Upside Down Stanford | The University of Austin

Summary

Campus Files: Upside Down Stanford | The University of Austin

Podcast: Campus Files: Scandals, Secrets & Crimes at American Universities
Host: Ian Mont (with guest Evan Mandery)
Date: May 13, 2026
Episode Overview:
This episode explores the rise and tumultuous journey of the University of Austin (UATX)—a new institution launched as an antidote to “cancel culture,” promising uncompromising commitment to free speech and classical education. Host Ian Mont and guest Evan Mandery, professor and author, examine whether the ambitious idea unraveled into partisan bickering, lost its founding ideals, and simply replicated the same campus culture wars it sought to reform.

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Main Theme

The episode investigates UATX’s origins as a beacon for open discourse, its rapid internal division, and its ultimate rightward swing—raising questions about whether any American university can escape today’s political polarization.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Backdrop: Free Speech and the “Campus Wars”

• [01:25–03:10] The episode opens by tracing the evolution of the free speech debate at American universities, from student activism and alleged left-wing censorship to new right-wing forms of cancellation via government pressure.
  • Quote:

    "For at least the last decade, the question of free speech has been the defining issue of American higher education." — Ian Mont [01:52]

  • The “woke left” is said to have gripped campuses, disinviting speakers and enforcing ideological boundaries, while the right now leverages state power to exert its own pressure.

2. UATX’s Vision: A Bold Experiment

• [03:28–05:30]
  • UATX launches with promises of “unfettered free speech” and a classical curriculum, governed by a formal constitution and Chatham House Rules (“What happens in the classroom should stay in the classroom.” — UATX Rep [04:26])
  • The project quickly gathers a high-profile, ideologically diverse founding team—entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale, historian Niall Ferguson, and (then) journalist Bari Weiss.

3. Who’s Behind UATX? Key Players

• [07:22–10:10]
  • Joe Lonsdale: Tech entrepreneur, connected to Peter Thiel, previously embroiled in a sexual harassment scandal at Stanford (eventually cleared, but with public fallout).
    • Quote:

      "Many people said...they thought that he carried some antagonism or antipathy for Stanford as a result of that." — Evan Mandery [08:58]

  • Niall Ferguson: Conservative-leaning historian.
  • Bari Weiss: Now director at CBS News; her public profile was instrumental in UATX’s fundraising and pitch.

4. Early Fractures: Ideological Discord and Departures

• [10:10–11:58]
  • Even before opening, major supporters (Steven Pinker, Robert Zimmer) resign, uncomfortable that the school’s focus shifted from promoting pluralism to broad attacks on traditional higher education.
    • Quote:

      "Those initial departures seemed to be really based on the aggressiveness with which UATX was criticizing the academy..." — Evan Mandery [10:33]

  • Ferguson’s own words illustrate this antagonism:
    • Quote:

      “There was a general feeling within academia that the rot had gone so far, that the established institutions could not easily be salvaged...so we decided...to create a new university.” — Niall Ferguson (UATX Rep) [11:22]

5. Clashing Philosophies: Pluralists vs. Straussians

• [12:31–13:45]
  • The “pluralist” camp (like Mandery) sought robust debate, not dogma.
    • Quote:

      "I actually would prefer that people disagree with me...I feel my job as a teacher is to help you clarify what you believe and to make the most reasoned argument in support of the position that you have." — Evan Mandery [12:31]

  • Contrasting this, another group was influenced by Leo Strauss, valuing “indoctrination” with certain (often conservative) values over neutrality.
    • Quote:

      “They’re using him to stand for the proposition that universities should not be value neutral and they should be indoctrinating people with a set of values.” — Evan Mandery [13:31]

6. Internal Implosion: The "Sal" Analogy

• [14:49–16:05]
  • A failed coup by senior administrators reflects a deeper issue: beyond opposition to “woke” culture (the analogy of everyone hating Sal for different reasons), stakeholders have little commonality on what the university should stand for.
    • Quote:

      “I think what the evidence suggests is that it was defined at the outset more by what it was in opposition to than what it was in support of.” — Evan Mandery [15:32]

7. The Dan Incident: Testing Principles on Day One

• [19:37–22:44]
  • UATX opens in Fall 2024 and, within hours, expels a student (“Dan”) over allegedly threatening statements and comments perceived as victim-blaming towards female students.
    • Quote:

      "One student described the situation as a gut punch to Evan. Students thought they were at a school that wouldn't cancel people without due process." — Ian Mont [22:12]

  • The process violated UATX’s own constitution, which promised public jury trials and procedural protections for accused students.
    • Quote:

      “UATX doesn’t follow the procedures in its own constitution, so Dan has a legitimate grievance there.” — Evan Mandery [22:44]

  • UATX argued their robust student rights actually violated Texas law, undercutting their own founding documents.

