In defence of inequality

An excellent speech by the President of the University of Austin on inequality:

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.

The right generally believes in equality of opportunity, while the left tries to engineer equality of outcome.

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.

Equality of opportunity.

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.

A rare speech.