Gotta respect the grift. https://t.co/FnsjJTkrZY
— Jeff Fecke (@jkfecke) November 8, 2021
The ‘Dems in disarray, Election Edition’ takes have grown stale, President Crafty Uncle Joe has gotten his infrastructure bill passed — must be time for the latest version of ‘Because of Wokeness, We Are Gonna Galt-Gulch Our Productivity!
My “I am starting a new university because all the others are irreparably broken” t-shirt is raising questions https://t.co/D3LTBFyh7P
— Eric Rauchway (@rauchway) November 8, 2021
Every nine to twelve weeks, without fail, this crowd founds some new Institute, Foundation, Think Tank, or (now) “University”. The About Us page is always some subset of the same thirty or forty people. pic.twitter.com/HRU3l3aKZw
— Kieran Healy (@kjhealy) November 8, 2021
The Top 5 Long and Unproductive Wars of the 21st Century:
1) U.S. invasion of Afghanistan;
2) U.S. invasion of Iraq;
3) Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine;
4) Saudi intervention in Yemen;
5) First UATX faculty meeting.— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) November 8, 2021
I don't know how anyone could keep a straight face while writing this. pic.twitter.com/NcQsmF1n8k
— David Ambaras (@dambaras) November 8, 2021
The University of Substack can hire Aaron Rodgers as the QB coach for the Fighting Cancellees.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 8, 2021
Calling a timeout after my University of Austin Fightin' Tautologies are on the wrong side of a 9-0 run in the second half. They circle up around me. "I find this behavior CONCERNING," I shout, "but hardly SURPRISING given the sadly degraded state of the CONVERSATION ON CAMPUS."
— David Roth (@david_j_roth) November 8, 2021
The copy for UT Bari is absolutely indistinguishable from parody. The gap between its pretensions and the overexposed Intellectual Horse Paste Web mediocrities running it is like a 3-year-old going to a routine play date in a tuxedo pic.twitter.com/znnTGPD06s
— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) November 8, 2021
*andrew sullivan on video in joker makeup* "i heard someone's been saying some not-very-nice things about my telos of truth"
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) November 9, 2021
I enjoy the guys in the comments insisting that they hire more racists.
sorry 'experts in human diversity'
— James Palmer (@BeijingPalmer) November 8, 2021
Or perhaps that's "seeking" accreditation.https://t.co/vARsQgW7PF
— Philip Koop (@philkoop) November 8, 2021
Hope the administration at Bob Jones University is staying up tonight to keep the University of Substack from poaching their faculty.
— Charles P. Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) November 8, 2021
A non-accredited, non-research university that does not confer degrees… mama that's a book club.
— George Civeris (@georgeciveris) November 8, 2021
oldster
If they want to be taken seriously, they are going to have to put some credible people on their Board of Trustees, like Elizabeth Holmes.
MattF
I don’t know… I get an uneasy feeling about Ms. Bari “All my friends agree with me” Weiss.
piratedan
@oldster: awaiting the announcement on who will receive the Bernie Madoff chair as Dean of their Business School on Economic Theory.
mrmoshpotato
Just fill the board with Dump’s former Cabinet. Done!
Tex Drillerson’s International Diplomacy course is gonna be awesome!
Benw
It’s the non-accredited, non-research Harvard of the south.
mrmoshpotato
@MattF: And just why would that be? ?
Jim, Foolish Literalist
“fearless”! “exciting”! “witches who refuse to burn”!
defining courage down to “being obnoxious on the Bill Maher program” and persecution down to “people were snarky to me on twitter!”
I wonder if they’ll hire anyone from the left side of the horseshoe who also see themselves as persecuted when their innate awesomeness goes unrecognized.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Naomi Wolf.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
Hmm I wonder if the real point of this is a diploma mill for Right Wing talking heads. Pay them this much and you can put a Dr. next your name for the next time you are guest on Fox and Friends.
scav
I’m sure there are takers who would pay extra for a Rand Paul Accreditation to show all those meanies who’s boss.
