Instead of school closures, this "freedom" university is opening in Austin

Quid est veritas?
I can do this with the best of’em, I have a classical education.

There is scientific truth (a verified hypothesis), there are legal standards of truth, journalistic standards of truth…I find that the Wikipedia article on “truth” is as long as this thread. So, he’s, there isn’t even an “enduring truth” about what the concept of truth is.

And those who are involved in this endeavor aren’t fighting for any concept of “truth”, but for their values. Rarely have a read a statement as intellectually dishonest as this:

“Ninety years ago Germany had the best universities in the world. Then an ideological regime obsessed with race came to power and drove many of the best scholars out, gutting the faculties and leading to sustained decay that German universities never fully recovered from."

The “ideological regime”, viz. the Nazis, weren’t “obsessed with race”. They didn’t give a sh*t about “race” as used in the US discussion, ie African and other ethnicities “of colour” not represented Central Europe. They were obsessed with eliminating Jews in Central Europe and Jewish professors losing their jobs at universities was just a tiny, preliminary measure. Before, you know, killing them. That’s not “driving them out” as in “disinviting as a speaker, but not managing to actually fire any one”. That’s killing them. Do you consider calling conflating “disinviting as a speaker” with “killing them” an “imprecise analogy” a version of truth? I consider it a lie.

And would you say “killing anyone who has a Jewish grandparent” is the same as “putting group membership before merit” when “group membership” means “political affiliation”?

Truth? Imprecision? Intellectual dishonesty? Lie?

I’m not impressed with their search for “truth”.

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Well, @Tigerle , if you are merely saying that truth is elusive and multiple, not as O.W. Holmes once put it, “a brooding omnipresence in the sky but the skin of a living thought,” then we can do business. But if you’re saying, as many in the academy say nowadays, that it doesn’t exist at all or isn’t worth trying to arrive at because other narratives are more important, then we are talking postmodernist obscurantism. Whatever you say about the new school it is committed to the belief that open debate and disagreement is a feature, not a bug: the feature is, as Mill and Milton and all progressives believed until just the other day, it is the best way to get closer to the truth. Truth is a “possibility” achievable by humans, not something written in the sky.

Tiger, you have seized and shaken to pieces an imprudent analogy employed by one of the 26 members of the Board of Advisers. Is it your view that we are supposed to hunt in the archives of each of these members to find imprudent statements, which are then characterized as the central objective of the larger organization? That would hardly be a good faith attempt to understand what that organization is about. It is, however, very characteristic of the very mode of argument the organization deplores.

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If one is conservative and Christian with decent stats, Grove City is a good place to check out. It’s in PA in a fairly rural area, but there’s a great shopping mall nearby (or at least there was prior to Covid - no idea if that affected the mall). Wheaton (IL) has attracted a couple, but its distance from here affects it’s popularity. One a few years back went to Patrick Henry, but I never heard back from him as to his experience.

ETA: I should also add my oldest son’s college to this list for Christians and Conservatives. It’s Covenant College in GA - a small school that rarely gets mention on here. My guy was attracted to it because he was interested in microfinance and the two authors of a book he/we really liked (When Helping Hurts - How to Alleviate Poverty Without Hurting) were professors there. I think they still are, but haven’t checked. He got a terrific education and enjoyed his time there. It’s outside of Chattanooga, TN, but on top of a mountain - so great views, but a distance from shops/restaurants, etc. No one else from our school has gone there, but I’m adding it anyway. I’m also putting it into the “middle” of my recommendations because I have no idea what stats one needs to go there now. My guy had high stats, but I don’t know that they’re needed.

Those really religious and perhaps not as good stats like Geneva and Liberty. Liberty often gets dissed on boards like this due to their beliefs, but I’ve yet to see them do a poll like Hillsdale has. Maybe I’m not on the correct mailing list? I should be. I’m Christian (solid Christian) and registered Republican.

If not religious, many of our more conservative good stat students consider Bucknell or a couple have headed to Washington & Lee.

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And this will remain to be seen. Will they have a bar, and if so, how biased is it toward their side or even education in general (aka Flat Earth)?

Honestly, no one knows at this point, but I understand folks (like me) who are skeptical.

If it’s merely a conservative college that doesn’t slink into the depths for fundraising it could be worthy of consideration. If it is open to decent intellectual debate more might be interested.

I suspect they’ll still have problems attracting a majority of students due to not having bells and whistles for those who can pay and being 30K for those who need to get their education super inexpensively. But they don’t need to attract a ton. Time will tell what happens.

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What a shame that it’s changed in the way it has. Sounds like it was a terrific place before. Perhaps they need a change in leadership to restore them to where they were. A bad leader or two can really drive a place into bad spots (companies, colleges, whatever).

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I know you don’t like that survey it put out, but in what other ways has it changed that would make it inconsistent with what it once was? Certainly it embodied from the time of its founding a certain kind of old-fashioned progressivism wedded to religion and the classics. Is it possible that progressivism changed, but it didn’t?

No idea. I’m not that familiar with the school. It was merely one on my list for conservative students to consider if they were willing to travel further from home.

Their survey definitely made an anti-intellectual impression on me (in case you couldn’t tell). Readers can make their own decisions. As long as they are sending out their “survey” I have no desire to recommend them for educational reasons. It’s not a survey. It’s not something a college should be teaching or producing as a survey. Leave that to PACs.

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The very fact that we can identify “one” fairly unknown such school speaks to the merit of making available more such schools given the size of the population that is conservative and Christian.

As a Vassar alum with a kid at Brown I am keenly aware (and enthusiastically supportive) of the numerous “good places” for non religious liberal students.

I personally don’t think a student should seek a school aligned with their political or religious beliefs but view it as a personal decision. The lack of viable options for one side of the political spectrum seems conspicuous.

