Bari Weiss, UATX, and the Corporate Rewriting of “Free Speech”

Bari Weiss has built a powerful public identity as a defender of free speech against institutional conformity. From elite universities to legacy newsrooms, she presents herself as a principled dissenter confronting ideological capture. Yet her expanding influence across higher education and corporate media suggests something deeper than individual controversy. It reveals how elite institutions are increasingly repackaging control, consolidation, and risk management as rebellion.

Weiss’s involvement in the University of Austin and her editorial authority at CBS News illustrate how the language of free inquiry has been absorbed into a broader project of institutional realignment rather than democratization.

The University of Austin was launched in 2021 as a highly publicized response to what its founders described as illiberal conditions in American higher education. Weiss, as a co-founder and public face of the project, helped frame UATX as a refuge for intellectual risk-taking and heterodox thought. Yet the institution was not built from the margins of academia. It emerged through the backing of wealthy donors, venture capitalists, tech executives, and high-profile media figures who already occupy powerful positions within American public life.

UATX’s critique of higher education centers almost entirely on cultural politics, presenting universities as hostile to dissent while leaving largely untouched the material structures that govern academic freedom. The casualization of academic labor, the erosion of tenure, donor influence over research agendas, student debt as a disciplinary force, and retaliation against labor organizers and whistleblowers rarely figure into the narrative. In this way, UATX offers not a systemic challenge to elite education but an exit strategy for those with the resources to opt out of public accountability.

The same logic appears in Weiss’s role within legacy media. In late 2025, CBS News pulled a completed investigative segment from 60 Minutes examining the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelan migrants to a notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador. The segment had reportedly passed legal and editorial review. The decision to shelve it, attributed to a demand for additional on-the-record administration comment, sparked internal outrage. Veteran journalists described the move as political interference rather than standard editorial caution, with some staff reportedly threatening to resign.

The episode carried a deep irony. One of the most prominent self-described defenders of free speech now presided over the suppression of investigative journalism within one of the country’s most storied news programs. Whether temporary or permanent, the delay signaled a shift in institutional priorities, where political sensitivity and corporate risk appeared to outweigh journalistic autonomy.

This controversy unfolded amid broader upheaval at CBS News. Longtime anchors departed the CBS Evening News in emotional farewells as management reshuffled talent and redefined the network’s public posture. Inside the newsroom, morale reportedly declined as staff faced uncertainty about editorial direction, layoffs, and ideological repositioning. Weiss reportedly questioned journalists about public perceptions of bias, reinforcing a top-down effort to rebrand the organization rather than engage in collective editorial deliberation.

These developments cannot be separated from the corporate transformation of CBS’s parent company. Paramount Global has undergone a sweeping restructuring shaped by its merger with Skydance Media, led by David Ellison, the son of Oracle founder Larry Ellison. Under this new ownership structure, CBS News has been encouraged to restore “balance” and credibility, language that often accompanies efforts to reduce investigative risk and align journalism more closely with corporate and political interests.

At the same time, Paramount’s deal-making has intersected with elite political networks. Jared Kushner’s private equity firm was involved in related media acquisition efforts before withdrawing, highlighting the increasingly blurred lines between media ownership, political influence, and capital consolidation. In this environment, editorial independence is not abolished outright but carefully managed, constrained by the priorities of ownership and the sensitivities of power.

What connects UATX and CBS News under Weiss’s influence is not ideology so much as structure. In both cases, authority flows upward while dissent is curated. Free inquiry is framed as a moral value but detached from democratic governance, labor protections, or accountability to those most vulnerable to institutional retaliation. Meanwhile, individuals and groups who experience genuine silencing in academia and media—adjunct faculty, student activists, labor organizers, whistleblowers, and critics of militarism or donor power—remain largely absent from this version of the free speech debate.

This pattern is familiar within higher education. When institutions face crises of legitimacy, elites rarely pursue democratization. Instead, they create alternatives that preserve control under new branding: private institutes, donor-led centers, honors colleges, and parallel universities. Legacy media has followed a similar path, repackaging dissent while narrowing the scope of accountability.

Bari Weiss is not an anomaly within this landscape. She is emblematic of it. Her influence reflects how “free speech” has become an aesthetic rather than a structural commitment, invoked loudly while practiced selectively.

The danger is not that Weiss holds strong opinions. It is that her framework for free speech travels so easily across institutions precisely because it leaves their economic and power relations intact. The University of Austin does not confront the forces hollowing out higher education. CBS News, under corporate consolidation, risks muting the investigative journalism that once defined it. In both cases, freedom becomes a branding strategy rather than a democratic practice.

