Manifesto for a new university in Austin

[pgher]

I subscribe to a daily email from https://www.theflipside.io/. Today's message was about this university. The Flip Side provides some excerpts from journalism on both the left and the right for a given topic. I find it a good way to stay balanced.

[Wahoo Redux]

ETA: they (BLM) also oppose belief in the value of the nuclear family even though statistics show that boys who grow up with no father in the home are much more likely to get into legal trouble, crime, drugs, mental depression, less likely to finish school etc.

Growing up on the west coast, it was the far-left that spent their time distorting the Reagan milieu.  The far-left was not always wrong but they could be counted on to predictably misunderstand, mischaracterize, and axiomatically oppose anything the Gipper and his ilk did.

Now the polarities have switched.

In spirit I support BLM.  Many of its followers, however, do not adhere to the spirit of BLM-----we are too angry and frustrated a culture to behave rationally on all sides.

Being an intellectual, you should be smarter than to make statements like the one above, mahagonny. 

This is what BLM says about the family:

We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with
their contexts.

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children.
We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work "double shifts" so that they
can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each
other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our
children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

May I suggest that you take your commentary over to Brietballs or Disqus or One American Nutballs, mahagonny.

[mahagonny]

ETA: they (BLM) also oppose belief in the value of the nuclear family even though statistics show that boys who grow up with no father in the home are much more likely to get into legal trouble, crime, drugs, mental depression, less likely to finish school etc.

Growing up on the west coast, it was the far-left that spent their time distorting the Reagan milieu.  The far-left was not always wrong but they could be counted on to predictably misunderstand, mischaracterize, and axiomatically oppose anything the Gipper and his ilk did.

Now the polarities have switched.

In spirit I support BLM.  Many of its followers, however, do not adhere to the spirit of BLM-----we are too angry and frustrated a culture to behave rationally on all sides.

Being an intellectual, you should be smarter than to make statements like the one above, mahagonny. 

This is what BLM says about the family:

We practice empathy. We engage comrades with the intent to learn about and connect with
their contexts.

We make our spaces family-friendly and enable parents to fully participate with their children.
We dismantle the patriarchal practice that requires mothers to work "double shifts" so that they
can mother in private even as they participate in public justice work.

We disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement by supporting each
other as extended families and "villages" that collectively care for one another, especially our
children, to the degree that mothers, parents, and children are comfortable.

May I suggest that you take your commentary over to Brietballs or Disqus or One American Nutballs, mahagonny.

Wy would supporting each other as extended families disrupt anything rather than reinforce it, and why would anyone want it to do that?
Since you are intellectual who cares, perhaps you should offer to help them craft a coherent mission statement that motivates people to want to lend a hand. Except they wouldn't let you, because you're white, so they think you are a problem in their lives, and therefore incapable of thinking about them helpfully other than apologizing for the space you take up. Which is part of trouble they're in.

the 'patriarchal practice' part just confuses me. what does the village do for the mother so she won't have to work double shifts that a father/husband in the home wouldn't do better?

I like this writer:

https://www.newsweek.com/its-time-black-america-break-democratic-party-opinion-1649223

https://www.newsweek.com/systemic-racism-real-we-black-americans-must-heal-ourselves-too-opinion-1621162

[Wahoo Redux]

Breitbart, mahagonny.  It's calling you. 

[dismalist]

I subscribe to a daily email from https://www.theflipside.io/. Today's message was about this university. The Flip Side provides some excerpts from journalism on both the left and the right for a given topic. I find it a good way to stay balanced.

That is quite intelligent!

Rather than go through the pro-con litany again [I'm for competition, intense competition], let me cite something from the message that is easily forgotten

The university is a joint project of a host of luminaries from across the political spectrum who have in common a commitment to open debate and civil dialogue.

Across the political spectrum!

[Caracal]

Colleges are failing and retrenching all over North America, and these people want to start a new one.

Man, that is one big outgassing of conservative frustration.

No, man, that's healthy competition. :-)

Everyone likes competition in the markets in which they buy. Everyone hates it in the markets in which they sell.

Sure, they can start a college if they want. I suspect they are misreading the market, however. The vast majority of students aren't concerned about cancel culture (whatever the hell that means) at their university, or any of this ideological stuff. That leaves the rest and I doubt they can really deliver on any of that.

[Sun_Worshiper]

Good article in the Guardian today on this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/nov/17/university-austin-anti-woke-college

[mamselle]

I wonder what Rip van Winkle would say?

One of the issues with remaining somnambulent is the loss of those 20 years (or however many) to the potential for love.

Wasting all one's time either hating, or sleeping, doesn't sound like much of a recipe for delight in one's life.

M.

[WWUpdate]

Sure, they can start a college if they want. I suspect they are misreading the market, however. The vast majority of students aren't concerned about cancel culture (whatever the hell that means) at their university, or any of this ideological stuff. That leaves the rest and I doubt they can really deliver on any of that.

Precisely. The real divide on this issue isn't based on race, but on age. Young people are far less upset about "wokeism," "cancel culture," and CRT than their elders. Their life experiences are different and so is their value system. From The Atlantic:

Indeed, the biggest differences in attitudes toward these questions appear to break along age lines: People over 50 were significantly more likely than those ages 18 to 29 to agree that "America is becoming too politically correct"; that "critical race theory is a serious threat to public schools, workplaces, and the federal government"; or that "affirmative action has become so prevalent that white people now face reverse discrimination in hiring." Fully 68 percent of people over 65 said America is too politically correct. Meanwhile, the greatest support for the tearing down of Confederate statues, for the use of gender-neutral pronouns, for defunding the police, and for saying "Latinx" or "pregnant people" was among respondents under 40—yet these views still represented a minority of overall respondents. "The more 'woke' attitudes, respecting pronouns—those are really things being driven by a younger generation," says Natalie Jackson, the director of research at the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

It's also possible that young people who aren't yet in college, or who will never go to college, are becoming more progressive. "Students were showing up to campus with these ideas," says Greg Lukianoff, the president of the free-speech group Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, who has also contributed to The Atlantic.

