Paul Kengor: Creating Free Speech U

“I’m caught in an insane asylum, everybody’s gone crazy, I will work for half.”

So said a desperate professor to Peter Boghossian, who this week announced the creation of a new college, the University of Austin, committed to “freedom of inquiry, freedom of conscience and civil discourse.” The announcement was posted by free-speech liberal Bari Weiss and ex-New York Times columnist and editor (and Pittsburgh native), one among many liberals fed up with the intolerance of leftist ideologues.

This will not be a conservative college, says Boghossian, but one genuinely seeking to uphold academic freedom from all sides. Professors, conservatives and liberals alike are sick of the cancel culture and hostile environment.

“They’re desperate to get out,” says Boghossian. “They can’t stand the illiberalism. They can’t stand the censoriousness, they can’t stand the diversity statements, they can’t stand pretending to believe something that not only do they not believe, they just know it is false, but they can’t do anything about it lest they receive accusations of bigotry or discrimination.” He says that “hundreds of college professors” nationwide contacted him pleading to join the new university mere hours after its announcement.

Boghossian affirms that the principal purpose of any university ought to be “free speech, free inquiry, the open exchange of ideas.”

It should indeed. As conservatives like myself have insisted for decades, observing this beast growing uglier and nastier, the one diversity that ought to matter most at any university is diversity of ideas. And yet, that is plainly not the case. When campus leftists call for “diversity,” they’re focusing on race, gender and sexual orientation, with diversity often not extended to those who disagree. Those who dissent may find themselves cast out of the diversity spectrum — labeled, smeared, repressed, harassed and sometimes pushed out.

As the late, great (true) liberal Nat Hentoff once objected, “Free speech for me but not for thee.”

True liberals agree with conservatives that this has been going on to such a crass extent that universities have become the most intolerant institutions in America.

Among those tired of the toxic environment are professors from this area. I hear from them. They email me in confidence, nervously pleading with me not to share their names out of fear of being vilified.

My alma mater, the University of Pittsburgh, continues to create discord and division through its diversity office. Professors are afraid to speak out. One of the few doing so is Michael Vanyukov, a professor of pharmaceutical sciences, psychiatry and human genetics, who in 1990 came to America as a Soviet refugee. He has openly taken a stand against Pitt’s Office for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. Others dare not join him out of fear.

In fact, many such professors nationwide are looking for an escape hatch — an actual safe space to teach. The University of Austin seems to be offering one (and surely will not be the last). It is currently seeking accreditation. It will begin its first courses as “pilot programs.”

It will take time, but it’s worth the effort. Many professors and students alike will be willing to wait. They’re desperate for a refuge from the academic asylum.