As the Austin Chronicle article notes, there are grounds to believe the School of Civic Leadership will suck resources out of existing institutions for research and teaching in the liberal arts at UT.

Don't be fooled by the pretense that this is merely about reviving study of "Great Books".

UT already has a center where undergraduates can undertake the study of core texts and ideas of the western tradition under the direction of a leading Straussian scholar, Tom Pangle:

https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/coretexts/

I suspect that Rufo et al. are unhappy with this center because Pangle is an East Coast Straussian, not a West Coast Straussian; see this Jeet Heer article for the distinction between these two currents of Straussian thought:

https://newrepublic.com/article/140933/failure-pro-trump-intellectualism

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