For those concerned with truly independent journalism and genuinely democratic education, the lesson is clear. Speech is never just about speech. It is about ownership, power, and who bears the consequences when truth becomes inconvenient.

The University of Austin’s Ideological Overreach: A Critical Look at the “Higher Education” Alternative

The University of Austin (UATX) markets itself as the cure for the alleged decay of American universities—a “fearless pursuit of truth” dedicated to restoring rigor, patriotism, and civic virtue. In a recent fundraising appeal, UATX’s president Carlos Carvalho argued that America’s youth have been “miseducated, unwise, and confused” by elite institutions and that only UATX’s model can reverse these trends.

But beneath the rhetoric lies a deeply ideological project that raises serious questions about educational substance, inclusivity, and the influence of wealthy backers. Rather than addressing the structural challenges facing higher education, UATX simplifies complex societal shifts into a moral blame game, offering solutions grounded in a narrow set of political and cultural assumptions.

A Narrow Diagnosis for a Complex Problem

UATX highlights surveys showing declining patriotism among young Americans and growing interest in alternative economic systems such as socialism. The university concludes that mainstream universities are to blame for this generational malaise—a claim both simplistic and selective. Attitudes toward identity, governance, and civic life are shaped by economics, media, community, and lived experience, not solely by seminar-room pedagogy. Reducing broad societal trends to grading policies or curriculum choices obscures complexity and risks promoting moral panic over reasoned analysis.

UATX’s Prescriptions: Tradition Over Inquiry

The university champions meritocratic admissions emphasizing test scores, small seminars, and strict grading as antidotes to the so-called “gutting of academic standards.” While rigorous study has value, these proposals reflect a particular vision of education: one centered on classical Western texts, narrow definitions of excellence, and pedagogical models that prioritize conformity over intellectual exploration. Rather than fostering openness, this approach risks reinforcing orthodoxy.

Donors, Ideology, and Influence

UATX rejects tuition and government support in favor of private philanthropy, a choice that amplifies questions of ideological influence. The university’s early and major backers are heavily aligned with conservative and libertarian priorities, raising doubts about whether the institution can serve as a genuinely neutral forum for intellectual inquiry. Notable supporters include Jeff Yass, billionaire co-founder of Susquehanna International Group and major Republican donor, who pledged $100 million to UATX, launching a $300 million campaign; Harlan Crow, real estate developer and GOP donor, reported as an early backer; Len Blavatnik, investor whose family foundation has donated to UATX; and Bill Ackman, hedge fund manager supporting UATX’s free-speech mission.

Founders and trustees include Bari Weiss, journalist and co-founder who remains a trustee, framing UATX as a response to “censoriousness” in higher education; Joe Lonsdale, venture capitalist and founding trustee linked to UATX’s fiscal sponsor; and Niall Ferguson, Pano Kanelos, and others who played founding leadership roles. The concentration of wealth and ideological alignment among donors raises pressing questions: can a university built on such a foundation truly function as a neutral intellectual space?

Alarmism, Ideology, and Academic Freedom

UATX portrays mainstream universities as ideologically monolithic and hostile to free speech. Critics note that such framing conflates disagreement with censorship, overlooking the robust debates already occurring on campuses nationwide. Moreover, by marketing itself as an alternative to “woke indoctrination,” UATX signals a particular cultural orientation rather than offering a neutral platform for diverse perspectives.

Ideological Branding—not Educational Transformation

UATX presents itself as an education revolution. Yet its model appears more rooted in ideological branding than in addressing real structural and pedagogical challenges: affordability, accessibility, genuine academic freedom, and engagement with both classical and contemporary ideas. True reform demands more than a privately funded bubble of aligned donors and like-minded students; it requires grappling with complexity rather than caricaturing crisis.

Sources 

Green, Erica L. At the U. of Austin, a Raft of Departures Leaves More Questions Than Answers. Chronicle of Higher Education.
Zaleski, Olivia. Austin’s Anti‑Woke University Is Living in Dreamland. The New Republic.
Smith, Helen. Is the University of Austin Betraying Its Founding Principles? Quillette.
CBS News. UATX Launches, Touting Ideological Openness and Debate.
Austin Monthly. How the So‑Called University of Austin Is Faring Nearly Two Years After Conception.
Chron.com. University of Austin Staff Exodus.
Reformaustin.org. GOP Donors Pour Millions Into Anti‑Woke University in Texas.
Salon.com. Bari Weiss’ Field of Right‑Wing Dreams: Will the University of Austin Ever Actually Exist?

