Rufo has become a darling of the right, but many critics argue that his work is deeply flawed and misleading, often misrepresenting the contents of diversity training programs and academic scholarship.
Deeply flawed and misleading. That’s becoming the tagline of this country.
#Monterey
#MorningWalk
#TheDaily
#Rufo
#AcademicFreedom
#WhiteSupremacy (2/2)
Over the past five years, the activist #Christopher #Rufo has spearheaded the conservative critique of and assault
on critical race theory and diversity, equity and inclusion efforts,
organizing effective campaigns against government offices, corporations and American universities.
In the process, Mr. Rufo has become an influential voice in the ear of the Trump administration as it turns his strategy into a wide-ranging government crackdown on higher education.
Michael Barbaro speaks to Mr. Rufo about how far his agenda will go.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/11/podcasts/the-daily/christopher-rufo-dei-critical-race-theory.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Right-wing provocateur #Christopher #Rufo could help shape President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for #higher #education, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.
Rufo—a leading actor in right-wing culture wars,
from the moral panic surrounding “critical race theory” to the hoax about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio
—reportedly “has an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, where he will present the president-elect’s team with a 
plan to geld American universities by withholding money if they don’t pull back on diversity measures.”
A spokesperson for JD Vance told the Journal that the vice president-elect sees Rufo as
“a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to higher education,
who “recognizes schools and universities exist to equip American students to face tomorrow’s challenges, not to indoctrinate them with the fringe beliefs of the far left.”
To see such lofty aims in action, one can look at how the New College of Florida has transformed -- since Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Rufo and other conservative activists to the school’s board of trustees in 2023 in his “war on woke.”
Under its new leadership, New College has undergone significant changes, most recently hiring a number of “ideologically aligned rightwing faculty and staff for a range of positions,” per The Guardian,
including conservative commentator and comedian Andrew Doyle, who will teach a course on “wokeness.”
The overhaul of New College and Rufo’s actions as trustee have been met with resistance and sharp criticism from students and faculty.
One such critic, a visiting history professor, was threatened by Rufo and later dismissed after co-writing an op-ed against the new administration, in what the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called “a clear violation of the public college’s First Amendment obligations.”
According to the Journal, Rufo’s top concerns include
ending race-based affirmative action at universities “with which the federal government does business”
and defunding colleges “that continue to engage in DEI practices” in an effort to “recapture” them from the left
—stances that resonate with president-elect’s thinking on higher ed.
https://newrepublic.com/post/188800/donald-trump-christopher-rufo-woke-schools
Florida university to host extremist after DeSantis-led lurch to right
New College of Florida (NCF) will 
host the extremist writer #Steve #Sailer,
who has been described as a 
“white supremacist” and a “proponent of scientific racism”,
at a college-branded public eventnext month.
New College has made headlines since January 2023, when the rightwing governor, 
Ron DeSantis, vowed to transform it from a university known for liberal values into a conservative institution,
and installed a new board of trustees including the rightwing culture warrior #Christopher #Rufo.
That board in turn appointed DeSantis’s “close ally” #Richard #Corcoran as the new college president, in which role he makes a $699,000 salary.
DeSantis’s lieutenants’ actions at New College
– like 
abolishing disciplines, removing bathroom signage
and denying professors tenure
– have seen 
the departure of more than a third of the faculty,
and given rise to myriad legal actions.
But the moves have been lauded by the so-called “new right”,
many of whom see US higher education as a bastion of liberalism that needs to be subject to a rightwing “#reconquista”.
JD #Vance, for his part, has pledged to. “#aggressively #attack the universities in this country”.
Even so, Sailer’s invitation to speak is likely to stir controversy for his extremist views, especially on race.
In Sailer’s newly published anthology, Noticing, one essay claims that
an “African population explosion” is related to
a “primal African cult of fertility”.
Another associates “young woman-of-color journalists”
with “Haitian #voodoo and Southern #hoodoo magic”.
Many offer variations on the claim that “Blacks have higher average levels of violent crime and lower average levels of intelligence”.
After all the #MarkRobinson, #Rufo, #Nuzzi and #RFKJr news broke, a late-night filing revealed that 3 witnesses gave sworn testimony that “#MattGaetz attended a drug-fueled sex party in 2017 with the 17-year-old girl at the center of the alleged sex trafficking scandal.”
Thursday was quite a news day.
#media
https://www.notus.org/florida/new-court-filings-matt-gaetz-dorworth-sex-party
With #humanitarian #catastrophes unfolding on several continents,
the response of the #wealthy #world has been to demand tighter borders and higher fences.
