0:01

Hi again listeners, it's Ross. In

0:03

our farewell episode last week, we

0:05

told you to watch this space

0:08

for what's to come. And while

0:10

the new show isn't ready just

0:12

yet, I wanted to give you

0:14

a taste of the kind of

0:16

arguments and ideas that I'll be

0:19

exploring soon enough. So this week

0:21

we're going to talk about

0:23

DEAI, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

0:25

a vision of social justice that

0:28

took elite America and all its

0:30

institutions by storm during Donald Trump's

0:32

first term, and a vision, as

0:35

almost everyone has noticed, that is

0:37

now in full-scale retreat. In part,

0:40

that's because of the actions of

0:42

the Trump White House itself,

0:44

which is doing everything it

0:46

can to eradicate the DEA

0:48

programs and initiatives that proliferated

0:50

inside the federal bureaucracy over

0:52

the last 10 years. But

0:54

it's not just the Trump

0:56

White House. Companies like Google

0:58

and Walmart and Paramount and

1:00

Bank of America are also

1:02

shedding diversity-related efforts that they

1:04

had celebrated just a few

1:06

short years ago. And even

1:08

universities, a bastion of progressive

1:10

ideology, are suddenly backing away

1:12

a bit or treading carefully.

1:15

Almost all of this shift

1:17

happened because of the work

1:19

of just one man. arguably

1:21

the most important activist in

1:23

American politics since the days

1:25

of Ralph Nader and Phyllis

1:27

Shlafly. That man is our guest

1:30

today, Christopher Rufo, and we're going

1:32

to be talking to him about

1:34

how he won for now, what

1:37

it means for the second Trump

1:39

administration, and what his vision is

1:41

for America after DEAI. Chris Rufo,

1:43

welcome to the show. It's good

1:45

to be with you. So

1:50

I imagine that a big part of

1:53

our audience first heard of you around

1:55

the same time that they first heard

1:57

the term critical race theory

1:59

and academic term of art that

2:01

your activism successfully adapted and used

2:04

to frame really the whole DEA

2:06

I debate and We're gonna talk

2:09

about that. We're gonna talk about

2:11

the Trump administration a lot of

2:13

other stuff But I want to

2:15

understand first how you became yourself

2:17

How you became the activist so

2:20

you grew up in Northern California,

2:22

and you live in the

2:24

Pacific Northwest now and These

2:26

are not the big hot

2:28

beds of right-wing activism and

2:30

conservative opinion. So I'm wondering,

2:32

first of all, were you

2:34

always some kind of conservative?

2:37

No, not at all. I

2:39

started as a young man

2:41

very much on the left,

2:43

even the far left. My

2:45

family members on my father's

2:47

side in particular are very

2:49

far left, unreconstructed communists. in

2:51

Italy and so my politics

2:54

is real real real communists

2:56

not not Bay Area communists

2:58

like correct yeah not kind

3:01

of cultural communists but actual

3:03

economic card-carrying party member communists

3:05

and so that was the

3:08

politics that I inherited growing

3:10

up and it's interesting because

3:12

California you're right now

3:14

is not a hotbed of America's

3:17

right wing but it actually produced

3:19

I would say the best 20th

3:21

century conservative leaders. And so my

3:24

own experience actually marches totally at

3:26

odds with the historical experience of

3:28

the state. I started out left,

3:30

moved right, whereas the state was

3:33

much more right wing in the past

3:35

and moved left. And you were

3:37

a documentary filmmaker. How did you

3:39

get into that? Right after school.

3:41

I graduated from university in 2006

3:44

and then... I took a job

3:46

doing production for a small ramshackle

3:48

company, had a chance to travel

3:50

around the world, and then started

3:53

producing my own films in my

3:55

mid-20s and did that for another,

3:57

you know, five or ten years.

3:59

So talk. Talk about your view of

4:01

politics back then, and you can

4:04

maybe think of yourself as a

4:06

documentary filmmaker, right? Use that lens

4:08

on American politics in the early

4:11

2010s. Yeah, it's really interesting, and

4:13

actually the work I was doing

4:16

in the documentaries at that time

4:18

was not political. Some more social,

4:20

cultural, kind of human interest stories,

4:23

but the industry itself was hyperpolitical.

4:25

And what we now think of

4:27

as... you know, wokeness or left-wing

4:30

race and gender ideology was

4:32

already kind of the dominant

4:34

system of beliefs in the

4:37

documentary world in the late

4:39

2000s, early 2010s. And look,

4:41

the documentary world is not

4:43

a business, but really it

4:45

survives on the prestige of

4:47

philanthropic institutions that provide grant

4:49

funding. And so I don't

4:52

know if it's that that

4:54

kind of economy attracts left-wing

4:56

people or if left-wing people

4:58

produce that kind of economy.

5:00

I don't know how that

5:02

might tease out, but it really

5:05

did raise red flags. I had been

5:07

rejected for some grants and

5:09

then told explicitly this is

5:11

grant restricted only for minorities

5:13

and women. It's like, oh,

5:15

interesting. That's quite odd. That

5:17

doesn't seem, you know, fair,

5:20

but. Okay, you kind of deal with

5:22

it and figure out alternative opportunities. And

5:24

I remember, you know, joking with the

5:26

producer of mine says, we really need

5:29

to get this grant. We're going to

5:31

mark you down as bisexual. That will

5:33

give us the edge that is needed

5:35

in order to compete in this new

5:38

identity landscape. You know, we didn't actually

5:40

do it was more just a joke,

5:42

but the joke became very real. And

5:45

certainly after 2020 when I moved into

5:47

politics, journalism and then activism, that...

5:49

ethos that had been really just

5:51

at the margins of

5:54

American avant-garde cultural institutions

5:57

had captured all of

5:59

the major institutions.

6:01

And so was there a moment

6:03

of radicalization then? What changes on

6:05

the left from your perspective in

6:08

2018 through 2020? What is, and

6:10

we're coming around obviously to DEA

6:12

and critical race theory and so

6:14

on, but give me a concrete

6:17

take on that shift, what that

6:19

means? Yeah. You see it really

6:21

from 2014 to 2020 slowly building

6:23

after the Great Recession was over

6:26

and the Occupy Wall Street 99%

6:28

narratives had subsided. The narratives that

6:30

were really gaining energy and traction

6:33

were all related to race and

6:35

sexuality. You could see the local

6:37

kind of BLM chapters or racial

6:39

justice activists, you know, gaining power.

6:42

And then all the sudden in

6:44

2020, these movements that had been...

6:46

building just kind of catapulted into

6:48

prominence. And the moments that you

6:51

could say are points of radicalization

6:53

for me were all in the

6:55

wake of George Floyd 2020, observing

6:57

and even doing on-the-ground reporting in

7:00

Seattle. And the politics of that

7:02

time that I felt encapsulated in

7:04

a very small scale the entire

7:07

derangement that would then happen everywhere

7:09

was... In the couple-week period of

7:11

the Chas, if you remember the

7:13

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, 2020 riots,

7:16

the mayor of Seattle, instructs the

7:18

police department in the Capitol Hill

7:20

neighborhood, famously the most left-wing neighborhood,

7:22

to abandon their actual department building.

7:25

and then seed multiple blocks of

7:27

territory to the left-wing radicals. They've

7:29

taken over territory, they've declared it

7:31

an autonomous zone, they've rewritten all

7:34

of the laws and the rules,

7:36

and then it all goes into

7:38

an immediate and calamitous decomposition. They

7:40

invited all of the homeless from

7:43

Seattle to set up camp. I

7:45

mean, all of the kind of

7:47

academic theories were put into this

7:50

little. miniature model of governance. And

7:52

what happens? Vandalism, crime, destruction, chaos,

7:54

and then people start getting killed.

7:56

You have this autonomous zone in

7:59

the name of, you know, black

8:01

liberation, and who ends up getting

8:03

murdered, you know, young black kids,

8:05

including a young boy, and I

8:08

interviewed this boy's father as part

8:10

of the reporting I was doing.