Who Really Rules Higher Education in Texas?

Texas has long held a paradoxical position in American higher education—home to elite research universities like the University of Texas at Austin and Rice University, sprawling community colleges, aggressive for-profit colleges, and some of the nation’s most ideological legislative battles over curriculum and control. But beneath this multifaceted system lies a sharper question: Who really rules higher education in Texas?

The answer, as in William Domhoff's Who Rules America?, lies not in the democratic ideal of a neutral, public-serving education system, but in a network of wealth, political power, and corporate interests that increasingly determine who gets educated, what they learn, and who profits.

Oil, Oligarchs, and the Board of Regents

Texas higher education has always been intertwined with fossil fuel wealth. The University of Texas and Texas A&M systems benefit from the Permanent University Fund (PUF), built from vast West Texas oil and gas revenues. This financial cushion has helped build world-class infrastructure—but it has also made these institutions vulnerable to elite capture.

Regents appointed by Republican governors—often wealthy businesspeople, energy executives, and political donors—wield enormous influence. These appointments are less about educational expertise than loyalty to political and economic interests. The Board of Regents has functioned as a tool for ideological enforcement and donor-class control, rather than a steward of academic integrity.

The Shadow Power of Elite Private Schools

Elite private institutions such as Rice University, Southern Methodist University (SMU), and Baylor University play a quieter but equally significant role in shaping Texas’s academic and cultural landscape. Heavily endowed, often legacy-driven, and historically exclusionary, these schools serve as pipelines to elite law firms, corporate boards, and government agencies.

Though less exposed to direct political interference than public schools, these institutions remain tethered to the same economic power centers—big oil, finance, and real estate. Their boards are dominated by billionaires, their research often subsidized by corporate contracts, and their prestige protected by carefully curated admissions policies. The myth of meritocracy is preserved through glossy brochures and selective philanthropy, but access remains restricted by legacy, wealth, and social capital.

The University of Austin: A Privatized Culture War Experiment

The recently launched University of Austin (UATX) has emerged as the most explicit expression of Texas’s ideological drift. Founded by anti-woke entrepreneurs and libertarian-leaning academics, UATX markets itself as a haven for free speech and anti-orthodoxy—but it is, in essence, a venture capital-funded think tank with a university label.

With backing from Silicon Valley moguls and conservative influencers, UATX represents the privatized, boutique model of ideological education: elite, exclusionary, and built from the top down. It doesn’t serve the broader public so much as it serves a political narrative. It is less about offering a robust education than cultivating a new cadre of culture warriors with academic credentials.

The Rise of Christian Nationalists and Culture War Education

In parallel, Texas’s right-wing legislature has increasingly politicized public higher education. DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) offices have been defunded. Critical race theory has been demonized. Professors face mounting surveillance and restrictions on academic content.

Senate Bill 17, sponsored by State Senator Brandon Creighton, banned DEI offices across public institutions. Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick has explicitly called for the dismissal of faculty deemed too liberal. These moves are not isolated—they reflect a growing campaign to remake public education as a conservative ideological apparatus.

Privatization and the Businessification of Education

Corporate power, meanwhile, has reshaped the educational infrastructure behind the scenes. Think tanks like the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF)—funded by Koch money and fossil fuel magnates—push privatization, deregulation, and the businessification of public services.

Online program managers (OPMs), ed-tech startups, and private equity-funded providers offer turnkey degrees and credentialing schemes that promise efficiency but often deliver subpar instruction, student surveillance, and high attrition. The revolving door between university administrators and the for-profit education sector ensures that public education serves private goals.

Who’s Left Out?

Working-class Texans—especially Black, Hispanic, and rural students—remain sidelined. Community colleges, where the majority of first-generation and low-income students begin, are perennially underfunded and politically neglected. Four-year public institutions are increasingly unaffordable. Debt is rising. Admissions remain stratified by zip code, standardized tests, and legacy connections.

Undocumented students and DACA recipients, once supported by early DREAM Act-style policies, now face mounting barriers. The ideal of universal access is being eroded by systemic inequality—racial, economic, and political.

Resistance and Hope

Yet Texas is not entirely lost to reaction. Faculty groups, student organizers, and investigative journalists are pushing back. Community colleges are innovating against austerity. Alternative models of education—democratic, inclusive, publicly accountable—persist, even if they are under threat.

