Excerpts of an address given by Founder and Trustee Gordon Jones at our Provo Inauguration event on August 21, 2025
In the domain of higher education, name changes are common. Columbia started as King’s College. Princeton was once the College of New Jersey; Dixie College was recently renamed Utah Tech University; Utah Valley University was once Salt Lake Technical College; BYU was Brigham Young Academy until 1903.
Tonight, Mount Liberty College is going to become part of that tradition. The school is going to be renamed in honor of one of the most important of our Founding Fathers, one who, oddly enough, does not have a college named for him until now: John Adams.
Two quotes about him: the first is how George Washington described him: “I know him to be honest and virtuous; and in all that concerns the welfare of his country, he will be faithful.”
From the Father of Our Country, that ought in itself to be enough to confirm the worthiness of this man, for any honor that could be given him.
The second is what John Adams himself wrote, in preparation for a speech he never gave, but which demonstrates his profound understanding of the conundrum of the state, and, we think, justifies the action we are taking tonight:
“Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, or the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people. . . . There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all others, by the size or figure or beauty and variety of colors, in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike. . . .
The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved. . . .
Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable. . . .
There is danger from all men. The only maxim of the free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty. . . .”
Despite the fact – and it is a fact – that the Declaration of Independence would never have been passed in the form we have it, if it passed at all, without John Adams, he is one of the most overlooked of the Founders while at the same time one of the most famous. Washington and Jefferson have monuments on the National Mall. Hamilton has a Tony Award-winning musical. John Adams has no monuments and little regard, and it is a crime.
Our action today is small remedy. But it is the best we can do for now, and we hope the exceptional quality of our students will, over time, add some weight to his side of the scales.