St. John's makes its tenure decisions based only on what the tutors do within the college, not based on any outside credentials or publications. Tutors who publish five times have no better chance at tenure than tutors who never publish. That's better than the typical policy, but you do end up, for instance, with the occassional tenured tutor who feels he can forget to show up for a student's oral examination and not have to pay for it. However, perhaps one could keep tenure and simply adjust salaries and responsibilities to reflect the competence of the individual teacher.

I don't know much about Gary Hull, and I don't know whether he can succeed at this, but I wish him the best. I have had my doubts as well, and if I were applying for college for next fall, I would not hesitate one second in choosing St. John's over Founders. Still, I think you have to avoid evaluating Founders College by the standard of what's best for academia. Gary Hull is an individual, not an organization whose purpose is to change the culture. If this is what he wants to do with his life, does it matter whether some other strategy would have a greater impact on the culture?

I agree with Daniel that it's inappropriate to judge this proposal primarily by what effect it will have on the culture. The issue is: Will this be a good college? There is no objective evidence that it will be as good even as the most humble community college. Disturbingly, the founders are preceding as though the opposite were the case. They are not starting small on rented property, pitching themselves as an experiment in education, and taking the time to hone their curriculum and establish objective credentials; nor are they staining every nerve to make clear to prospective students what their new ideas are and why they will work. Rather they are purchasing expensive properties, hiring gourmet chefs, and offering themselves up as the new Rolls Royce of education to a demographic that has no reason to give credence to their claims. Given this, the founders themselves cannot have good reason to think that a venture of this sort, carried out in this manner and on this scale, will succeed. Yet they persist despite the lack of evidence, and they expect prospective students to do likewise. The whole venture is subjective.

GS hints at the most important point--who exactly does Hull think are the STUDENTS who are going to apply here? Every other school that's been around at least 30-50 years has a reputation of some sort--a selling point, a "killer app," a notable alumnus. Even St. John's, obscure as it is, has connections to Mortimer Adler, Leo Strauss, Eva Brann, etc. (Incidentally, it also has a curriculum whose guiding principle--"study the great works of western history"--can be described to a prospective student or other interested person 5 seconds, without the need for grandiose rhetoric.)

But anyway, back to my central point. Most students gather college ideas through guidebooks, counselors, etc. How Founders is going to get into any reputable guidebook (Peterson's, Princeton Review) is beyond me, let alone in the minds of counselors, etc. Hell, St. John's has been around in its current form for 60+ years, and its an hour from where I live, yet none of the counselors at my high school had heard of it.

The student who cares about everything Hull has been rhapsodizing about will think about St. John's and Aquinas, as well as the host of mainstream colleges (U of Chicago, e.g.) that have strong reputations for curricula that are mindful of traditional standards. Why would he want to take a chance on a college no one has heard of, with eighth-tier faculty (similarly, why would newly-minted PhDs want to risk the most productive years of their careers at a place that might go belly-up fairly soon?) and a weirdly secret curriculum (the recourse to copyright smells of a Scientology training seminar more than a legitimate, respectable institution of higher education)?

Subjective is exactly the right word. They have given us no substantial information. That alone would be reason to patiently withhold judgment. But they *have* given us something: hype: that they will instantly go from zero to top-notch, full-fledged liberal arts college. But it's just that, hype, unsubstantiated and incredibly implausible. Projects this ambitious don't succeed by sprouting fully formed from Zeus's head, they succeed with years of hard work, experimentation, study, refinement. We have no evidence that any of this has occurred, and we have a lot of hype suggesting it hasn't.

And speaking of subjective, what's with the strangely unattributed, first-person quote in the middle of their website? "I can say with the utmost confidence that every graduate of Founders College will have the tools they need to seek out and achieve not only a successful career, but a passionate and purposeful life." Not just assertions of the college's value, but assertions of (someone's) *confidence* in the college's value.

"Why have so many Objectivists been so uncritical about this?"

There are some obvious proximate causes of this, but here's the only explanation that really satisfies me. A lot of people think that intellectual work in the humanities isn't really work. They think it's arbitrary, or equivocal, or rhetorical, or anyone can do it. Some Objectivists if anything seem more prone to this than average, in this respect: they think intellectual work in the humanities is easy. They don't think it on purpose; it's a mixture of a general mind-body split, their own above-average understanding of philosophy, and rationalism. But they think it nonetheless.

Just look at the number of Objectivists who use internet forums to write not just silly things, but silly things about which they are obviously unqualified to talk. Or take the typical Objectivist attitude towards new intellectuals (at least many of the ones I meet). They are certainly grateful for you and glad you are doing it, because they want the culture to change. But they see your job as basically fighting academics, not as developing the special skills you need to be a good philosopher. They think it's something they could do if they wanted to. They wouldn't even dream of taking this attitude towards a physicist, a computer programmer, or even a banker. There they recognize that skills are involved, and ambitious projects require a lot of hard-earned expertise, planning, and buildup. With philosophy, you need... something... maybe, but amateur Objectivists sure seem to be pretty good at it!

A lot of Objectivists aren't like this, of course. But some are, especially (though not exclusively) on the internet. (And more are partially, with regard to certain issues and people.) Everyone, it sorta seems to them, can have the same (or about the same) philosophical skills and knowledge; philosophers are just the ones who happen to be able to stomach academia. Mutatis mutandis for many other intellectual endeavors.

Then they deduce from this unspoken premise that Gary Hull, because he's an Objectivist intellectual, will *of course* be able to start a college, in whatever manner he sees fit. Why couldn't he, he does all that other philosophical stuff, right? Hell, if it wasn't for all the irrational-culture-roadblocks, they'd probably be able to start a college themselves.