8:12

And it was this kind of,

8:14

you know, this poetic miniature and

8:17

accelerated timeline of. This is what

8:19

happens when you give kind of

8:21

governing power to these ideas, ends

8:24

in heartbreak, disaster, destruction. Or it

8:26

ends in employee retraining seminars. Right?

8:28

Well, because I mean, look, you're

8:30

taking, and I agree, this is

8:33

one of the most extreme manifestations

8:35

of left-wing radicalism, right? But that

8:37

was not the case that people

8:39

were, for the most part, setting

8:42

up those kind of armed camps,

8:44

right? It was mostly the case

8:46

that you had various kinds of

8:48

self-conscious or unself-conscious ideological indoctrination as

8:51

part of the ordinary work of

8:53

a university or a big corporation

8:55

and so on. When we talk

8:57

about wokeness as a phenomenon, most

9:00

Americans who experienced it, experienced it

9:02

that way, right? Yes, but I

9:04

think that the comparison is actually

9:07

really important because the, you know,

9:09

two and a half weeks of

9:11

chas, the autonomous zone, It's the

9:13

same story as what happened over

9:16

a five-year time horizon in America's

9:18

institutions. As a metaphor, they're really

9:20

the same process. And so the

9:22

reporting that I did that really

9:25

took off, and this is something

9:27

that was surprising to me, I

9:29

was working on homelessness, I was

9:31

working on local issues, that was

9:34

my first foray into this world.

9:36

But I did get a tip

9:38

from a city of Seattle employee

9:40

who sent me... documents from their

9:43

race and social justice initiative. training

9:45

on race and social justice. It

9:47

was white privilege, white fragility, systemic

9:50

racism, unconscious bias, disparate impact. It

9:52

was Ibrahim Kennedy, Robin Diangelo, the

9:54

leading lights of the George Floyd

9:56

moment. And they were doing it

9:59

in the city of Seattle in

10:01

a racially segregated manner. And I

10:03

thought it was going to be

10:05

a one-off story. But what happened

10:08

was really interesting. It not only

10:10

took off publicly, but I started

10:12

getting leaks and materials from dozens

10:14

and then hundreds and then thousands

10:17

of other places around the country.

10:19

And so the opportunity presented itself

10:21

to say, oh, this is a

10:24

really interesting thread. I'm going to

10:26

chase this threat and see where

10:28

it leads. And I think now

10:30

in retrospect, it led to that

10:33

you could call it anti-woke, you

10:35

could call it a backlash, you

10:37

could call it a conservative counter-revolution.

10:39

It really set the stage, but...

10:42

to me again it is a

10:44

reaction to what was happening that

10:46

in my view was a kind

10:48

of derangement that people are are

10:51

even people who participated in it

10:53

I think are now embarrassed to

10:55

admit their participation in the past.

10:57

But one of the things you

11:00

did from the start was naming

11:02

it right trying to associate the

11:04

specific term critical race theory with

11:07

all of these elements of left-wing,

11:09

left-leaning ideology. And it's an interesting

11:11

phenomenon, the whole thing, because almost

11:13

everyone at this point agrees that

11:16

there was a big ideological shift

11:18

in American institutions in the period

11:20

you're describing. No one has ever

11:22

sort of quite had a consensus

11:25

on what... to call it in

11:27

part because you know the terms

11:29

that activists often used like anti-racist

11:31

were terms that their critics weren't

11:34

likely to use right because you

11:36

don't want to sort of concede

11:38

the argument that one side is

11:41

the anti-racist side but you get

11:43

you know social justice you get

11:45

wokeness you get conservatory using the

11:47

phrase cultural Marxism, why did you

11:50

decide that critical race theory, which

11:52

is, you know, an academic term

11:54

of art for a particular discipline

11:56

and way of looking at the

11:59

world, was the right term to

12:01

use? And what does that term

12:03

mean from your perspective? Sure. I

12:05

mean, the simplest reason is that

12:08

because it was correct. I mean,

12:10

what I did at that time

12:12

was try to figure out, okay,

12:14

well... where does this ideology come

12:17

from? Because what I was seeing

12:19

was essentially boilerplate coming from all

12:21

different corners of American society, from

12:24

big companies, HR programs, to universities,

12:26

kind of humanities labs, to public

12:28

schools, to all these places, and

12:30

in every case. I could trace

12:33

it back, just looking at the

12:35

footnotes, doing the reading, kind of

12:37

doing the homework. So, well, this

12:39

all seems to come from a

12:42

discipline of critical race studies, critical

12:44

race theory, critical whiteness studies, and

12:46

the universities have formalized it under

12:48

these disciplines and sub disciplines. And

12:51

so I thought it was actually

12:53

initially the least loaded and the

12:55

most accurate way of framing it.

12:58

But as we started fighting it

13:00

out, I realized that in a

13:02

sense by accident, it was also

13:04

the most rhetorically effective framing. Because

13:07

as you said, it was not

13:09

an obvious pejorative, because it was

13:11

the name that these folks gave

13:13

to their own discipline, but it

13:16

had the connotations that could then

13:18

be really loaded with maximum political

13:20

energy and used as a focal

13:22

point. And then it gave us

13:25

a concept that we could use

13:27

to political ends. Is there a

13:29

form of critical race theory that

13:31

you take seriously? I take it

13:34

all seriously. Well, I mean seriously

13:36

as, you know, obviously you are,

13:38

as an activist, America's leading critic

13:41

of critical race theory, right? But

13:43

so if you said to me,

13:45

ten years ago. before we entered

13:47

fully into this era. What is

13:50

critical race theory all about? I

13:52

probably would have said something like,

13:54

well, you know, it's a view

13:56

that racism isn't just about personal

13:59

animus, right? It's about structural realities,

14:01

impersonal realities, and that you have

14:03

aspects of American society handed down

14:05

from slavery and Jim Crow that

14:08

still affect America today, that, you

14:10

know, we should take seriously. And

14:12

that's a left of center view,

14:15

but it's one that I as

14:17

a conservative would have said, you

14:19

know, you know, you know, you

14:21

know, I take that view seriously,

14:24

I don't always agree with it,

14:26

but it makes some reasonable points.

14:28

And it also seems to me

14:30

that there's a difference between that

14:33

view and holding seminars organized around

14:35

a kind of psychological retraining of

14:37

white people to get at the

14:39

core of their sort of personal

14:42

racial guilt and racial animus and

14:44

so on. So I guess, yeah,

14:46

I'm wondering, do you think structural

14:48

racism exists as a category that's

14:51

worth describing? Yeah, it's a good

14:53

question, but I think that your

14:55

description is euphemistic because if you

14:58

actually read the critical race theory

15:00

literature, it is Ibrahim Kennedy and

15:02

Robin D. Angelo and all of

15:04

the excesses of left-wing racialism, you

15:07

have arguments for seizing land and

15:09

wealth and redistributing it along racial

15:11

lines. You have these long kind

15:13

of pseudoscientific studies about racial microaggressions

15:16

and kind of... ferreting out racism

15:18

in the subconscious of white people,

15:20

you have the whole concept of

15:22

whiteness itself, which is, you know,

15:25

reducing the race to a kind

15:27

of an evil essence and then

15:29

trying to create re-education programs to

15:32

erase and replace, you know, so-called

15:34

whiteness. I mean, it's all there.

15:36

It was all there in the

15:38

80s and the 90s and the

15:41

early 2000s. It was just not

15:43

taken seriously for a good reason

15:45

beyond the academic circles. And so...

15:47

The criticism that I got at

15:50

the beginning was, oh, we just

15:52

want to... talk about the legacy

15:54

of redlining and Jim Crow. And

15:56

like you, great, we should talk

15:59

about that. That's totally fair. We

16:01

had systemic racial discrimination in this

16:03

country for a very long time.