8. Rightward Shift after the 2024 Election

• [25:12–27:15]
  • Trump’s victory triggers a political shift at UATX; co-founder Lonsdale, previously critical of Trump, now aligns with him.
  • Lonsdale calls a dramatic all-staff meeting, demanding all faculty explicitly align with principles of anti-Communism, anti-socialism, anti-identity politics, and anti-Islamism. Faculty departures follow immediately.
    • Quote:

      “Lonsdale said that all staff and faculty of UATX must subscribe to the four principles of anti Communism, anti socialism, identity politics, and anti Islamism.” — Evan Mandery [27:03]

    • Memorable Moment:

      "Michael Lind submitting a resignation. He walks out of the meeting, depositing his key fob as he leaves." — Ian Mont [27:32]

9. A Conservative Project, After All?

• [27:40–28:51]
  • Despite initial denials, UATX’s new leadership acknowledges to concerned board members that the project “was and always had been a right wing project.”
  • The Manhattan Institute’s statement advocating for state intervention against “leftist” universities is signed by UATX figures and mirrored by the school president’s own statement.
• The idea of a neutral, open university fades in favor of explicit ideological alignment.

10. Reflections on Academic Pluralism and Power

• [28:51–29:27]
  • Mandery laments the human tendency toward certainty and advocates for radical openness and confidence in reasoning over exclusion.
    • Quote:

      "I am mistrustful and often afraid of anybody who's certain about anything. You handed me all the power...I would still say to all of the people with whom I disagree...Go ahead, let's have it out. Because I believe my ideas are going to win." — Evan Mandery [28:51]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with timestamps)

• The Dual Nature of Cancel Culture:
  • "The left and the right are both guilty of engaging in cancellation. It bothers me more from the left...they should know better." — Evan Mandery [05:00]
• On Classroom Debate:
  • "Classrooms should not be safe spaces. They should be physically safe spaces... they should not be intellectually safe spaces." — Evan Mandery [05:42]
• The Sal Analogy (on coalition-building):
  • "We really have no common ground whatsoever other than sort of incidental agreement." — Evan Mandery [14:49]
• First-Day Hypocrisy:
  • "By the end of the first day, one of UATX's 92 students was permanently removed from campus." — Ian Mont [20:21]
• Procedural Short-circuit:
  • “Rights don't mean anything without procedures... The rubber hits the road on these things is what are your procedural protections?” — Evan Mandery [21:15]
• Staff Revolt and Dramatic Resignation:
  • "He walks out of the meeting, depositing his key fob as he leaves." — Ian Mont [27:32]
• On Pluralism’s Value:
  • "I am mistrustful and often afraid of anybody who's certain about anything" — Evan Mandery [28:51]

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Key Timestamps

| Timestamp | Segment | |-------------|----------------------------------------------------| | 01:25–03:10 | Setting up the campus free speech “crisis” | | 03:28–05:30 | UATX's stated mission and founding principles | | 07:22–10:10 | The backgrounds of the UATX’s key founders | | 10:33–11:58 | High-profile resignations and early cracks | | 12:31–13:45 | Differing teaching philosophies within UATX | | 14:49–16:05 | Analogy: “Sal”—the problem of unity via opposition | | 19:37–22:44 | “Dan incident”—testing UATX’s principles | | 25:12–27:15 | Trump’s win and UATX’s stark rightward turn | | 27:32–28:51 | Staff resignations, public positioning | | 28:51–29:27 | Mandery’s closing reflection on pluralism |

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Conclusion

This episode offers a nuanced, inside look at an experiment in higher education that promised intellectual freedom but quickly dissolved into the same tribalism it set out to escape. UATX’s trajectory, as presented, is less a story of a failed “neutral” university and more a case study in how ideological purity, lack of foundational consensus, and external political tides make such neutrality almost impossible in American academia.

For those interested in the future of colleges, speech, and the culture wars, this episode is essential listening.

