The Chicago Thinker, UChicago’s conservative student publication, held its inaugural American Identity Summit at the David Rubenstein Forum on May 10, hosting speakers across four panels and two keynote addresses to discuss the future of the United States and “American values.”
Christopher Phillips, the editor-in-chief of the Thinker, opened the event by praising UChicago for its support for free speech: “We have the foundations here both institutionally and socially and culturally for free speech and open inquiry. We have the fundamental infrastructure in place for that that’s not really in place at other universities and we have to be really grateful for that.”
Phillips, who is also president of UChicago College Republicans, expressed confidence about the U.S.’s direction. “Right now our country is in a moment of ascendance, in my view,” he said in his opening remarks. “We’re insurgent, we have cultural dominance; it’s really spiriting, the attitudes and the changes both geopolitically as well as domestically in the last six months to a year.… It’s very spiriting to me.”
He argued that conservatives should use this moment to strike a positive tone. “We were sort of raised in an age of pessimism, and it’s regrettable, but I believe that what a lot of the discourse centers around now is the desire to be unabashedly in favor of greatness, growth—that’s something that we have to maintain,” he said. “We can’t be ashamed of growing our economy, loving our families, loving our country.”
The conference’s first panel, titled “The Fight Against Censorship and the Future of American Journalism,” featured Cenk Uygur, the founder of populist political talk show The Young Turks; Nadine Strossen, former president of the American Civil Liberties Union; Clay Travis, co-host of the conservative radio show The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show; and Jonathan Turley (A.B. ’83), a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.
During the panel, Turley argued that the media no longer has credibility with the American people. “We [in the media] have become a happy ship of fools,” he said. “Revenues and readership are plummeting; people are turning to social media and new media. And we don’t have a clue. We don’t even seem to have any interest in why this is happening. But… the public is rejecting us.”
Uygur also criticized the media, arguing MSNBC had violated his free speech rights when his show was moved to weekends, leading him to leave the network in 2011. He argued that the media at large does not value independent thinkers who could be trusted to take principled stances on contentious issues. He gave Joe Rogan as an example, citing his opposition to Trump’s immigration policies.
“Everyone on the Left said, ‘You’re nuts. No way Rogan and the independent guys are going to do the right thing. They’re going to back Trump no matter what.’ And they were wrong. Rogan is saying it was wrong to arrest those people…. I love when folks stick to principles.”
He also spoke about what he sees as disregard for due process coming from the Trump administration. “This government is 100 percent against the Constitution, and I loathe their attacks on Western civilization,” he said. “I love America. I love our Constitution. I love Western civilization, and I can’t stand the attacks on it from either Obama, Biden, or Donald Trump.”
“If you think that Donald Trump isn’t doing it, you’re in la-la land,” Uygur added. “When you say we’d like to take away the writ of habeas corpus, you are definitely attacking the Constitution and you are definitely attacking Western civilization. That is a cornerstone.”
The second panel, titled “American Citizenship and the Changing Character of American Education,” featured Dorian Abbot, a professor of geosciences at UChicago; Robert Bortins, chief executive officer (CEO) of Classical Conversations, a group that advocates “Christ-centered” homeschooling and a sponsor of the event; Paul Vallas, the former CEO of Chicago Public Schools and runner-up in the 2023 Chicago mayoral race; and John Heiderscheidt, an immigration attorney.
Vallas expressed strong support for implementing school choice policies, providing parents the decision to enroll in charter schools or receive vouchers to go to private schools—including religious schools—as a solution for Chicago’s public school system, which he said is mismanaged. “If you are in a failing school, you should have the right to enroll your kid in a magnet school or a public charter school, or, for that matter, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t get support to attend a parochial private school.”
He also criticized the state’s decision to cancel a program which provided parents with vouchers to pay for tuition to private school, which he said “doesn’t cost the Chicago public schools a dime.”
Both Vallas and Bortins attributed dysfunction in public schools to the influence of teachers unions. “For improving the current system, you would need to design [the system] around serving parents instead of serving the students and serving the teachers unions,” Bortins said.
Abbot, who has sparked controversy for his criticism of diversity, equity, and inclusion, spoke to what he sees as a decline in American higher education at universities like UChicago. “Somehow we’ve gotten to the point where our humanities are denigrating, attacking, and destroying our tradition, and pushing the idea that anyone opposed to anything associated with the West must be good, no matter what they’re doing, no matter what the actual actions are,” he said. “The goal of destroying the West is so important that any means that they take are justified. And so that leads to the sort of moral chaos that we saw and complete confusion.”