But to truly reclaim higher education for the people, we must see through the spectacle. Texas doesn’t just have a higher ed system—it has a ruling class that uses education to reproduce its power. Until we confront that reality, the state’s students, workers, and communities will continue to bear the cost.

---

In Texas, who rules higher education? Not students. Not teachers. Not communities. The answer is: oil barons, hedge funders, ideologues, and empire builders. Until that changes, higher education will remain a tool of exclusion—not liberation.

---

Sources:

• Domhoff, William. Who Rules America? McGraw-Hill Education, multiple editions.

• Texas Tribune. “Gov. Abbott's Higher Ed Appointees Have Deep Industry Ties.” Texas Tribune

• University of Texas System. “The Permanent University Fund (PUF).” utsystem.edu

• Inside Higher Ed. “Texas Bans DEI in Higher Education.” (2023)

• Chronicle of Higher Education. “Dan Patrick’s Culture War Against Texas Professors.”

• Texas Public Policy Foundation. tppf.org

• The University of Austin. “Why We're Founding a New University.” uaustin.org

• Hechinger Report. “Who Gets Left Behind at Texas Community Colleges?”

• Education Trust. “Racial Disparities in Texas Higher Education Outcomes.”

• The Century Foundation. “The Problem with Online Program Managers.”

• The Intercept. “Billionaires and Anti-Woke Crusaders Launch a University in Texas.”

Tips, leaks, or story ideas? Contact the Higher Education Inquirer.

UATX and the Manhattan Statement: A Reactionary Vision Masquerading as Reform

The July 14 release of the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education, authored by conservative activist Christopher Rufo and endorsed by a network of public intellectuals including Jordan Peterson and Victor Davis Hanson, signals a renewed attempt to politicize and reengineer U.S. higher education from the top down. The University of Austin (UATX), founded in 2021 as a counter to so-called "woke" universities, quickly aligned itself with the statement’s aims. In his July 17 response, UATX President Carlos Carvalho embraced Rufo’s framing, declaring that his institution was created to reverse what he and others call a crisis of truth and national identity in American academia.

But as previously noted by the Higher Education Inquirer in the article “Socrates in Space: University of Austin and the Art of Selling Platitudes to the Powerful” (July 2024), UATX is not a revolutionary institution. It is a repackaged version of elite academia, complete with wealthy donors, highly connected board members, and a PR strategy rooted in grievance politics. The school’s language of “freedom,” “truth,” and “rigor” masks a political project designed to shape a new generation of conservative elites, while marginalizing alternative perspectives and undermining the pluralism that genuine education requires.

The Manhattan Statement claims that American universities have become engines of ideological tyranny, no longer serving the public good. It calls on the President of the United States to draft a “new contract” that would tie federal funding and accreditation to ideological conformity, enforced through policy tools like grants, loans, and eligibility restrictions. In short, it advocates for government control over academic speech and governance—precisely the kind of top-down coercion that critics of higher education claim to oppose.

President Carvalho responded with a full-throated endorsement of this approach, asserting that universities today lack rigor and suppress dissent, and that UATX alone fosters true academic freedom and civic responsibility. He describes a meritocratic admissions process based on quantitative performance metrics, a rigorous curriculum rooted in “civilizational survival,” and a mission to produce citizens capable of preserving “constitutional liberty and national prosperity.”

In practice, UATX is a selectively curated intellectual space, one that draws heavily on a Western classical canon and excludes broader traditions of inquiry. The “quantitative metrics” for admissions echo longstanding tools of exclusion used by elite schools, masking inequality behind a rhetoric of objectivity. The institution is unaccredited, but wrapped in the trappings of prestige: slick marketing, elite endorsements, and curated media profiles. It critiques the influence of DEI offices while quietly building its own ideological infrastructure, funded by libertarian and neoconservative donors.

UATX claims to break from the existing higher education establishment, but in many ways it reflects its worst tendencies: elite gatekeeping, narrow curriculum design, and a penchant for cultivating future power brokers under the guise of critical thought. Its alignment with figures like Rufo and institutions like the Manhattan Institute reveals that its primary mission is not educational transformation, but political reprogramming.

The true crises in higher education—mounting student debt, the precarity of adjunct labor, bloated administration, and the deepening divide between elite and non-elite institutions—are ignored in both the Manhattan Statement and UATX’s institutional messaging. Instead, culture war narratives dominate the agenda. Rather than addressing the exploitative political economy of higher education, Rufo and Carvalho advance a project that serves to consolidate influence among ideologically aligned elites, while framing dissent and diversity as existential threats to the republic.

