Richard discusses his new initiative—ALEX university and why education needs to “go rogue.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit radixjournal.substack.com/subscribe
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| Hello, everyone. | |
| This is Richard, and welcome back to my journal. | |
| Today is May 11th, 2022. | |
| Notable people born on May 11th. | |
| Cam Newton, Salvador Dali, Louis Farrakhan, and myself. | |
| So, quite a group. | |
| I'm proud to be among them. | |
| Alright, I want to talk a little bit about Alex University, which is a new initiative that I've started. | |
| And before I do that, I'm going to talk a little bit about this podcast. | |
| So this is a podcast for subscribers only, but I'm going to make this one open to the public. | |
| And I'll do this for other matters as well, but I really want this one to be open to the public because it's not just my hot take. | |
| It is a, I guess, advertisement, you could say if we want to be crass, but it's a discussion about something that I feel really passionate about. | |
| And in fact, I think it's... | |
| A way that I can, and other people who will be involved in it, can contribute to the world and intellectual life and fill a void in many ways. | |
| So, it's Alex University, and here are the basic components of it. | |
| It is an online university. | |
| So, it is not... | |
| A place where you could stay at a dorm or go to lecture halls or go to amazing keggers on Friday night. | |
| No, it is all online. | |
| All classes will take place via Zoom. | |
| The classes will be highly affordable, infinitely affordable in comparison to the current university system. | |
| They will be in the $200 range, and they will be fairly short in length. | |
| That is a month, five weeks, six weeks, something like that. | |
| So it is something that you can dedicate a short part of the year to. | |
| And it is something that takes dedication. | |
| As I wrote in our initial essay, We live in a digital Alexandria, so the Library of Alexandria is obviously a famous library and scholarly institution of the ancient world, perhaps the most famous. | |
| What exactly happened to it is up to dispute. | |
| There's been long-term rumors of burning and so on, but it did disappear at some point. | |
| But it was an incredible institution of learning and maintaining scrolls, but we could imagine it a lot like the Lyceum of ancient Athens as well. | |
| Now, we live in a digital Alexandria right now. | |
| The amount of information is absolutely... | |
| And not just information. | |
| The amount of, at least potentially, learning that one can acquire through the internet, and effectively for free, is absolutely amazing. | |
| At the very least, if you're living in a first-world country where you have easy internet access, you can hear lectures. | |
| You can read books online. | |
| You can search books for details through Google Books. | |
| Intelligent people all have a podcast of some kind or a YouTube channel. | |
| You can learn about mainstream history, arcane philosophy, revisions of how we view the world in various ways. | |
| It is all at our fingertips, literally and figuratively. | |
| But I think we also recognize that we live in a state of dumbing down. | |
| And so we have all of this available, and yet there are polls of, say, high school graduates in the United States that are rather shocking Possessing negative knowledge. | |
| They're very sure that Jesus Christ is an American. | |
| Things like that. | |
| You think I'm joking, but sadly I'm not, or 40% of the American public thinks that chocolate milk comes from chocolate cows. | |
| You've heard stuff like that. | |
| Well, obviously we cannot resolve a problem of that magnitude, but... | |
| I think we will be able to ameliorate things in our own small way. | |
| And I think what is lacking in this endless cornucopia of information and knowledge, even potential wisdom, is good instruction. | |
| I am not as hostile towards the university system as many people on the right are. | |
| For better and for worse, I think that if you are going to seek status in the world, that attending Harvard is not a bad way to go. | |
| Okay. | |
| I also gained quite a bit from my own education. | |
| I was educated at the University of Virginia and the University of Chicago and Duke. | |
| Yeah, there was a lot of Salinas along the way, you know, the bad professors focusing on partying or whatever, or just, you know, the university is what has become a kind of gigantic... | |
| Daycare center for 20-year-olds where the gym and the student center and the student center's climbing wall and cafeteria that has all sorts of chain restaurants in it. | |
| It has become that, a kind of entertainment place and not really a place of serious learning. | |
| But I do have very fond memories of my time in school, and there is no question that professors that I had, I could go into this perhaps at some point, influenced me, helped me learn to read. | |
| By that I mean read something closely, to interpret something in a way that I don't think I would be the person I am today without them. | |
| Some people might consider that an insult, but I'll leave that as it is. | |
| So I am not as hostile towards this. | |
| I'm not sure I can agree with people when they're just like, don't go to college, go start a business and make money. | |
| That can be an excellent decision for many people. | |
| I actually don't think that's a great decision for all people. | |
| I would also add that I think the university system has become... | |
| Deformed, as it were, in the sense that there's a kind of reverse engineering or cargo cult attitude towards what an education is. | |
| If you listen to politicians, and I'm sure a lot of advisors in schools, they think of a university education as a ticket to the middle class. | |