In response to an audience question about the difference between public schools in Los Angeles (LA) and Dallas, Bortins described the difference in values. “LA, I would suggest, thinks we are all just a little bit more than apes…. And so it’s not surprising that young people act like animals. And so if your fundamental worldview is we’re all just a little bit smarter than apes, then you’re going to treat humanity like a bunch of wild animals, and you’re going to get those educational outcomes.”
“If you believe that we were all created in the image of God and that he loves us and he sent his son to die for us so that we could reign in heaven with him forever… [people in Dallas are] going to educate their children in a much different way,” he added.
During the panel “Can We Afford the American Dream?” featuring Alex Pollock, senior fellow at the Ludwig von Mises Institute; Heidi Heitkamp, a former Democratic senator from North Dakota and the outgoing director of UChicago’s Institute of Politics; Jon Phillips, professor of agribusiness at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona; and Victor Gutwein (A.B. ’13), founder of the venture capital firm M25, panelists agreed on the importance of international trade and immigration.
Responding to a question from a Northwestern University student about whether immigration has any value for America, Gutwein said, “When you look at [major startup incubator] Y Combinator, I think there’s a huge amount that are immigrants, first-generation or second-generation. I also think that when you talk about what an American is, these people come for school, for a job. It could be five years later they go back to Michoacán, they go back to Bangalore. That’s not home, almost five years later, 10 years later. They’ve already become more American than they were.”
He argued that immigration does not dilute the American identity. Instead, the American identity expands to include those who were not born in this country. “The speed at which America changes these people is incredible,” Gutwein said. “I’ve seen it. We work with a lot of our founders who are first-generation immigrants. They came over, maybe [as] kids, maybe more recently [as] adults, and they’re taking the risk that my ancestors did 100 years ago, and they started a business here in the United States. They’re taking that same risk.”
After the first three panels, Melina Hale, dean of the College, delivered remarks on the educational mission of UChicago and how it has been shaped by American identity over time.
She cited the University’s decision not to sign a letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities opposing the Trump administration’s interventions in higher education as an example of UChicago’s values of institutional neutrality. “In [President Paul Alivisatos’s] role of responsibility for our institutional identity, I really don’t see that it was a choice,” she said.
“For me, the last lines of that particular statement, that call for engagement of the signers on behalf of current and future students and all of us who are at and benefit from our institutions, [were] striking and problematic, whether you interpret ‘on behalf’ to mean representing our voices or our interests. Even if we at UChicago now did hypothetically all agree with a particular statement or path forward, which is extraordinarily unlikely to the point of absurdity, we also need to be open to future members of our community who may not agree with us.”
The other featured individual speaker was Nikolas Ferreira, a conservative member of the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies with a large social media following, interviewed by first-year Eduardo Ribeiro.
Ferreira returned to the topic of free speech, arguing that he has been frequently attacked for his views. He said if he had not been able to use social media as a “shield” against attacks, “maybe now I would be in prison and without social media.”
When a member of the audience asked about how he had been attacked by activists online, Ferreira criticized how activists were not adequately representing their communities. “When you talk about LGBT activis[ts], they say that ‘Oh, you’re going to have rights right now, we’re going to fight for you,’” Ferreira said. “But in Brazil, for example, LGBT [people] are being robbed. They walk in the streets and their cell phones, they [are] just [taken] away. So what they are doing for LGBT persons? Nothing. They just promise and they do nothing. They just wear a badge and they say, ‘Oh, I’m a[n] LGBT activist’ because it’s good for [their] image, but they are doing nothing.”
“For me, our democracy and our justice and our public activism should be blind. So I’m going to do this not because you are Black or you are Hispanic or you are immigrant. I’m going to do this because you’re a human being and you deserve to have good healthcare, good education, [and] good security.”
To end the discussion, Ferreira was asked how he stayed strong despite all the criticism and the many legal threats he has received, and even the danger of violence against him. “I don’t want to lose my life. I don’t want to be in prison. It would be unnatural if I chased this,” he responded. “But I know that my mission has sacrifices. And if they kill me all they’re going to do is make me meet my savior.”
The conference concluded with the panel “America’s Role in the World” featuring UChicago professors Paul Poast and Robert Pape, both in the Department of Political Science, as well as Curt Mills, the executive director of The American Conservative. The discussion began with brief prerecorded remarks from former World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz considering the history of American involvement abroad.
Afterward, the panelists debated the benefits of exercising American power abroad, with Poast and Pape arguing that America has a role to play internationally which benefits its interests.
Mills argued for an increased focus on the rest of the Americas, saying, “The state should work for its own citizens’ lives, liberty, and their pursuit of happiness, and we should avoid entangling alliances abroad, as Washington warned [in] his farewell. We can have a second American century, but we should do that by actually focusing on the Americas. So in that sense, the sort of designs on Greenland and Panama, I’ll say this: it makes a lot more sense than invading Iraq.”
