University of Austin split underscores how colleges can close minds

David French argues that colleges can either expand or entrench students' minds, and he uses the University of Austin (UATX) as a recent example of how new institutions can reproduce the very problems they were meant to solve. French writes that many students arrive on campus with strong preexisting convictions and that the best professors urge them to question those assumptions.

He also notes a national survey in which a majority of students reported feeling intimidated about voicing true opinions on hot-button topics, and he points to campus policies such as speech codes and bias response teams that have chilled debate. UATX was launched in 2021 with founders who included Niall Ferguson, Bari Weiss and Joe Lonsdale and early advisers such as Nadine Strossen, Steven Pinker and Jonathan Haidt.

A Politico Magazine account by Evan Mandery, French says, reported divisions inside the school after an April 2, 2025, meeting in which, according to visiting professor Michael Lind, Lonsdale told staff faculty they had to subscribe to four principles: anticommunism, antisocialism, opposition to identity politics and anti-Islamism.

French reports that many of the original cohort have since departed and that defenders called Mandery’s piece a “hit piece,” while Lonsdale posted on X defending aggressive purges of “commies.” French concludes that the UATX story is unfinished and that the school may be at a crossroads.

Key Topics

Culture, Joe Lonsdale, Bari Weiss, Niall Ferguson, Speech Codes, Bias Response Teams