16:05

It's had an effect on how

16:08

our society has developed. It's had

16:10

negative consequences for the people who

16:12

were on the receiving end of

16:15

that discrimination. There's a reasonable argument

16:17

to be had there. I'm happy

16:19

to have that. I'm not a,

16:21

you know, we solved the problem

16:24

in 1964 and now everyone has

16:26

to shut up forever. There is

16:28

a strain of conservatism that takes

16:30

that tack. I don't. But it's

16:33

totally at odds with the actual

16:35

substance of not only the, say,

16:37

woke movement, BLM movement, but even

16:39

the kind of supposedly reasonable underpinnings

16:42

of the theory itself. That's really

16:44

interesting and I want to come

16:46

back to those questions. Let's sort

16:48

of move forward toward the present,

16:51

right? It seems to me, at

16:53

least, like wokeness or whatever you

16:55

want to call it, whatever term

16:58

you want to use, peaked probably

17:00

in 2021, maybe in 2022, and

17:02

then your activism began to create

17:04

a backlash, and public opinion started

17:07

to turn, institutions started to shift.

17:09

And in that sense, I think

17:11

it was really in retreat, well

17:13

before Donald Trump's re-election campaign even

17:16

really started. Is that how you

17:18

see it? I think that's right.

17:20

I think probably 2021 was at

17:22

the fever pitch. 2022 is still

17:25

relatively strong in the spring of

17:27

that year. And then I think

17:29

that the political turn was the

17:32

dissentist re-election in 2022. Because look,

17:34

the key political figure in the

17:36

kind of war on woke was

17:38

And they said, oh, you can't

17:41

fight Disney, you can't fight gender,

17:43

you can't fight CRT, you can't

17:45

abolish DEA, you can't take over

17:47

a public university, you're going to

17:50

pay a price, and then he

17:52

wins by 20 points, was for

17:54

me an indicator that the political

17:56

calculus was changing. And certainly I

17:59

felt safe for operating and taking

18:01

bigger risks. in 2022 and 2023

18:03

then and the years prior, but

18:05

it was still by no means

18:08

assured. And I think that had

18:10

Kamala Harris won in 2024, we

18:12

would be having a very different

18:15

conversation right now. Let's take a

18:17

quick break and we'll be right

18:19

back. So

18:39

let's have the conversation about Donald

18:41

Trump and his administration, right? Which

18:44

is Trump administration is formally aligned

18:46

with your strategy and goals, at

18:48

least to some extent, and is

18:51

applying some kind of anti-DEI effort

18:53

across all federal agencies. What do

18:55

you think of the progress of

18:58

that effort from your perspective as

19:00

an activist? Well, look, I laid

19:02

out in the transition period a

19:05

counter-revolution blueprint. that outlined my strategy

19:07

for how the president and the

19:09

administration could take decisive action in

19:12

the war against these left-wing ideologies.

19:14

And to my great enjoyment, five

19:17

out of the six of the

19:19

recommendations, the ones that I can

19:21

remember off the top of my

19:24

head, have been put into action,

19:26

some even more aggressively than I

19:28

thought was likely or even possible

19:31

at the time. And we have

19:33

now... the beginnings of a very

19:35

successful administration on these questions and

19:38

the action on DEA I was

19:40

perfect fantastic strong decisive abolishing the

19:42

DEA departments in all of the

19:45

federal government but then taking the

19:47

second step which I recommended and

19:49

they followed up on which is

19:52

to say if you are a

19:54

federal contractor or you receive federal

19:57

funding. The prohibition on DEA also

19:59

extends to you institutionally because we've

20:01

determined that it's a violation of

20:04

the 1964 Civil Rights Act. And

20:06

so they're pushing that pressure outward

20:08

to all of the institutions in

20:11

American society, stripping the left-wing patronage

20:13

from the federal government. The first

20:15

Trump administration was funding tens of

20:18

billions of dollars a year towards

20:20

left-wing causes. And I remember I

20:22

was in the White House in

20:25

October of. 2020. And one of

20:27

the discussions we were having was,

20:29

you know, look at all this

20:32

money that is going to left-wing

20:34

NGOs, left-wing academic research, left-wing activism.

20:36

How can we actually just stop

20:39

the flow of funding completely? And

20:41

it was an idea that seemed

20:44

impossible at the time. A lot

20:46

of moving parts, a lot of

20:48

chaos, a lot of conflict and

20:51

drama. Four years later the same

20:53

people are now... back in the

20:55

White House, ruthlessly, going through the

20:58

budget line by line, and actually

21:00

eliminating left-wing, waste, fraud, and abuse,

21:02

patronage. And so look, I think

21:05

that we're now six weeks in,

21:07

more or less, the opening salvos

21:09

have been very strong, and I

21:12

think that it's time now to

21:14

try to push deeper and try

21:16

to go after some of those

21:19

more systematic reforms that are possible,

21:21

but we'll take a lot of

21:23

follow through. All right, so let's

21:26

talk about the plan of action

21:28

you've just sketched. Starting with civil

21:31

rights. Because one of the things

21:33

the Trump administration has done is

21:35

rolling back the affirmative action executive

21:38

orders that go back to Lyndon

21:40

Johnson that involve essentially advantages for

21:42

minority contractors with the federal government

21:45

that are sort of considered the

21:47

point of origin of modern affirmative

21:49

action programs. And these are things

21:52

that past Republican presidents haven't touched.

21:54

This is sort of not just

21:56

the rollback, but the actual kind

21:59

of counter-revolution. So... I'm assuming that

22:01

you obviously support those moves. I

22:03

guess my question is, what

22:06

aspects of the post-64 civil

22:08

rights bureaucracy do you support?

22:10

Yeah, I know. It's a great question. And

22:12

this is, look, this is a

22:15

real tension on the right, and

22:17

I'm very cognizant of this tension.

22:19

You have... two competing schools. There

22:22

are some on the right that

22:24

have the kind of Christopher Caldwell

22:26

thesis that the Civil Rights Act

22:29

is really a second constitution. It's

22:31

usurped authority over the original constitution.

22:33

It's created this regime of kind

22:36

of state intrusion on private life,

22:38

social life, civic life, etc.

22:40

I mean, that's as a factual matter. True.

22:42

And so what I think the president

22:44

has done that is salutary, at least

22:46

as an opening step, is to say

22:48

we're going to try to do what

22:50

not only other Republican presence

22:53

haven't touched, but they've

22:55

actually assented to, agreed to,

22:57

expanded and strengthened. President Nixon

22:59

expanded the affirmative action programs

23:01

of President Johnson and kind

23:03

of all the way down

23:05

the line. you see this

23:07

consensus because Republicans have been

23:09

so scared of anything involving

23:11

civil rights, race, sexuality that

23:13

they have, you know, I

23:15

think, been kind of pressured

23:18

or in some cases hoodwinked

23:20

into expanding this regime that

23:22

we're talking about. Well, but

23:24

just to pause, it's also

23:26

that corporate America at a certain

23:28

point somewhere in the 1970s decided

23:30

that certain kinds of diversity programs

23:32

were good for business. So my

23:35

sense is that, for instance, in

23:37

the Reagan era, there was a

23:39

sense that in fact Republicans would

23:41

lose support from parts of big business

23:44

if they went hard after

23:46

affirmative action. Part of the

23:48

post-civil rights consensus, I think,

23:50

that Republicans at least partially

23:52

embraced a certain point, was

23:54

the idea that there were

23:56

sort of modest forms of

23:58

diversification initiatives, right? that were

24:00

good for American society. And the

24:02

language and arguments that are being

24:04

used right now around those are

24:06

basically to say, as you just

24:09

said, right, that they are in

24:11

fact intention with the original vision

24:13

or at least the letter of

24:15

the law of the Civil Rights

24:17

Act, because they discriminate against white

24:19

Americans, right? Sure, yeah, whites and

24:21

and Asian Americans and right in

24:23

college applications Yeah, which was not

24:25

not the case in the 70s

24:28

and 80s because the Asian population

24:30

was So small, but certainly now

24:32

is the case But look I

24:34

think you may be overestimating the

24:36

support in corporate America. I think

24:38

it was really just the kind

24:40

of concession. Is it all right?

