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• Christopher Ferguson Rufo (born August 26, 1984) is an American conservative activist and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
He is best known for his activism against critical race theory, which he claims "has pervaded every aspect of the federal government", poses "an existential threat to the United States", and is anti-American.
Rufo has been actively involved in Republican efforts to restrict critical race theory instruction or seminars.
Critical race theory considers the idea that racism is systemic in the United States, through laws, policies, regulations, and even court decisions. ... CAREER AND ACTIVISM.
Rufo was a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute.
Later, he was a research fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian think tank known for its opposition to the theory of evolution and advocacy for intelligent design to be taught in public schools. ... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Rufo
• Christopher Rufo is a Senior Fellow for the Manhattan Institute.
He is also a writer and filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, Rufo has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three "forgotten American cities." In recent years, Rufo has led the fight against critical race theory in American institutions.
Rufo's research and activism inspired a presidential order and legislation in fifteen states, where he has worked closely with conservative governors and lawmakers to craft successful public policy.
Rufo has been featured in the Wall Street Journal,New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.
Rufo earned his bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a master's degree from Harvard University.
Source (2023-01-16): https://www.ncf.edu/about/leadership/board-of-trustees/
• see also: Economy - Economic systems - Mixed economies - Social economy - Nonprofit organizations - 501(c)(3) organizations - Manhattan Institute for Policy Research - Christopher Rufo
• (2023-01-06, https://www.flgov.com/2023/01/06/governor-ron-desantis-appoints-six-to-the-new-college-of-florida-board-of-trustees/) "Governor Ron DeSantis Appoints Six to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees." Today, Governor Ron DeSantis announced the appointment of Christopher Rufo, Dr. Matthew Spalding, Dr. Charles R. Kesler, Dr. Mark Bauerlein, Debra Jenks, and Jason "Eddie" Speir to the New College of Florida Board of Trustees.
CHRISTOPHER RUFO.
Christopher Rufo is a Senior Fellow for the Manhattan Institute.
He is also a writer and filmmaker.
As a filmmaker, Christopher Rufo has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including America Lost, which tells the story of three "forgotten American cities." In recent years, Christopher Rufo has led the fight against critical race theory in American institutions.
Christopher Rufo's research and activism inspired a presidential order and legislation in fifteen states, where he has worked closely with conservative governors and lawmakers to craft successful public policy.
Christopher Rufo has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News.
Christopher Rufo earned his bachelor's degree from Georgetown University and a master's degree from Harvard University.
• (Isabela Dias, 2023-06-01, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/chris-rufo-launched-crt-panic-he-isnt-done/) "Christopher Rufo Launched the Critical Race Theory Panic.
He Isn't Done.
Meet the man helping Ron DeSantis' efforts to turn back the clock on social progress." On a rainy day in late March, a group of American and European public intellectuals gathered in a stone-clad villa in Budapest's Castle District.
They'd been invited by the Danube Institute - a conservative think tank backed by the Hungarian government - to denounce growing threats from the Left.
The Danube Institute's president - John O'Sullivan, a British octogenarian and former editor of National Review - summarized the challenge - gender theory, recognition of a climate emergency, critical race theory - in one all-purpose expression: "wokeness." The mastermind behind the event - titled "The ABCs of Critical Race Theory & More" - was American activist, Christopher Rufo (Chris Rufo).
Christopher Rufo, who came to prominence for instigating the moral panic over critical race theory (CRT) in public education - a move that, John O'Sullivan noted approvingly in his introduction - "provoked a popular resistance of parents." Christopher Rufo had recently arrived for a monthlong visiting fellowship with the Danube Institute, an incubator for U.S. ideologues who consider Prime Minister Viktor Orbán's brand of nationalist populism - particularly Viktor Orbán's muscular use of state power - as a model to be replicated.
Viktor Orbán's "illiberal democracy" has subjugated the independent press, banned LGBTQ content from schools, ended gender studies in universities, and evicted the Central European University from Hungary.
