It's not. Instead, the infinitives of "cut" and "heal" are being used as noun phrases. The grammar is correct, and the switch if anything makes the sentence more punchy.
I would have preferred and opted for "to teach" instead, or probably the more emphatic yet more problematic "to teach the truth" but the sentence structure seems sound to me grammatically speaking.
> "The telos of a knife is to cut, the telos of medicine is to heal, and the telos of a university is truth."
Since when is "truth" a verb?