State legislatures are a greater threat to free speech than the social climate on college campuses
With debates surrounding cancel culture and freedom of speech on college campuses growing more and more contentious, one group of academics claim to have found the magic solution: creating a new university. Condemning what they call “a pervasive climate of anxiety and self-censorship” on college campuses, the group announced last week that they will be founding the University of Austin. While the University’s backers are a diverse group of prominent higher ed critics, they all share “a common dismay at the state of modern academia and a belief that it is time for something new.” They allege that modern universities have sacrificed the pursuit of truth, and turned into breeding grounds for “liberal intolerance and administrative overreach.” By forming their own university, they hope to reestablish open inquiry as the central guiding principle of a university and promote greater diversity of thought.
But have universities really abandoned the principles of open inquiry for liberal orthodoxy? It quickly becomes apparent that such claims are quite strained. Consider the dire terms Pano Kanelos — a former St. John’s University president and a founding trustee of UATX — used to describe the state of higher education in his announcement last week: “We had thought such censoriousness was possible only under oppressive regimes in distant lands. But it turns out that fear can become...
The Management of Dangote Petroleum Refinery and Petrochemicals has noted with concern the circulation of unfounded and misleading claims suggesting that its petroleum products are exported to Lom...