Christopher Rufo

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Rufo in 2022 from a video interview with Reason TV
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"If conservatives want to protect the American way of life, they must be willing to lay siege to the institutions, and reorient them according to their own values. Whatever the odds, it’s never too late for counterrevolution in our time."
—Christopher Rufo[1]

Christopher Rufo (1984–) is an American far-right activist. Rufo is an anti-LGBT culture warrior,[2][3][4][5] a racist anti-"woke" and anti-DEI crusader,[6] and senior fellow of the Manhattan Institute. He is also an intelligent design advocate and former director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty.[7][8] He has falsely claimed to have a degree from Harvard University, when he has only a degree from the open-enrollment Harvard Extension School.[9]

Critical race theory[edit]

The manufactroversy of critical race theory was spearheaded by Rufo.[8] Over the course of 2020, the former documentary filmmaker turned conservative activist gathered curricula and documents from anti-bias training sessions in the city of Seattle. From these, he postulated (using cherry picking, according to critics) that the anti-racism seminars did not just merely represent a progressive view on race, but that they were purportedly expressions of a distinct ideology — critical race theory — with purported radical Marxist roots.[10] This despite Rufo not completely understanding (or even caring to understand) the actual intellectual underpinnings behind critical race theory.[11] Rufo initially reported his findings on both his SubstackWikipedia and the Manhattan Institute's City Journal. Rufo's "theory" later gained huge amounts of currency in conservative politics after Rufo was featured on Tucker Carlson's show.[10]

Anti-public education activities[edit]

See the main article on this topic: public education

Rufo is obsessed with the idea that colleges have been taken over by the radical left, and in particular is ticked by university diversity efforts. Rufo's obsession is so strong, he believes that universities must be forcefully changed by a "counterrevolution". In an article for City Journal, he pleaded for the next conservative federal government to punish universities that "enforce left-wing orthodoxy", and admitted that such a plan could be described as "right-wing Leninism".[12]

Rufo has expressed admiration for Viktor Orbán's authoritarian government in Hungary. In particular, Rufo seems to desire a similar path that Orbán took in transforming the country's university system into political propaganda mills.[13][14] Rufo's authoritarian leanings also extend to historical American politics. The same article City Journal article that talked about a "counterrevolution" also featured open admiration, and calls for the return of, the thuggery of Richard Nixon. (Rufo particularly seemed impressed with Nixon's thuggery against Black New Left organizations like the Black Panthers.) In addition, Rufo hand-waved away the illegalities and civil rights violations committed by J. Edgar Hoover.[12]

Destroying New College of Florida[edit]

In early 2023, Ron DeSantis appointed Rufo to the board of New College of FloridaWikipedia as part of an effort by DeSantis to replace the board of the small college with conservative firebrands and DeSantis-aligned stooges, remaking it in the model of the private conservative Christian Hillsdale College.[15][16][17] Under Rufo's direction, professors have been terminated merely for having left-wing political views and being publicly critical of the DeSantis board takeover,[18] what basically amounts to thoughtcrime.

Before Rufo and DeSantis took over, roughly two-thirds of New College's students were women, a situation that seemed to trouble Rufo. ("This is a wildly out-of-balance student population, and it caused all sorts of cultural problems.") Rufo claimed that having so many more women then men at New College turned it into "what many have called a social justice ghetto."[19] True to this misogynistic outlook, Rufo boasted about the college "rolling back the encroachment of gender ideology and queer theory" under the DeSantis administration.[19]

The result was a predictable brain drain from New College: in August 18 2023, it was reported that 38 of the 90 full time faculty members resigned. Similarly, 88 of the 697 students took advantage of one transfer deal alone, offered by Hampshire College.Wikipedia[20] New College tried to compensate for the brain drain by heavily focusing on recruiting student-athletes, at the cost of its previous highly-ranked academic reputation.[21] This shift in focus was reflected by one of the new degrees offered by New College by the DeSantis administration: sports psychology.Wikipedia[19]

Battling Harvard University[edit]

In December 2023, Rufo continued his theme of attacking education institutions by focusing on ousting the president of Harvard University.Wikipedia