No one would be uncritical if Hull claimed, using the same sort of immaterial hype he's using now, to be opening a factory producing flying cars. But it doesn't occur to people that the amount of expert knowledge and effort needed to make flying cars vs. to make a revolutionarily good college is actually pretty comparable. If it were flying cars they'd ask for evidence that he knew engineering, had facilities for long enough to build parts and do experiments, had been working in the field, etc. They'd say, "sure, he's got a PhD in physics, and he built a few widgets, but a *flying car*?!" It'd be so obvious that the hype was arbitrary. But as it is they don't ask for evidence that he knows education/administration, has tried anything of the sort before on any scale, or even if he's done specific intellectual work in the area. They swallow the hype unchewed.

(Then because they don't see hype of this sort as something suspicious, they accuse *you* of being illogical and malevolent. It looks to them like you're questioning some kid's chances of winning a coloring contest. Sure it's risky, because there are bullies around who will yell at him, and his crayon might break, but isn't it just *mean* to tell him he shouldn't enter, when clearly he really wants that coloring trophy? And who are *you* to say, before the competition even begins, that he'll color outside the lines and lose?! At least wait for the judges to see it first, sheesh.)

The better an idea that one has of the specific hurdles one faces in endeavors like this--not just cultural hurdles, but intellectual ones--the more implausible everything about Founders College seems.

The more ignorant/intellectually careless/rationalistic one is--the more a complex, demanding, large-scale application of Objectivism like this seems relatively straightforward--the more feasible and ordinary it seems.

NS: Welcome back to the sphere and thanks for posting on this topic. I agree completely with all your reservations about this project. But I think there is another important reason for worry that hasn't been mentioned yet (and needs to be mentioned in order to make fully objective the case against auspiciousness toward this project).

First off, I agree with the points made by msb, in particular with the point that, according to some people, "intellectual work in the humanities isn't really work" and consists essentially of arguing against the bad guys. As msb pointed out, many of the people who are warm to this project probably reason as follows: "Gary Hull, because he's an Objectivist intellectual, will *of course* be able to start a college, in whatever manner he sees fit. Why couldn't he, he does all that other philosophical stuff, right?"

What I think needs also to be questioned are the premises behind this (already erroneous) line of argument. Is Gary Hull really an intellectual (Objectivist or otherwise)? Does he really do "philosophical stuff" in a serious way? The last "philosophical stuff" I recall him "doing" was the horrifically terrible lecture on metaphors at the 2002 summer conference -- a lecture which, to my mind at least, proved once and for all that Gary Hull is not a serious thinker/philosopher/intellectual at all.

And this is a big part of the grounds for thinking that Founders College is going to be a flop. Yes, as NS and others have pointed out, it is extremely troubling that the various press releases have contained dubious and fuzzy hype, and no meaningful principles or concrete details. That alone is sufficient to reserve optimism about the project (there being quite simply a complete lack of positive evidence on which to base any such optimism). But still, as several people have suggested on other websites, if that lack of positive evidence were the complete picture, it would probably still be reasonable to have a good-spirited benevolence toward the project. Just to concretize this point: imagine that this planned college -- about which, let us assume, we still know next to nothing -- was being chartered by Harry Binswanger or Leonard Peikoff or Robert Mayhew. It would still surely be appropriate to reserve judgment (even the judgment that optimism is warranted) until there was some additional information about the project. But it would then be reasonable to think that, based simply on the principal's history of quality intellectual work, there was at least a chance that the project could go well.

But given that, in the real world, the principal involved is Gary Hull, there are no such grounds for even that initial and tentative belief that the project *might* go well (and have a positive impact for Objectivism and the culture). Indeed, Gary's track record as an "Objectivist intellectual" constitutes substantial positive evidence that this project will *not* have a positive impact on Objectivism and the culture.

NS, I'm glad that you've raised this issue. I've posted some thoughts on the matter on NoodleFood. The comments have already started to get a bit warm. Some academic perspective would be most welcome.

Re TTN's comment: There is good reason, independent of one's opinion of Hull's work, to conclude that Founders will be bad, rather than to withhold judgment. The scale on which they are trying to implement the project, the fact that they are releasing only hype this close to the alleged opening date, and the content of that hype all constitute positive evidence of mediocrity. If one had reason to have extra-ordinary confidence in Hull's general merit and in the soundness of his judgment, that might justify giving the venture some benefit of the doubt. But I don't think a mere respect for his intelligence and abilities (of the sort that might be justified by knowing of his relation to ARI or by having read some of his better Op-Eds) is a sound basis for withholding judgment on the school, and certainly a mere lack of contempt for his work should not lead to any agnosticism about the merits of Founders.

I think NS was wise not to bring the issue of Hull's merit more into his criticism of Founders; to justify any claim about Hull's abilities one would have to rely on evidence that is not near to hand--on the content of Hull's lectures and articles.

I agree. As evidence I don't really have a negative evaluation of Hull's intellectual work (I'm unfamiliar with it). And I have a positive evaluation of that of Eric Daniels, who as I understand it is involved with the project.

Eric Daniels is no longer involved with Founders College, nor at Duke.

Whoops, I'm out of the loop. But the point still stands that one doesn't need a critical judgment of the principals to be critical of the project.

(Maybe if one the half-dozen or so Objectivists I really, positively think is great was doing this, that'd count as evidence, despite everything else. But of course if one of them was in charge, there wouldn't be this kind of hype.)

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