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Fair enough, @Creekland , but you seemed to be making a much larger point about that little school when you said that it was once a terrific place but is no more.

One observation about the history of this school and a certain continuity in that history: It embraced these highly progressive causes when they were controversial fighting faiths, not merely the received wisdoms of their time. That maverick strain has persisted in its educational DNA through many cultural and political changes. I can’t help but admire it.

If this describes a genuine belief, then the term obscurantism would not apply.

Not sure whether these are genuine beliefs. The obscurantism often makes it hard to tell. Certainly the prose employed could be so called.

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So you’re in favor of colleges/universities stooping to such levels so people associate these “surveys” with higher education? It seems that way from your posts TBH.

I don’t want to see any college promoting that. If a different university put out a similar, but opposite, intentionally biased “survey” I would hope people would post about it on a college board dedicated to education. I’d cross that one off my list too. It doesn’t matter to me if it’s liberal or conservative.

As I said before, I’m a facts person. The fact is, that’s not an educational survey. It’s low level marketing and they’ve put their name with it trying to make it look like something it isn’t.

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Well, you’ve got your blood up about that dumb survey, @Creekland , but why are you trying to make me an apologist not only for it but for some wider notion of “colleges stooping to such levels”? That’s simply a non sequitur: I’ve said nothing at all on that subject - except just now: it was dumb. Frankly, fixating on it hardly seems like the best way of getting to the heart of the educational mission of a school. It sounds more like a gotcha move.

Actually, I lose no sleep over it at all. I just adjust my life and actions accordingly, the same as I do when any business opts to do something I agree or disagree with. I’m pretty sure doing things like that puts me in the majority of humans. We all make our choices based upon what we feel is important in life - and ignore the rest.

Colleges sometimes do go in reverse to their historical legacies. For example:

  • Liberty Hall Academy enrolled the first Black student in US higher education. However, that legacy was not continued until (as eventually renamed) Washington and Lee University enrolled its next Black student in 1966, and its “Confederate” image limited its appeal to many students.
  • Rice University was originally chartered as a free university limited to White students. In the 1960s, the school changed both aspects (removing the exclusion against non-White students and charging tuition), though it had to fight off alumni lawsuits in the process.

@Creekland If you’re looking at conservative Christian colleges that support open debate, I’ll put in a good word for Hope College in Holland MI. It’s one of the CTCL. It’s definitely conservative by CC standards, but it’s also not AS conservative as people here probably think and has changed in recent years. For one thing, the school has become more ecumenical with an increasing percent of the student body identifying as Catholic (versus Protestant identities such as Reformed or evangelical). Hope also appointed a new President who was inaugurated in Fall 2019. He’s 42 years old and has impressed me by how he’s navigated the pandemic and moved the college toward greater tolerance and inclusivity. He has several times remarked that Hope is a college not a church, and as such is not in the business of telling you what you have to believe. He has said he wants to avoid what he sees as the extremes of “the more prescriptive Christian colleges” on the one side, and elite secular colleges on the other side, where he feels that too many topics are not open for honest debate because they are considered settled. He says he wants students and faculty to be able to engage in the inquiry and wrestle with difficult questions.

“We can’t force students to believe something,” President Matthew Scogin said. “What conclusions (students) come up with is up to them. We’re simply trying to put the questions on the table. The secular schools don’t even put the questions on the table. Other (more conservative colleges) are mirroring churches. Churches should be about answers. We’re not a church; we’re a college. It comes down to inquiry, not answers.”

The article below discusses a range of Christian colleges including Hope College.

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Here’s an interesting article by a Hillsdale graduate on how the college is doing on race in the many years since their founding.

Hillsdale is also known for voicing it’s displeasure about pro-LGBTQ+ rights, including sending out a mass e-mail to students, staff, faculty, and alumni asking them to pray against the “evil” that is same-sex marriage during the deliberation of Obergefell v. Hodges.

I don’t think anyone expects Hillsdale to embrace LGBTQ±friendly causes, but maybe consider that contradiction (as well as the contradictions discussed in the article I linked to above) when touting their “progressive” beginnings.

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@Corinthian and @splash1 , thanks to both of you for two very interesting articles.

The Hillsdale grad writing the second one was slightly disgruntled and was advocating changes from his own progressive perspective. But that perspective in itself suggests that the college didn’t stifle him, nor did he say that it did. What I found most convincing was his complaint that the college should be making greater efforts through scholarships and even affirmative action to recruit black students. Whether it should alter its curriculum, political orientation, or classical/religious ethos just for that purpose does not necessarily follow. And what he saw as the failure of the school to take positions as an institution on matters of racial justice makes an unwarranted assumption: that that’s the function of an educational institution. Other schools - notably the University of Chicago - as a matter of principle take no positions on public issues not directly connected to their educational mission. That’s a policy that at the very least is debatable, not a foregone conclusion.

The history of these schools in the first piece was most interesting. The conflict between religion and secular Enlightenment values is clear in the case of the ones that have stayed close to their religious roots. It strikes me, however, that even those that began Christian but became secularized (including some of the ivies) still have a whiff of that old-time Protestant true-believing spirit in them. Social Justice can be a religion too and just as much as any other religion can be in tension with an ethos of dispassionate independent inquiry.

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Interesting perspective from Malcolm Gladwell: https://malcolmgladwell.bulletin.com/263138299110591

Will this be a cause of “fistfights” as @Creekland suggests? Or are students still capable of discussing different views without that?

Without explicitly stating it, Gladwell makes a good case for why the hysteria about supposedly “leftist” universities is overblown. After all, if the best place for liberal students is a conservative school, then wouldn’t the best place for conservative students be the opposite?