Beginning in October 2023, Harvard (along with several other universities) was battling with the hedge fund billionaire investor and college donor Bill Ackman.Wikipedia Ackman was very concerned (freedom of speech be damned)[22] with possible antisemitism within campus protests of the 2023 Israel–Hamas war,Wikipedia and directed ire at school boards that supposedly weren't combating his perceived antisemitism enough.[23] Such was the fervor of his crusade, at one point, he demanded that schools reveal the names of any student blaming Israel for the Hamas attacks.[24] With Harvard in particular, Ackman was also personally ticked that the university had not heeded his advice on a variety of topics.[23] Due to these grievances, Ackman publically called for the university president at the time, Claudine Gay,Wikipedia to resign.[23]

When that effort failed, Ackman teamed up with Rufo to push another way to oust Gay: accusations of plagiarism.[note 1] On December 10 2023, in his Substack, Rufo published an article accusing Gay of plagiarizing in sections of her Ph.D. thesis.[26] Rufo then worked diligently to promote the story in order for it to eventually appear in mainstream media.[27] Like the critical race theory manufactroversy, the campaign against Gay was well coordinated and highly organized.[27]

While what Rufo pointed out was indeed plagiarism, many in academia found the allegations to be relatively trivial.[28] Even one of the plagiarized authors, the political science professor David Canon, declared that he wasn't concerned at all about the passages Gay had plagiarized from him. ("This isn’t even close to an example of academic plagiarism.")[29] Of those people whom Gay plagiariazed, there appeared to be only one person who found it a serious offense, PragerU's Carol M. Swain,Wikipedia who was plagiarized at time when she was an early career academic; other plagiarized academics were either mid-to-late career or did not find the misappropriation particularly serious.[30] Nonetheless, Rufo and Ackman's efforts to oust Gay was successful; Gay resigned as Harvard president on January 2 2024.[29]

Gay was the first Black president of Harvard. Therefore, many civil rights organizations and leaders (ranging from Al Sharpton to the NAACP) detected strong whiffs of racism in the controversy.[31] Rufo certainly helped fuel this impression when he penned a long screed in City Journal that essentially accused Gay's career of completely being a product of reverse racism.[32]

Ironically, the news website Business InsiderWikipedia found on January 4 2024 that Ackman's wife (Neri OxmanWikipedia) had also committed similar acts of plagiarism in her doctoral dissertation.[33] While Oxman admitted to the plagiarism and apologized for the problematic passages,[34] Ackman naturally got extremely pissed and threatened to sue Business Insider.[35]

Promoting racialists[edit]

In order to hype up the Claudine Gay controversy at Harvard, Rufo gave an interview in City Journal to an "outsider" academic named Jonatan Pallesen. Pallesen accused Gay of committing supposed data errors in her Ph.D. thesis. Pallesen also whined that in academia, "woke claims tend to find easier acceptance", whereas "non-woke white male researchers, such as Bo Winegard, do meticulous research and are fired."[36]

Unmentioned in the interview was Pallesen's own pseudo-academic work, which included some racialism bullshit. Pallesen is one of four authors (together with other racialism advocates like Curtis S. Dunkel, Emil Kirkegaard and Michael A. Woodley of Menie) of a 2019 paper called, "Polygenic Scores Mediate the Jewish Phenotypic Advantage in Educational Attainment and Cognitive Ability Compared With Catholics and Lutheran". This paper attempted to prove that "the high average cognitive ability of Jews may have been shaped, in part, by polygenic selection acting on this population over the course of several millennia."[37] To accomplish this, the paper frequently cited Kevin MacDonald, a retired psychology academic well known for pushing antisemitic racialism.[38]

Actual academics found the paper ridiculous, with obvious correlation does not imply causation logical fallacies. Actual academics also noted that the Jewish "high intelligence" stereotype fit into conspiracy theories often pushed by white supremacists.[38]

In previous City Journal articles, Rufo had been critical of white racialists, including websites such as VDARE.[39] It is unknown whether Rufo was sloppy in interviewing Pallesen or whether his previous criticisms of white racialists were not genuine.

