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.

We live in an age where our most elite educational institutions have seemingly abandoned their core mission—the fearless pursuit of truth—and instead choose to lower academic standards in the name of equality. To abandon excellence in favor of false notions of equity. Carvalho and UATX have chosen to take a different path. Theirs is a meritocratic message our country sorely needs to hear.

We’re publishing Carvalho’s remarks in full. On the eve of a new school year, we encourage you—students, teachers, parents—to read and debate them over the dinner table. You won’t regret it.

—The Editors

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...