UATX is not a path forward for American higher education. It is a reflection of its decay—an institution more interested in slogans and spectacle than in solving the structural issues that actually imperil the future of learning and equity in the United States.

Sources:

Christopher Rufo, Manhattan Statement on Higher Education, July 14, 2025
Carlos Carvalho, UATX Response to the Manhattan Statement, July 17, 2025
University of Austin promotional materials and public statements, www.uaustin.org
Higher Education Inquirer, Socrates in Space: University of Austin and the Art of Selling Platitudes to the Powerful, July 2024
New York Times, The University That War on “Wokeness” Built, December 2021
Inside Higher Ed, UATX and the Spectacle of Merit, February 2024
Chronicle of Higher Education, Is UATX a University or a Political Project?, January 2023

Socrates in Space: University of Austin as a Model of America's Ivory Tower Future

The University of Austin's inaugural class begins this September. While its founding has had some media attention, critical and uncritical, little is known about the school, other than its founders and some of the curriculum--and more recently about the school's constitution and austere, free market business model. We expect the public to receive information akin to propaganda from the new university while investigative reporters attempt to find what's really developing.  

Tomorrowland's Elite Model

The US has had three major growth periods in elite higher education with the founding of Christian-based Ivy League schools in the 17th and 18th centuries, the rise of more private colleges in the 19th century, and the evolution of state flagship universities in the 20th century, which altered their missions from teaching to focus more on research and medicine.

According to President Pano Kanelos, the University of Austin (UATX) is modeled after elite schools founded by the money of 19th century capitalists: Johns Hopkins University, the University of Chicago (John D. Rockefeller), and Stanford University. In its original plan, the school is seeking accreditation but not public funding. And without federal funding, the school is not required to be transparent on a number of issues, including finances, student demographics, and crime statistics. A limited amount of information will be available on the institution's IRS 990 forms.

UATX's leaders see the school as a model for elite education in the 21st century and beyond: socializing future elites in neo-classical western thought and the search of the truth as they know it: through the lens of US venture capitalists and US private equity. The school's donors include Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale who created the start up funds for UATX, real estate investor Harlan Crow, and global real estate investor Scott Malkin.  

Despite its calling for intellectual diversity, the University of Austin will serve as a safe space for conservative and libertarian youth, especially young men: blind to race, class, and gender, and friendly to those who may feel intimidated by progressive folks and the recent pro-Palestinian movement on elite campuses. UATX will be attuned to the needs of private capital and the promotion of their ventures and the ventures of their allies: from bitcoin, to artificial intelligence, to private space exploration. 

Command and Control

At the University of Austin, there will be no faculty senate and no faculty tenure. The initial faculty roster is composed of 19 men and 4 women--and appears to be disproportionately white. Staff and support roles will be done largely by artificial intelligence and workers in Guatemala.   

 

Artificial Intelligence will be used to reduce labor costs at the University of Austin. 

Prospective students will selected by the faculty and on merit, which includes standardized test scores. Those who matriculate will learn classical and neoclassical western philosophy (like Socrates and the Federalist Papers) and English Literature in combination with science and engineering, where all students will take the same coursework for the first two years, then become research fellows in the remaining two years, with each student involved in practically solving "a major political, social or economic problem...by the time they graduate."

Students will share apartments off campus where they will do their own cooking. There will be no amenities on campus or campus police, but local gyms and local police will be in the area. Aside from the Austin Union, the student body is expected to start their own clubs and activities. The physical library is a small room with a few bookshelves, and the librarian has additional duties. Civil debate is encouraged, but campus protests will be limited--it is said, to protect the rights of all students. 

The founding 2024 class is expected to enroll 100 students, growing to 200 students in 2025 and 1,000 students in 2028, reaching a peak of 4,000, and with a new campus. After the founding class, which will receive free tuition for four years, tuition is expected to be about $32,500 per year, with a number of students receiving scholarships.

Related links:

The Constitution of Academic Liberty (Niall Ferguson, National Affairs)

Can the New University of Austin Revive the Culture of Inquiry in Higher Education? (Joanne Jacobs, Education Next)

An American Education: Notes from UATX (Noah Rawlings, The New Inquiry)

Austin’s Anti-Woke University Is Living in Dreamland (Morgan O'Hanlon)

The Future of Publicly-Funded University Hospitals (Dahn Shaulis and Glen McGhee)

A People's History of Higher Education in the US?

Dangerous Spaces: Sexual Assault and Other Forms of Violence On and Off Campus