A group of intellectual mavericks made splashy headlines in 2021 when they announced plans to launch a new university in Texas called the University of Austin.
Backed by a gallery of celebrity intellectuals—its trustees and directors include former Harvard president Larry Summers, Brown University economist Glenn Loury, former ACLU President Nadine Strossen, civil rights leader and former congressman Andrew Young, and the journalists Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan—the startup would be dedicated to the classic ideals of open inquiry, Socratic debate, and the unfettered pursuit of truth. The University of Austin is just one of a number of recent academic experiments challenging what many conservatives and independents see as a stifling leftist monoculture on campus they deem illiberal, censorious, and anti-intellectual….