24:42

Well, this is the tax that

24:44

we pay and to bring up

24:47

this issue or to kind of

24:49

politicize this issue. There's probably more

24:51

cost or risk than benefit. And

24:53

so it was a tacit acceptance

24:55

of, all right, well, we are

24:57

just 10 years out of the

24:59

Jim Crow era, some restitution, some

25:01

transition is good. And even the

25:03

Supreme Court says, well, you have

25:06

this kind of affirmative action is

25:08

probably a violation of the if

25:10

not the letter of the spirit

25:12

of the 14th Amendment and the

25:14

Civil Rights Act, but it's a

25:16

transition period that will have to

25:18

accommodate and then eventually will let

25:20

it go. That was the common

25:22

argument, but I think that there

25:24

are really two avenues forward for

25:27

the right. There is one avenue

25:29

that is the most kind of

25:31

radical libertarian. The argument would be

25:33

that the Civil Rights Act is

25:35

a fundamental infringement on civil liberties

25:37

and freedom of association, freedom of

25:39

speech. and therefore it requires abolition.

25:41

The second argument and the argument

25:43

that I favor is to say,

25:46

no, the right needs to have

25:48

its own interpretation of civil rights

25:50

law and it needs to take

25:52

over enforcement of civil rights law

25:54

to have essentially an alternative vision

25:56

that is, in my view, better

25:58

grounded in the Constitution and the

26:00

law. to say that we need

26:02

to have a kind of Spartan

26:05

system of color blind equality. There

26:07

is no reward or punishment based

26:09

on ancestry. And if you do

26:11

that in admissions, hiring, promotions, contracting,

26:13

you should pay just as heavy

26:15

a price as if someone was,

26:17

you know, segregating the lunch counters

26:19

in the past. And I think

26:21

my position in 2020-21 is now

26:24

the majority position on the right

26:26

with almost no exceptions. Yeah, I

26:28

think that's right. But I think

26:30

the left is going to have

26:32

to face this because they're going

26:34

to have to say, you know,

26:36

do you want to have a

26:38

kind of color blind equality or

26:40

do you want to have this

26:43

system of racial spoils, racial favoritism,

26:45

racial discrimination? And my goal moving

26:47

forward is to push that debate

26:49

as far leftward as I can

26:51

so that the establishment liberals versus

26:53

the kind of race radicals, you

26:55

know, they're going to have to

26:57

fight it out eventually. And I'd

26:59

like to see that the establishment

27:02

liberals win this fight. But from

27:04

the point of view of, let's

27:06

say, the establishment liberals, like whether

27:08

you're in corporate America or whether

27:10

you're running a major American university

27:12

or any of these kind of

27:14

things, when you're dealing with, I

27:16

think, issues of elite formation, there's

27:18

always going to be an interest

27:20

in a diverse, multiracial, multicultural society

27:23

in having diverse representation. in important

27:25

slots. And you see this obviously

27:27

even in Republican cabinets and so

27:29

on, right? I think that to

27:31

some degree, I agree with you,

27:33

it may not put a fundamental

27:35

limit on how far the right

27:37

wants to go in sort of

27:39

sweeping all affirmative action programs away.

27:42

I think at the very least,

27:44

though, it puts a pretty hard

27:46

limit on how far you could

27:48

get sort of the center left

27:50

establishment to go along with your

27:52

argument. I think that if you're

27:54

running a major American corporation, I

27:56

think there's always going to be

27:58

a world in which you're going

28:01

to want to find some way

28:03

to take racial diversity and representation

28:05

into account. Don't you think that's

28:07

true? I don't think so. I

28:09

don't think that that's the case.

28:11

And I frankly don't think that

28:13

that's how the majority of the

28:15

population thinks. Yes, in elite institutions,

28:17

people have been conditioned to think

28:20

in those terms. But I actually

28:22

don't think that's true. Wait a

28:24

minute. Wait a minute. I think.

28:26

Just stick with politics for a

28:28

minute, right? Representation in politics is

28:30

a completely normal part of American

28:32

politics long before you get to...

28:34

the age of affirmative action, right?

28:36

It's always been the case. You're

28:39

like, you're trying to pick a

28:41

vice president and you're, you know,

28:43

you're trying to balance the country

28:45

regionally. You have, you know, and

28:47

all the way down, I know

28:49

this is an overused example, right,

28:51

but all the way down to

28:53

Antonin Scalia, the great conservative jurist

28:55

who was picked not only as

28:58

the first Italian-American on the court,

29:00

but that was a consideration. I

29:02

just don't, I don't see how

29:04

you do away with those kind

29:06

of considerations. I think two things.

29:08

One is, look, I don't think

29:10

that people genuinely care about precise

29:12

mathematical representation across every institution. I

29:14

completely agree with that. I'm happy

29:17

that, you know, I think most

29:19

people accept that when they go

29:21

to the nail salon and it's...

29:23

being run by almost all Vietnamese

29:25

people, they're fine with that. When

29:27

you go to a kind of

29:29

programming floor, it's mostly East Asian

29:31

and South Asian males, since white

29:33

males, like or court, you know,

29:35

let's say athletes, okay, most you're

29:38

going to have heavily black representation

29:40

in the NBA. Like the world

29:42

is complicated and most people have

29:44

a sense of different groups, different

29:46

cultures have different priorities, different interests,

29:48

different talents, different talents, and they

29:50

don't mathematically graft themselves. in an

29:52

artificial way onto every institution, and

29:54

that's okay. As long as there's

29:57

a sense that people are being

29:59

treated fairly, as long as a

30:01

sense that there's a path to

30:03

advancement, to people who merit advancement.

30:05

And look, we're talking about perception.

30:07

And I think that there is

30:09

even on the right. I think

30:11

this is true. You've been around

30:13

right-leaning institutions as longer than I

30:16

have. People do have a sense

30:18

of thinking about this question of

30:20

representation that you're bringing up. I

30:22

think that's fine. It's a fine

30:24

gut check. I think it's a

30:26

normal reaction and I think there's

30:28

something to be said about that.

30:30

The Scalia example, perhaps. Absolutely gets

30:32

it on the merits, but you're

30:35

making an argument. No, no, he

30:37

no, there's perhaps some Catholic representation

30:39

He absolutely does but but there

30:41

is balance all these questions, right?

30:43

Okay. Yeah, that's a natural human

30:45

thing But what what is I

30:47

think the proper approach for that

30:49

is to kind of submerge it

30:51

and obscure it It's something that

30:54

may be happening at the margins

30:56

that maybe people have some heightened

30:58

sensitivity to but we don't talk

31:00

about it. It's kind of done

31:02

with the appearance that it's not

31:04

being done is the most humane,

31:06

the most effective, and I think

31:08

the most honorable way to do

31:10

something like that. But what we

31:13

have is the opposite. We have

31:15

like insane hatred written into the

31:17

operating manual of our universities. It's

31:19

like, we have to get rid

31:21

of all that. And then if

31:23

there's some subtle marginal tacit, you

31:25

know, kind of representation, provided that

31:27

everyone meets the threshold of excellence.

31:29

I think almost everyone can live

31:31

with that. That's fine. But what

31:34

we have is so far from

31:36

that, that almost seems like a

31:38

nice dream to have in relation

31:40

to what we have in real

31:42

life. Right. I guess all I'm

31:44

saying is I'll hear a lot

31:46

from populist conservatives, like, oh, you

31:48

know, Ronald Reagan was gutless, George

31:50

H. W. Bush was a coward,

31:53

Trump is doing all of these

31:55

things that they could have done

31:57

and should have, right. didn't try

31:59

to sweep away affirmative action was

32:01

because it was widely perceived as

32:03

a version of what you are

32:05

conceding is sort of a natural

32:07

part of elite formation and construction.

32:09

You know, again, like I work

32:12

in journalism. My wife works in

32:14

journalism. You run a big city

32:16

newspaper. The city is heavily African-American.