This last effort had the dual benefit of exiling a global postcommunist bastion of liberal values, social sciences, and humanities while eradicating the influence of its founder, Hungarian-born philanthropist George Soros - whose extensive financial investments in upholding democratic institutions throughout former communist countries have been demonized, often in blatantly antisemitic ways, by the right in both nations.
(In an interview, John O'Sullivan defended the Danube Institute.
"We are not doing anything mysterious," John O'Sullivan said, describing its mission as to "encourage the transmission of ideas" and "democratic debate.") Displaying a fresh high and tight haircut, the 38-year-old Christopher Rufo took the stage with the swagger of a classroom know-it-all.
CRT - which Christopher Rufo describes as a race-centered, neo-Marxist version of history pushed by elites perpetuating a myth of the U.S.' intrinsic racism - might seem like a uniquely American construct.
But Christopher Rufo warned that, much like Netflix, rap music, and other Yankee exports, CRT would inevitably land in Hungary.
"You should prepare yourselves politically," Christopher Rufo said, "prepare yourselves intellectually, and not rest on the assumption that because it's a false theory and because it can't be transposed accurately onto your history - it always finds a way." In 2020, Christopher Rufo's highbrow brand of scaremongering launched him into the conservative spotlight.
Christopher Rufo boasts that his strident anti-CRT campaign was a singular achievement in public persuasion - a transformation from "an obscure academic discipline" that few had heard of into a catalyst for conservative outrage.
Not one for false modesty, Christopher Rufo told The New York Times, "I've unlocked a new terrain in the culture war." When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis began his own attacks on CRT in March 2021, Christopher Rufo welcomed him to the fight.
Christopher Rufo assumed an unofficial role advising the 2024 candidate Ron DeSantis - helping Ron DeSantis build his culture warrior reputation, with Viktor Orbán as Ron DeSantis' exemplar.
(Christopher Rufo admits he sees similarities between some policies in Hungary and the Sunshine State - Florida - but claims "if there is a direct inspiration, I am not aware of it.") Where Ron DeSantis - or Donald Trump with his reality-show populism and "build that wall" chants - often comes across as an unpolished bully, Christopher Rufo provides a veneer of intellectual sophistication and an arsenal of strategically incendiary rhetoric.
As Politico's Michael Kruse writes, Christopher Rufo is a "main source and surrogate" for the governor's "anti-woke" agenda.
With CRT, Christopher Rufo effectively distorted an academic and legal framework that examines how racism is embedded in institutions and laws into a concise acronym and conduit for white grievance.
To Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric and professor at Texas A&M University, Christopher Rufo is a propagandist whose talents call to mind Edward Bernays - the so-called father of public relations, who in the late 1920s famously sold cigarettes to women by associating smoking with freedom.
"He (Christopher Rufo) is very savvy about how to move ideas into the public sphere in order to control the political conversation," Jennifer Mercieca says.
Christopher Rufo frames "the conversation in a very specific way so that the outcome is predetermined." *** Christopher Rufo describes himself as an accidental activist and lapsed liberal.
An only child, Christopher Rufo grew up Roman Catholic in an Italian-speaking home in Sacramento, California with lawyer parents.
Christopher Rufo's mother hailed from Detroit, and his father - born in the small Italian village of San Donato Val di Comino - was involved in Democratic politics.
Christopher Rufo sometimes visited his "dedicated Marxist-Leninist, unreformed communist" extended family in Italy, and they once gifted him a Che Guevara flag that he hung in his bedroom.
"I thought it was pretty cool at the time," Christopher Rufo has said.
High school teachers pegged Christopher Rufo as arrogant but bright, the kind of student who would ignore lectures but still ace the Advanced Placement exam.
"He (Christopher Rufo) completely tuned me out, sat there and read a book," recalls Gary Blenner, who taught Christopher Rufo AP History.