Old School
Just wanted to leave a shout-out to Beemer’s suggestion of “Nutter Dame” in last night’s DougJ post.
I also enjoyed Tom Levenson’s “Midvale School for the Gifted.”
Kent
What are the odds that they will face their first sexual harassment scandal before they confer their first degree?
Villago Delenda Est
Reactionary gits like Bari Weiss need to be shot into orbit with no safe return provided for.
lowtechcyclist
@Old School: For the win, @ChrsitianPinko: with “Midvale School for the Grifted.”
Medicine Man
I just think of this one as “Snowflake U”. Go Fighting Flakies.
Raoul Paste
Finally, a place where I can get my Doctor of Thinkology degree
lowtechcyclist
@Kent: Probability > 1 – ɛ for all ɛ > 0.
Basilisc
Wonder how many of the students/donors/fanboys will stick around when they learn that Deirdre McCloskey, an accomplished economist, historian and philosopher whom they “count among their numbers”, was named Donald before she transitioned.
Not joking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deirdre_McCloskey.
Suzanne
@Villago Delenda Est: Considering her history with trying to get professors fired, I deeply appreciate this irony.
I cannot imagine any employer hiring any “graduates” of this “university”.
Suzanne
LMAO I am musing on how the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture lost their accreditation because they wanted to be like this, teaching music lessons instead of structures.
prostratedragon
@Basilisc: She’s one of several on that list who make me wonder if they were contacted first and if so, what the actual pitch was.
lollipopguild
This is a parody that writes itself.
Cameron
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: “From the prestigious Seb Gorka Graduate School…..”
Kent
I’ve had a front row seat watching as a group of Mennonites have tried to basically do this same exact thing and found a new university around conservative values. They call it Sattler College: https://www.sattlercollege.org/ and they are basically renting one floor of a nondescript office building in Boston and then expecting their students to do online learning at other local Boston area universities to fill in all the gaps.
What they are doing is living on borrowed time on the donations of some wealthy backers and are burning through about $5 million per year of deficit. But that is utterly unstainable as they don’t actually have an endowment. A typical endowment would need to be in the $125 million range to throw off $5 million a year in earnings. Sooner or later the wealthy backers are going to get weary of setting their money on fire and the whole place will vanish in a puff of smoke.
I predict the same fate for this project.
tom
Gordon “Golly” Gee is the former president of THE Ohio State University who said, after yet another football scandal, “I’m just hoping the coach [Jim Tressel] doesn’t dismiss me.”
(I mentioned this in an earlier thread but my comment disappeared for some reason.)
p.a.
On the “Dysfunctional Marriage” list Gordon Gee as Brown President was front page above the fold.
Another Scott
Meta – Not to pick on you (you do a great job here!), but isn’t it astounding how the GQP can get any message they want into the press and Democrats / Liberals / NeverTFGs will spend the next day or two (or more) amplifying it even while they’re mocking it? For free?
Why can’t TeamD find a way to do similar amplification for good things and their policies? Why are we usually reacting to what they do?? Why don’t more political types study the message discipline of AOC? Even if some of us dislike her, we can learn from her communications skills.
(sigh)
My $0.02.
Cheers,
Scott.
Ken
@Kent: But the important thing will be all of the university’s accomplishments before it collapses, not least of which is funnelling five million dollars a year into the pockets of the administrators.
Ken
Ah, you’re interested in the Aerospace and Aeronautics program!
JeffH
Having helped (successfully) start a college, I’m finding this hard to take seriously. There is a metric fuckton of long, tedious drudgery that goes into setting up a college and I see no reason to believe these people are willing to put in the work to do so.
That being said, the lack of accreditation is not something to ding them for yet. They can’t get accredited until they are up and running. Once they are going (if they ever get there) the accreditation process is slow. It took us two years to get past the first stage and that was substantially faster than just about any other school that had gone through the process.