Perhaps more strongly demonstrating the later, on 31 January 2024 The Guardian reported that Rufo (on his SubstackWikipedia) recommended a Substack publication called Aporia. Aporia self-styled itself as "the world's only sociobiology magazine",[40] which masked its actual purpose: promoting racialists and their scientific racism viewpoints. Aporia was a re-brand of a previous personal newsletter by a hereditarian named Matthew Archer. At the time of the Guardian report, Bo Winegard was executive editor; other editors include racialists like Noah Carl. To underscore the degree that this "sociobiology magazine" should not be taken seriously at all, one article advanced arguments in part by using discredited data from the early 20th century eugenics promoter Charles Davenport.Wikipedia[41]

Aporia also produced a podcast, which Rufo had appeared in on August 2023. The podcast was likewise known for promoting racialists. For instance, in January 2024, the podcast hosted a debate between The Bell Curve author Charles Murray and the hereditarian Helmuth Nyborg.Wikipedia In the episode published immediately after the Rufo podcast, Winegard interviewed the white supremacist "human biodiversity" advocate Steve Sailer.[41]

Notes[edit]

  1. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ackman was primarily known for supporting Democrats. However, during and after the pandemic, Ackman became more active on Twitter, marking a shift in his politics. By October 2023, Business Insider reported that Ackman had a reputation for being the "king of uninformed, unnecessary, and seemingly unlimited tweets," with greater support for reactionary figures like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Kyle Rittenhouse,Wikipedia and Elon Musk.[25]

References[edit]

