For 25 years I was a professor at elite colleges and universities. I've written books and articles that challenge conventional academic ideas about the history, politics, and culture of the United States. I’ve always loved teaching and research and writing but I’ve hated everything else about academia.

I’ve found that colleges, which claim to be places where students and teachers are free to talk about ideas, are actually anti-intellectual. There’s no real debate in colleges, since almost all faculty and most students agree on the big issues, and those who don’t agree are often silenced. I know this from personal experience because I’ve been told that my ideas have no place in the academy.

With the costs of college rising higher and higher and the quality of classroom experiences remaining dissatisfying for most students, a growing number of people are questioning the value of a college degree.

There’s a movement to change higher education, but it’s just beginning. People are starting to educate themselves outside the formal academic environment. They’re finding new sources of information and new venues to have real exchanges of ideas. They listen to podcasts rather than sit in classrooms. They know that there’s more debate in four minutes on Twitter than in four years in college. Many of them want to replace the current system of higher education with something freer, where the courage to voice unpopular ideas is rewarded, not punished.

So I’ve started a new kind of college.

For a small fraction of the price of tuition at Harvard, anyone with a curiosity about past events and big ideas can be a student at Unregistered Academy.

In online lectures and interactive seminars, and in face-to-face events in cities across the country, you will learn things about history and politics I promise you’ve never heard before. You’ll see the most sacred ideas challenged fiercely, from radically different perspectives. And you’ll be encouraged to do what many college students aren't allowed to do—think differently.

Unregistered Academy will offer courses on history, philosophy, politics, and current events. We’ll also feature courses in which the smartest people from different schools of thought debate each other directly—something you won't see in a regular college classroom.

If you want to learn entirely new ways of thinking about the world, have your ideas challenged and sharpened, and be treated like a free thinker, please join us.

Let the revolution begin!