I will give them credit for one mildly clever rhetorical trick. They’ve co-opted the left-ish critique that too many schools are too administratively heavy. Not that I expect them to hold to it, but that line will get them some support from weird places I suspect.
Tom Levenson
@Kent: They appear to be educating ~20 students a year for their $5 million a year (deficit).
That’s $125,000/student. If you want to be kind, they have something like 40 students enrolled ow, so $62,500/student, plus the ~$20,000 they expect the students and their families to cough up.
That’s not far off the cost to educate (not the cost to the student) at MIT or a similar place that actually has a campus, facilities, etc.
Not sustainable indeed.
scav
@prostratedragon: Deidre surprises me too — although I’ve seen her make some very silly arguements.
Tom Levenson
@Tom Levenson: Give them props for using the BPL as their library, however. It’s a world-class research library. Way better than anything some new shop could offer in like, forever.
Not that it can replicate the experience of having a dedicated research space with dedicated staff to help you. (I think they do have a librarian on staff, though.)
matt
The intellectual dark web isn’t just for hiring hitmen and buying drugs any more!
SpaceUnit
I’m imagining the UA campus as an abandoned K-Mart with a parking lot full of decommissioned confederate monuments, Newt Gingrich pounding on the door and demanding to be allowed inside.
Ken
@Tom Levenson: They took a publicity picture in front of someone else’s major research library? Sounds a bit like this business plan.
Timurid
@Old School: Hogworst.
The train to there leaves from Platform 1488…
PST
@prostratedragon:
I wonder that too. Getting people to agree to be on an advisory board for a new university, perhaps with a handsome honorarium, might not have prepared them for appearing to be signatories of the Bari Weiss Manifesto. They might not all relish appealing to the types she is courting. I think several of them have pretensions to normalcy.
burnspbesq
If the play is to rely on 17-year-olds mistaking it for the real university in Austin, they’re going to need a racist Greek system and a mediocre football team, stat.
matt
I’m kind of hoping they achieve modest success. This will keep them busy, and their faculty and management meetings will be like Lord of the Flies.
As a bonus, they’ll burn a lot of rich reactionary people’s college funds.
burnspbesq
Given the current state of the Austin real estate market, if they want something that looks like everybody’s idea of a small liberal arts college, they’re going to be way, way out of town. O’Connor Rd. between 45 and 620, or maybe all the way out in Liberty Hill or Dripping Springs.
Soprano2
@Medicine Man: That’s what I said last night! From what I heard this morning on “On Point”, Ruy Texira might fit right in there too, since he seems to believe all of Democrat’s problems are caused by the “woke”, and if we would just quit talking about things like racism white working class people would vote for us again.
SpaceUnit
The real game-changer in American politics is gonna be Wingnut KinderCare. Get ’em while they’re young.
Dear God, I shouldn’t be giving them ideas.
Nilnoc
@burnspbesq: If they ask nicely, perhaps Elon can find them some corner of his gigafactory that won’t be in use until Cybertruck production comes fully on line. Should get them through their first half decade.
James E Powell
@tom:
The Buckeye Deep State is everywhere.
Nilnoc
@burnspbesq: If they ask nicely, perhaps Elon can find them some corner of his gigafactory that won’t be in use until Cybertruck production comes fully on line. Should get them through their first half decade.
Seanly
I’m old enough to remember when infrastructure was something Republicans heavily favored. Especially in the House when they could earmark specific projects in their district like a local highway interchange or airport improvements. Now apparently infrastructure is communism?
Woodrow/asim
Because the Conservative movement has put millions, and decades, into that effort — time and money Progressives/Social Justice (mostly) put into building policy and supporting communities. That left the Democratic Party, and it’s members, more-or-less isolated on messaging in ways the GOP doesn’t.
