The Crisis That Led to UATX
President Carlos Carvalho on the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education.
Christopher F. Rufo released the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education on July 14, signed by Jordan Peterson, Bishop Robert Barron, Victor Davis Hanson, and countless others — including members and supporters of UATX.
“The universities have brazenly, deliberately, and repeatedly violated their compact with the American people. They have engaged in a long train of abuses, evasions, and usurpations which, with every turn of the ratchet, have moved our society toward a new kind of tyranny — one in which ideology determines truth, and the university functions as a political agent of the left.”
The Statement’s signatories “call on the President of the United States to draft a new contract with [America’s] universities, which should be written into every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation, and punishable by revocation of all public benefit.”
Read Rufo’s announcement and the full Manhattan Statement on Higher Education here.
UATX President Carlos Carvalho’s Response:
This crisis is why UATX was founded.
Universities have replaced truth-seeking with ideological activism. Academic rigor is almost nonexistent. Self-censorship is the norm. Equality under the law has been corrupted by DEI bureaucrats. And students, rather than learning to become citizens, are too often trained to see their country and civilization as beyond redemption.
Our curriculum compels students to engage the deepest questions of human freedom, moral order, and civilizational survival — not through slogans or activism, or by absorbing fashionable opinion, but through direct encounter with radically alternative thinkers throughout history.
Our admissions system — solely based on quantitative performance metrics — is the most meritocratic in the country.
We protect academic freedom without exceptions.
Our purpose is clear: to educate citizens and leaders capable of assuring the success of constitutional liberty and national prosperity.
But we can’t do this alone; we need competitors. The more universities that reclaim their purpose, the stronger we will become, and the stronger our nation will become.
If the United States is to remain free and prosperous, we must rebuild the institutions that sustain it. This statement points the way forward — and we hope other institutions will join us.
God speed UATX. May the old Ivy League pay close attention and learn from this splendid new University.
I lean left, but I agree with the claim that "[Universities] have engaged in a long train of abuses, evasions, and usurpations which, with every turn of the ratchet, have moved our society toward a new kind of tyranny — one in which ideology determines truth, and the university functions as a political agent of the left.” On the other hand, I do not think that our boorish, crude, intellectually-deficient, habitually lying President is the person to draft a contract with universities.