The American Council of Trustees and Alumni (ACTA) will honor Pano Kanelos, the founding president of the University of Austin (UATX), as our 2025 Hero of Intellectual Freedom. A passionate advocate for liberal education and intellectual diversity, Dr. Kanelos and his fellow co-founders formed UATX to preserve the “lively clash of ideas and opinions” that fuels discovery, innovation, and the search for truth.
Dr. Kanelos served as the inaugural president of UATX from 2021 to 2024 and then as chancellor until Fall 2025. Under his leadership, UATX devoted itself to showing how higher education can be rescued from the illiberalism that has strangled discourse on too many campuses. Dr. Kanelos ensured that UATX abided by the Chicago Principles on Freedom of Expression and the principle of institutional neutrality. In a 2022 interview with ACTA, he remarked, “We wanted to be able to bring together students and faculty from across ideological boundaries and throw in front of them some of the most vexing questions of the day, questions around empire or gender or race, and create a circle of trust where these students and faculty, who differ in so many ways, find what I call the highest common denominator.”
Dr. Kanelos previously served as president of St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland. St. John’s is one of just eight universities nationwide to earn an A+ for its rigorous core curriculum requirements from ACTA’s What Will They Learn?® project. Under Dr. Kanelos’s leadership, St. John’s significantly reduced tuition and transitioned to a philanthropy-based funding model to preserve its celebrated Great Books program. He also founded the Cropper Center for Creative Writing at the University of San Diego and is a noted Shakespeare scholar.
“Seeing the need for reform in American higher education, Dr. Kanelos became the founding president of the University of Austin – a bold, new venture dedicated to free inquiry and the pursuit of truth,” said Steven McGuire, ACTA’s Paul & Karen Levy Fellow in Campus Freedom. “This was surely not an easy undertaking, but, thanks to Dr. Panelos’s leadership, UATX has begun to offer students a place where they can learn without fear. While so many of our colleges and universities pay only lip service to freedom of thought and expression, we are indebted to Dr. Panelos and his colleagues at UATX for offering an alternative our country desperately needs.”
ACTA President Michael Poliakoff remarked, “There is a hunger among America’s young people for debate and dialogue and meaningful education. UATX has shown a strong commitment to providing this type of education, and we hope that it will serve as a model for other universities to follow. All of this was made possible by Dr. Kanelos’s leadership. We at ACTA take pride in honoring a man who has done so much for the ideals at the very root of higher education.”
ACTA will present the Hero of Intellectual Freedom award to Dr. Kanelos at our 30th Anniversary Celebration on October 24, 2025, at the George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon. Former UATX provost Jacob Howland will deliver a tribute to Dr. Kanelos.
Launched in 1995, we are the only organization that works with alumni, donors, trustees, and education leaders across the United States to support liberal arts education, uphold high academic standards, safeguard the free exchange of ideas on campus, and ensure that the next generation receives an intellectually rich, high-quality college education at an affordable price.
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