Less than a year since its inception, the freedom-of-speech-focused University of Austin (UATX) had already gone live with a big splash of media attention, a team of heavy-hitting academic and tech executive partners, and a bullish timeline and plan to raise $250 million to rethink higher education.
“It is time to restore the meaning to those old school mottos. Light. Truth. The wind of freedom. You will find all three at our new university in Austin,” read the initial announcement, written by president Pano Kanelos and published in journalist Bari Weiss’s Substack in Nov. 2021, approximately six months after Weiss, Kanelos, venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, Harvard professor Arthur Brooks, evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, and the Hoover Institution’s Niall Ferguson got together to make plans for a new institution.