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Contact:
Send tips or ideas: [e-mail]
More stories: Check out “Gangster Capitalism,” Seasons 1–3, in the feed.

Transcript

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[Ian Mont]

At Yale University, a faculty member is

[Evan Mandery]

yelled at by students.

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It is not about creating an intellectual space. It is not, do you understand that? It's about creating a home here.

[Ian Mont]

The reason his wife, also a Yale

[Evan Mandery]

instructor, had suggested students should be free to wear any Halloween costume they choose, even if slightly offensive. A month later, the teacher resigns.

[Ian Mont]

For at least the last decade, the question of free speech has been the defining issue of American higher education. The 2010s are now talked about as a time where the so called woke left had a kind of stranglehold on college campuses. Right wing speakers got disinvited, in some cases even threatened. Professors were quote unquote canceled. Students and activists decided what kinds of ideas were welcome or unwelcome on their campuses. And now the right is doing their own version of censorship and quote unquote, cancel culture. But through state power, the Trump administration is cutting funding for universities that won't carry out its directives, and they're detaining students who write editorials they disagree with. Now, on both sides of the spectrum, there's a growing consensus that something has got to change for the sake of the American Academy. This week we talk about a brand new school that set out to tackle those problems head on but appears to have lost its way in the process, struggling to define itself even before opening its doors. I'm ian mont. This week on campus files upside down stanford, the university of austin.

[Evan Mandery]

I'm Evan Mandery. I'm a contributing writer at Politico, and I am a professor at the City University of New York. And my most recent book, Poison How Elite Colleges Divide Us, is about elite colleges as bad social actors and drivers of inequality.

[Ian Mont]

Evan wrote a great piece in Politico tracing the story of the University of Austin, or UATX for short.

[Evan Mandery]

UATX was founded on ostensibly on principles of free speech that cancel culture had really undermined the academy and in their public statements and to the extent I could journalistically discern in their private conversations, it was principally about changing that culture and having a college dedicated to open dialogue and much more connected to sort of the Greek tradition of classical education.

[Ian Mont]

UATX started with a simple pitch, a return to classical education with unfettered free speech. It aimed to achieve this by operating under a constitution and by following Chatham House Rules, which are a set of guidelines for group discussions where the contents of the discussion can be shared outside the group, but the speakers cannot be identified. Here's a UATX representative describing Chatham House Rules. Tell an American audience, what do you mean by Chatham House Rule?

[UATX Representative]

The Chatham House Rule is a great British invention, and it says that if you are a participant in a discussion and you hear an interesting, maybe a controversial thing, you can refer to the information that you've gleaned, but you can't attribute it to a person. People fear that the thing they said that was not right was politically incorrect, ends up on X or for that matter, on Instagram. And that which happens in the classroom should stay in the classroom.

[Evan Mandery]

They had, as I described it in the article, a coordinated media blitz, and it included a story in the New York Times. And all of those initial public statements and articles were about UATX as an antidote to cancel culture and kind of the notion of safe intellectual spaces on college campuses. And that very deeply resonates with me. You know, I think the left and the right are both guilty of engaging in cancellation. It bothers me more from the left, which is where I associate myself, because I feel like they should know better.

[Ian Mont]

Evan told his wife he wanted to work there after seeing the announcement for the first time. He never did, but he's been a professor for more than 25 years, and he's watched as the rules around free speech on campus have changed.

[Evan Mandery]

I've said this many times, classrooms should not be safe spaces. They should be physically safe spaces. And gun control would go a long way to promoting that type of safety, but they should not be intellectually safe spaces. And you know, I've taught for a long time. I've taught for, depending how you count, 26 or 29 years. And I've never really heard a student be consciously hateful in class. But I've seen people say things or heard people say things that are very challenging to people. And I understand that can be tough, but in many instances I'll listen to that and go, well, I understand that you really disagree with that, but probably about 55% of Americans actually agree with that viewpoint. So it may be uninformed, it may be wrong, but boy, it would be a lot better to learn how to engage with that argument with reason than to just try to cast a person out of the community. Because if we get into the casting out business, I'm not so confident that they're going to be the ones cast out and that you're not going to be.

[Ian Mont]

Evan wasn't the only person feeling uneasy about speech issues on college campuses. When UATX presented itself as an alternative to censored academic spaces, it quickly built a pretty star studded cast of supporters.