32:18

You have an awful lot of

32:20

white reporters. Are you going to

32:22

want to hire an extra African-American

32:24

reporter? Of course you are, right?

32:26

I think a lot of Americans,

32:28

including Republicans, perceived that as sort

32:31

of the way the system already

32:33

worked and as a thing that

32:35

was then upset by... by the

32:37

shift in the 2010s. And so

32:39

I agree with you that there

32:41

is a kind of split on

32:43

the right about like how far

32:45

back are you going? And some

32:47

people think this was all built

32:50

into the Civil Rights Act itself,

32:52

and you're in the position of

32:54

saying if we properly interpret the

32:56

Civil Rights Act, then it will

32:58

sort of grow back on the

33:00

excesses of affirmative action. I'm just

33:02

sort of curious where the stable

33:04

equilibrium... Is it 1997 or is

33:06

it a little bit more anti

33:09

affirmative action than that? Yeah, this

33:11

is a really important debate on

33:13

the right and I have of

33:15

course people to my right that

33:17

say no, no, the Civil Rights

33:19

Act is a problem and has

33:21

to get repealed. Right. I think

33:23

we can both agree that the

33:25

Civil Rights Act is very unlikely

33:27

to be repealed. That is the

33:30

first point in saying, all right,

33:32

well, this is a non-starter, so

33:34

your point gets you nowhere. I

33:36

actually think that... there's a way

33:38

to not go backward. The question

33:40

shouldn't be, do we go back

33:42

to 1997, to 1965, or to

33:44

1963? I think we have an

33:46

opportunity to go forward to say,

33:49

hey, what? Look, we've had this

33:51

experiment with affirmative action that metamorphosized

33:53

into woke ideology, into DEA, into

33:55

rampant discrimination, that rewards and punishes

33:57

people based on their ancestry. We're

33:59

done with that. We're going to

34:01

reinterpret the law so that we

34:03

have... for the first time ever,

34:05

simple, strategic, color blind equality through

34:08

all of our institutions. And if

34:10

you want to have a government

34:12

that enforce civil rights laws, we

34:14

need to have a government that

34:16

enforces civil rights laws for everyone.

34:18

Not just the favored groups, but

34:20

for every individual. Right. And so

34:22

what does that look like? It

34:24

looks like what the Trump administration

34:27

is doing to say, hey, anti-white

34:29

bigotry should face just as severe

34:31

a sanction as anti-black bigotry. And

34:33

yet, you only see the institutions

34:35

practicing one of those. But you're

34:37

still going to... True color blind

34:39

equality requires equal enforcement. Right. Okay.

34:41

But on that point, you're still,

34:43

if you're the Trump administration, you're

34:46

still going to have to make

34:48

choices about lawsuits and enforcement, all

34:50

of the kind of choices that

34:52

liberals have been making in the

34:54

past around where you're going after

34:56

a company, right? Like what is

34:58

the standard of racial discrimination that

35:00

you use, right? And you're going

35:02

to have universities that say, okay,

35:05

you know... We're in compliance with

35:07

the Supreme Court's ruling on affirmative

35:09

action, and you can tell that

35:11

we're in compliance because the white

35:13

and Asian share of our student

35:15

body went up by three or

35:17

four percent, and the African-American and

35:19

Hispanic share went down by three

35:21

or four percent. But someone in

35:23

the civil rights bureaucracy, now it's

35:26

going to be a fan of,

35:28

you know, Christopher Ruffo, rather than

35:30

a critical race theorist, let's say,

35:32

right, is going to have to

35:34

decide, okay, this percentage... change signals

35:36

continued anti-white discrimination, and that percentage

35:38

change signals what you're conceding is

35:40

always going to happen a little

35:42

bit of normal, you know, we're

35:45

trying to balance the class, we

35:47

don't want to have a racial

35:49

monoculture, right? You're still going to

35:51

have a government bureaucrat under your

35:53

ideal system, now a conservative bureaucrat,

35:55

deciding where is the line between

35:57

normal racial balancing and racial discrimination?

35:59

That decision point doesn't go away.

36:01

Correct. Yeah, and it cannot go

36:04

away as long as you have

36:06

a civil rights act. Right. And

36:08

so my argument is that that

36:10

conservatives have to live with the

36:12

status quo and to do the

36:14

best that we can with that

36:16

status quo and therefore need an

36:18

alternative policy. But there is an

36:20

interesting wrinkle here that I think

36:23

is really important. First, yes, I

36:25

think the Trump administration should take

36:27

a maximalist approach. I think they

36:29

should say if you have discriminatory

36:31

DEI programs, if you have discriminatory

36:33

admissions procedures, or discriminatory hiring and

36:35

promotion practices, you'll be stripped of

36:37

federal funding, which in a sense

36:39

means bankruptcy from any universities, and

36:42

they should do it. They should

36:44

actually follow through on the threat

36:46

in at least one symbolic... fight

36:48

that then changes the incentives everywhere

36:50

and sends people scrambling to comply

36:52

with the law. But the question

36:54

that I think you're raising or

36:56

about to raise is another good

36:58

one to say, well, what happens

37:01

if Harvard's admissions numbers change dramatically

37:03

and fewer black or Hispanic students

37:05

are admitted to XY or Z

37:07

university? You may see some recomposition

37:09

of the numbers. Well, you have

37:11

to see recomposition of the numbers.

37:13

the critique of all these programs,

37:15

the whole point is that these

37:17

schools don't have meritocratic admissions, they

37:20

don't have color-blinded missions, if they

37:22

had color-blinded missions, the numbers would

37:24

look quite different, right? Yes, as

37:26

a whole, I mean, the top

37:28

university may be able to reach

37:30

the threshold, but even going down

37:32

a few, you're going to have

37:34

it even more dramatically. I mean,

37:36

the first off, the answer is

37:38

quite simple. You either have meritocratic

37:41

admissions or you don't, and you

37:43

live with the consequences. Conservatives are

37:45

so eager to solve that problem

37:47

in theory that they forget an

37:49

important lesson. That isn't a problem

37:51

that our opponents will have. I

37:53

mean, if our opponents are, let's

37:55

say, administration of elite universities, I

37:57

consider those people my political opponents.

38:00

You create a problem for them.

38:02

They have to explain why the...

38:04

have changed. They have to either

38:06

defend the previous system or defend

38:08

the current system, but one thing

38:10

I think is a really important

38:12

political lesson is never solve your

38:14

opponent's problems for them. Certainly don't

38:16

solve them in advance. You create

38:19

a standard, you enforce the standard,

38:21

and then let them grapple with

38:23

the outcomes. That to me seems

38:25

the best course of action, and

38:27

then as they adapt, then our

38:29

position can adapt in response. I

38:31

agree, I guess all I'm stressing

38:33

is when you say create the

38:35

standard and enforce the standard. The

38:38

question of enforcement is your problem,

38:40

right? It will be the Trump

38:42

administration's problem and there will have

38:44

to be a set of decisions

38:46

made about what kind of recomposition

38:48

of student bodies suggests a good

38:50

faith move away from racial preferences

38:52

and what doesn't. And I'm just

38:54

arguing that it is inherently... a

38:57

gray area to some degree? Yeah,

38:59

I think it is, I think

39:01

there's perhaps some gray, like all

39:03

things, but I think it's less

39:05

than maybe you're suggesting here. And

39:07

I think that there's two things

39:09

that we could do to help

39:11

solve this problem or help even

39:13

just to reveal the problem. The

39:16

first is that every university that

39:18

receives federal funding should be required

39:20

to publish disaggregated data for race,

39:22

sex. GPA, SAT scores, and then

39:24

class rank at the back end.

