In Substack piece titled “We Can’t Wait for Universities to Fix Themselves. So We’re Starting a New One” hosted on the site of New York Times washout Bari Weiss, Pano Kanelos announced he’s leading an effort to launch a new, super non-woke “University of Austin” on which Weis will serve on the founding board of advisors.

The non-accredited institution, which will not offer college credits or degrees, will provide indoctrination into conservative ideals all under the guise of pursuing “truth.”  The university-in-name-only, much like Trump’s ill-fated “university” or Glenn Beck’s “university,” will be seminar based.  It will host a summer program where students at real universities can come to cleanse their conservative palates to complain about how liberals are ruining the world–one anecdotal story at a time.

Citing The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, Kanelos reports that at least 491 disinvitation campaigns since 2000. Roughly half were successful.  Kanelos fails to mention that more than one-quarter of these efforts were undertaken by people on the Right trying to stop someone they considered too liberal.  Also, that’s 491 campaigns–about half of which were unsuccessful–over a 21 year period, or 23 per year, hardly an epidemic of totalitarianism.  And curiously, the efforts from the Right proved far more successful at silencing critics (53%) than those from the Left (42%), but that doesn’t get mentioned by Kanelos. 

According to Kanelos, American universities are full of soft students, attracted to things revolving around lifestyle rather than rigorous academics.  But the biggest sin is “illiberalism” in the minds of the writer:  the unwillingness to accept contrary opinions.

Conservatives like to crow people’s opinions aren’t wrong; they’re just a different way of looking at subjects, and all opinions should be given equal countenance in the lecture hall.  The problem in academia is that it proves that yes, many opinions are wrong:  Hitler had many wrong opinions about Jews and other populations.  Reagan had wrong opinions on trickle-down economics and AIDS.  Stephen Miller has wrong opinions on immigration.  Holding different opinions doesn’t make someone’s opinions automatically legitimate.  In fact, the reason that many academic opinions are demeaned is their lack of legitimacy, not in the academic world, but in the real world.

For decades, male-dominated academia discounted the abilities of women for academics and the workplace.  In today’s colleges, women are excelling in all areas of study, just as they are in the workplace.  Conservatives at “University of Austin,” however, would say barring women from the workplace, or even rescinding their right to vote, warrants discussion.  In reality, however, it doesn’t.  Time has proven it, just like time will show the “University of Austin” ultimately failing as an academic institution.