[Evan Mandery]

A lot of people framed it as a right wing project. There were conservatives among the founders, but that's to be admired, right? Because if they're going to have meaningful viewpoint diversity, there should be conservative voices. And they are generally grossly underrepresented in the academy. But it also included some people like Nadine Strossen, like Jonathan Haidt, like Steven Pinker, who really have a lifelong commitment to pluralism.

[Ian Mont]

The founding president of uatx, Paul Canelos, summarized the mission by describing why he saw UATX as essential. He said universities no longer have an incentive to create an environment where intellectual dissent is protected and fashionable opinions are scrutinized. At the start, the board included a wide range of political thinkers, but it's worth putting particular focus on the three co founders who are at the center of this story. Joe Lonsdale, Neil Ferguson and Barry Weiss. Let's start with Joe Lonsdale.

[Evan Mandery]

Lonsdale is co founder or secondary founder of Palantir Technologies and is very closely associated with Peter Thiel. Lonsdale had had a very public episode with Stanford, about which Emily Bazelon of the New York Times wrote a very interesting and detailed article approximately 10 years ago.

[Ian Mont]

Lonsdale's episode with Stanford is both long and complicated, but to put it as briefly as possible. Lonsdale was accused of sexual assault and harassment by a female student he was mentoring. She, Lonsdale and Stanford later reached a confidential negotiated settlement which included Lonsdale being banned from campus for 10 years. Later, she and Lonsdale both sued each other. But within a year, both lawsuits were dropped and Stanford reversed his ban, saying new evidence had come to light that they took to mean he hadn't violated campus policy. Emily Bazelon wrote a piece about this incident for the New York Times which did a great deal to redeem Lonsdale's public image.

[Evan Mandery]

Certainly many people said to me in my reporting that they thought that he carried some antagonism to antipathy for Stanford as a result of that, which certainly, if you saw it from his perspective, would be understandable.

[Ian Mont]

Then there's Neil Ferguson. Ferguson is a Scottish born historian, often described as being conservative leaning. He calls himself a supporter of both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. And then finally there's Barry Weiss.

[Evan Mandery]

So Weiss left a position in the editorial division of the New York Times, founded the Free Press, which was originally a substack and later became an online journalistic publication. Maybe air quote journalistic. I mean, it's journalistic, so I think that's fair to say. But of course, Bari Weiss has risen to greater heights since then and is now the director of CBS News. Somewhat controversial early tenure there. And Weiss is a central role in the story in that. I mean, I spoke with many former staff members at uatx, including many development fundraising type people, and they all said that Bari Weiss's association was very important in their pitch.

[Ian Mont]

It's easy to forget that Lonsdale, Ferguson and Weiss set out to create a brand new university, which is a huge undertaking requiring a lot of resources and collaboration. But quickly after this highly orchestrated press run announcing the project, some cracks began to show. Even before the school opened its doors to students, some board members resigned very quickly.

[Evan Mandery]

Steven Pinker resigns and Robert Zimmer resigns. Robert Zimmer passed away since, but he was the president of the University of Chicago. Those initial departures seemed to be really based on the aggressiveness with which UATX was criticizing the academy as opposed to asserting its affirmative vision for what it wanted college to be.

[Ian Mont]

UATX was formed in opposition to cancel culture. But public statements about the school from founders and supporters increasingly took an antagonistic tone to traditional higher ed in general. Going beyond the issue of speech alone, going so far as to say that existing higher ed is irreparably broken and no longer in the pursuit of truth. Here's co founder Neil Ferguson saying as much in a UATX video.

[UATX Representative]

What had brought us together was a belief that the state of higher education in the United States and the Western world generally was so awful, so disastrous, that we had to create a new university, that the old ones couldn't be repaired. There was a general feeling within academia that the rot had gone so far, that the established institutions could not easily be salvaged, and we had to do something. So we decided there and then pretty much on the spot to create a new university, and we started talking about how to do it.

[Ian Mont]

Some board members felt UATX went too far and chose to leave. Former board member Steven Pinker later told the Harvard Crimson, the University of Austin was kind of stacked with right wingers, not even necessarily free speech advocates. Some of them were actually opposed to free speech. But the project of building this institution was very much still on, even if less unified loose factions began to form within the school. And on one side is what Evan called the pluralists. As he wrote in his piece, he found that this was the group he personally had the most in common with.