39:26

Publishers numbers, make them available so

39:28

that if there is the appearance

39:30

that there is a large, say,

39:32

disparity in SAT scores in GPA

39:34

based on groups and admissions, you

39:37

then create the opening for a

39:39

public inquiry. I think that's a

39:41

really good way where increased transparency

39:43

could lead to kind of automatic

39:45

accountability, right? And the other thing

39:47

that's really important is that admissions

39:49

is like... important, but I would

39:51

put it down a couple wrongs

39:53

from the most important related to

39:56

discrimination, etc. I think the DEI

39:58

bureaucracies are a much more fruitful

40:00

line of attack. And I think

40:02

we start there because you're creating

40:04

a culture that is the problem

40:06

beyond just the mathematical problem of

40:08

admissions and statistics and SAT scores.

40:10

All right, let's take a quick

40:12

break and we'll be right back.

40:46

All right, so you mentioned

40:48

the idea of people in

40:50

the Trump administration going line

40:52

by line through grants and

40:54

programs that are essentially grants

40:56

to left-wing ideological organizations. However,

40:58

take the biggest thing the

41:00

Trump administration has put on

41:02

the chopping block, right? It's

41:04

been USAID, which absolutely contains...

41:06

many programs that fit the

41:08

description that you've offered. It

41:10

also contains a lot of

41:12

other programs, right? I think

41:14

it's fairly hard to argue

41:16

that PEPFAR, the program that

41:18

tries to ameliorate AIDS and

41:20

HIV in Africa, should be

41:22

seen primarily as just funding

41:24

for left-wing groups, or for

41:26

that matter, a kind of

41:28

DEI program. And so the

41:30

approach the Trump administration has

41:33

taken there has been less

41:35

a kind of line-by-line we're

41:37

eliminating specific programs and more...

41:39

a much broader, you know,

41:41

we consider this whole effort

41:43

sort of ideologically rotten and

41:45

therefore we are cutting programs

41:47

generally. There's a similar question

41:49

with the Department of Education

41:51

where the Department of Education

41:53

contains within it grants and

41:55

programs that absolutely fit the

41:57

description of what you're criticizing.

41:59

It also does a lot

42:01

of other stuff, right? So to what extent

42:03

is it makes sense and

42:05

is it defensible for the

42:07

Trump administration to be essentially

42:09

shuddering departments or collapsing departments

42:11

in an effort to get

42:13

at DEAI? Yeah, let me

42:15

take the example of Department

42:17

of Education. I know it much

42:19

better than I do USAID and

42:22

PEPFAR and AIDS in Africa, which

42:24

is not in my area of

42:26

expertise at all. So what's happening

42:28

at the Department of Education. what

42:30

should happen at the Department of

42:32

Education rather, is a

42:34

USAID style dismantling. But what I

42:37

would recommend in particular for that

42:39

institution is to bracket out those

42:41

programs that are worthwhile, that are

42:44

politically popular, that are going to

42:46

be very difficult to cut even

42:48

if you wanted to do so.

42:51

And so with Department of Education,

42:53

I look at it as three

42:56

buckets. You have, you know, $120

42:58

billion a year more or less

43:00

of federal financial aid for colleges

43:03

and universities, student loans, student

43:05

grants, etc. I think that

43:08

number should be reduced over time.

43:10

I think that the assets, the

43:12

kind of loan asset portfolio should

43:14

be spun off and privatized, but

43:16

in the immediate blitz, I think

43:19

you have to say the student

43:21

loan programs will not change. it'll

43:23

be spun off into its own

43:25

independent agency, and then you can

43:27

implement the particular reforms, reductions, privatization

43:30

down the line. The second area

43:32

that I think you have to

43:34

continue or kind of safeguard is

43:36

specialized K-12 funding. low-income school districts,

43:38

special ed programs. These are very

43:40

politically popular. And you say, hey,

43:43

we're not, we're going to actually

43:45

keep this the same or slightly

43:47

increase it. And we're going to

43:49

block granted to the states so

43:51

that it can be, you know,

43:53

better utilized for local conditions and

43:55

the people who actually run the

43:57

education systems. The third bucket, which is

43:59

numeric. smaller than K-12 aid and

44:01

federal financial aid is everything else

44:04

that the department does. The ideological

44:06

programs, the grants for critical race

44:08

theory and gender ideology and liberatory

44:10

pedagogy, whatever you may have, all

44:12

of that needs to just be

44:15

burned to the ground. I mean,

44:17

really truly, it needs to be

44:19

gutted and dismantled. And so what

44:21

you have at the end is

44:23

something that is simpler, that is

44:25

reduced to the essential components, and

44:28

that that can be parceled out

44:30

and decentralized so that the power

44:32

is not within the kind of

44:34

very, very far left leaning administration

44:36

of the Department of Education, but

44:39

it's simply granted out to the

44:41

state so that Governor DeSantis can

44:43

take that money and do. do

44:45

something better than, you know, for

44:47

example, Governor Newsome. Okay, here's, here's,

44:49

here's, that to me seems defensible.

44:52

All right, good, good. So here's

44:54

what I don't understand about this

44:56

plan. The Trump administration is in

44:58

charge of the Department of Education.

45:00

The administrators of the Department of

45:02

Education are appointed by the Trump

45:05

administration, right? Why, why do you

45:07

need to? I mean, first of

45:09

all, it's not even clear that

45:11

you can legally abolish the Department

45:13

of Education without congressional action, right?

45:16

But why would you even want

45:18

to? Why wouldn't you just say,

45:20

we're going to have a Department

45:22

of Education, it's going to do

45:24

the things that you yourself have

45:26

described as the biggest financial portion

45:29

of what it does, right, from

45:31

special ed, student loans, and so

45:33

on? We're going to continue to

45:35

do... educational research of various kinds,

45:37

longitudinal research. I personally know more

45:40

than a handful of center-right wanks.

45:42

We're very happy to do educational

45:44

research that is not woke or

45:46

progressive or ideological, right? And maybe

45:48

we're just going to purge the...