"He (Christopher Rufo) was just dismissive of anything I had to say." As a Georgetown undergrad, Christopher Rufo initially joined progressive groups and marches against the Iraq War, before growing disillusioned with what he (Christopher Rufo) once described as the "pervasive phoniness" underlying "the elite left-wing agitation on campus." Christopher Rufo was turned off by "sons and daughters of America's elites," who were bound to "take off the keffiyeh or the red bandana and become investment bankers." In interviews with fellow conservatives, Christopher Rufo recounts his conversion from being "very young and very excited" and "very anti-authoritarian" to classical liberalism.
(In his 2023 book, Ron DeSantis similarly attributes his rightward shift to Yale's "unbridled leftism.") After graduating in 2006, Christopher Rufo embellished his experience to land a gig as a cameraman for filmmaker Cody Shearer - a Clinton family associate Christopher Rufo had met at a grocery store.
Cody Shearer and Christopher Rufo traveled to Cyprus for a project.
After a falling-out, Christopher Rufo reportedly kept Cody Shearer's equipment - an allegation Christopher Rufo denies - and recruited a longtime friend to film a travelogue through Mongolia.
Christopher Rufo told the Sacramento Bee in 2007 that he "used tactical exaggeration" to get an interview with the country (Mongolia)'s president.
The final product aired on public television; a New York Times review said Christopher Rufo and his co-creator had "a good eye for the unusual," but made "the mistake of thinking that they are as interesting as the people they are documenting." Christopher Rufo directed other documentaries on relatively anodyne topics such as the Senior Olympics and baseball in China.
But a five-year project about poverty in "three forgotten American cities" set Christopher Rufo on his current path.
Following residents of Youngstown, Ohio; Memphis, Tennessee; and Stockton, California, Christopher Rufo witnessed "wrenching human situations" of gun violence and incarceration.
"Spending a lot of time looking at real life in the poorest and most desperate communities," Christopher Rufo has said, sparked "a huge internal change." Christopher Rufo's documentary "America Lost" opens with sentimental home movie footage - Christopher Rufo's young parents holding hands and walking, his father cuddling infant Chris.
Christopher Rufo narrates how he was "born into the American Dream," where his penniless immigrant father gained a life of prosperity.
Then Christopher Rufo's tone in "America Lost" becomes ominous, and family archival images are replaced with what Christopher Rufo calls "the lost American interior" - night scenes of police cars, ambulances, and homeless people.
"We are coming apart economically to be sure," Christopher Rufo says, "but we are coming apart as a culture." As the film "America Lost" progresses,Christopher Rufo describes these places as suffering on a "deeply personal, human, even spiritual" level, one hastened by the erosion of religious community and the two-parent family.
Christopher Rufo hoped the movie - which received funding from right-wing foundations that support the Manhattan Institute - where Christopher Rufo now leads an anti-CRT initiative - would "reshape the way we think about American poverty." "I started the film ("America Lost") as a libertarian," Christopher Rufo said during a 2020 online screening, "and I finished the film as a conservative." Along with his political evolution, Christopher Rufo was contemplating a career change.
In Christopher Rufo's telling, the Left-leaning documentary space had become inhospitable for a newfound conservative.
Christopher Rufo had relocated to blue (COMMENT: "blue", i.e. the Democratic Party) Seattle - where Christopher Rufo's Thai-born wife, Suphatra, had a job with Microsoft, and Christopher Rufo found an intellectual home within a right-wing network always ready to bring a professed convert into the fold.
Christopher Rufo secured a 2017 Claremont Institute fellowship (same class as Project Veritas founder James O'Keefe) and a role with the Discovery Institute - a think tank based in his new hometown and known for promoting the anti-evolution concept of "intelligent design," becoming director of the Discovery Institute's Center on Wealth & Poverty.
Christopher Rufo also started writing for the Manhattan Institute's "City Journal", and later landed a fellowship with The Heritage Foundation - whose president, Kevin Roberts, would go on to describe Christopher Rufo as a "master storyteller" of the conservative movement.
"My whole world opened up," Christopher Rufo told psychologist and conservative guru Jordan Peterson.
