University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days • Hacker News Board

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#21

Post by deanCommie » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

> The first named members of the UATX founding faculty include philosopher and outspoken feminist Kathleen Stock, who as a professor at the University of Sussex sparked controversy for stating that transgender women are not biologically women and for her support of a ban on transgender women in women’s bathrooms and giving puberty blockers to minor children.

Bigots always can't help but give themselves away.

"Caution about giving medical treatment to children?" Seems reasonable by default.

"Transgender women are not biologically women?" Well people disagree on what the definition of what a biological woman is but I understand what you're trying to say and sure there are of course relevant biological differences. Trans women can get prostate cancer. Some biology is relevant.

"Ban transgender women in women's bathroom?" Errr. You've given yourself away. This makes absolutely no sense. I don't go look at people's genitals when I go to the bathroom. Are you? Are butch lesbians supposed to go to men's bathrooms? We should do away with gender segregated bathrooms entirely and make inclusive privacy-focused spaces where you do your private business behind closed doors and interact at communal sinks and mirrors that do not require gender separation. But including this in your agenda reveals yourself as an illogical bigot, and the motivation for the rest of your arguments becomes invalid.

Deep breath.

Which is exactly the situation with the University of Austin.

"We are committed to these long-held ideals of the pursuit of truth, academic freedom, open inquiry, and spirited debate." That sounds fantastic! I agree with these concepts too! But...the people you now hire are going to speak volumes about what these words ACTUALLY mean to you.

If your pursuit of truth and open inquiry means exploring various justifications for restricting the lives of trans people, exploring only evidence that doubts climate change, and twisting data to try to establish risks of vaccinations, well...

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#22

Post by seoaeu » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #10

At universities, ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy. I'm not sure anyone has quite confronted that reality yet. It seems almost like an army that won much more easily than they expected, and now doesn't quite know what to do off the battlefield. I hope this university is able to balance these ideas into more of a discussion and less of a battle.

> ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy

In the abstract, isn't this a good thing? Like this true of lots of scientific advances. Germ theory or whatever initially being seen as a fringe idea, eventually being adopted as the leading explanation

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#23

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:12 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #16

The article claims the university has a "diverse board of founding trustees and advisors", but amusingly the actual page has photos in black-and-white which is a frequent trick to obscure the lack of (racial) diversity Edit: It also says that "UATX will ... eschew federal and state funding to maintain independence from government-imposed programs and excessive regulation" which sounds like it might be related to dodg…

[deleted]

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#24

Post by sharklazer » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:13 PM UTC

v3rt3x wrote: post #20

I imagine the prospect of not having to author Maoist style diversity statements and other indignities will be quite a draw. Universities have become inhospitable and intolerant places for even politically moderate folks. https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/11/19/mathematician...

You aren’t down to sign another Great Loyalty Oath. You can put your Washington Irving right there.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#25

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:14 PM UTC

wyldfire wrote: post #19

> DOESN'T IT TAKE SOME UNIVERSITIES A DECADE TO RECEIVE ACCREDITATION? > Our conversations with our accredited partners lead us to believe that we'll have a much shorter time frame than that. But we're not waiting for accreditation to get started on our programming. Until it is accredited, UATX will offer ... If you are graduating high school soon, I'd recommend not betting on this University until/unless they're acc…

[deleted]

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#26

Post by karaterobot » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

mattkrause wrote: post #12

It’s not obvious to me that this reflects anything special about this particular model for a university. Instead, I think it reflects the utter horrow-show that is the academic job market and, to some extent, the terrible matching in the rest of the job market as well. Individual job postings at “regular” mid-tier universities attract hundreds of applicants, many of whom are extremely qualified.

> Individual job postings at “regular” mid-tier universities attract hundreds of applicants, many of whom are extremely qualified.

But if this is an order of magnitude more job inquiries than average, might that not reflect something different about the model? Maybe something as banal as "it attracted a lot of attention", but surely a 5x or 10x difference is indicative of something.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#27

Post by didibus » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:15 PM UTC

deanCommie wrote: post #21

> The first named members of the UATX founding faculty include philosopher and outspoken feminist Kathleen Stock, who as a professor at the University of Sussex sparked controversy for stating that transgender women are not biologically women and for her support of a ban on transgender women in women’s bathrooms and giving puberty blockers to minor children. Bigots always can't help but give themselves away. "Caution…

Ya, it seems way too political from the onset, I suspect it'll grow into more of a partisan train wreck then something truly about the objective truth. But hey, I hope not, and awesome if it can be a really objective place, but it definitely is not starting as one from what this article mentions.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#28

Post by seneca » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

seoaeu wrote: post #22

chmod600 wrote: post #10

At universities, ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy. I'm not sure anyone has quite confronted that reality yet. It seems almost like an army that won much more easily than they expected, and now doesn't quite know what to do off the battlefield. I hope this university is able to balance these ideas into more of a discussion and less of a battle.

> ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy In the abstract, isn't this a good thing? Like this true of lots of scientific advances. Germ theory or whatever initially being seen as a fringe idea, eventually being adopted as the leading explanation

> In the abstract, isn't this a good thing? Like this true of lots of scientific advances. Germ theory or whatever initially being seen as a fringe idea, eventually being adopted as the leading explanation

This is a cultural revolution, not a scientific one. Scientific ideas replacing proven-false ones is a good thing. Cultural crusades, especially those spread through intimidation and bullying, have next to nothing in common with that though.

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#29

Post by djbusby » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

chrisseaton wrote: post #8

jdhn wrote: post #3

I'm really curious to see if this experiment works out. Looking at their website, it seems that they don't have any land whatsoever, so does that mean this is going to be 100% virtual for now? They also don't offer degrees, so is this basically a glorified Khan Academy for the time being? Also, it remains to be seen if they can resist the same forces that they say have overrun other universities in the country.

> they don't have any land whatsoever Vast majority of organisations don't own any land - they lease office space.

University generally has some land they built on, granted by the State (UCB, UW, UMass, VT) or some rich guy (Stanford, Harvard, Yale, etc)

Re: University of Austin Draws over 3k Employment Inquiries in Four Days

#30

Post by mattkrause » Sat, Nov 13, 2021, 6:17 PM UTC

chmod600 wrote: post #10

At universities, ideas which were once countercultural and revolutionary have become the mainstream orthodoxy. I'm not sure anyone has quite confronted that reality yet. It seems almost like an army that won much more easily than they expected, and now doesn't quite know what to do off the battlefield. I hope this university is able to balance these ideas into more of a discussion and less of a battle.

Has this actually happened?

My experience has been that if you walk around a campus, you can find people studying all sorts of ideas. Some of that might even involve intellectual exercises where one tries to make a strong case for a “revolutionary” idea.

However, at their core, universities are fundamentally conservative big businesses: they want more money and less controversy. There aren’t any actual Marxists in the Dean’s Office.