This morning, at the first Convocation in UATX history, our new students crossed the stage, signed the register, shook hands with President Pano Kanelos, Board Chairman Joe Lonsdale, and our deans, and formally matriculated as undergraduates of the University of Austin.
“The pioneers of the University of Austin have journeyed over rough terrain,” Provost Jacob Howland said in his opening remarks.
He continued:
In under three years, we have built a rough-hewn yet sturdy and serviceable outpost of real education. From the beginning, we have been sustained by donors, trustees, and advisors who have dedicated precious time and treasure to ensuring our success. This year, we have been joined by a faculty of exceptionally gifted teachers and scholars whose can-do energy and generosity of spirit exemplify the American virtues that Alexis de Tocqueville celebrated almost two centuries ago.
But our work would have been fruitless without the people in this room: the inaugural Class of 2028 students and their parents, whom we celebrate this day.
Universitas in Latin refers to an integrated whole of equally significant parts. We are all in this together. We are Team UATX. Let us raise up a university for the ages, one that is second to none and that will do us all proud in centuries to come.
In his own remarks, President Kanelos took up the meaning of another old word: revolution.
“Ours is a revolutionary institution—revolutionary in the proper sense,” he said. “False revolutions propose only the tearing down of the established order. They are an exercise in nihilism. Yet the word revolution in its original sense — revolvere — means to revolve, to turn back to a point of origin, with the purpose of renewing an originary spirit or idea. We are returning to the very roots of the Western intellectual tradition.”
Those roots trace back to Socrates, Kanelos said, who introduced a mode of conversation and teaching that pursues truth by asking a simple question: Is this truly the best answer?
Not long after the UATX founders promised a new university in 2021, they designed an integrated core curriculum of literature, philosophy, mathematics, and science, shaped by the Socratic tradition.
Here, University of Austin professors introduce you to some of our core books, each chosen to raise the fundamental questions.
Is that truly the best answer?
Guided by their teachers and their books, our students, like Socrates, will ask this relentlessly.
Their quest begins today.
Maggie Kelly is the editor of Inside UATX. Follow her on X at @margaretbkelly.
I wish this institution the greatest success. Having been a professor for 35 years at a neighboring institution and watched it strangle what used to be distinguished, humanistic disciplines all at the behest of a leftist propaganda machine, I applaud all attempts to give these disciplines a new footing.
Will you be making other suggested readings from your courses available online?