| So you get this ticket, it's punched, you get on the train, next thing you know, You got a house in the burbs and you're happy and stable and paying taxes and going on vacations and so on. | |
| Well, I can obviously, no myth is, you know, no myth could come about if there isn't a kernel of truth to it. | |
| And there is a kernel of truth to that. | |
| Though I think that myth is quickly being transformed into a kind of nightmare at this point where young people And I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for them, by the way. | |
| Young people will go and announce, you know, oh, I'm working at Starbucks and I've got $150,000 in debt. | |
| And the conservative response is usually, well, yeah, that's what happens when you major in women's studies or critical race theory and, you know, pay your... | |
| Pay that bill and shut up. | |
| Well, I actually do have a lot of sympathy for them. | |
| I think they were sold a bill of goods. | |
| And, you know, an 18-year-old or even a 25-year-old or maybe even a 30-year-old, they do see a lot of potential in education. | |
| They've maybe bought into that myth to some degree about a ticket to the middle class. | |
| Maybe they actually seriously want to learn things. | |
| When you sign on a dotted line, you know, here's a subsidized loan. | |
| Pay it back when you can. | |
| It's hard not to take that. | |
| So I actually have a great deal of sympathy for them. | |
| But this is a digression. | |
| I think the main thing is that that myth of the university is quickly turning into a nightmare. | |
| And there is a tremendous amount of skepticism. | |
| About the university system. | |
| Now, I am never going to host any course that would demand $50,000 to $70,000 a year subsidized through loans. | |
| That's not how I imagined this taking place. | |
| I think a small, highly affordable... | |
| These courses are now $200. | |
| Demanding, though, something that should supplement your life. | |
| Supplemental. | |
| I think those are some of the values, pragmatic values, that I take towards this endeavor. | |
| But again, we need to return to that paradox of we live in the greatest library that ever was, the internet. | |
| So why is everyone stupid? | |
| Well, again, I think we should on some level break down that myth of education, the American myth of education. | |
| It's a ticket to the middle class. | |
| But I don't think education is for everyone, at least higher education. | |
| It is for the very few. | |
| But again, to answer the paradox, I think there's just been simply a lack of instruction. | |
| And engagement. | |
| People go to the great store of knowledge in order to get some cool facts so they can win an argument on Facebook. | |
| Or they go to it just merely to be entertained. | |
| To watch YouTube until 3am and, you know, watch old Saturday Night Live sketches or... | |
| You know, various reviews of the new Spider-Man film or makeup tutorials. | |
| A kind of endless, dumbing-down session. | |
| There isn't that instruction. | |
| There isn't that ability to connect with the teacher, to learn from him or her, to challenge him or her, to be challenged, to... | |
| Think in a way that you haven't before. | |
| That is absent. | |
| And I also think that, and I'm kind of speaking just about my own personal career and so on, I think there has been a real absence of serious intellectual engagement in right-wing circles in general. | |
| Now, you absolutely do not need to be a right-winger in order to attend a class I teach. | |
| In fact, I hope there are people who aren't ideologically rigid in my class. | |
| But you know what I mean. | |
| I think a lot of failure and spinning of wheels and going nowhere So, we are starting out quite modestly, as one should do. | |
| I think the term in Silicon Valley is a minimal viable product. | |
| And that doesn't mean that we don't take it seriously or that it's a throwaway or a one-off. | |
| It's none of those things. | |
| But I want to start off quite minimally, really nail things, make some mistakes, learn from them, correct them, and move to what would be a functioning online university, what could eventually be... | |
| A real-world university as well, if it is viable and if we are serving our students and if we are attracting excellent students who want to engage in this material. | |
| That is a great long-term vision. | |
| Again, my medium and short-term vision is to create some awesome four- to six-week courses that people want to take and that they want to engage with. | |
| I also have a bit of a, let's say, secondary motivation in doing this, in the sense that a lot of these courses are going to coincide with publishing efforts in a really productive way. | |
| So Edward Dutton, for instance, is teaching a course on an introductory to... | |
| Evolutionary psychology. | |
| He will be referencing some work that he's published. | |
| Ed's obviously incredibly prolific. | |
| And so it can work in that way. | |
| I'm more excited about how it can work in another way. | |
| For instance, Mark Brahman and I have a book planned on film that is in... | |
| Production in terms of a manuscript. | |
| And it is basically applying REM theory, which you can learn more about, to 20th century cinema. | |
| And I think the teaching a course on that, which we are going to do... | |
| Would actually go a really long way in honing our interpretations and getting this book to be excellent. | |
| We need to actually first publish the REM book, which is well underway. | |
| We've been working on it for many years now. | |
| So that the basic theory is out there and applying it will be... | |
| Very fruitful, and I think fun as well, particularly when we're talking about, you know, Hollywood cinema of the 20th century. | |
