Why did the University of Oxford forbid the teaching of Cartesian doctrines?

The University of Oxford forbade the teaching of Cartesianism because it represented a significant challenge to the established Scholasticism that dominated university curricula at the time.12

As a fashionable and influential alternative to traditional academic thought, Cartesian doctrines were perceived as a serious threat to established religious and intellectual authority. This opposition was part of a broader climate of resistance; for similar reasons, the Roman Catholic Church placed the works of René Descartes on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1663.12