45:50

ideological programs that you describe? Or,

45:53

you know, maybe we're going to

45:55

sort of substitute some other set

45:57

of right-leaning programs. Like, why wouldn't

45:59

you want to just run the

46:01

actual bureaucracy, especially since, yes, if

46:03

you block grant things to the

46:06

states, some things will go to

46:08

Ron DeSantis in Florida and to,

46:10

you know, sort of conservative-leaning state

46:12

governments, but it's not like the

46:14

educational bureaucracy in the states is

46:17

super right wing. And obviously there

46:19

are plenty of straightforward blue states

46:21

where block granting to the states

46:23

leads to policies that Euchris Farufo

46:25

would never support in a million

46:27

years, right? So what is the

46:30

gain to conservatism of doing away

46:32

with this major tool for federal

46:34

influence over education policy? Yeah, I

46:36

mean, look, the gain or rather

46:38

the problem and the potential gain

46:40

is this. The strategy you're outlining

46:43

is a strategy that we've already

46:45

been doing. I've done reporting on

46:47

some of the... grantees, NGOs, and

46:49

other institutions that are almost entirely

46:51

or entirely funded by the Department

46:54

of Education. They're kind of monolithically

46:56

left-wing, and as I've done this

46:58

reporting and brought it to public

47:00

attention, contracts have been cut for

47:02

dozens of these NGOs. which would

47:04

effectively cripple them moving forward. And

47:07

the total amount of funding for

47:09

these programs that has been cut

47:11

by the Doge team at Department

47:13

of Education is now more than

47:15

a billion dollars. And so yes,

47:18

what you're saying is, you know,

47:20

to kind of... I'm saying you

47:22

could declare victory and you still

47:24

have the Department of Education doing

47:26

the popular things it does. We

47:28

all know that, you know, most

47:31

education is funded at... the local

47:33

level in the US, so you're

47:35

not actually talking about a huge

47:37

part. Go ahead. Here's the problem

47:39

though. It's very easy to cut

47:41

external contracts, external funding, etc. It's

47:44

very difficult to take an institution

47:46

and the kind of permanent bureaucracy

47:48

of that institution and to change

47:50

its... culture. I think that at

47:52

USAID, from what I've read, but

47:55

I know for a fact that

47:57

at Department of Education, you know,

47:59

replacing the management, you know, at

48:01

the building does not really replace

48:03

the broader culture. And a cabinet

48:05

secretary in the first Trump administration

48:08

told me an interesting story. This

48:10

person said to me, you know,

48:12

had a meeting with some of

48:14

the career staff, the permanent staff

48:16

in this agency, wasn't Department of

48:19

Ed. And the career staff. was

48:21

not complying with what this person

48:23

was trying to do, was running

48:25

circles around him, couldn't get anything

48:27

done, and eventually said, just tell

48:29

me what the deal is, like

48:32

just level with me, what's the

48:34

deal? And the career staff said,

48:36

we know that we're going to

48:38

be here in four years or

48:40

eight years or 12 years or

48:42

16 years, and we know that

48:45

you're going to be gone in

48:47

two years or six years, whatever

48:49

it might be. And so you

48:51

have a system that is... unaccountable

48:53

and when the culture of that

48:56

system and the vast bulk of

48:58

the bureaucracy of that system is

49:00

captured you get the status quo

49:02

from the first Trump administration which

49:04

was Department of Education was radically

49:06

left-wing funding only radical left-wing causes

49:09

and I just think that there

49:11

has to be a kind of

49:13

binary choice agency by agency can

49:15

this agency be reformed or can

49:17

this agency only be abolished? or

49:19

dismantled to the maximum extent permissible

49:22

by law. I think Department of

49:24

Education is in the latter camp.

49:26

FBI, I think FBI could be

49:28

maybe reformed. Other agencies can be

49:30

perhaps reformed. But Department of Education,

49:33

in my view, is beyond reform.

49:35

And so you have to spin

49:37

off liquidate, terminate, and abolish to

49:39

the furthest extent you can by

49:41

law while maintaining. your political viability

49:43

and your statutory compliance for those

49:46

things that are essential, that are

49:48

required by law, and that are

49:50

politically popular. You always want to

49:52

maintain the popularity, but can you...

49:54

But this just seems weird to

49:57

me. First of all, put it

49:59

this way Chris. If you can't

50:01

find enough right leaning or sentrous

50:03

people to staff a strip down

50:05

and slimmer Department of Education to

50:07

affect American education in the way

50:10

you want, how are you ever

50:12

going to find enough personnel to

50:14

do it at the state level?

50:16

Like, I mean, a big reason

50:18

that American education writ large is

50:20

left leaning is that... many many

50:23

people who go into it are

50:25

left leaning you and I know

50:27

this very well you know some

50:29

of my best friends are you

50:31

know left leaning graduates of America's

50:34

many fine educational schools and it

50:36

just seems like it's sort of

50:38

preemptive despair on the part of

50:40

conservatives to say well we have

50:42

political control over this agency that

50:44

has a certain kind of influence

50:47

over American education and we're just

50:49

going to give it up because

50:51

you know, because we can't find

50:53

enough people, like you're assuming a

50:55

capacity to fire people, right? Yes.

50:58

But you don't assume any capacity

51:00

to hire new people? Well, this

51:02

gets to another point, and maybe

51:04

I can answer your question more

51:06

effectively from the other side. You're

51:08

asking essentially, well, why can't you

51:11

just replace the bad folks with

51:13

the good folks? Just to be

51:15

clear, you are advocating, eliminating all

51:17

of the people who you think

51:19

are sort of... irredeemably left-wing, right?

51:21

But I think that the answer...

51:24

Like they will not have jobs

51:26

anymore. The unfortunate answer, yes. Yes.

51:28

I mean, they're redeemable as people,

51:30

but they aren't entitled to lifetime

51:32

federal employment with no accountability. But...

51:35

Absolutely. I'm not, I'm not, I'm

51:37

not, I'm not making a moral

51:39

case for their right to a

51:41

job. I'm saying... But you're arguing

51:43

we can, we can, we can

51:45

fire them. Yeah, I believe that

51:48

to be true as part of

51:50

an overall reorganization. Right. But I

51:52

think the other problem that you're

51:54

identifying is one that I take

51:56

seriously, and the unfortunate answer is

51:58

no. Conservatives cannot fully staff the

52:01

Department of Education. Conservatives cannot. fully

52:03

compete for you know education grants

52:05

for you know university level research

52:07

programs no conservatives can't do any

52:09

of those things and so we

52:12

have to figure out what can

52:14

we do where can we have

52:16

leverage where can we take over

52:18

or recapture an institution and if

52:20

we can't do those things which

52:22

things we have to shut down

52:25

shutting things down is actually very

52:27

effective strategy but you're not so

52:29

But you're not actually shutting down

52:31

the schools themselves, right? Americans are

52:33

going to continue to want to

52:36

send their kids to colleges and

52:38

universities. I agree with you that

52:40

if you asked me tomorrow to

52:42

staff all of America's colleges and

52:44

universities with people whose politics are

52:46

in the then diagram between the

52:49

two of us, I couldn't do

52:51

it. That's right. But, you know,

52:53

there's no... solution where conservatives are

52:55

like, oh, we don't have enough

52:57

academics, I guess we're going to

52:59

close down the American university system,

53:02

and if that were our policy,

53:04

it would be extremely unpopular, right?

53:06

Well, no, I would take issue

53:08

for two reasons. One is that

53:10

we can do that at the

53:13

state level. I mean... Governor DeSantis

53:15

has done it in Florida, governors

53:17

in Ohio and Arizona and Tennessee,

53:19

have opened up conservative research institutions

53:21

within their flagship state universities and

53:23

then other affiliated state universities. Yes,

53:26

they have set up small, I

53:28

agree, they have set up small

53:30

institutes and that is a great

53:32

start. I think it's very important.

53:34

It opens up the possibility for

53:37

growth, even in theory geometric growth

53:39

in the future. But I actually

53:41

think that your. Other point is

53:43

not quite right. And I actually

53:45

think that the corrective that is

53:47

required is not to say, oh,

53:50

we're going to shut down all

53:52

the universities. Yeah, that's not possible.

53:54

But I think with, by spinning

53:56

off, privatizing, and then reforming the

53:58

student loan programs, I think that

54:00

you could, by a degree or

54:03

two degrees of separation, put the

54:05

university sector as a whole into

54:07

a significant recession. And I think

54:09

that would be a very salutary

54:11

thing. I think that putting the

54:14

universities into contraction, into a recession,

54:16

into a declining budgets, into a

54:18

greater competitive market pressure, would discipline

54:20

them in a way that you

54:22

could not get through administrative oversight

54:24

with 150 extra department of ed

54:27

bureaucrats. medium-term goal, maybe longer-term goal

54:29

of mine is to figure out

54:31

how to adjust the formula of

54:33

finances from the federal government to

54:35

the universities in a way that

54:37

puts them in kind of an

54:40

existential terror to say, uh-oh, unless

54:42

we change what we're doing, we're

54:44

not going to be able to

54:46

meet our budget for the year.

54:48

We're going to have to, you

54:51

know, swine certain things down and

54:53

then make the universities make those

54:55

hard decisions. So let's end there.

54:57

What is it in fact that

54:59

you want them to do besides

55:01

get rid of DEA, right? You're

55:04

on the board of the new

55:06

College of Florida, which Rondisantis took

55:08

over, so you're involved in curricular

55:10

debates, right? Like, what is the

55:12

alternative curriculum? Part of the appeal,

55:15

I think, of everything associated with

55:17

DEA, was that it offered itself

55:19

up to left-of-centered people as a

55:21

narrative. about America, you know, a

55:23

very critical narrative, obviously, a narrative

55:25

that said America was unjust, but

55:28

a powerful one for, you know,

55:30

a 21st century diverse society and

55:32

so on. Is there a conservative

55:34

version of that? Like what what

55:36

affirmative things would you want to

55:38

see elite or non-elite schools doing

55:41

when it comes to teaching about

55:43

American history, teaching about America right

55:45

now? Yeah. I think that's what

55:47

we're cobbling together at at New

55:49

College of Florida. I think it's

55:52

also what some of the reforms

55:54

in Florida have been designed to

55:56

do in the other state. universities.

