Excellence and Equality in Education

I am very pleased to be able to participate in the inauguration of a new university, a new institution for the dissemination and development of knowledge old and new. This is the latest in a long list of similar organizations that, with their innovation and knowledge, have constituted a particularly important contribution to the Western world since the especially creative period that was the Middle Ages. The image that we have of that period tends to be negatively conditioned by the Renaissance, a great and necessary revolt that took place against it. The need to find new paths, the maximum representation of which was the careful founding of the scientific view of the world, led to ridicule, antagonism, and problems of interpretation in the world prior to 1500. Thus the new architects made fun of their predecessors by calling them "Goths,” as if they were the barbarians who had destroyed Rome. Today, especially due to the influence of our nineteenth-century ancestors, “Gothic” cathedrals are recognized as one of the most glorious products of the human spirit and craftsmanship.