| But I think teaching a course, which we are going to do over the summer, will go a long way in terms of actualizing that book. | |
| And so taking a course would mean that you're kind of, I don't know the right word, you're being our editor, you're giving us feedback. | |
| Maybe even kind of rechanneling things, making us question aspects of what we're doing. | |
| And ditto with the course that I'm teaching, which I'm very excited about, which is Nietzsche's Political Theology. | |
| This is something I have written a lot on in the past, but these matters are kind of a bit scattered. | |
| They're very interesting essays I'm proud of, but... | |
| They really need to be put together in terms of a larger interpretation of Nietzsche and what he thought about politics. | |
| And again, a course goes a long way into making that a reality. | |
| I'd also mention that over the past two years, I have been effectively doing this, doing Alex University, as you could say a kind of warm-up, a spring training. | |
| For Alex University with a group of supporters. | |
| We have done very close readings of Plato's Republic. | |
| We've looked at Nietzsche on occasions. | |
| We've read a bit of Machiavelli. | |
| We've read Carl Schmitt. | |
| We've read the Bible. | |
| We've brought in people who have something to say on these matters. | |
| And we have had a kind of university seminar. | |
| These will usually have the form of, I will start out the lecture, speak on a text for 45 minutes to an hour, while getting feedback from the group. | |
| And then that will transition to open discussion. | |
| And these have been excellent. | |
| Again, we've done some serious classics in this way, and I feel like even two years ago, I was convinced that this is the kind of thing that we need to be doing. | |
| That my supporter group, we get lost in the day-to-day, in reaction, effectively, and that we need to start developing... | |
| A major conception of who we are. | |
| And that can be achieved through interaction with great books and great ideas. | |
| And that can be best achieved in this seminar-like environment. | |
| So, again, for the time being, seminars will take place via Zoom. | |
| If you sign up, you will be given, I should say when you sign up, when you sign up, you will be given a repeating Zoom meeting. | |
| We'll do once a week. | |
| And we will follow that basic format of close reading. | |
| I will offer a lecture, I guess in the literal sense of the word, a reading, giving you my perspective on matters. | |
| And of course, you are... | |
| Welcome and encouraged, in fact, to interact with that and question it. | |
| And then we will have a free-flowing discussion that I think will be very productive, and that can go wherever you want to take it. | |
| But I'll certainly be there to guide things and interact with you. | |
| So I am extremely excited. | |
| And this is the kind of thing that if I were a young person, I shouldn't even say a young person, if I were an old person as well, I would be enthusiastic to enroll in. | |
| And I'm not just saying that. | |
| That is very true. | |
| You can see ideas like this cropping up in other spheres. | |
| Perhaps most famously, there's the University of Austin that is That was initiated by, I guess, Barry Weiss, and it has some famous right-of-center professors who are involved with it to some degree. | |
| I think Niall Ferguson is involved, which would be very interesting. | |
| They are obviously much better funded than I am, so they are starting out doing in-person instruction. | |
| And I think it's great. | |
| I mean, again, whatever you think about that, you can call it neocon university if you want. | |
| I think that's probably unfair, but you get it. | |
| You can say that's not for me. | |
| But the fact is, it's a good thing that this is happening. | |
| And this has been going along for well over a decade now, probably two, in terms of technical skills. | |
| You know, learn Photoshop, learn how to edit video, whatever. | |
| And that is a much better system for an adult in particular, or a young person just starting out, dipping his toe into things, than giving someone $100,000 in finance and sending them off to a big university. | |
| Obviously, that is just much better. | |
| And I think it is time for us to move... | |
| Move into that sphere in the intellectual realm, in the humanities, and in the case of Ed, the sciences. | |
| Because it's, you know, I guess you will learn some skills. | |
| I hope that you'll be a better reader after working with me, that you'll be able to dive into a text and dissect it and see various threads in it. | |
| Kind of read against the grain. | |
| I do hope to give you that skill. | |
| But I think the main thing is just the expansion of your mind that is possible with a program like this. | |
| And which again is really absent from many people's lives and is increasingly absent even within academia. | |
| And that is a very sad thing. | |
| So anyway, I hope you sign up. | |
| You can look at my blog, I guess is the right word, on Substack about this. | |
| You can visit alexuniversity.online. | |
| And you can enroll for courses. | |
| You can pay for it with a credit card right then and there. | |
| It's very easy. | |
| After you sign up, you'll receive information on when these things are taking place. | |
| They are going to start in mid-June, so we actually have plenty of time to sign up and so on. | |
| If you would like to ask a question, I would encourage you to contact me at hello at alexuniversity.org Hello at alexuniversity.org And I will respond to you. | |
| So anyway, I might do a couple more podcasts on this subject because it's very interesting and it's just deeply important to me. | |
| And again, it's the kind of thing that I would do. | |
| If I were you. | |
| All right. | |
| I'll leave it there, and I will talk to you soon. |