(Photo: Wikimedia Commons and nyu.edu via Washington Square News)
New York — by Carmo Moniz
This story was originally published on New York University’s Washington Square News.
Two NYU professors are among a group of intellectuals who plan to form a university founded under “the fearless pursuit of truth.” Former Stern professor Niall Ferguson and current Stern professor Jonathan Haidt joined a group of intellectuals to promote “illiberalism” and “freedom of inquiry” with the University of Austin, styled as UATX — which has no campus, course catalog, faculty or accreditation.
Without providing details, the college claims it seeks to launch a summer program next year, graduate programs by 2023 and an undergraduate college by 2024. Ferguson, who is an advisory board member and founding trustee of the university, described its founding as “the most hope-giving event in higher ed in years” on social media.
“The erosion of academic freedom and the ascendancy of an illiberal ‘successor ideology’ known to its critics as wokeism, which manifests itself as career-ending ‘cancelations’ and speaker disinvitations, but less visibly generates a pervasive climate of anxiety and self-censorship,” Ferguson wrote in a November Bloomberg opinion essay.
Read the rest of the story at Washington Square News.