Before Fox News — before Rush! — they already had networks and allied organizations, from the Commerce Club to the John Birchers, pushing various messages out for them. People forget the Washington Times was well right-of-center before Ailes even came up with Fox News. They learned from each other hot to best present ideas, and to bend narratives in their direction.
The gap has been present for a long, long time.
What she does gets visibility, in no small part, because she was attacked so often and became known as a result. She has to develop that messaging style, or she’d been ate alive. Hell, as you note there’s people on this very blog who’ll happily tear her apart, who never have a nice thing to say about Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.
That’s not a great model, much less one we want to repeat.
Moreover, no matter if you agree with her, or not — one Rep.’s messaging doesn’t usually move the needle on these fights. If they did, to take another example. Re. Porter would be a lot more powerful than she is, and a lot more corporations would actually be quaking at her questioning.
Simply put: Implementing effective organizations for disseminating messaging is the work of decades. Elsewhere today, WaterGirl noted that it took Stacey Abrams a decade to build up GA for the win — and that’s with a lot of people already on the ground in GA, and others willing to give up days and weeks of time and sweat to build that state’s electoral changes for us, up. Abrams didn’t do any of that, alone, and she’d be the first to tell you that.
And that organizing/teamwork? Matters. That work takes away time from dealing with the many other social challenges those activists oft deal with — time that means people are getting harmed when we try to get votes in to mitigate that harm. It’s a brutally hard balance, and part of why I regally recommend people actually engage those local groups, when they can.
To circle back: Conservatives don’t need to worry about that balance. Nor are their movements usually short on funds. And they have groups that have spent many years developing gamebooks on how to push out messages, along with the networks that help when a “good” message is developed by one team or another.
I don’t know how to overcome that gap. Yet I’m frustrated that so few seem to realize that gap in supporting messaging exists, much less why it’s there. I will say I think a lot of this comes from the “sound bite” era of politics, and over-stating the importance of what was said, versus the systems and media that communicate that bite out to viewers and voters.
Just One More Canuck
Ralph Wiggum – “I’m going to Bovine University”
JaneE
As DJT already proved you can label anything a “University”. Even an outright fraud. Surprising it took so long for these “professors” to figure that out. No doubt they will find someone to donate to their “University” so they can endow professorships etc. Maybe even build an office to crank out their diplomas on a real printing press.
Another Scott
@Woodrow/asim: Thanks. Lots to think about.
Cheers,
Scott.
leeleeFL
@Villago Delenda Est: Only way to be sure!
But, seriously Folks, this strains belief to the point of breaking! They will be in Court many times, methinks!
moops
Cancel Culture U.
Would anyone who isn’t a huge asshole register to go there? What does an employer think if they see this on an applicant’s CV ?
geg6
@tom:
Cole should have something to say about this. Gee is the president of WVU. For the second time even.
geg6
@p.a.:
He’s actually currently the president of WVU. He is getting a lot of heat.
thebewilderness
I am surprised by the effort to poison the well against a bunch of people who lost their positions for speaking truth to power.
I thought they would just be ignored.That’s what I was doing, ignoring them, until the stochastic terrorism began.
I forgot that when “centerist” women like Dr Stock are cancelled they are expected to stay cancelled, or risk further demonization and death threats.
O. Felix Culpa
@Basilisc: @prostratedragon:
I used to know Deirdre McCloskey, albeit not terribly well. We belonged to the same Episcopal church in Chicago. I find it hard to believe she’d sign up for a project like this, unless the organizers had a somewhat slanted pitch. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were not wholly transparent.
The Pale Scot
I Will Create A Winning Basketball Program At The University Of Austin
Bill Arnold
@thebewilderness:
Kathleen Stock?
Bigot. (And wrong, for some technical reasons that she would not (I am fairly sure) accept. (Human brains are a very plastic … substrate.) )
Same for some of the others. “Speaking truth to power” can be a big stretch, depending on the truth level/value of what one is speaking.