The University of Austin (UATX) welcomed its first cohort of students this fall, and instead of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, the private liberal arts university is touting freedom of speech, open debates and merit-based admissions.
“They talk about safe spaces. We want to create an environment that’s safe for ideas to be explored and where there’s not risks to the student for taking positions as they explore,” UATX Vice President Michael Shires told Fox News Digital.
The university, which is currently unaccredited, was founded in 2021 by a group of academics and public figures, including former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss, who were concerned about the decline of free speech across college campuses.
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UATX accepts students based on merit, not DEI initiatives. (iStock | University of Austin)
While its inaugural students are not eligible for federal financial aid, the university has had significant support from private donors, including billionaire Bill Ackman and activist Harlan Crow, allowing it to offer free tuition to its first cohort.
“As we look ahead, obviously this is a time when people are trying to figure out how to foster free speech on campus,” Shires said. “Oct. 7 was a critical juncture in the last year and a half that really showed some of the holes in the environment we’re in.”
While the university was founded prior to Donald Trump’s re-election, Shires said the “Trump administration is an exciting time for us to build an institution in an environment where there’s value on open discourse and dialogue.”
Trump has signaled he would also roll back DEI and “woke” policies within federal agencies, including dismantling the Department of Education, signaling a potential for more schools to adopt UATX’s model. He has also said he would sue and tax “excessively large private universities” who implement “woke” policies.
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The threat of what constitutes hate speech has been a major concern for many public universities in recent years – leading to the rise of what critics call censorship and cancel culture – but Shires said defining the term depends “what are the value systems you’re applying to those.”
“And you know, for us, that’s our goal, is to create an environment where there’s civil discourse and where, basically, respect for the other…
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