  1. "Anti-civil rights activist Chris Rufo: “What Nixon did to the Black Panther Party, the next president must do to the violent factions of our time”" by Media Matters, 2023 August 14
  2. Ebner, Julia (2023-06-22) (in en). Going Mainstream: How extremists are taking over. Bonnier Books UK. pp. ~111. ISBN 978-1-80418-314-4. "In 2022, the new 'Don't Say Gay' legislation in Florida caused a major controversy in the US. It started with the conservative American activist Christopher Rufo initiating a large campaign to punish Disney for releasing its new animated series The Proud Family: Louder and Prouder. The series introduced a pair of homosexual dads, featuring voice-overs by LGBTQ actors, as well as recurring queer character Michael Collins. After Rufo claimed that The Proud Family was grooming children with radical sexual propaganda and helping advance a 'gay agenda', waves of anti-LGBTQ campaigns kicked off." 
  3. Adrian Horton (October 17, 2022). "John Oliver: 'Some on the right have truly lost their minds about trans rights'". The Guardian. Quote: "Rufo has suggested branding the discussion of trans issues as 'radical gender theory', and tweeted that drag queens should be referred to as 'trans strippers' because it’s more 'lurid' and has a 'sexual connotation' – part of the conservative strategy of linking transgender issues with sexual predation or social contagion."
  4. Trip Gabriel (April 24, 2022). "He Fuels the Right's Cultural Fires (and Spreads Them to Florida)". The New York Times.
  5. Paul Matzko (July 21, 2023). "How Chris Rufo Became the Thing He Hates". Reason.
  6. "Yes, efforts to eliminate DEI programs are rooted in racism" by Tatishe Nteta, Adam Eichen, Douglas Rice, Jesse Rhodes, and Justin H. Gross, The Conversation, 2024 April 5
  7. Christopher Rufo. discovery.org. accessed 15 July 2023.
  8. 8.0 8.1 "Christopher F. Rufo", Manhattan Institute, personal profile.
  9. Christopher Rufo Claims a Degree from “Harvard.” Umm … Not Quite: The activist who is now a leading education policy figure on the right actually matriculated at Harvard Extension School. There’s a difference. by Daniel Strauss (February 17, 2023) The New Republic.
  10. 10.0 10.1 "How a Conservative Activist Invented the Conflict Over Critical Race Theory" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, New Yorker, 2021 June 18
  11. "A key figure behind the “critical race theory” scare campaign admitted he doesn’t care about actually understanding it" by Eric Kleefeld, Media Matters, 2021 June 23
  12. 12.0 12.1 "Bring on the Counterrevolution" by Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal, Summer 2023
  13. "Christopher Rufo’s Alarming and Deceptive Crusade Against Public Universities" by Jeremy C. Young, Time, 2023 August 30
  14. "Viktor Orbán’s pet university is all about propaganda – I know, I was there" by Bence X Szechenyi, Guardian, 2023 September 11
  15. "New College board fires president, installs former GOP House speaker, DeSantis ally" by Zac Anderson, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2023 January 31, reprinted in the Tallahassee Democrat
  16. "FSU faculty say it's 'rubbish' as Christopher Rufo targets FSU 'radical' diversity programs" by James Call, Tallahassee Democrat, 2023 February 3
  17. "Records lawsuit filed against Christopher Rufo, New College" by Omar Rodriguez Ortiz, Miami Herald, 2023 February 23, reprinted by the Tampa Bay Times
  18. "Firing a Professor for 'Left-Wing' Views Is Unconstitutional" by Emma Camp, Reason, 2023 June 9
  19. 19.0 19.1 19.2 "At a College Targeted by DeSantis, Gender Studies Is Out, Jocks Are In" by Michelle Goldberg, New York Times, 2023 August 14
  20. "New College students, faculty are leaving after DeSantis takeover. Here’s how many" by Jim Dela, Bradenton Herald, 2023 August 18
  21. "New College of Florida nets record number of new students, but at academic cost" by Steven Walker, Sarasota Herald-Tribune, 2023 July 27
  22. "Bill Ackman and the Crusade Against Free Speech" by Jasmine N. Wynn, Harvard Crimson, 2024 January 8
  23. 23.0 23.1 23.2 "Bill Ackman’s Campaign Against Harvard Followed Years of Resentment" by Maureen Farrell and Rob Copeland, New York Times, 2023 December 12
  24. "Bill Ackman wants Harvard to name the students blaming Israel for the Hamas attacks so that he and other CEOs don’t hire them by accident" by Eleanor Pringle, Fortune, 2023 October 11
  25. "Bill Ackman is bringing the same ruthless energy that made him a hedge fund billionaire to politics" by George Glover, Business Insider, 2024 January 5
  26. "Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?" by Christopher F. Rufo and Christopher Brunet, christopherrufo.com, 2023 December 10
  27. 27.0 27.1 "We Sat Down With the Conservative Mastermind Behind Claudine Gay’s Ouster" by Ian Ward, Politico, 2024 January 3
  28. "What counts as plagiarism? Harvard president’s resignation sparks debate" by Jeff Tollefson, Nature, 2024 January 11
  29. 29.0 29.1 "Harvard’s Claudine Gay was ousted for ‘plagiarism’. How serious was it really?" by Andrew Lawrence, The Guardian, 2024 January 6
  30. The plagiarism allegations against ex-Harvard president Claudine Gay, explained by Sophia Nguyen (January 4, 2024 at 8:03 p.m. EST) The Washington Post.
  31. "Harvard governing board, activists say former president was a victim of racism" by Bianca Quilantan, Politco, 2024 January 2
  32. "Claudine Gay’s DEI Empire" by Christopher F. Rufo, City Journal, 2023 December 18
  33. "Bill Ackman's celebrity academic wife Neri Oxman's dissertation is marred by plagiarism" by Katherine Long and Jack Newsham, Business Insider, 2024 January 4
  34. "Neri Oxman admits to plagiarizing in her doctoral dissertation after BI report" by Katherine Long, Business Insider, 2024 January 4
  35. "Ackman Escalates Attack On Business Insider—And Musk Eggs Him On" by Brian Bushard, Forbes, 2024 January 9
  36. "Claudine Gay’s Data Problem" by Christopher F. Rufo (2024 January 4) City Journal.
  37. [Dunkel, Curtis & Woodley of Menie, Michael & Pallesen, Jonatan & Kirkegaard, Emil O. W.. (2019). Polygenic Scores Mediate the Jewish Phenotypic Advantage in Educational Attainment and Cognitive Ability Compared With Catholics and Lutherans. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences. 13. 10.1037/ebs0000158.
  38. 38.0 38.1 "Scientist cited in push to oust Harvard’s Claudine Gay has links to eugenicists" by Jason Wilson, Guardian, 2024 Jan 14
  39. No to the Politics of “Whiteness” by Christopher Rufo (2023 August 30) City Journal.
  40. "The world's only sociobiology magazine. Ideas for a future worth wanting.", @APORIAMAGAZINE, Substack Notes, archived on 2024 January 31
  41. 41.0 41.1 "Activist who led ouster of Harvard president linked to ‘scientific racism’ journal" by Jason Wilson, Guardian, 2024 January 31