People might go to college to have their minds expanded and learn from people they disagree with? “60 Minutes” is shocked, SHOCKED, at such a concept!

On Sunday night, “60 Minutes” ran a feature on the University of Austin, a brand-new college that just opened its doors this fall. The college is being run on classical liberal principles and is rejecting DEI tenets right off the bat.

The school swaps DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — for what some call MEI: merit, excellence and intelligence. UATX, co-founded by historian Niall Ferguson, launched with a focus on encouraging free speech and open debate.

“University forms the way you think about the world for the rest of your life,” Ferguson said. “If our universities are screwed up, and I believe they are, then that will screw up America as a whole quite quickly.”

UATX was conceived largely by frustrated professors looking to fix the problems they see on college campuses. Ferguson, an Oxford-educated historian and former Harvard professor, launched UATX in 2021 with former New York Times journalist Bari Weiss; Joe Lonsdale, co-founder of data analytics company Palantir; and Pano Kanelos, the former president of St. John’s College in Maryland. Among others, Larry Summers, the former Harvard president and U.S. treasury secretary under President Bill Clinton, became an adviser.

“From a historian’s point of view, it’s terribly important that the United States improves, reforms, revitalizes its universities,” Ferguson said.

In an ad, the school said it was “done waiting for America’s universities to fix themselves.”

“Right up until I guess the early 2000s, it still seemed like universities were the places where you could think most freely, and speak most freely, and take the most intellectual risk,” Ferguson said. “And at some point in the last 10 years, that changed. And it changed in a way that began to stifle free expression.”

High-profile donors include Trump-backing billionaire Bill Ackman, a Harvard graduate who vocally criticized his school after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas against Israel that sparked the deadly war in the Middle East, and Harlan Crow, a close friend of conservative Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Nadine Strossen, a liberal legal scholar who headed up the ACLU for nearly 20 years, is also a UATX adviser. Strossen believes the most important public policy topics — abortion, immigration, police practices, race and gender — are not being discussed candidly on college campuses. Provided there is no serious harm, Strossen argues all speech should be allowed.

“My concern is to try to eliminate the underlying discriminatory attitudes. You don’t do that by punishing expression,” Strossen said. “You do that through education, through more speech, not less.”

For those who remember Bari Weiss’s resignation from the New York Times and her launching of The Free Press, the creation of the University of Austin was an overdue reaction to the narrow-minded conformity that academia – especially the “Poison Ivies” – have demanded for years now. One only has to look at how these supposed institutions of “higher learning” have dealt with the spoiled brats who decided to cosplay as oppressed Hamas LARPers this last spring to know that academia has become an intolerant and reactive place that focuses on diversity over merit. Remember, Harvard fought to justify its own affirmative action quotas in the name of “diversity” – and eventually got slapped down by the Supreme Court.

Wait, a non-religious university that is run by classical liberals with Democrat credentials that wants to focus on MERIT? “60 Minutes” can hardly believe it. It’s probably why their editors and the graphics department decided to name the piece “Disruptor U” – though it is humorous that they’re telling on themselves.

Unlike the nearby University of Texas at Austin — one of the country’s largest schools — there are just 92 students in the first class at University of Austin. Roughly half the students come from Texas. A third are women.

Students share academic strength, averaging in the 92nd percentile on the SAT. Some were accepted at schools like the University of Chicago and Georgetown, but they chose UATX instead.

University President Kanelos said the school looks for applicants who think deeply and challenge norms.

“The primary thing that we’re interested in is the mind,” Kanelos said.

Students told 60 Minutes the inaugural class is politically diverse.

“I’ve met people of every political persuasion here from, like, far-left Democrats who are for Bernie Sanders or to the left of that even, to people who would make Donald Trump look like a liberal,” student Jacob Hornstein said.

Despite the different views, student Constantin Whitmire said classmates listen to each other and are still friends. He and Hornstein agreed that they vehemently disagree on a lot of topics.

“We still get along pretty well, and it’s a beautiful thing,” Whitmire said.

Differing views and outspokenness about those beliefs are welcomed. It’s why Dylan Wu chose UATX; he wants his beliefs to be challenged.

“I want them to be challenged because I know that I’m wrong in some way,” Wu said.

“I've met people of every political persuasion here from far-left Democrats who are for Bernie Sanders or to the left of that even, to people who would make Donald Trump look like a liberal,” says UATX student Jacob Hornstein. https://t.co/ngO1ZmOFjD pic.twitter.com/VCaRzxS1ES

— 60 Minutes (@60Minutes) November 25, 2024

Students who want to learn and be challenged??? Compare that to the precious fragile darlings who needed therapy ducks and mental health days to deal with the election of Donald Trump. I can tell you which young adults are going to be more well adjusted and flexible enough to deal with the realities of life, and it won’t be the ones who needed a “safe space” after Election Day.

Now, the University of Austin still has a long way to go – the college won’t be eligible to be nationally accredited until after its first class has graduated, as “60 Minutes” reports, and the college itself is still trying to figure out how large an enrollment it can support with the current funding. But it is crucial that alternatives to the current university system get developed, and UATX is a big step forward in that cause. Although by the way “60 Minutes” portrays it, the concept of diversity of thought is apparently something the big brains of CBS has never even considered before.

The best thing about this clip is the 60 minutes reporter questioning skin color diversity and the professor going yeah actually diversity isn't just about paint swatches at Home Depot. https://t.co/GMp8mds0qe

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 25, 2024

Just imagine how many other things “60 Minutes” could discover out in this country if they considered diversity of thought more important than diversity of skin color. It could be mind-blowing!

Featured image via Sven_fotografiert on Pixabay, cropped, Pixabay license