There is no blockbuster charity single raising money for starving refugees from the civil war raging in Sudan. And now, the cruel taunts come not just from schoolyard bullies and cranks on the political fringes, but from the lips of a man who stood on the presidential debate stage on Tuesday -- a former president who once again has a coin-flip shot at regaining the most powerful office in the world.
And so I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised by that lowest of moments at the debate,
when Donald Trump repeated a vile, baseless claim that Haitian immigrants were killing and eating household pets in Springfield, Ohio.
This allegation appears to stem from viral social media posts and statements at public meetings.
It was picked up by some of the most rancid figures at the #fringe of the #MAGA-verse,
then quickly hopscotched from there to a social media post by Trump’s running mate, JD #Vance,
and finally to the debate stage, sputtered by #Trump himself.
There is something particularly #insidious about this claim,
uttered at this time, from that stage.
#Food and #pets are, to use a Freudian term, highly overdetermined #symbols in our political life.
They are capable of receiving and holding a multiplicity of very potent meanings, transmitting deep messages about #identity and #belonging.
You can tell how powerful this type of slur is by how quickly and vociferously it has animated so many on the right.
Figures who flirt with the mainstream have eagerly jumped into the fray.
The conservative culture warrior #Christopher #Rufo has offered a $5,000 bounty for anyone who can find proof that a Haitian immigrant had in fact eaten a cat.
It is not hard to imagine how this could quickly escalate into #vigilante #violence against Haitians in America.
On Thursday, city officials in Springfield, most of whom have pushed back against the false allegations, said they had received #bomb #threats, prompting the evacuation of city buildings.
MAGA bigotry is far more #sinister and #dangerous than weird.
And disbelieving laughter could,
I fear, blind us to moments like this, when truly unacceptable lines are crossed
Project 2025 was supposed to boost Donald Trump's campaign
— but it may be backfiring instead
Trump's #authoritarian game plan is breaking through the post-debate noise and it's starting to scare people
When #Project2025 was released, a number of progressives expressed surprise that Donald Trump's army of authoritarian schemers would boldly publish their plan to destroy American government as we know it.
The over 900-page document, commissioned by the people expected to run another Trump White House, is a laundry list of the far-right's most politically toxic ideas,
from banning abortion nationwide
to mass firing federal officials who believe in protecting public health and safety.
One would think that Trump and his allies would try to keep their sinister plans out of public view.
Instead, Team Trump published their fascistic blueprint on a website for anyone to read.
They even proudly display the menacing "Project 2025" label on the front page.
But really, it's not that surprising.
The MAGA right learned years ago the value of hiding their wicked plans in plain sight.
Authoritarian thought leader Christopher #Rufo is the most prominent example.
He frequently speaks loudly of his machinations, such as boldly announcing on Twitter that the right is trying to take away birth control,
claiming women should not have "recreational sex."
Recently imprisoned Trump ally Steve #Bannon gloated openly on his podcast about his schemes.
Before going to prison, he bragged to the New York Times,
"This is a military headquarters for a populist revolt."
Kevin #Roberts, whose group Heritage Foundation is helping run Project 2025, recently spoke about how Trump will use violence to force the MAGA agenda on the public.
Trump himself regularly employs this strategy,
giving speeches where he declares that his goal is "retribution" against political opponents,
promises pardons for the January 6 insurrectionists,
and characterizes anyone who objects as "vermin" who need to be eliminated.
This strategy works because it depends on the fact that most Americans don't pay close attention to politics. 
They will never learn that Trump and his allies are saying such vile things.
So the MAGA goal with this bad guy posturing is twofold:
First, get the juices flowing in their base.
Second, cause those progressives who are paying attention to panic.
Trumpists then paint the people speaking out as a bunch of liberal crazies who are exaggerating the threat of MAGA.
I often liken it to a guy who pinches a woman's butt in a bar, and when she protests, laughs and insists she's just a crazy lady making it all up.
We saw this strategy with the Supreme Court's recent presidential "immunity" decision.
It's factually correct that it gives Trump a license to kill, but anyone who speaks this fact is accused of "Trump derangement syndrome" and "madness" by Republicans.
The strategy largely works, because
less politically engaged Americans assume that "both sides" engage in hyperbole.
Low information people are ready to believe the false accusations that liberals are "deranged" when they warn of Trump's plans to be a dictator.
️Project 2025 seemed to be rolled out with this assumption that "normies" would never hear of it, and that the few who did hear would dismiss the fears as overheated nonsense. ️
Instead, however, there are promising signs that people who aren't political junkies are starting to hear about Project 2025.