"I felt like I had the freedom to think for the first time as an adult." While making a movie took years, channeling Christopher Rufo's storytelling skills toward commentary on social justice and political issues offered more instant results.
For Christopher Rufo, progressive Seattle became a convenient punching bag.
Christopher Rufo's work for the Discovery Institute and the Manhattan Institute's City Journal focused on the Seattle's homelessness crisis - criticizing the "ruinous compassion" of "socialist intellectuals", who pushed for more housing as a salve.
"We must look at homelessness not as a problem to be solved, but a problem to be contained," Christopher Rufo wrote in 2018-10.
"The backlash is coming," Christopher Rufo predicted.
That year (2018), Christopher Rufo filed to run for a Seattle City Council seat held by a progressive incumbent.
Around that time, Christopher Rufo styled himself as a "centrist." But Christopher Rufo soon dropped out of the race, claiming he and his family had been harassed.
Christopher Rufo shared hostile social media posts, calling him a "fascist" and "a sad excuse for a human being," with reporter Katie Herzog, who was then with the Stranger.
Christopher Rufo also said someone had sent his wife a message containing a threat of sexual violence.
Katie Herzog recently said on her podcast she thought Christopher Rufo had exaggerated the harassment to "make himself look like a victim of crazy leftists." "We've ceded the intellectual and moral territory to misguided principles of tolerance, diversity, and compassion," Christopher Rufo complained after his abortive run, suggesting his opponents' attacks had betrayed those ideals.
Christopher Rufo returned to writing, skewering Seattle's "activist class" and the "radical progressive ideology seeping its way through institutions." In 2019, Christopher Rufo broke into the major leagues when Christopher Rufo was invited three times to appear on Tucker Carlson's show to comment on Seattle's supposed descent into lawlessness.
Christopher Rufo's burgeoning platform coincided with the rapid growth of a social movement that Christopher Rufo would harness to further boost his career.
In the summer of 2020, Christopher Rufo watched as demonstrations sparked by George Floyd's murder swept the United States.
In Seattle, protesters set up a cop-free autonomous zone whose utopian vision was soon marred by shootings and other crimes.
Christopher Rufo characterized it - and the summer of 2020 - more broadly as a "period of violent terror", and pointed to the Seattle activists' experiment as the perfect example of the Left's failure to deploy the tenets of critical race theory (CRT) into something resembling governance.
"Beware of clever slogans," Christopher Rufo said of the Black Lives Matter movement at the time.
"They often mask malign intent." With Seattle continuing to serve as his anti-woke lab, Christopher Rufo became a regular on Fox News - bashing Seattle's anti-bias initiatives as racist.
On Twitter, Christopher Rufo called himself a "reporter with a mission to defend America" with "bombshell" whistleblower-provided reports about CRT in federal agencies and school districts.
The more Christopher Rufo wrote, the more sources sent Christopher Rufo information he could use, and the more Christopher Rufo built the case that CRT was pervasive, unpopular, and "coming soon to a city or town near you" - as Christopher Rufo wrote in the Manhattan Institute's "City Journal".
Within months, Christopher Rufo's Twitter following had more than tripled, and Christopher Rufo added the swashbuckling and combative image of crossed swords to his bio on the platform.
Meanwhile, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck highlighted Christopher Rufo's work, and Christopher Rufo continued his TV appearances.
But even more opportunity beckoned.
In one interview, Christopher Rufo said the Black Lives Matter movement "was like a lit match into gasoline" that - combined with pandemic-fueled rage over government overreach - had "created this gap, this void, where people were calling out for new voices and new ideas and new defenses - a new language." All Christopher Rufo had to do was legitimize their anxieties by introducing a vocabulary to express them.
On 2020-09-01 Christopher Rufo staged a well-rehearsed coup de grâce on Tucker Carlson's Fox News show.
While denouncing how critical race theory (CRT) had become the "default ideology of the federal bureaucracy" and an "existential threat" to the United States, Christopher Rufo called on then-President Donald Trump to immediately abolish "critical race theory trainings." Then-President Donald Trump was apparently watching.
