The University of Austin (UATX), a new school proclaiming its dedication to freedom of thought and discourse, is tightly intertwined with—and quickly racking up support from—a powerful and pointedly vocal group of venture capitalists.
The school has put down roots in the now hometown of Joe Lonsdale, the cofounder of Palantir who runs the multibillion-dollar Austin-based venture firm 8VC. Over a hot weekend at Lonsdale’s enormous 11-bedroom home on the west side of Austin, a group that included former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, and Harvard University professor Arthur Brooks hashed out what it would look like to set up a new university, explains Pano Kanelos, president of the University of Austin, in an interview with Coins2Day. Kanelos, whom Weiss enticed away from his role as president of St. John’s College, says he was drawn to the various personalities all converging over the importance of higher education.
“We just all agreed—I would say the spirit of it was there are a lot of things in the world [that] are broken now,” Kanelos says, using language notably synonymous with the slogan of 8VC, plastered on the homepage of the firm’s website: “The world is broken, let’s fix it.”
Even Netscape cofounder and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen is getting involved. While it is unclear whether he, like Lonsdale, has donated to the school, he will join Lonsdale as a lecturer for the university’s second rendition of its academic program called “Forbidden Courses”—named such because UATX argues the “current [political, social, and cultural] turbulence” prevents people from “encountering one another honestly and authentically,” according to the school’s prospectus. The free program taking place in June will delve into questions around science and religion, race, gender politics, and conservatism, among other things, and participants will be reading everything from books by Edmund Burke and Thomas Sowell to selections from the Book of Genesis. Web3 startup Spindl CEO Antonio García Martínez and Guillermo Rauch, CEO of web development unicorn Vercel, an 8VC portfolio company, are on the roster as lecturers too. (Founders Fund vice president Mike Solana had been scheduled to lecture as well, though he has since pulled out because of a conflict, according to UATX. MaC Venture Capital’s Adrian Fenty and a16z’s Katherine Boyle are listed as speakers for another program, the university’s yearlong entrepreneurship and leadership Polaris fellowship, according to the UATX prospectus). The tech founders and venture capitalists will be joining people like economist Glenn Loury, teaching on racial inequality in America, and author Katie Roiphe, who is teaching how to write about sexual politics. Last year philosopher Kathleen Stock and economist Deirdre McCloskey debated gender and transgender issues in an hour-long session UATX later published on YouTube.
Financially, venture capitalists and tech CEOs are stepping up with cash. Kanelos estimated that approximately one-third of the school’s nearly $150 million in donations have come from individuals working within the venture capital or tech ecosystem. (He declined to name specific individuals who had donated, and a spokesperson later said the school wouldn’t confirm exact figures. Andreessen, Solana, Lonsdale, and Rauch didn’t respond to requests for comment regarding lectures. Weiss declined an interview.)
“We’ve had so many people actually reach out to us and say, Can we get involved? Can we do a seminar? Can we run a workshop?” Kanelos told Coins2Day from the university’s newly obtained campus space in Austin, located on the top floor of a building on Congress Avenue. “[Andreessen and Solana] were eager to [lecture] when presented with the opportunity.”
The new university has garnered an unusual degree of attention for a school that is still drafting an undergraduate program and is still waiting on the state of Texas for authorization to offer degrees and charge for courses before it can start the accreditation process. Part of the attention stems from the school’s initial key members, many of whom have stirred up criticism based on their critiques of cancel culture, “woke”-ness, and sometimes affirmative action or the DEI movement. In a Bloomberg piece about the launch of the university, board member Niall Ferguson wrote: “Academic freedom dies in wokeness.”
Some of the frustration comes from personal experience of those involved. Philosophy professor Kathleen Stock, for example, who is a faculty fellow at UATX, was accused of transphobia after publishing a book about gender identity and ended up resigning at the University of Sussex after experiencing harassment. (Stock and UATX reject these claims against her.)
Lonsdale himself had been banned from campus as well as teaching or mentoring students at Stanford University, based on an undisclosed relationship he had with a student he was mentoring in 2012 that eventually led to accusations of sexual assault and a lawsuit as detailed in a New York Times Magazine story. (Lonsdale vehemently denied the allegations, filed a countersuit for defamation, and published correspondence between the two of them that combated the claims; the parties settled at the end of 2015, and the Stanford bans have since been lifted.) When asked whether the allegations against Lonsdale had ever come up when forming the University of Austin, Kanelos described it as a “nonissue” and said that no one else has ever asked him about it. (Lonsdale didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment.)
Kanelos protests any notion that the university is intended to combat cancel culture, and goes so far as to say, “We’re not allowed to use the word woke…That’s just not who we are,” Kanelos says. “You don’t build a university to be against things. You build a university because you believe in things. We’re not here to cancel cancel culture: Why would you spend your time doing that? We’re here because we believe in and we have foundational principles: We believe in open inquiry. We believe in freedom of conscience. We believe in civil discourse.”
The school has had some of its early advisors step back, such as the University of Chicago chancellor and president emeritus Robert Zimmer, who parted ways with UATX shortly after its launch, noting that he disagreed with “a number of statements about higher education in general, largely quite critical” that the university made at the time. Psychologist Steven Pinker, another early advisory board member, resigned around the same time, though he didn’t elaborate other than to say on Twitter that it was a “mutual & amicable agreement,” that he wished the university well, and that he wouldn’t be commenting further (the university published a statement regarding these departures on its website). Heather Heying, a founding trustee of the institution, published a resignation letter from the board in December, noting that it was “better to separate myself from the University, than to have my name be attached to an institution that does not represent my scientific and pedagogical values.”
Kanelos says more than 5,000 academics have reached out, some of whom expressed interest of teaching at the university. At a year and a half, the school is more than halfway through its fundraising goal to raise $250 million and has more than 2,200 donors. Its first class of 27 Polaris fellows, part of its yearlong leadership and entrepreneurship program, will graduate next month. And it’s getting its campus ready for 2024, when it plans to enroll the first class into its four-year undergraduate program, which the university expects will cost students around $32,500 a year.
Kanelos says, despite the criticism, the overwhelming message he has received is that the vision of UATX is resonating. Clearly it’s resonating with at least some venture capitalists too.
