For a brand-new university still drafting its undergraduate program, the University of Austin is attracting some pretty heavy hitters.
That’s the University of Austin—not the University of Texas at Austin—I’ll point out. It’s the school cofounded by venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, journalist Bari Weiss, evolutionary biologist Heather Heying, Harvard University professor Arthur Brooks, and others who all gathered at Lonsdale’s 11-bedroom home in West Austin one hot summer weekend to hash out what it would look like to set up a college they hope will fix academia. According to them, higher education “might be the most fractured institution of all,” as they argue campuses are stifling students from saying what they believe and “faculty are being treated like thought criminals.”
Now a group of venture capitalists and tech founders are getting involved as they sign up to lecture at the university, including at its “Forbidden Courses” program that starts in June, which will delve into questions around science and religion, race, gender politics, and conservatism. There’s Marc Andreessen and Katherine Boyle from a16z; MaC Venture Capital’s Adrian Fenty; Web3 startup Spindl CEO Antonio García Martínez; and Guillermo Rauch, CEO of web development unicorn Vercel, a portfolio company of 8VC, Lonsdale’s multibillion-dollar venture capital firm. Founders Fund vice president Mike Solana had been scheduled to lecture as well, though he has since pulled out due to a conflict, according to UATX.
About one-third of the university’s estimated $150 million raised so far has come from people who work in venture capital or tech, according to UATX president Pano Kanelos, who spoke with me from the school’s Austin campus a few weeks ago. (A spokesperson later said the school wouldn’t confirm exact figures.)
Some of the school’s initial key members have stirred up criticism because of their critiques of cancel culture, “woke”-ness, and sometimes affirmative action or the DEI movement. But Kanelos protests any notion that the university is intended to combat cancel culture.
“We’re not allowed to use the word woke…That’s just not who we are,” Kanelos told me. “You don’t build a university to be against things. You build a university because you believe in things. We’re not here to cancel cancel culture: Why would you spend your time doing that? We’re here because we believe in and we have foundational principles: We believe in open inquiry. We believe in freedom of conscience. We believe in civil discourse.”
The “Forbidden Courses” program starts next month, and I will not be in attendance, though I asked if I could sit in. At the current moment, journalists are not allowed.
Read my full story here.
Thera-no… Almost five years after being indicted on fraud charges, Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes reported to prison yesterday in Texas to start her more than 11-year sentence. Erin Griffith, another former Term Sheet editor, wrote about her arrival to the 655-inmate women’s minimum security prison for the New York Times, noting that she arrived, wearing jeans, and appeared to be accompanied by her parents.
In one regard, Holmes’s long-awaited prison sentence feels almost anticlimactic after years and years of legal proceedings and various appeals. I have become numb to the photos of her holding hands with her now-husband plastered across the television. At the same time, Holmes’s arrival at F.P.C. Bryan is such an exceedingly important moment for the technology industry—an unprecedented testament to where a growth-at-all-costs mindset can go off the rails.
In an industry where nearly half of investors don’t think Holmes was an outlier, Holmes continues to be a symbol of both hubris and deception.
See you tomorrow,
Jessica Mathews
Twitter: @jessicakmathews
Email: jessica.mathews@fortune.com
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