You may have heard about this in the news. I imagine they chose Austin because Phoenix, Liberty, Trump and Con Game were already taken. Worse, they will probably make Alex Jones, Ron Paul and Joe Rogan faculty members. For all of UT’s biggest faults for being a diploma mill to legacy assholes and being a losing, unofficial NFL franchise; real thinking across the spectrum takes place.
Most universities lean more “liberal” due to the Hard Right’s disdain for education and the right/conservatives tend to pursue money over knowledge with gigs at corporations or stink tanks. Professors who lean more to the conservative camp in my experience (most often Business and Engineering) still discuss many possibilities. They may have voted for St. Reagan or Bush the Elder but the majority shared a university primary mission, to expand the boundaries of knowledge no matter where it may take them.
My alma mater, Marquette is easily a center-right school given its ties to the Catholic Church and residing in Milwaukee, a dying blue-collar city. However, they didn’t indoctrinate anybody into Catholicism or worse, the Opus Dei crap, as my cousin Leesa feared when considering a place to pursue more education. Hell, they made me an even better Atheist…well, you can blame that on the Jesuits. My point, if the check cleared, they didn’t care what you believed as the numerous Muslim grad students from Indonesia proved. They did care, as all good universities do, if you graduated with more knowledge, perspective and an open mind about all things. Fame couldn’t hurt as shitbird and dropout Scott Walker or NBA star Dwayne Wade demonstrated (he did graduate later).
So this “university” is yet another scam and right-wing cliché factory to slow the Right/Conservatives’ failure to adapt or realize their ideas/stances are out of step with reality. Or the biggest case in point I often make with my own life in how my opinions/life don’t line up with what my parents wanted. They hate how I got an education as they did and somehow didn’t get the outcome they desired, a Xerox of their beliefs.
I’m certain these assholes chose my adopted city as their base not to just counter our Left/Liberal/Green leanings; they also want to smoke weed and enjoy Austin’s quality of life since the cities they’re really welcome in are shit holes. You don’t see the Right in a rush to set up shop in Little Rock, OKC, Bismarck or Indiacrapolis.