is he still alive?  I remember wanting to be impressed with "Glengarry Glenn Ross," but after all the bombast of Alec Baldwin's character's speech ("Coffee is for closers!"), I found the rest of the play empty and meaningless; and I mean that in the worst way.  Not "meaningless" in some thematic sense, but in the dramatic sense.  All the drama was in that scene.  The rest was just....nuthin'.  What'd he do after that, "Speed the Plow" maybe?  Which everybody remembers because Madonna was in the original cast, back when we didn't yet realize she couldn't act her way out of a wet paper bag?) wants to teach theater critics (and audiences) that he's not a man to be trifled with.  I mentioned recently I was scanning and saving my seminary papers (so I can inflict them on a hapless world!  Bwah-hah-hah!).  One set of them was from a course on "Feminist Biblical Interpretation."  A very seminary topic, I know, especially 30 years ago.  But I wonder if anything similiar would be allowed at UATX, under the oversight of David Mamet or Barri Weiss?  After all, the school's avowed mission is:

... to create a “fiercely independent” school that offers an alternative to what founders see as a rise in “illiberalism” on college campuses.

Okay, then; nothing like an avowed point of view to establish an open-minded approach to inquiry without an avowed point of view or guardrails that don't permit certain thoughts (and I don't just mean students on campus yelling about Israel and Gaza, usually out of ignorance.  The problem with college students is how ignorant they are.  The other problem is how much they resist replacing that ignorance with knowledge.) Yeah, I don't think they'd consider Feminist Biblical Interpretation (or Feminist anything interpretation) "correct" teaching.  Or even allowable thought.

Going to be interesting to see if they can get accredited.  Schools I know of that didn't, vanished overnight after such a failure.  Even free tuition is too high a price to pay for a worthless piece of paper that won't even get you a transfer to the big state school just down the street.  The one where all the beer and sex and sports, are. The forces behind this complain already about the "flaws" in the accreditation system, but acknowledge dese are de conditions dat prevail.  I really wonder how ideological they can get away with being, especially if they're going to rigidly redefine the "liberal" in "liberal arts."

I wonder if they realize it has nothing to do with American politics?  Especially considering all the donors funding it, I kinda doubt it.

"Trouble ahead; trouble behind. And you know that notion, just crossed my mind."