In his White House biography, then-chief of staff Mark Meadows writes that he called Christopher Rufo the next morning (2020-09-02) and began to work on an U.S. presidential executive order on CRT.
Christopher Rufo flew to Washington to help "fine-tune the wording," and on 2020-09-22 Donald Trump signed the order instructing federal agencies to stop racial sensitivity programs.
(President Joe Biden rescinded Donald Trump's anti-CRT executive order upon taking office.) Christopher Rufo reportedly kept the pen Donald Trump used and a handwritten card that read "Who says one person can't make a difference?!" After Mark Meadows' book was published, Christopher Rufo tweeted to thank Mark Meadows for including the anecdote, adding that "the Tucker-to-Trump pipeline was a beautiful thing!" Christopher Rufo catalyzed a national movement, from Donald Trump down to the parents who packed once-sleepy school board meetings, decrying award-winning books as pornographic and brandishing signs declaring they would not "co-parent with the government." Conservative school board candidates found financial and mentoring support from newly formed, deep-pocketed national groups.
Legislation to restrict discussions on race, gender identity, and sexuality spread, spurring campaigns to defund libraries and ban books.
If his goal was to mobilize the public, it worked.
Christopher Rufo's home studio in Gig Harbor, Washington - a small maritime town near Tacoma, Washington - has a direct connection to Fox News' satellite desk.
There Christopher Rufo records highly produced, professorial video essays for his YouTube channel, including a series dubbed "Christopher Rufo Theory" - a play on CRT - that Christopher Rufo promotes to more than half a million Twitter followers, and shares with thousands of paying Substack subscribers.
Christopher Rufo welcomes monikers like "far right mastermind" as "dangerous and cool" and makes a point of antagonizing the media.
"I'll give you the position as the most prestigious Christopher Rufo theory scholar," Christopher Rufo quipped during an appearance with Joy Reid on MSNBC after Joy Reid called Christopher Rufo out for twisting the real meaning of CRT.
Christopher Rufo once refused to speak with USA Today unless the reporter removed gender pronouns from her email signature for 90 days.
When I reached out for an interview, an aide said Christopher Rufo wouldn't have time, and did not respond to follow-up emails.
Later, in response to a detailed list of questions, Christopher Rufo sent a terse reply.
"My official statement: Mother Jones is trash," Christopher Rufo wrote.
Christopher Rufo has mastered the art of erudite name-dropping, citing books like Milton Friedman's "Free to Choose", and Augusto Del Noce's "The Crisis of Modernity" - and referring to James Burnham, a Trotskyite who turned anti-communist and helped found National Review - as one of his (Christopher Rufo's) "intellectual heroes." But more often, Christopher Rufo invokes leftists like Herbert Marcuse, Rudi Dutschke, or Angela Davis - crediting them with a victorious "long march through the institutions" that has infiltrated powerful organizations, from elementary schools to state universities, from media to corporations.
(Christopher Rufo's upcoming book about "how the radical left conquered everything" has the same editor as Ron DeSantis' recent memoir.) In Christopher Rufo's diagnosis, Reaganites (Ronald Reagan) and the "think tank right" kept their main focus on economics for too long, and failed to engage with the culture wars.
Christopher Rufo considers himself to be launching an anti-establishment, "rock and roll" counterrevolution - dueling with crossed swords to reclaim territory lost to progressives.
Conservatives must "take the linguistic high ground," Christopher Rufo says, and put forward a new "moral language." Christopher Rufo explained his rationale for focusing on critical race theory to the New Yorker: "political correctness" was dated, "cancel culture" too vacuous, and "woke" overly broad.
CRT was the "perfect villain." "He (Christopher Rufo) has a Ronald Reagan-level skill in manipulating language for political ends," says Rick Perlstein, the author and historian of modern conservatism.
"Christopher Rufo is the Svengali for the age of Donald Trump," Rick Perlstein adds.