Even better, those folks aren't immediately dismissing it as progressive theatrics but may be genuinely alarmed.
It looks like Greg Abbott's response to the protests at UT Austin is even more unpopular on the right than I thought. Apparently even Chris Rufo is mad at him. Rufo is quoted in this article as asking “How is such a policy different from DEI programs promising to prohibit ‘anti-black speech’? And why not include ‘anti-white speech,’ [lol -ed] which, as I have shown in my reporting, is institutionalized at University of Texas?”
The last few paragraphs of the article kind of lay it all out, though:
In December, the state Republican committee voted 39-32 to continue permitting members to meet with groups “known to espouse or tolerate antisemitism, pro-Nazi sympathies or Holocaust denial,” stripping a clause that would have banned such meetings from a statement of support for Israel, according to The Texas Tribune.
Half the board also voted not to keep any record of that vote.
In voting down a measure that would have restricted such meetings, members raised concerns about free speech. A ban on such meetings was reminiscent of “Marxist” tactics, members said.
Banning them “could put you on a slippery slope,” committee member Dan Tully told the Tribune.
In the aftermath of Wednesday’s arrests, a local journalist with the left-wing Texas Observer called out the apparent contradiction between the state’s broader response to antisemitic speech and its crackdown on the college demonstrations.
“I’ve seen no credible reporting of actual antisemitic incidents at the UT Austin protest,” Steven Monacelli wrote on X.
“What I can tell you is that I’ve reported on numerous neo-Nazi events and Greg Abbott never once tried to put any of them in jail.”
Chris #Rufo is an intellectual fraud. Rather than engaging substantially with #intersectionality and #CriticalRaceTheory, which would require him to actually understand them, he preens about figuring out that (gasp) scholars routinely use approximately the same language to describe the same highly technical and precise components of their research.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/open-season-on-scholars-of-race
#Pedophiles very much have a vested interest in keeping the supply of unwanted #children high.
That is likely the reason I'm getting *strong* pedo vibes from this #christofascist #Rufo.
2/
"FOR THE PAST few years, #Rufo has elevated critical race theory: an academic discipline that studies how racism shapes public policy. In 2020, he appeared on Tucker Carlson Tonight and declared that critical race theory had “become, in essence, the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.”
https://theintercept.com/2023/06/08/christopher-rufo-nonprofit-dark-money/
So in chorus we sing out "Fuck you" to #Ackman and the #NYTimes, filthy #Rufo ally and symps.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/01/exactly-one-proposition-2
"the #NewYorkTimes wants to behave this way. They want to inflate academic jaywalking by Harvard’s president into a massive scandal worthy of weeks of wall-to-wall coverage. But it obviously isn’t, and so they need an excuse, both for their readers and for themselves.
#Rufo and #Stefanik provide that excuse: Influential conservatives are talking about this, so we have to cover it."
~ @foser
https://findinggravity.substack.com/p/christopher-rufo-and-elise-stefanik
All these takes seem to misdiagnose the mainstream media outlets as
"getting played"
when its plain as day they are actually captured megaphones for the same wealthy interests running these campaigns-- Ackman, Thiel, Koch, etc.
Can we grow the fuck up and stop giving mainstream media a fucking pass?
Theyre not the duped innocent.
@nicholas_saunders Gay's resignation is more a #RightWing #Lynching funded by big money #billionaires, assisted by scumbag Christopher #Rufo, #AntiSemitic Trumper Elise #stefanik and billionaire Bill #Ackman. As usual, follow the money.
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/claudine-gay-chris-rufo-war-on-higher-education
Chris #Rufo is a weak-minded poser. At UT-Austin "professors were there to shut him down" - they went for the (intellectual) jugular, and Rufo responded with the equivalent of Josh Hawley running away from the rioters on January 6. That he was allowed to have any say about Claudine Gay's intellectual achievements is absurd.
Anyway, give the Austin Chronicle your clicks instead of those promoting the charade.
another manufactured scalp taken by the #rufo, frothing right, and thoughtless idiots who play along. and of course the #IsraelUberAlles crowd.
https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2024/01/rufos-collaborators
it's really lucky that #DeSantis, Chris #Rufo, et al aren't a lot smarter, or they'd see that these anti-education measures they want to enact mesh perfectly with the goals of far too many top-level administrators in #highereducation https://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2023/02/florida-man-takes-over-research-universities
Prof Gates crushed it again this morning.
https://themotleycow.net/desantis-wants-you-to-be-afraid-of-black-history/
Mechanic 
