It seems like Austin is becoming something of a center for anti-woke universities. First the University of Austin anounced it was starting a campus here, and now Elon Musk has filed paperwork to start a new university.
Billionaire Elon Musk is likely to start a university in Austin that will begin with a primary and secondary school centered on science, technology, engineering, and math, according to a report by Bloomberg, which reviewed financial statements of Musk’s charitable foundation.
The outlet reported that the new organization filed documents with the Internal Revenue Service seeking tax exempt status. Musk’s university will seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.
Bloomberg added that Musk transferred $2.2 billion to his charitable foundation in 2022. Some years ago, Musk also started a school for his own children and the children of other employees of SpaceX.
Musk moved to Texas in 2020 and has since purchased X, formerly known as Twitter. He also announced in the fall of 2021 that he would move Tesla’s headquarters to Austin.
In one way, Austin is a weird choice for the Anti-Woke University Capital of the US, since it’s a blue dot in a red oasis. In another way in makes a lot of sense, as Austin has been tagged the “cool” place to live for quite a while, and has attracted anti-woke refugees like Musk and Joe Rogan.
Also, if Musk’s university is going to focus on STEM, “Silicon Hills” has one of the biggest concentrations of tech companies outside Silicon Valley. That’s a good pool to draw expertise from, and a place for students to find jobs.
If Musk can found a university that actually teaches useful information, without being infected with social justice, and can avoid inflicting postcolonial studies and Queer Theory on students, more power to him.
Tags: Austin, education, Elon Musk, Social Justice Warriors, Texas
“without being infected with social justice”
Social justice in and of itself is not necessarily the problem, but the weaponization of it. We should all be striving to make America better for every American. The issue at hand is how forces bent solely on power, domination, and humiliation have latched onto it as a vehicle to get what they want. Social justice has been turned into a method for the most incompetent, mentally deranged, narcissistic, and vindictive people to abuse and silence everyone that is their opposite. Just look at the current President of Harvard.
We need to care less about the immigrant and more about our own citizens. We need to care as equally about boys as we do about girls. We need to focus less on international disputes abroad and more on disputes among ourselves regarding OUR money. It goes on and on. Nothing I just said above would’ve been considered at all radical just 40 years ago, but if you agree with any of it now you’re practically a reincarnation of Goebbels to certain people, and that is bullshit.
The compassion, sympathy, and charity we owe each other as citizens has been getting used against us, almost since the end of WWII. Moreover, we have completely stopped teaching people how to fish – to borrow the old euphemism – and have just been giving away trillions of free fish to everyone since before Germany invaded Poland.
American wallets and American sympathy are not a bottomless reservoir for every freeloader, parasite, and sycophant in this country and elsewhere to draw from endlessly. Not only must it end, but it will end regardless. We are approaching an inflection point where we may lose control of how it ends. I really hope that doesn’t happen.
Saying “Social Justice itself isn’t the problem” is a lot like saying “True communism has never been tried.”
If every time you run the experiment, the patient dies, there’s a problem with your theory.
Everything we know about “social justice” is that the people promulgating it are opposed to individualism, capitalism, equal rights and the rule of law.
I hope Elon names the university what he suggested about the time UATX was announced:
Texas Institute for Technology & Science
which would be known by its acronym.
There is an Elon University in Elon, NC.
As long as I don’t have to supplement it with my tax dollars I don’t much care what musk does.
When “social” is used as an adjective, it really means “a complete absence of”. So “social justice” means “a complete absence of justice”, and “social security” means “a complete absence of security”.
It’s doable, I live here and only a bit over half the population is woke and weird
Train all the STEM students you want. They will get decent jobs and those jobs will be subject to the people in HR who work for the people in DC. You know, those people who got their “useless” Humanities, Social Sciences, and Grievance Studies degrees in higher ivory towers.
STEM is subordinated to politics and will be until you get control of the politics. If you didn’t know. And pass the word on to Elon.
“In one way, Austin is a weird choice for the Anti-Woke University Capital of the US”
Every Texan in the world: “You don’t say”
“Social justice in and of itself is not necessarily the problem…[snips 38 paragraphs of fluff]”
There are no short excuses for communism.
Before the confusion of this meme gets out of hand: Jimmy McNulty correctly pointed out that a *real* Elon University has existed since 1889, in the small town of Elon near Greensboro, North Carolina.
SO, DON”T URGE ELON TO START “ELON U.” !
So, if you want to urge Mr. Musk to launch an institution, have him call it “SpaceX University”.
We should probably note that there is already an Elon U., in North Carolina. I like the above suggestion, TITS.
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Of course it will be called University X.
It’s Yale University, not Elihu University and Stanford University not Leland University. If Musk founds a university and it ends up being named for him it is a whole lot more likely to be named Musk U than Elon U. Or maybe Musk Institute of Science and Technology (MIST).
While it is true the older universities started by individuals use their last names, that was an era when no one would dream of calling Leland Stanford “Leland” except his wife, maybe. Musk is well known as “Elon“, but as everybody is already pointed out, there already is an Elon University.
I’m betting on X university.
While Austin is a blue dot in a red to some places purplish landscape, he’s obviously already made Austin his base of operations for the X empire; Also, putting it in any big city puts it in a blue insanitorium, But I think there’s a chance down the road to turn the corner on Austin, and Elon may have something to do with that.
Starting not just a university but a whole school system of engineers that will go out and make money is better than starting a school of less rigorous “academics”. And you already have the University of Austin (UATX) for that anyway. I would not be surprised to see X University add in a kind of entrepreneurship/business orientation as well, to basically form a class of “Elons” which would be a definite improvement over what universities are producing now.
p.s.
I do think the most noteworthy part of his proposal is not the University itself, but the fact that he will establish an elementary and a high school to feed into it. THAT is where you are going to turn around society, something the old timers knew, and the Left learned and adopted.
Many complain that public schools are indoctrinations centers. Of course they are, they always have been, right with there with teaching the three R’s. The problem is is who gets to decide what the kids are indoctrinated in, and what they choose. Bluntly, you can’t teach just the three R’s; societal norms – or abnorms – are baked right into the process, Since it takes other humans, too, do the teaching or even set up the “computer” teaching.
The left has made this very explicit, prioritizing teaching abnormal behavior over actual academics. Sane people who want to reemphasize actual academics are also teaching a societal norm. Heck that’s the whole point of homeschooling, to have absolute control over how teaching happens. Unfortunately not everybody can homeschool, nor is everyone going to be good at it. There is a place for common schools, whether privately or publicly, funded, and that’s where the bulk of people are going to get their education at a young age.
Elon sees this.
“Musk’s university will seek accreditation from the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools.”
If Musk is going to play with the woke accreditation agencies (and all of them are woke), this is doomed before it starts. Too bad – we could use one serious STEM university that stands on its own merits.
Considering what he names his children, I’m kinda hoping he doesn’t name the place. Though MIST sounds nice, and TITS is fantastic + on-brand.
X University would be great. What would the mascot be?
Not gonna lie, though … I can’t avoid thinking about “Trump University” and how that turned out.
“X University would be great. What would the mascot be?”
A Starship of course. Or Marvin the Martian.