In Defense of Inequality How do we respect every person’s dignity while also cultivating excellence? Nearly every university has decided to answer that question by abandoning the latter. Not mine.By Carlos Carvalho
https://www.thefp.com/p/in-defense-of-inequality
Earlier this week the University of Austin (UATX)—a new university, whose founding was announced four years ago in these pages—welcomed its second class of undergraduates. At the school’s convocation ceremony, UATX president Carlos Carvalho delivered an address you won’t hear at any other university: a defense of inequality.
Good evening—students, parents, and all the supporters helping us build the University of Austin. I am honored to be with you today at your convocation, at the most important and exciting university in America.
Thank you for trusting us with your education. We are thrilled to welcome you into the UATX family.
Tonight, as we gather on the threshold of America’s 250th anniversary, I want to share why this moment and UATX represent something essential about the American experiment.
Two hundred and fifty years ago this week, King George III formally declared Americans to be rebels and traitors. This dashed the colonists’ hopes for a peaceful reconciliation, and set the path to declare a new nation based on the proposition that all men are created equal.
But on the heels of America’s quarter-millennium since the Declaration of Independence, I want to do something a bit unfashionable: I want to defend inequality.
Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.
I want to defend this kind of inequality because I believe it is the most important way that UATX distinguishes itself, and because being honest about inequality is the most important way that UATX can help you be extraordinary.
Alexis de Tocqueville, the great 19th-century critic of American democracy, noticed that the passion for equality dominates every American institution. He admired this democratic spirit, but he also issued a warning.
De Tocqueville warned that the concept of equality is the most powerful compulsion in the American mind. A dominating drive for equality suffocates the very people whose uncommon talent, courage, and vision could pull everyone else upward.
Without those rare sparks of excellence, there are no breakthroughs. No bold leaders. No innovations. No radical thought that disrupts the human tendency toward lazy conformity.
De Tocqueville famously observed that people in democracies might come to prefer equality in servitude to inequality in freedom. In the name of making all things equal, we end up equal only in mediocrity.
Of course, all men are created equal. But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement.
And that is the surest path to slavishly submitting to authority, submitting to bad ideas, submitting to an overbearing government, and submitting to the soft tyranny of low expectations.
Equality, without excellence, is the surest path to national decline.
A free society, to remain dynamic and free, must enable those gifts to develop rather than force them into a common mold. So even in a republic of equals, we need small sanctuaries of aristocracy and excellence to ensure the success of liberty.
Democracy runs on equality; freedom and excellence run on inequality.
The tension between those two realities shapes almost every real problem in education today. How do we respect every person’s equal dignity and opportunity while also recognizing and cultivating individual excellence?
Nearly every university in America has decided to answer that question by abandoning excellence. Harvard hands out more A’s than any other grade. Yale gives nearly 60 percent of students straight A’s. Princeton no longer requires Greek or Latin to major in the classics. Columbia proudly ditched the SAT. In our leading institutions, honors are handed out like candy while calculus is quietly dropped.
At UATX, we know you cannot democratize a serious education by watering it down and expecting to keep its substance. Plato fed through ChatGPT turns Plato into a mediocre social media post. Macroeconomics without some basis in calculus is just cable news polemics.
The truth is that excellence has no shortcut. When people mass-produce artificial diamonds, they turn out to be pebbles that nobody values. The attempt to counterfeit excellence only cheapens it. If you make the difficult and the extraordinary dumbed down or commonplace, you destroy it.
At UATX, we will not counterfeit excellence. For students, that means being asked to do the hardest academic work you’ve ever done: carefully reading what an author actually wrote, stepping through an argument line by line, breaking down a scientific methodology and reproducing it, or building a model that fails 10 times before it works.
You will be graded according to standards, not your intentions or our wishes. You will hear “no,” “not yet,” “try again” often.
Our students should never accept anything uncritically. But, thriving in an aristocratic institution requires starting with humility and charity—assuming, at least at first, that the authors you read, the professors who guide you, and the administrators who correct you might know more than you do.
You won’t always like it. But if we’re doing our jobs well, you will always benefit from it.
At UATX, we will not counterfeit excellence. For students, that means being asked to do the hardest academic work you’ve ever done.
High standards are the highest sign of respect. Telling you the truth about where you stand is respect. Holding you to the mark is respect. It’s the only way to draw the best out of you. If we demanded anything less, we would be insulting your potential.
UATX is aristocratic because it dares to tell the truth that inequality is everywhere. As Thomas Jefferson put it: “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”
Each of you carries different strengths, abilities, and passions. Some books will shape your mind for life, while others deserve to be forgotten. Some disciplines wrestle honestly with reality, while others are unserious and don’t deserve your time.
To pretend otherwise is to flatten human experience into mediocrity. We refuse that pretense.
Jefferson proposed a model school where each year, quote, “Twenty of the best geniuses will be raked from the rubbish.”
Bold phrasing aside, Jefferson’s point was crucial: Let the best rise from any condition, and educate them deeply for the common good. That, to us, is the most American solution to the reality of human inequality.
We cannot (and should not) make everyone the same, but we can ensure that anyone, from anywhere, with ability and drive, has the chance to climb as high as they are able to.
At UATX, we open our gates to any American, from any background, regardless of means, family legacy, or identity. A child of an American president and the child of a waitress get the same treatment in our admissions process and in our seminar rooms.
Our job as educators is to get the best in each of you, unequal though your gifts may be, by setting high standards and insisting on excellence.
Although we believe this approach is the best kind of education for you, our acceptance—or, I should say, our embrace—of inequality is not selfless. Ultimately, it is not about you and your potential. We do it because we believe it’s the best way to make our institution excellent, our country excellent, and our future free.
Before I close, a word to the parents.
Since your kids decided to come here, we already know that you have raised children who seek challenge, and who put substance over mere credentials. That speaks to your success as families.
And although I haven’t met all of you yet, I suspect that raising such strong-willed, confident young people means that you are pretty strong-willed and confident yourselves.
So I expect feedback from you. Perhaps even the occasional complaint. And I welcome it—honestly.
I have only one small request: When you do complain, please make it about UATX not being challenging enough. Hold us accountable not for coddling your kids, but for challenging them.
To the class of 2029: You have chosen to rebel. Not against hierarchy, but against its abandonment. Not against standards, but against their erosion. Not against excellence, but against those who would fake it.
You rebel against a world that tells you mediocrity is enough, that comfort is the highest good, that all answers are equally valid. Your rebellion is in service of ancient truths: that wisdom deserves deference, and that difficulty breeds strength.
America’s next quarter-millennium begins right here, with you.
Welcome to the rebellion. Welcome to the University of Austin! Thank you.
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