Minds that Dare

This book gives an insider account of the rise of Academia Libera Mentis, a revolutionary new type of higher education that restores free speech and the ideals of the enlightenment, but that also uses a unique integrated teaching method that vastly accelerates learning of the social sciences in a one-year program (economics, leadership, psychology, history, statistics, and so forth). It has been co-written by an academic founder and a student of this academy: Professor Paul Frijters and Sienna Baker. Sienna describes what life and study is like at this new academy for a 21 year old, whilst Professor Frijters gives an insider look at the founding of this new academy. The interaction between these authors is unusual, a real conversation across generations with a lot of surprises for the reader. It is a one-of-a-kind book. The authors begin with juicy revelations about Harvard, set up an 'are we brave enough' moment to hook the reader, talk about the education of great Western classical thinkers, paint a vision of a future network of small academies, lay out a revolutionary blueprint for a new type of education to replace the current academic tribes in social science, and then regale the reader with the trials and tribulations of actually building and running a new academy. There is romance, laughter, heart-to-hearts, big reveals, agony, religion, poetry, and much else in this book. The hope for this book is to spark an academic revolution. Accordingly, the book ends with a grand vision of academic renewal and what specific steps various audiences can take.

Key passages:

Paul to his wife Erika: "Hey, honey, I have an idea. Want to quit your job, move countries, spend all of our life savings on a place to educate students, risk being seen as a dangerous lunatic by the Dutch government and your own family, and work hard for no pay for years in the vague hope that we can change Western university education and help young people today with their struggles, though they will probably not thank us for it?"

Erika's response? "Let's do it."


Sienna " My life a week later was completely unrecognisable from what it had been. I gained confidence as a teacher and a writer; and I could finally envision a life beyond the cloistered echo-chambers of modern universities and bureaucracy-strangled Australian institutions. More than that, even - my autoimmune issues almost completely cleared up."