A writer attended the Forbidden Courses program, or what he describes as “a sort of anti-woke summer camp,” at the recently created University of Austin. Here, he shares what he learned, which includes the fact that UATX isn’t terribly interested in learning at all. Thank you for your service, Noah Rawlings:
Peter [Boghossian, UATX founder] springs to the center of the room. The air pressure changes. A buzz, a hum, a current about us. He brims with a frenzied energy. Something is happening. He is going to give us a taste of what’s to come, he says. This is the kind of intellectual activity we’re going to experience at UATX. We’re going to grapple with big issues. We’re going to be daring, fearless, undaunted. We’re going, he says, to do something called “Street Epistemology.”
What is Street Epistemology? He’ll demonstrate. It’s one of two things he does, the other being jiu-jitsu. “I don’t have a life,” he says. “I talk to strangers and I wrestle strangers.” But before we can do Street Epistemology, Peter needs to think of some questions.
He turns his back to the audience, hunches slightly and strides, stroking his chin. He is Rodin’s thinker set in manic motion; he is a relentless logician in his study at midnight; he is a frantically philosophical gremlin … —BAM! He wheels around and stalks forward and slings his index finger out toward a student, demands of him whether climate change is real?! and how certain is he?! and why?!—BOP! He points at another student, asks whether gender is a social construct, whether trans women are women?! He cites Socrates and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. He staggers and weaves: as a boxer dances, so Peter lectures. He is the professor you never had; he is a squall of raw intellect; he is Robin Williams in the Dead Poets Society, but ripped. He is putting a gun to the head of your most precious assumptions.
And then it is over. That, we have learned, is Street Epistemology. It is asking the hard questions of another, and not refuting them when you disagree, but continuing to ask “why?” and “how certain are you?” until the temple of their convictions crumbles, and you can help them build a newer, sounder one.
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