Billionaires back a new ‘anti-woke’ university

Rich investors have injected $297 million into the University of Austin, an institution of just 92 students, attempting restore ‘Western accomplishments’ and boast former PM Tony Abbott among its supporters.

Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott has spoken at the University of Austin, proclaiming it will be ‘one of the great universities of the world’ in 100 years and its first students will be ‘pioneers’. Picture: UATX

Billionaires frustrated with elite colleges are banding behind a fledgling school in Texas that boasts 92 students.

Trader Jeff Yass, real-estate developer Harlan Crow and investor Len Blavatnik are among the high-profile people donating to the University of Austin, or UATX. The new school has raised roughly (AU$297 million) $200 million so far -- including (AU$52 million) $35 million from Yass -- a huge sum for a tiny school without any alumni to tap.

Crow, a major GOP donor, was an early backer. “Much of higher ed today seems to want to reject Western accomplishments and the accomplishments of Western civilizations in their entirety,” he said. “Many people think that’s a bad idea.” Crow said he expects UATX to encourage ideological diversity.

Crow and his wife, Kathy, have hosted several events for the school at their Dallas home and let the school use space in an office park he owns for its summer program, provocatively called Forbidden Courses. Crow has been a controversial benefactor to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He has said he has never discussed pending cases with Thomas.

Frustration with the state of debate and levels of unrest at prestigious universities has spurred some of the richest Americans to flex their financial muscle.

Billionaires like Marc Rowan and Bill Ackman led campaigns to oust Ivy League presidents they viewed as being too soft on antisemitism on campus following Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israel and the war in Gaza. Many wealthy donors believe elite colleges are overwhelmingly progressive -- and are attracted to the idea of an alternative school that says it encourages meritocratic achievement and myriad viewpoints.

Enter UATX, which welcomed its initial class of first-years last month in a former department store near the Texas Capitol. The school says it is nonpartisan and refers to its mission as the “fearless pursuit of truth.” Its foundational curriculum marries classical texts -- students were given a copy of Homer’s Odyssey upon enrollment -- with an emphasis on entrepreneurship.

Billionaires are backing the 'anti-woke' University of Austin, a three-year-old establishment based in the progressive Texas city. Picture: UATX

A video posted to the school’s YouTube page contrasts scenes of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments at other schools with a civil UATX seminar. The video ends with the message, “They burn, we build.” Officials talk about UATX in lofty terms. Some cite the University of Chicago as an aspirational role model. President Pano Kanelos called students and faculty “pioneers” and “heroes” in his convocation address. “What is truly historic is that which sends the trajectory of history, and lives lived within the stream of history, shooting in a direction other than that towards which they were tending,” Kanelos said.

The effort to launch the school was announced in fall 2021. Founders include venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, a conservative who is donating to Donald Trump, and journalist Bari Weiss, who has described her news startup, the Free Press, as a check to mainstream media’s liberal orthodoxy.

Yass, who has long pushed for school choice and is UATX’s biggest donor, said in a statement, “Higher education needs competition. It is time for philanthropists to start new colleges in keeping with the way American learning institutions were founded.” PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who has long known Lonsdale and has separately been paying students to skip college, made a small gift. Former energy trader John Arnold and his wife, Laura, who are advocates of criminal-justice reform and open debate on campus, are major donors. Alex Magaro, co-president of investment firm Meritage Group, gave $10 million last month.

The campus turmoil over the war in Gaza accelerated fundraising, school administrators said, including from those who felt universities selectively applied free-speech principles. Blavatnik, who is Jewish, gave $1 million through his family foundation in the days after Hamas attacked Israel. He later paused his giving to Harvard University, his alma mater.

Daniel Lubetzky, founder of snack-bar maker Kind Snacks and a son of a Holocaust survivor, donated early on and continued to give after the attacks. He became increasingly alarmed at the rise of ” us vs. them” thinking on campuses. Active discussions are ongoing with others, including Ackman, who was harshly critical of elite colleges’ diversity, equity and inclusion efforts and their handling of antisemitism on campus.

“It took what happened in the wake of Oct. 7 on the major campuses to convince Wall Street, to convince people in Silicon Valley, that there really was a problem” with higher education, said historian Niall Ferguson, another school founder.

Niall Ferguson, UATX founder, speaks at the Austin home of tycoon Lorne Abony. Picture: UATX

A larger fundraising campaign is expected to start in January. Whether prospective students find UATX as attractive as donors remains to be seen. UATX currently lacks accreditation and can receive it only after its first class graduates. As a way to offset the risk students are taking, the first class of students is receiving full-tuition scholarships worth about $130,000. More than 40% of the students in the class hail from Texas and a third are female.

Executives from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Boring Company are helping to develop the school’s engineering curriculum. Lonsdale, the school’s board chair, is gifting a few acres of land outside Austin, adjacent to SpaceX and Boring, for a science and technology center. UATX is also searching for a main campus.

While UATX says it isn’t an explicitly political school, some of its most prominent backers are big donors to Republican candidates and causes, including Yass and Crow. Yass co-founded trading giant Susquehanna International Group, which has a big stake in TikTok.

Kanelos, the University of Austin’s president, said the school’s top 10 donors vary in political ideology but that, “Everyone who gives to us is a critic of higher education.”

WSJ