"He (Christopher Rufo) is perfectly willing to push the envelope of brazenness in a way that wasn't conceivable in the era of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan." In that sense, Rick Perlstein explains, Christopher Rufo "seems to be a product of a world that is very comfortable with outright reaction, that sees the institutions of small-l liberalism - and even democracy itself - as impediments to a vision of reactionary triumph." Indeed, Christopher Rufo is welcomed in the eclectic big tent of the New Right.
In 2021, Christopher Rufo spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, Florida - an event "dominated by the psychology of threat and menace," according to a report by David Brooks in the Atlantic, and whose participants were eager to use government to put conservatives in power.
Christopher Rufo later signed a follow-up NatCon manifesto rejecting globalism and elevating Christian values - "a road map for autocracy," as Salon described it - drafted with the help of U.S. admirers of Viktor Orbán.
For Nicole Hemmer - a Vanderbilt political historian and author of "Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics" - the U.S. Right's growing affinity for Hungary suggests "a hunger for a much more powerful state that can shape the world that they want to live in through force." *** Among the crowded field of hyper-online right-wing provocateurs, Christopher Rufo stands out for his willingness to publicize his strategy even as Christopher Rufo is implementing it.
"We have successfully frozen their brand - 'Critical Race Theory' - into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions," Christopher Rufo famously tweeted in 2021-03.
"We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category.
The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think 'Critical Race Theory.' We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." Similarly, in 2022-06 Christopher Rufo proposed that instead of saying "drag queens in schools," conservatives should use "trans stripper" to shift "the debate to sexualization." That way, the Left "will find themselves defending concepts and words that are deeply disturbing to most people." "That kind of overt explanation of Christopher Rufo's process, and Christopher Rufos' goal is something you don't often see," Nicole Hemmer notes.
"Normally, you have to kind of read between the lines ... Christopher Rufo is just very open about it." In 2022-04 Christopher Rufo previewed the next phase of "laying siege to the institutions" in an address at Michigan's Hillsdale College - a conservative breeding ground, with deep ties to the Christian right.
"We defund things we don't like," Christopher Rufo said.
"We fund things we do like." One tactic is to push state legislators to adopt so-called "curriculum transparency" bills aimed at toning down the teaching of concepts controversial on the Right and other legislation to do away with DEI (Diversity, equity, and inclusion: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diversity,_equity,_and_inclusion) initiatives.
Christopher Rufo sees himself as a "hands-on political activist," Nicole Hemmer says, who wants "to change politics in the United States" - and be around powerful people who might make that happen.
So when Florida's governor Ron DeSantis declared a war on "woke" that would extend to Disney, Christopher Rufo made common cause with his project.
Donald Trump may have paved the way, Christopher Rufo wrote, but Ron DeSantis possesses the skills and courage to move from "culture war as performance" to "culture war as policy." Florida Governor Ron DeSantis acknowledged Christopher Rufo's work while successfully pushing Florida Board of Education to ban critical race theory (CRT) in the summer of 2021.
That December (2021-12) Christopher Rufo accompanied Ron DeSantis as Ron DeSantis announced his "Stop WOKE Act" - which restricted discussions on race in schools and workplaces.
When Ron DeSantis signed the Stop WOKE Act bill the following spring (2022), Ron DeSantis praised Christopher Rufo as the "architect of focusing attention on some of these pernicious ideologies." *** On 2023-01-25 Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir - the founder of a private Christian school - held town halls with faculty and students at the New College of Florida in Sarasota, Florida.
Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir were among six new conservative trustees appointed by Ron DeSantis to the board of the 700-student public college - the New College of Florida - which prides itself as "a community of free thinkers, risk takers, and trailblazers" and as a haven for queer students.
But for Christopher Rufo, the New College of Florida was a "social justice ghetto" ripe for the seizing.
"We are now over the walls," Christopher Rufo said of the appointment.
New College of Florida officials received an email threatening violence against Eddie Speir and tried to cancel the forums, but Christopher Rufo - in a confrontation that he later released on video - accused the New College of Florida officials of suppressing free speech.
"This is the problem at your school.