55:58

I mean, look, some students, our

56:00

universities are no longer liberal arts

56:02

universities. There's these kind of mega

56:05

complexes that have scientific arms, research

56:07

arms, financial arms, but if we're

56:09

talking about just the humanities, I

56:11

think we need a total overturning

56:13

of the ideology of the humanities

56:16

and a return to the classical

56:18

understanding of the humanities. Of course,

56:20

adapted for modern conditions, popularized for

56:22

those large state universities. But you

56:24

can have a classical liberal arts

56:26

curriculum that takes the ideology out

56:29

and what we're doing at new

56:31

colleges reintroducing the eternal human questions.

56:33

So in our new college mission

56:35

statement, which we revised, was essentially

56:37

it's a community of scholars and

56:39

learners that have a shared commitment

56:42

to a culture of civil debate

56:44

and inquiry leading towards the true

56:46

the good and the beautiful. and

56:48

continuing the great tradition of the

56:50

Western civilization that has provided us

56:53

with these opportunities. And so that

56:55

is kind of big overarching message.

56:57

And then on the secondary level,

56:59

you get rid of... About America,

57:01

though, right? So I'm a fan

57:03

of classical education. I think the

57:06

rise of the classical school movement

57:08

in America is one of the

57:10

healthiest signs in our culture. At

57:12

the same time, when I look

57:14

at those programs, I'm not talking

57:16

about new college in particular, right,

57:19

but... They're very great books heavy.

57:21

They're really good at sort of

57:23

figuring out the right balance of

57:25

the ancient Greeks and the medievals

57:27

and the Renaissance and so on.

57:30

But so much of the debate

57:32

around critical race theory and DEA

57:34

and everything else is about the

57:36

story we tell about America. But

57:38

there is a kind of conservative

57:40

patriotic education that you and I

57:43

both encountered. that has a certain

57:45

kind of sterility to it, right?

57:47

It's like, you know, the founders

57:49

are awesome and Lincoln perfects it

57:51

and then you needed Martin Luther

57:54

King to finish things off, but

57:56

that's right, but that's like the

57:58

story we're telling, right? And I

58:00

feel like America is a big,

58:02

you know, it's a big complicated

58:04

messy society. And I feel like

58:07

certain versions of that kind of

58:09

conservative patriotic education, they don't feel

58:11

sort of as deep and rich

58:13

as America deserves. So a macro

58:16

question is, can conservatism become less superficial?

58:18

And then the particular thing is

58:20

like, you know, just to pick

58:22

up point some of your critics

58:24

tend to make, right? If you

58:27

are setting out to sort of

58:29

eliminate CRT, critical race theory, as

58:31

sort of an ideological influence on

58:33

education, what does that mean for

58:36

the professor at New College who

58:38

wants to assign Tanahasi-coats, right?

58:40

Who wants to assign sort

58:42

of figures who are associated

58:44

with radicalism and wokeness as

58:46

part of the American story?

58:48

What do conservatives think about radicalism

58:51

and how can conservatives

58:53

figure out how to teach

58:55

about radicalism? We actually did

58:57

this at New College. We

58:59

had the satirist Andrew Doyle,

59:01

who was the artist behind

59:03

the Tidiana McGrath, satire handle

59:05

on Twitter. And so he

59:07

taught a course this past

59:09

winter, looking at exactly

59:11

what we're talking about, the war

59:14

surrounding woke ideology. And his approach,

59:16

I think, was the right approach.

59:18

He paired. Tanahizi coats with my

59:21

book. He paired Ibrahim Kendi with

59:23

Eric Kaufman, the conservative social scientist.

59:25

And so what they did was

59:28

they had a kind of a

59:30

grappling with this phenomenon of

59:32

the last 10 years and

59:34

providing the best arguments from

59:36

both of the major sides

59:38

or traditions and then trying

59:40

to relate them to these

59:42

enduring human questions. Does this get

59:44

us closer to justice? Does this

59:46

interpretation of American history, does it

59:48

get us closer to the truth?

59:51

And these great questions, where you're

59:53

not just having a kind of

59:55

narrow ideological debate, but you're trying

59:57

to guide people to the right

59:59

answer. And so I think that

1:00:01

is a really good way to

1:00:04

do it, if you wanted to

1:00:06

answer that particular question. Your other

1:00:08

critique is important. Look, I mean,

1:00:11

the patriotic education from a lot

1:00:13

of these conservative organizations is sterile,

1:00:15

one-dimensional, jingoistic. You need to have

1:00:17

something better. Conservatives need a more

1:00:20

arresting, a more sophisticated, a more

1:00:22

complex. story that we tell about

1:00:24

the country that still captures the

1:00:27

essence of the goodness of this

1:00:29

country, the genius of this country,

1:00:31

the talent and virtue of the

1:00:34

people of this country. And I

1:00:36

think that that is a story

1:00:38

that is absolutely possible to be

1:00:40

told. And then administratively, you can

1:00:43

reorganize the institutions around that fundamental

1:00:45

narrative. Gender studies is out, DEA

1:00:47

is out, a more complex history

1:00:50

is in. Andrew Oil's course on

1:00:52

the war of Woke is in,

1:00:54

and then you go forward from

1:00:57

there. And so in that sense,

1:00:59

I think that you have to

1:01:01

have a strong alternative to present.

1:01:03

I think it's not there yet.

1:01:06

We haven't done so in a

1:01:08

way as big as sophisticated, as

1:01:10

glossy as our opponents, but I

1:01:13

think that it can be done

1:01:15

and it will be done in

1:01:17

the future. All right, last question.

1:01:20

You're in charge of a curriculum,

1:01:22

let's say. You have to include

1:01:24

one author who you think students

1:01:26

can read and benefit from reading

1:01:29

who you are opposed to? Who

1:01:31

do you pick? Oh, I think

1:01:33

that without a doubt, Herbert Marcuse,

1:01:36

the new left philosopher, who was

1:01:38

the leading philosophical intellectual light of

1:01:40

the new left in the late

1:01:43

60s, early 70s. I think you

1:01:45

have to read Marcuse. for catastrophic

1:01:47

errors and judgment, for a kind

1:01:49

of repulsive politics in outcome, there

1:01:52

are certain insights that can be

1:01:54

salvaged from his work. And it's

1:01:56

certainly the most brilliant and. and

1:01:59

rich defense of left-wing ideologies that

1:02:01

have been on the rise in

1:02:03

the last half century. And I

1:02:06

think that's a very valuable work

1:02:08

that could be taken seriously. And

1:02:10

I've benefited from reading Markusa. All

1:02:12

right, we're going to leave you

1:02:15

planning the Herbert Markusa seminar at

1:02:17

New College in Florida. Chris Rufo,

1:02:19

thanks so much for joining me.

1:02:22

Thank you. And

1:02:28

thank you listeners. As I

1:02:31

said at the outset, we're

1:02:33

going to take a brief

1:02:35

break before we officially launch

1:02:37

the new interview show. But

1:02:40

in the meantime, we'll still

1:02:42

be sharing interesting conversations from

1:02:44

my colleagues. So please keep

1:02:46

your eye on this feed.

1:02:49

And we'll be back soon,

1:02:51

I promise, with the new

1:02:53

show itself. Until then, thanks

1:02:55

again for listening. This episode

1:02:58

was produced by Sophia Alvarez

1:03:00

Boyd, Elisa Gutierrez, and Andrea

1:03:02

Battanzos. It was edited by

1:03:05

Jordana Hoekman. Our fact check

1:03:07

team is Kate Sinclair, Mary

1:03:09

Marge Locker, and Michelle Harris.

1:03:11

Original music by Isaac Jones,

1:03:14

A-themed Shapiro, Carol Saboro, and

1:03:16

Pat McCusker. Mixing by Pat

1:03:18

McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon

1:03:20

Busta, and Christina Samueluski. Our

1:03:23

executive producer is Annie Rose

1:03:25

Strasser.