'You rebel against a world that tells you mediocrity is good enough'

Carlos Carvalho

Carlos Carvalho, president of the University of Austin, welcomed new students -- this is the private school's second year -- with a speech defending inequality.

"Of course, all men are created equal," said Carvalho, who was a professor of statistics in the business school at the University of Texas in Austin. "But all men are not the same. We have unequal curiosity, unequal intellect, unequal talent, unequal courage, unequal drive, unequal achievement."

Alexis de Tocqueville, the great 19th century critic of American democracy, warned that "a dominating drive for equality suffocates the very people whose uncommon talent, courage, and vision could pull everyone else upward," said Carvalho. He "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."

. . . 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.

Most universities have abandoned excellence, he charged. Everyone gets an A.

UATX students will work very hard, Carvalho said. Grades will be based on high standards, which are "the highest sign of respect."

“There is a natural aristocracy among men," Thomas Jefferson wrote to John Adams. "The grounds of this are virtue and talents.” He proposed a system to provide a free education to "geniuses" living in poverty.

Thanks to generous donors, UATX is tuition free for its first two cohorts of students. Students with high scores on the SAT (1460), ACT (33) or Classical Learning Test (105) are automatically admitted. Those with lower scores are asked to include AP or IB scores and a three-sentence list of "verifiable achievements." Essays, extracurriculars and grades are not considered.

University of Austin's Class of 2029 "have chosen to rebel," said Carvalho. "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."

I wrote about UATX's attempt to revive the "culture of inquiry" last year for Education Next.

Boris Fishman, who teaches creative writing and literature, wrote about being a liberal at a "conservative" university.