As they prepare to welcome UATX’s founding freshmen this fall, University of Austin professors have been teaching bright and bold high school students in cities around the country.
In June, the UATX Life of the Mind national tour set up shop in Denver, Colorado.
Life of the Mind offers a rich selection of seminar courses, led by UATX founding faculty. Professors introduced students to topics ranging from philosophy to literature to science, asking such questions as “What is the good life?” and “What does modern AI tell us about the nature of intelligence?”
“It’s refreshing to be in an environment where you’re surrounded by so much great thinking,” wrote Hudson, 17, who participated in the Denver program. “The professors really encouraged us to wrestle with ourselves and with ideas.”
The program commenced with an introductory seminar led by UATX Associate Vice President for Students and Community Ben Crocker. Crocker led students in reading from Plato’s Republic, using the philosopher’s famous passages on music and censorship to explore the role of free speech and free expression in a thriving polity.
The students quickly grasped key ideas and were eager to share their views on how censorship may harm or aid the formation of healthy political societies. Through discussion, they arrived at a finer shared understanding of the marketplace of ideas and the importance of shared inquiry.
UATX Associate Professor of Political Philosophy Alex Priou led students in seminars on “Democracy and the Good Life,” beginning with the premise that “to seek to live a truly good life–one based not on opinion but on genuine insight—one must question the goodness of one’s regime.”
“We really appreciate how Professor Priou was very real and transparent with our class and also maintained an honest, funny demeanor,” wrote Michelle, 17, of Denver. “He made his lecture personal, which induced many thought-provoking discussions.”
Dr. Kirsten Herlin, UATX Assistant Professor of Literature, taught seminars focused on the poems and manifestos of Romanticism, the artistic and literary movement featuring a “startling, electrifying, and sometimes dangerous new poetic style” that began amid the political and social turbulence of the French and American Revolutions and the Industrial Revolution in England.
“With Prof. Kirsten Herlin in the ‘Poetry of the Romantic Revolution’ seminars, we discussed the roots of human passion through the guidance of great poets like Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, among others,” wrote Sophia, 16. “Texts like these are foundations to teaching each new generation to seek the true, the just, and the beautiful through the course of their academic career.”
Peter Boghossian guides participants in his Spectrum Street Epistemology exercise
University of Austin Founding Faculty Fellow Peter Boghossian, co-author, with James Lindsay, of “How to Have Impossible Conversations,” led a session of his renowned “Spectrum Street Epistemology” program during the event.
Using the Socratic method, Spectrum Street Epistemology engages participants in real-time exercises to examine their beliefs on controversial issues through reason and evidence. In a session during Life of the Mind, participants physically indicated the strength of their beliefs by standing on set positions and moving from one to another as their viewpoints shifted.
Emmett, 17, wrote that he enjoyed the experience so much he wished to start a Street Epistemology club of his own.
Life of the Mind comes home to Austin
From August 1 to 3, Life of the Mind will invite high school students to the UATX Scarbrough campus in downtown Austin, Texas. The university’s founding faculty will teach courses on Shakespeare, game theory, political ideology, and more.
Learn more about UATX’s year-round programs by signing up for our newsletter.
