"Forget yourself"

Carlos Carvalho is President of the University of Austin, a very young institution admitting its first class in 2024. It is tuition-free, and admission is intended to be by merit. The following are excerpts from the address its president delivered to this year's entering class. If this reflects the school's intent, I hope it is met, and that the school prospers.

.... The pilgrims and pioneers were the most self-reliant people on Earth. They persisted against nature and starvation to set up the colonies; they headed west on wagon trains even as they buried their children on the Oregon Trail. They formed volunteer fire brigades before any government services existed. They ran their own towns without deferring to a distant capital. They carved farms and opened shops and built railroads. They turned wilderness into civilization. Their grandchildren stormed the beaches at Normandy, and their great-grandsons walked on the moon.

That kind of relentless pursuit of greatness was self-uninvolved. It was strong and persistent, and the opposite of introspective. ....

These great achievements begin, however, with the recognition that there’s something greater beyond us; that much of life’s meaning comes from duties imposed on us and loyalties we did not choose. To strive beyond ourselves, we first need to understand ourselves, and that means fully understanding our inheritances before we presume to improve or criticize them.

Greatness starts with recognizing that we incurred a debt to the past, to the family that raised us, to the founders of our country, to the dead who built everything around us and fought our enemies so that we can live in freedom and prosperity. Greatness starts with the recognition of virtue. ....

So, to the class of 2030, the whole world will keep telling you to find yourself. We’re hoping for something better: that you forget yourself and discover the durable joy of being absorbed in something greater than you. .... 

Years from now, you’ll be in a room where something serious is on the line. Maybe a dinner table where a troubling question gets asked, or a courthouse where a big decision is made, or a board meeting where a serious mistake is about to be made. Those rooms will need at least one person who knows how to think through hard things. We want you to be the person the rest of the room quietly turns to.

...[W]e turn to you and ask you to forget yourself. We want you to read books that have no interest in your identity, and to wrestle with facts that don’t care how they make you feel. We want you to help your classmate at an inconvenient hour, to listen and learn from the professors, and to find ways to contribute to this young university without demanding that it conform to you. Forget yourself and find something greater than you. .... (more)

Carlos Carvalho, "What College Is Really For," The Free Press, August 25, 2026.