You know that, right?" Christopher Rufo told the provost of the New College of Florida.
"You've created an environment in which the most intolerant and the most aggressive people who threaten violence can veto you, can veto the president, can veto any changes." When the provost said the school would close the building, Christopher Rufo and Eddie Speir pulled rank and refused to leave.
Christopher Rufo told the staff packing the auditorium that the progressive college (New College of Florida)'s "echo chamber" culture had doomed it to struggle with enrollment and retention.
Christopher Rufo referred to himself as a "drastic solution to a crisis." One audience member shot back, saying Christopher Rufo was the "problem." Chief diversity officer Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez - who uses ze/zir pronouns - asked for assurances that "people like myself will maybe not be fired next week." Christopher Rufo also told the New College of Florida community that his goal wasn't to replace the "left-wing orthodoxy with the right-wing orthodoxy." But students like Sam Sharf - a transgender second-year sociology and gender studies major - remain skeptical.
"He (Christopher Rufo) is smart enough to be able to posit himself as a serious intellectual," Sam Sharf says, "but he (Christopher Rufo) advocates for things that are very harmful." Amy Reid - the New College of Florida's director of gender studies - worries about "generations of students not so much being educated, as having blinders put on them by institutional forces." At the end of January (2023-01) the new board of the New College of Florida held its first public meeting, and wasted no time in carrying out a plan to transform the small honors college into - as Ron DeSantis' chief of staff put it - the "Hillsdale of the South." The new board of the New College of Florida voted to oust Patricia Okker - the incumbent president of the New College of Florida, and first woman to serve in that role - and moved to replace Patricia Okker with Richard Corcoran - a onetime Republican speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, and Ron DeSantis' former education commissioner.
Outside, students rallied in support of Patricia Okker, chanting "Save New College", and waving signs saying "Protect educational freedom" and "Our school, our home, our choice." "We are the Petri dish for the rest of the nation," warns Tamara Solum - who attended the board meeting, and whose daughter graduated from the New College of Florida in 2020.
"If Ron DeSantis runs for president in 2024 the United States needs to know what he (Ron DeSantis) is capable of." Earlier that day, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis hosted Christopher Rufo at a press conference where Ron DeSantis unveiled his statewide overhaul of public higher education - promising to purge "ideological conformity" and DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion), while advancing a Western-centric curriculum.
Christopher Rufo took the stage and congratulated Ron DeSantis for reasserting control over public institutions.
Since then, the New College of Florida's provost has stepped down.
The New College of Florida's librarian - a member of the LGBTQ community - was dismissed.
Richard Corcoran fired Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez, and the new board of the New College of Florida eliminated the DEI office ze (Christopher Rufo) led.
Christopher Rufo vows to replace it with a department of "Equality, Merit, and Colorblindness." Once in place, the now unemployed Yoleidy Rosario-Hernandez anticipates that effort will make the New College of Florida more hostile to people from marginalized communities.
In late 2023-04 the trustees of the New College of Florida denied tenure to five members of the faculty, prompting their representative on the board to quit on the spot.
Amid the changes, universities outside of Florida are actively recruiting the New College of Florida's students.
Administrators hope that adding intercollegiate athletics will attract a new kind of student.
In the meantime, "our enrollment numbers continue to climb" - the New College of Florida's communications department said in an email - "and we anticipate having a record breaking enrollment for Fall 2023." "If New College fails," Aaron Hillegass, director of the school's applied data science program, says, "Christopher Rufo should shoulder a lot of the blame." Aaron Hillegass - who is also an alum and former tech CEO - recently withdrew a $600,000 pledge to the New College of Florida, and submitted his resignation.
Aaron Hillegass fears more professors and students will follow his exit; indeed Sam Sharf plans to transfer later this year (2023).
Such losses are a win for Christopher Rufo, who told Politico his greatest contribution to the board was the "P.R. rollout" of the takeover.
"Thank you for your resignation," Christopher Rufo tweeted in response to Aaron Hillegass.
"Don't let the door hit you on your way out."