[Evan Mandery]

When I teach you, I really try to present both sides. And actually, from a teaching standpoint, I actually would prefer that people disagree with me. I feel my job as a teacher is to help you clarify what you believe and to make the most reasoned argument in support of the position that you have. I'm under no delusion that I'm going to change anybody's mind about anything. Now, if we're friends, I might try to persuade you of something, although I haven't really found any evidence that I can persuade anybody of anything.

[Ian Mont]

There were professors and administrators at UATX who shared Evan's general teaching philosophy. But there was also another camp.

[Evan Mandery]

There's definitely a strong element at UATX of people who associate with a political philosopher named Leo Strauss. And I wasn't super hip to Strauss. I had to read about him.

[Ian Mont]

Leo Strauss was a political philosopher who argued against modernism and for a return to ancient Greek political philosophy. His writing has been very influential among conservative academics.

[Evan Mandery]

He's a little bit hard to pin down sufficient to say they're using him to stand for the proposition that universities should not be value neutral and they should be indoctrinating people with a set of values.

[Ian Mont]

Indoctrinate is a bit of a negative buzzword in education, but it's not inherently a bad thing. It's contextual, and it depends on the values that are being indoctrinated. But As a driving principle of some of UATX's staff, it is a bit puzzling. UATX purports itself to be a bastion of free thinking and free speech, but some of its leaders are fans of a guy who at least to some extent opposes those ideas. This conflict, to be neutral or not, was at the center of a number of other early departures. And in September 2023, two senior administrators at UATX attempted what has since been described as an internal coup. They were both critical of Paul Canelos, the school's founding president, for not being antagonistic enough to more conventional schools. Ultimately, the coup failed and the two administrators left. this point, the school is about a year away from opening, and this attempted coup signals a key underlying issue at uatx. I asked Evan to describe this issue, and he came up with a pretty good analogy. Imagine a person, let's call him Sal.

[Evan Mandery]

So you and I both know sale and we don't like Sal. And turns out we're like, oh, I really hate Sal. You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. And then we become really good friends because we're united in our desire to get rid of Sal. But it turns out I don't like him because he's a rich person and you don't like him because he went out with your ex girlfriend or something like that. So we really have really no common ground whatsoever other than sort of incidental agreement.

[Ian Mont]

In the case of uatx, sal is, for lack of a better phrase, woke colleges or cancel culture. Everyone at UATX hated Sal, hated cancel culture. But in many places, that's where the agreement ended.

[Evan Mandery]

I think what happens in the UATX story is so much of it is motivated in these early times by antipathy that they don't pause. So it's very hard if you and I both say that we don't like Sal, to stop and say, oh, yeah, we gotta get rid of this guy. I want to make sure that we're both getting rid of him for the same reason, because there's going to be a day after we're just going to get rid of him and worry about it later. I think what the evidence suggests is that it was defined at the outset more by what it was in opposition to than what it was in support of.

[Ian Mont]

Everybody agreed they had to get rid of Sal to get rid of woke cancel culture, but there was no real consensus on what to replace it with. UATX would open its doors in the fall of 2024 without having resolved that issue. And on literally day one, the school's founding principles and opposition to cancel culture would be immediately tested.

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[Ian Mont]

Will this be just another politicized campus swinging right or a true

[Evan Mandery]

disruptor resetting the marketplace of ideas?

[Ian Mont]

September 2024, UATX welcomed its first class of 92 students. In spite of the turnover on the board and the coup attempt and the early departures, UATX had actually done it. They'd created a school and were presenting what appeared to be a united front to the world. For context, UATX is in a pretty unique spot when it comes to hot button issues like DEI and Title ix.

[Evan Mandery]

It's important to add here that another thing that the founders were pretty deeply aligned on was antipathy for DEI and Title IX regulations and procedures.

[Ian Mont]

As a quick reminder, Title IX is a set of federal guidelines which are designed to prevent sex based discrimination on campus. Most people encounter Title IX in cases of sexual assault or harassment. But UATX so far doesn't take federal funding and for that reason isn't subject to all the same rules around Title ix. Instead, UATX aimed to tackle those issues through their constitution. But by the end of the first day, one of UATX's 92 students was permanently removed from campus.

[Evan Mandery]

The gist of the allegations is that he's heard to have said something sort of about uatx, female students generally, and about a student in particular.

