A brave effort, but a weak foundation

Universities in the Western world are broken, and one group of academics, activists, and philanthropists has decided what we need is a brand new university. With much fanfare, the University of Austin at Texas was launched on Nov. 8, 2021. Its president is Pano Kanelos, a Shakespeare scholar and former president of St. John’s College. It boasts strong financial backing and elite advisement from the likes of Harvard’s Steven Pinker and former Harvard president Larry Summers. The new website proclaims: “We’re building a university dedicated to the fearless pursuit of truth.” Why do they need a new university to do this?

It is no secret that modern universities are in crisis. Free speech is under attack. Cancel culture is raging. Science is politicized. Western civilization is scorned. Many of the people associated with the project feel professionally threatened if they voice honest opinions where they work. Mob rule is increasingly common.

The idea of the new university emerged out of discussions between former New York Times opinion editor Bari Weiss, biologist and former Evergreen College professor Heather Heying, and historian Niall Ferguson. They plan to build a new, elite university with in-person classes. Can it work?

The deeper question is: “Can a liberal university succeed?” Clearly, this is meant to be a liberal university in the tradition of the Enlightenment. In his article introducing the university, Dr. Kanelos states that the purpose of the university is to defend “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.” That is Enlightenment iconoclasm stated very clearly.

But even the New York Times recognizes that what is being attempted here is a revival of tradition. In an article published on Nov. 8, Anemona Hartocollis correctly notes: “The planned university is a throwback to tradition in many ways.” Here we see the contradiction at the heart of this new enterprise. The motto might as well be: Preserving tradition through iconoclasm. It won’t work because it can’t work. It is anti-conservative because it is liberal, and so it will not be able to mount serious resistance to the radical, utopian, extreme, left-wing spirit of the age. It’s a simple formula borne out through history: Over time, the tug of academic respectability pulls any institution leftward unless there is a firm commitment to eternal truths.

Many of the liberals who are part of this new endeavor bear the scars of a war they have fought against the leftist takeover of the university. They have experienced firsthand the intolerance, the irrationalism, and the fanaticism that drives the far left. They have met the naked will to power, and they are repelled by it. But as Jesus told his disciples when they asked why they had been unable to drive out a demon: “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer” (Mark 9:29). The demonic forces of anti-culture that are driving the rise of illiberalism in contemporary universities are too strong for Enlightenment appeals to “civility” and “freethinking.” Postmodernism and critical theory have already routed the armies of the Enlightenment ideology, which are now in retreat.

Perhaps they can regroup here and make a desperate last stand. To that extent, the effort is certainly laudable. I willingly concede that it may work for a while. Especially during the era of the founders—who have personally experienced exile and marginalization—it may be that a balance between culture and anti-culture endures for a while. But how long before the forces of anti-reason scale the walls?

As someone tasked with leading two Bible colleges to transition into liberal arts universities over the past 30 years, my experience is that the cultural pressures on tradition are powerful and ramp up in intensity year by year. There is a battle, and it is not for the faint of heart. Many Christians are just too “nice” to stand up to the propaganda and the relentless demands for compromise. Will these political liberals have the backbone to refuse to capitulate to the mob?

Here is a warning sign: Some of those involved in this new effort have signaled their own embrace of rebellions such as same-sex marriage and expressive sexuality. When the far left came for traditional marriage, they made common cause with the radicals against Christianity and tradition because it suited them. Now that marriage has been hollowed out, and the bitter fruit of the sexual revolution has left people wounded, poorer, and lonelier—now they want to defend tradition? What they fail to see is that the freedoms they cherish are rooted in traditions, and those traditions are rooted in metaphysical and religious truths. Revolutions cannot be turned off and on with the flip of a switch.

I wish this new university project well, but I fear that the shadow they are fleeing will soon fall over them. Their new foundations are unstable from the start.