For a brand-new university still drafting its undergraduate program, the University of Austin is attracting some pretty heavy hitters.
That’s the University of Austin—not the University of Texas at Austin—I’ll point out. It’s the school cofounded by venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, journalist Bari Weiss, evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, Harvard University professor Arthur Brooks, and others who all gathered at Lonsdale’s 11-bedroom home in West Austin one hot summer weekend to hash out what it would look like to set up a college they hope will fix academia. According to them, higher education “might be the most fractured institution of all,” as they argue campuses are stifling students from saying what they believe and “faculty are being treated like thought criminals.”