[Ian Mont]

The student who Evan calls Dan was accused of saying some UATX girls carry themselves in a way that invited sexual assault, specifically pointing to one female student. He also said on the official UATX discord channel that he would kill anyone who messed with his stuff.

[Evan Mandery]

As I say in the article, there is, and I've interviewed several people who were present at what I understand to be the critical incident that really doubt this story. Say it's a very, very gross misunderstanding. And I have interviewed Dan too.

[Ian Mont]

Nonetheless, Dan is labeled a quote, credible threat and removed from campus literally before the end of the first day.

[Evan Mandery]

One of the things which we haven't mentioned yet is that UATX was governed by a constitution. And it's a very, very interesting idea. Rights don't mean anything without procedures, right? We can say we all have freedom of speech. Well, if ICE can come and shoot you for protesting and the family can't sue because they have immunity, I don't know, your right didn't really seem like it meant very much. Kind of the rubber hits the road on these things is what are your procedural protections? And UATX highly innovatively was governed by a constitution that said that claims like Dan's would be factually adjudicated and the consequence determined by an external board of lawyers. And that did not happen in Dan's case, and it was very divisive on campus.

[Ian Mont]

One student described the situation as a gut punch to Evan. Students thought they were at a school that wouldn't cancel people without due process. To see Dan removed in less than 24 hours was a deeply divisive turn of events, especially because Dan was not provided with any of the procedural protections outlined in the UATX constitution, like the right to a public trial before a jury, which included students. This all led to a bizarre situation where UATX defended itself by arguing that its own constitution was illegal under Texas law.

[Evan Mandery]

UATX doesn't follow the procedures in its own constitution, so Dan has a legitimate grievance there. But UATX takes the position that the abundance of rights it afforded to students actually violated Texas law, so that, among other things, he didn't really have the right to confront witnesses against him.

[Ian Mont]

All of this created trust issues with at least some students. One student told Evan they feared facing the same fate as Dan, saying, at any moment a frivolous Title IX complaint could be filed against you. I've never felt my speech was so chilled as it was in the classroom at uatx. Others said UATX was nearly identical to other colleges they had attended in the past, certainly not the radical correction UATX was set out to be. And in the background through much of this first semester, the campaign for US President was building. And this time more than most, it seemed like a referendum on the cultural future of the country. When Trump won, all around the country, institutions changed tack and aligned with Trump. While it was never made explicit within uatx, the same pivot began there as well. The changes were invisible to many at UATX, at least until an explosive day in April 2025.

[Evan Mandery]

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[Ian Mont]

After President Trump's return to the White House, a number of changes were made around uatx, starting with the rhetoric of its leaders. Co founder Neil Ferguson, who had long been critical of Trump, attended a fundraiser at Mar A Lago after Trump's second election and said he was wrong to call Trump a would be tyrant. Following course, a number of internal changes were also made, including to the role of founding president Paul Canelos, who was one of the key figures arguing UATX should remain neutral. Here's Canlos on 60 Minutes stating his perspective.

[Evan Mandery]

Politics should be studied at a university. It shouldn't be the operating system of university.

[Ian Mont]

Any university that is identifiably political is not fulfilling its highest mission.

[Evan Mandery]

A big thing is that Canlos is elevated to the chancellorship and he's ultimately removed. And effectively most of the people who are loyal to Canalos are either removed or distanced themselves from the university because they feel like it's changed.

[Ian Mont]

Canalos removal from the presidency was the first of many things that pushed the school rightward in the months after Trump's election. For people Evan spoke to, the rightward swing was crystallized in an early April all staff meeting.

[Evan Mandery]

It's a very unusual event. As someone who's now spent 25 plus years in the academy, no trustee of my college has ever called a meeting of any kind, and certainly none has ever said anything like this. It's very dramatic.

[Ian Mont]

The meeting was called by Joe Lonsdale, the UATX co founder accused of sexual harassment by a student at Stanford. In the meeting, he described his vision for uatx, one that was decisively opposed to liberal and progressive ideology. One staffer told Evan, it was the most uncomfortable 35-40-ish minutes I've ever experienced.

[Evan Mandery]

Lonsdale said that all staff and faculty of UATX must subscribe to the four principles of anti Communism, anti socialism, identity politics, and anti Islamism.