You can read the entire article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/11/young-people-college-grads-wokeness/620674/

[apl68]

Ross Douthat at the NYT (Don't roll your eyes at me or shut your mind off!  You might not agree with him, but Ross Douthat can hardly be written off as a mindless Trumpian or what have you) has an interesting take.  He talks about how it has been a very long time since anybody has tried to establish an innovative new institution of higher education of any sort anywhere in the U.S.  Whether one likes or dislikes what U of Austin's would-be founders are trying to do, couldn't we use some fresh institutions of higher learning?  Excerpt:

I've argued before that conservatives should favor establishing national public universities, under bipartisan supervision and with a mandate to cultivate ideological diversity, rather than fighting endless battles at the state level over cutting funding or programs or blocking tenure appointments they dislike.

But the left, too, which has its own litany of complaints about the corporate university, should see advantages in establishing novel institutions. Forgiving yesterday's student debt is well and good, but I suspect that if you took the billions of dollars of higher-ed money being pondered in the Build Back Better plan and set up a group of national public universities aimed at offering low-cost educations to low-income Americans, you would do more good than sluicing it through the system that saddled all those kids with debt in the first place.

And for that matter, if you're the kind of progressive donor or foundation that's given generously to the initiatives and ideas that the University of Austin's would-be founders regard as threatening to academic freedom, wouldn't you want to see your own vision of the university realized with full integrity somewhere, instead of being compromised by its association with historically tainted institutions? I probably would not send my children to Ibram X. Kendi College, but I would consider it a healthier expression of antiracist ideology than a bunch of diversity programs layered throughout the corporate-university bureaucracy.

The absence of such true experiments tends to confirm one of my working theories of our era — namely, that you can tell that some of the talk about roiling crisis and radical transformation is overblown because of how tightly people cling to existing power centers, and how few are willing to strike out on their own.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/10/opinion/university-of-austin-colleges.html

[downer]

I have quite a lot of time for Ross Douthat. I liked it when he was doing a NYT podcast. His high minded denouncements of modern decadence make me smile, and I admire him for taking a stand, even if I don't agree with it.

But here I think we can poke fun at the U Austin self-promotion and deride some of the people associated with it, while being open to the possibility of good initiatives in higher ed.

[Parasaurolophus]

Via Leiter, this is surely of interest:

University of Austin: Who is in charge?
Pano ("Peter") Kanelos, the founding President of the University of Austin, has a curious history.  Reader Caleb Owens writes:

For a few years, he was Dean of the honors college at Valparaiso University. It's no coincidence that his time there  ended shortly after this went down:

https://www.chicagotribune.com/suburbs/post-tribune/ct-ptb-charter-hearing-chesterton-st-0914-20160915-story.html

In short, he tried to start a charter school, and it was a total flop, meeting public resistance from all angles. (The one thing I have ever seen to local left and right in that town unified over, in fact!) In hindsight, this can be seen as a comical sort of warm-up act for Austin U, although there are some other very telling parallels. For instance:

"The school's application indicated an intention to lease a property located at 700 N. County Road 50W in Valparaiso, which is owned by St. Iakovos Greek Orthodox Church, for two years and erect 12 modular classroom buildings. But the Rev. Jim Greanias said he was blindsided by the plan. He said that Kanelos, who is a parishioner, had mentioned the idea to him as recently as late spring, but there was "never a formal proposal made." The property is home to a garage and a portion of the church's community center."

Or:

"The truthfulness of the school's application was questioned by several speakers. In the application, board members mention they approached several groups and individuals, including the Chicago Street Theater, Valparaiso Mayor Jon Costas and Frataccia. But CST board member Kelley Weisenbacher, who admitted she is neutral on the school, said the theater was never approached by school backers, and Costas said Monday at a Valparaiso City Council meeting that he had no recollection of meeting with school representatives. Frataccia said he met with them, but the application said nothing about his negative impression of the school."

The situation represented by this last quote, in particular, brings to mind the Pinker and Zimmer situation, which (I believe) had something to do with misrepresenting their affiliation with Austin U. In short, with the charter school, he collected a list of community organizations with little context, and then presented them as sponsors. In some cases, he appears to have not even contacted them at all.

[marshwiggle]

Sure, they can start a college if they want. I suspect they are misreading the market, however. The vast majority of students aren't concerned about cancel culture (whatever the hell that means) at their university, or any of this ideological stuff. That leaves the rest and I doubt they can really deliver on any of that.

Precisely. The real divide on this issue isn't based on race, but on age. Young people are far less upset about "wokeism," "cancel culture," and CRT than their elders. Their life experiences are different and so is their value system.

Young people also have higher incidence of suicide, crime, and substance abuse.

Just because something is more popular among a particular age group, (such as young people), doesn't make it a good thing. It also doesn't mean they won't have different attitudes as they grow older.

[jimbogumbo]

I read WWU's post as suggesting the concept of this U isn't a real draw to the college age audience.

[marshwiggle]

I read WWU's post as suggesting the concept of this U isn't a real draw to the college age audience.

It would just have to be a draw to a tiny fraction to make it viable. Unless they plan to franchise it like McDonald's.