President Pano Kanelos: We Built a University. Join Us!

The University of Austin is opening its doors. We invite you to take a look inside.

Welcome to Inside UATX, our new weekly newsletter. Consider this your portal into the founding of the University of Austin and the exceptional people, projects, and conversations at the heart of our enterprise.

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This week’s edition begins with a message from our Founding President. Here’s Dr. Kanelos:

In November 2021, I wrote in The Free Press (then Common Sense) that we would build a bold new university based on the fearless pursuit of truth, the University of Austin (UATX). You may have heard about UATX from one of our founding trustees, like journalist Bari Weiss, entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, or historian Sir Niall Ferguson. 

Nearly three years later, I’m proud to say we did build a bold new university. The idea of UATX is now the reality of UATX, and in less than two months, our first students arrive for the beginning of their undergraduate education. On September 9th, our first academic year will begin. The lights will go on in seminar classrooms, books will open, debates will roar, and our campus will come alive.

Today, we want to invite you Inside UATX. Just as we sought to build a new type of university, we will communicate differently as a university too. No corporate jargon. No equivocation. We want to talk directly to you. Inside UATX is where you’ll find news about UATX and perspectives from our community.

So, what have we been up to for the last year?

In October of 2023, we earned authorization from the State of Texas to operate as a university and offer degrees. In 2024, we’ve been recruiting our founding class. 

From thousands of undergraduate applications, we admitted several dozen young people ready to study the humanities alongside the hard sciences and begin a four-year moonshot project that will launch their careers. They will be trained, as Niall put it, as “Navy SEALS of the mind.” And thanks to the generosity of our supporters, every single one of them has been awarded a full-tuition scholarship.

From more than 900 early faculty applicants, we hired professors for roughly 18 positions. Every candidate to whom we extended an offer accepted it. Our founding faculty includes an award-winning novelist, a literature scholar specializing in the origins of modernity, the former chief economist for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Human Affairs, and a scientist who has analyzed genomic changes in astronauts from the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission. 

We assembled a local network of business, civic, and artistic leaders to mentor our students and guide them from understanding the world to virtuously transforming it. Our Talent Network includes dozens of top companies, including 8VC, Unchained, Saronic, and Capital Factory.

Niall wrote The Constitution of the University of Austin, intended to guide us as the U.S. Constitution has guided our nation since its earliest days. Our UATX Constitution enshrines free inquiry and civil discourse at the heart of our enterprise. It defines the university as essentially nonpolitical and establishes our members’ rights, powers, and responsibilities. Those begin with the right to teach and learn free from the pressures of ideology or partisanship. 

In just three years, we have built America's newest private university, the first chartered in Texas in the past 60 years. We’ve raised millions of dollars to build it and found thousands of allies.

We've reached millions who agree that our country and our world need a bold, new university dedicated to forming the builders, creators, and innovators who will lead us into tomorrow.

And in just over a month, the University of Austin will begin its own voyage into tomorrow with the launch of our inaugural academic year. 

We would be honored to have you join us on this journey.

Pano Kanelos

Founding President

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Greetings from Austin, Texas! This is Maggie Kelly, Communications Manager at UATX and your newsletter editor. President Kanelos made the big announcements this week, but we’re just getting started.  

Read on for an even closer look at what we’re unveiling this September.

→Meet the Founding Freshmen. Why did they choose the University of Austin? What’s different about our founding class? Our new students have answers.

Plus: One Austin high school senior’s investigation into the student loan crisis led to a meeting with University of Austin President Pano Kanelos—and a decision to apply. Read how freshman Kyle Choy became convinced America needs new universities. 

→Meet our Provost and deans. Provost Jacob Howland is the Dean of UATX’s Intellectual Foundations program, which structures the first two years of our undergraduate curriculum. Previously, he served as McFarlin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa and Senior Fellow at the Tikvah Fund. He is the author of five books and one edited book, including two on Plato’s Republic and studies of Kierkegaard and the Talmud.

Dean Morgan Marietta, an expert on constitutional politics and political psychology, leads our Center for Economics, Politics, & History. Dean Patrick Gray, an authority on Shakespeare and Montaigne, directs our Center for Arts & Letters, and Dean David Ruth, formerly Permanent Military Professor of Mathematics at the United States Naval Academy, helms the Center for Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics.

Plus: Read Q&As with some of our newest founding faculty, including geneticist and bioastronautics expert Eliah Overbey, literature and modernity specialist Kirsten Herlin, political philosopher Alex Priou, and Bayesian statistician David Puelz.

→Find us in downtown Austin. Our home is the Scarbrough building, a Texas historic landmark blocks from the State Capitol. When the Scarbrough building was constructed as a department store in 1909, it was the tallest high-rise in the city. We’ve entirely remodeled and redecorated our third-floor space and are particularly proud of our light-filled atrium and brand-new library.

Schedule a visit to see more.  

→Get to know our town. The University of Austin has made its home in the most dynamic and fastest-growing city in America. Austin is home to statesmen, freethinkers, entrepreneurs, artists, and some of the most innovative and influential companies in the world.

Like UATX, Austin is also particularly friendly to eccentricities and viewpoints of all kinds.

Learn more about why we’re here.

A University of Austin education unites the past and the future, the liberal arts and entrepreneurship, ancient wisdom and modern innovation.

All freshmen and sophomores take 15 seminar courses on great books and ideas in the humanities, mathematics, and social and natural sciences. 

We’re calling our core curriculum Intellectual Foundations. Courses include “Writing and the English Language,” “Intellectual Foundations of Economics,” “The American Experiment,” “Ideological Experiments of the 20th Century,” “Quantitative Reasoning I & II,” and “Foundations of Science.”

In their junior and senior years, students may specialize in one of our interdisciplinary academic centers: Economics, Politics, & History, Arts & Letters, or Science, Technology, Engineering, & Mathematics.

Over all four years, each student will undertake a project to build, create, or discover something serving the human good. We call this endeavor the Polaris Project, after the North Star by which explorers have navigated for millennia.

The UATX Polaris Center will provide students with mentors and a structured program to guide them from brainstorming to execution and teach essential skills for personal and professional success.

Look Inside UATX through some of our top media coverage since the news broke three years ago.

• “Economist Roland Fryer on Adversity, Race, and Refusing to Conform” (Honestly with Bari Weiss)

• “A Turning Point in Higher Education with Pano Kanelos & Niall Ferguson” (Joe Lonsdale: American Optimist)

• “Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board gives first go-ahead to new University of Austin” (Austin-American Statesman)

• “College of the Future” by UATX Provost Jacob Howland (City Journal)

• “The New Founders America Needs” (The Free Press)

Want to signal your commitment to renewing higher ed? We’ve got you covered with shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and more.

We’re seeking extraordinary individuals to join us in building the University of Austin. View all jobs.

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What would you like to see Inside UATX? We want to hear from you. Email us at media@uaustin.org. 

We'll see you again next Monday.