[Ian Mont]

This meeting was a shock to many faculty members who still thought of UATX as a bulwark against cancel culture. Now all of a sudden, one of the school's founders was basically saying, if you disagree with me, get out. Visiting professor Michael Lind responded to Lonsdale at the end of the meeting.

[Evan Mandery]

You know, it ends with Michael Lind submitting a resignation. He walks out of the meeting, depositing his key fob as he leaves.

[Ian Mont]

Lind ultimately returned to finish out the semester, but no longer works at the school at the time of writing. Following that day in April, UATX has been fairly open about its political alignment. In July of last year, the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, published a statement calling on President Trump to redefine the relationship between the state and universities. It urged Trump to revoke any and all public benefit from universities that have fallen under the, quote unquote control of the left. This statement was co signed by a number of UATX staffers, including co founder Neil Ferguson. Two days later, UATX's new president published a statement that aligned the school with those beliefs. When three board members approached UATX's new president with concerns, they were told that UATX was and always had been a right wing project. The truth is probably somewhere in between. If you take the words of UATX's founders at face value, then UATX started as a genuine attempt to create a place for all ideas to exist on equal footing. It certainly appears they failed to achieve that, but the idea is worth something.

[Evan Mandery]

We're all just human beings trying to figure out the world. And I say this all the time. I am mistrustful and often afraid of anybody who's certain about anything. You handed me all the power. I would still say to all of the people with whom I disagree, the Christians and the homophobes and the transphobes. Go ahead, let's have it out. Because I believe my ideas are going to win. That's what I'm confident enough in, is my reasoning.

[Ian Mont]

If you've got a story idea, we would love to hear about it. Send us an [e-mail] and if you're loving this podcast, be sure to click Follow on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode. While you're there. Leave us a review and a five star rating. Campus Files is an Odyssey original podcast hosted by Margo Gray and Ian Mont. Our executive producers are Leah Rees Dennis and Lloyd Lockridge. Campus Files is produced by Ian Mont and Margot Gray, sound design and engineering by Andy Jaskowicz and Zach Clark, legal support by Laura Berman and Melissa Jean. Original music by Davey Sumner. Special thanks to Maura Curran, Josefina Francis, Hilary Schuff, Eric Donnelly, Kate Hutchison, Rose, Sean Cherry, Kurt Courtney and Lauren Vieira.

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[Lloyd Lockridge]

Yes.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

What made you so interested in all these ancestral lines and ancestral influences?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

So I've been interested in it for so long that I can't remember when it started.

[Evan Mandery]

But all I can tell you, like in childhood.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Childhood?

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

Did you do the DNA test?

[Lloyd Lockridge]

I've not done that. I wasn't all that interested in the statistical breakdown of my DNA. I'm more interested in the stories.

[Podcast Advertiser/Host]

The stories of your ancestors.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Of my ancestors and the circumstances that moved the them around the planet. Every family has its stories. Your grandparents met on a blind date or your great grandmother passed through Ellis Island. But every once in a while, you'll hear something a little more unusual.

[Ian Mont]

I have a really vague memory of somebody saying, did you know your great uncle killed somebody? I've heard my whole life that she invented the margarita.

[Evan Mandery]

He gets a patent one month before the Wright brothers.

[Ian Mont]

Oh, my God.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Some of these stories are hard to believe. Others are hard to imagine. And as these tall tales get passed down through the generations, they become something more than a family story. They become family lore. My name is Lloyd Lockridge, and in this podcast I'm going to have people on to tell stories about their families. And then we're going to investigate those stories and find out how much of it is true.

[Evan Mandery]

To go into the archive and find

[Ian Mont]

what you think is like, not just

[Evan Mandery]

the secret of your family's life, but the explanatory secret of your family's life.

[Narrator/Advertiser]

Wow.

[National Debt Relief Advertiser]

You know, maybe this old family story

[Evan Mandery]

that I overheard in my grandmother's kitchen is true.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

This is Family Lore, a new series from Odyssey Podcasts.

[Ian Mont]

You're always wondering why your dad is a certain way.

[Evan Mandery]

Well, here's one answer I love when

[Ian Mont]

I hear somebody says I have a

[Evan Mandery]

boring family family history. They didn't do anything. I said it's because you don't know anything about your history.

[Lloyd Lockridge]

Please follow and listen to Family Lore on any of your podcast apps.