‘Woke’ is waning: University of Austin opts for merit-based initiatives

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A private liberal arts university in Texas is reportedly not following the expected route of employing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.

Instead, the inaugural group of students to attend the University of Austin (UATX) will find merit-based policies as well as open debates and freedom of speech protections.

“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,” Michael Shires, UATX vice president, told Fox News Digital.

“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.”

He added that 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.”

The school’s model, bucking the DEI trend that overtook educational institutions, may be one that can be adopted by others as President-elect Donald Trump returns to office. The incoming president has already made it clear that he will be targeting “woke” policies in federal agencies and “excessively large private universities” could see lawsuits and taxes if they continue with the initiatives.

Former New York Times reporter Bari Weiss and other academics and public figures founded the school in 2021 and, thanks to support from private donors, the school’s first cohort is enjoying free tuition.

(Video Credit: 60 Minutes)

Shires said determining cancel culture and censorship depends on “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 person, and you’re debating and maybe even disagreeing on ideas,” he said.

Open classroom discussions are encouraged at UATX which utilizes the Chatham House Rule which allows for open dialogue without attributing or revealing the identity of the speaker.

The university’s “students are all over the place, ideologically, politically, philosophically,” according to Shires.

“We are an institute, so we don’t believe the institution should have a position or an orthodoxy or an ideology,” he said.

One of the university’s founders, Niall Furgeson, told “60 Minutes” in a recent report, “University forms the way you think about the world for the rest of your life, if our universities are screwed up and I believe they are then that will screw up America as a whole quite quickly.”

“We are putting resources into finding talent of an intellectual variety. And if you’re interested in diversity, I recommend you look at the social backgrounds of our students, at the family circumstances of our students,” he said.

The donors who helped launch the “anti-woke” university include Harvard graduate and Trump-backing billionaire Bill Ackman as well as real estate developer Harlan Crow and liberal, legal scholar Nadine Strossen – who led the ACLU for two decades.

“My concern is to try to eliminate the underlying discriminatory attitudes. You don’t do that by punishing expression,” Strossen said. “You do that through education, through more speech, not less.”

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Originally from New York, Powers graduated from New York University and eventually made her way to sunny South Florida. Powers also contributes to BizPac Review.