Senate Candidate JD Vance Keynotes NatCon 2 in Orlando, Calls for 'Aggressively Attacking' Universities and Says Teaching That 'Divides People' Is 'Satanic'

On November 1–2, 2021, then-Senate candidate JD Vance delivered the keynote address “The Universities Are the Enemy” at the National Conservatism Conference II (NatCon 2) in Orlando, Florida, organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation. In the speech — recorded and posted to YouTube by NatCon — Vance called for conservatives to “honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country,” described colleges as “hostile institutions,” invoked his Christian identity to characterize divisive pedagogy as Satanic, and closed by quoting Richard Nixon’s “The professors are the enemy.” The NatCon platform that hosted Vance included Doug Wilson, Albert Mohler, and Yoram Hazony as recurring speakers across the NatCon conference series, placing the speech within the Reformed-postliberal track’s primary institutional venue.

What Happened / Key Facts

NatCon 2 was the second convening of the National Conservatism Conference, organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation (Yoram Hazony, David Brog). The conference drew speakers from the same Reformed-postliberal and national-conservative ecosystem that NatCon 4 (July 2024) would document more explicitly: Doug Wilson, Albert Mohler, and Hazony himself are recurring participants across the NatCon conference series.

Vance’s keynote contained three structurally significant elements:

1. The call for institutional warfare: Within 40 seconds of starting, Vance declared that conservatives “should honestly and aggressively attack the universities in this country.” He described universities as “hostile institutions doing research that gives credibility to some of the most ridiculous ideas.” The call for an aggressive institutional attack — rather than defense — was the keynote’s central strategic posture.

2. The Christian framing of the attack: Vance explicitly identified as a Christian to ground his critique: he stated that he is a Christian, and as such regards teaching that divides people from each other as Satanic. This is the key theological-political vocabulary moment: Vance did not merely make a policy argument about university bias. He deployed Christian theological language — specifically the category of the Satanic — to characterize the academic left’s divisive pedagogy. This is Reformed-adjacent vocabulary (the language of spiritual warfare against institutional corruption) delivered at the NatCon platform that hosts Reformed voices.

3. The Nixon quote as rhetorical close: Vance closed with former President Nixon’s statement that “the professors are the enemy” — a deliberately provocative escalation that his audience of national conservatives received as a call to action.

The speech was described by The Bulwark as “very carefully crafted,” with “subtle signals” to his audience and “judo-like rhetoric that reverses the moral thrust of his opponents’ arguments.”

Vance was still a Senate candidate at this point — he entered the race in July 2021 and was elected in November 2022. NatCon 2 was among his earliest high-profile national appearances on the nationalist-conservative circuit.

Why This Event Matters

The NatCon platform is the primary institutional venue for the Reformed-postliberal track’s public political presence. Doug Wilson (CREC founder, Blog & Mablog) is a recurring NatCon speaker; Albert Mohler (Southern Baptist Convention, Reformed orientation) is a recurring NatCon participant; Yoram Hazony (Edmund Burke Foundation) is the conference’s intellectual architect. By delivering the keynote at NatCon 2 and deploying Christian theological language — specifically the “Satanic” framing of divisive academia — Vance signaled vocabulary alignment with the Reformed-adjacent spiritual-warfare register that characterizes this track’s discourse.

The speech predates by three years the NatCon 4 (July 2024) appearance documented in vance-reformed-evangelical-bridge, where Vance shared the platform with Wilson and Mohler. NatCon 2 establishes that Vance’s relationship with the NatCon/Reformed-postliberal institutional infrastructure began at the start of his political career, not as a post-nomination convenience.

The theological framing — “I am a Christian, and I regard [this] as Satanic” — is the clearest pre-VP example of Vance deploying explicitly Christian theological vocabulary in a speech to a Reformed-adjacent audience. It is distinct from his Catholic-integralist vocabulary (common-good constitutionalism, postliberal state) and from his NAR-adjacent vocabulary (immigration as Christian duty, the Courage Tour’s theological framing of border policy). The NatCon audience received Reformed spiritual-warfare language; the Steubenville audience received postliberal Catholic social teaching vocabulary; the Courage Tour audience received NAR-inflected Christian-duty-as-immigration-restriction vocabulary. Three venues, three vocabularies.

Broader Context

The NatCon conference series is co-organized by the Edmund Burke Foundation, which also coordinates with the National Conservatism movement’s trans-Atlantic network (NatCon UK, ARC). James Orr (NatCon UK) is documented in orr-james as a trans-Atlantic Catholic-integralist node with ties to Vance’s international network. The NatCon platform’s Reformed-postliberal orientation (Hazony’s Jewish nationalism sits alongside Wilson’s CREC Presbyterianism and Mohler’s SBC Calvinism) is the closest institutional venue to the Reformed-CN track that Vance appears at pre-VP.

Doug Wilson himself, asked about his connection to Vance, acknowledged the relational proximity without claiming direct ties: “Our separation from Vance is not that far.” The NatCon 2 speech is the earliest documented moment of Vance deploying theological language on the NatCon/Reformed-adjacent platform that Wilson also occupies.

Research Gaps

• Full transcript of the NatCon 2 keynote beyond the fragments documented by secondary sources
• Whether Vance met privately with Wilson, Mohler, or Hazony at NatCon 2 (no documentation found)
• Whether Vance appeared at NatCon 3 (Miami, 2022) or NatCon Brussels (2022) in addition to NatCon 2 (2021) and NatCon 4 (2024)

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