Bolzano alienated many faculty and church leaders with his teachings of the social waste of militarism and the needlessness of war. He urged a total reform of the educational, social and economic systems that would direct the nation's interests toward peace rather than toward armed conflict between nations. His political convictions, which he was inclined to share with others with some frequency, eventually proved to be too liberal for the Austrian authorities. On December 24, 1819, he was removed from his professorship (upon his refusal to recant his beliefs) and was exiled to the countryside and then devoted his energies to his writings on social, religious, philosophical, and mathematical matters.