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oracle.com slash, nyt. Hi again listeners,

0:34

it's Ross. In our farewell episode

0:36

last week, we told you to

0:38

watch this space for what's to

0:40

come. And while the new show

0:42

isn't ready just yet, I wanted

0:44

to give you a taste of

0:46

the kind of arguments and ideas

0:48

that I'll be exploring soon enough.

0:53

So this week we're going to

0:55

talk about DEAI, diversity, equity, and

0:57

inclusion. A vision of social justice

1:00

that took a lead America and

1:02

all its institutions by storm during

1:04

Donald Trump's first term. And a

1:07

vision, as almost everyone has noticed,

1:09

that is now in full-scale

1:11

retreat. In part, that's because

1:13

of the actions of the Trump

1:16

White House itself, which is doing

1:18

everything it can to eradicate the

1:20

DEA programs and initiatives that proliferated

1:23

inside the federal bureaucracy over the

1:25

last 10 years. But it's not

1:27

just the Trump White House. Companies

1:30

like Google and Walmart and the

1:32

Paramount and Bank of America are

1:34

also shedding diversity-related efforts that they

1:36

had celebrated just a few short

1:39

years ago. And even universities... a

1:41

bastion of progressive ideology are suddenly

1:43

backing away a bit or

1:46

treading carefully. Almost all of

1:48

this shift happened because of

1:50

the work of just one

1:52

man, arguably the most important

1:54

activist in American politics since

1:56

the days of Ralph Nader

1:58

and Phyllis Shlafly. man is

2:00

our guest today, Christopher Ruffo, and

2:03

we're going to be talking to

2:05

him about how he won for

2:07

now, what it means for the

2:10

second Trump administration, and what his

2:12

vision is for America after DEAI.

2:14

Chris Ruffo, welcome to the show.

2:17

It's good to be with you.

2:23

So I imagine that a big

2:25

part of our audience first heard

2:28

of you around the same time

2:30

that they first heard the term

2:32

critical race theory, an academic term

2:35

of art that your activism successfully

2:37

adapted and used to frame really

2:40

the whole DEAI debate. And we're

2:42

going to talk about that, we're

2:44

going to talk about the Trump

2:47

administration, a lot of other stuff,

2:49

but I want to understand first

2:51

how you became yourself, how you

2:54

became the activist. You grew up

2:56

in Northern California and you live

2:59

in the Pacific Northwest now. And

3:01

these are not the big hot

3:03

beds of right-wing activism and conservative

3:06

opinion. So I'm wondering, first of

3:08

all, were you always some kind

3:11

of conservative? No, not at all.

3:13

I started as a young man

3:15

very much on the left, even

3:18

the far left. my family members

3:20

on my father's side in particular

3:23

are very far left, unreconstructed communists

3:25

in Italy. And so my politics

3:27

is real, real communists, not, not

3:30

Bay Area communists, like, correct, European,

3:32

but actual economic, card carrying, party

3:35

member communists. And so that was

3:37

the politics that I inherited growing

3:39

up. And it's interesting because California

3:42

you're right now. is not a

3:44

hotbed of America's right wing, but

3:46

it actually produced, I would say,

3:49

the best 20th century conservative leaders.

3:51

And so my own experience actually

3:54

marches totally at odds with the

3:56

historical experience of the state. I

3:58

started out left, moved right, whereas

4:01

the state was much more right

4:03

wing in the past and moved

4:06

left. And you were a

4:08

documentary filmmaker. How did you

4:10

get into that? It got

4:12

into that right after school.

4:14

I graduated from university in

4:16

2006 and then I took

4:18

a job doing production for

4:20

a small ramshackle company, had

4:22

a chance to travel around

4:24

the world, and then started

4:26

producing my own films in

4:28

my mid-twenties and did that

4:30

for another... you know, five

4:32

or ten years. So, talk

4:34

about your view of politics

4:36

back then, and you can

4:38

maybe think of yourself as

4:40

a documentary filmmaker, right? You

4:42

use that lens on American

4:44

politics in the early 2010s.

4:46

Yeah, it's really interesting, and

4:48

actually the, you know, the

4:50

work I was doing in

4:52

the documentaries at that time

4:54

was not political. Some more

4:56

social, cultural, human interest stories,

4:58

but the... industry itself was

5:00

hyperpolitical and what we now

5:02

think of as you know,

5:04

wokeness or left-wing race and

5:06

gender ideology was already kind

5:08

of the dominant system of

5:10

beliefs in the documentary world

5:12

in the late 2000s, early

5:14

2010s. And look, the documentary

5:16

world is not a business,

5:18

but really it survives on

5:20

the prestige of philanthropic institutions

5:22

that provide grant funding. And

5:24

so I don't know if

5:26

it's that that kind of

5:28

economy attracts left-wing people or

5:30

if left-wing people produce that

5:32

kind of economy. I don't

5:34

know how that might tease

5:36

out, but it really did

5:38

raise red flags. I had

5:40

been rejected for some grants

5:42

and then told explicitly, this

5:44

is grant restricted only for

5:46

minorities and women. It's like,

5:48

oh, interesting. That's quite odd.

5:50

That doesn't seem, you know,

5:52

fair, but okay, you kind

5:54

of deal with it and

5:56

figure out alternative opportunities. And

5:58

I remember, you know, joking

6:00

with the producer of mine.

6:02

We really need to get

6:04

this grant. We're going to

6:06

mark you down as bisexual.

6:08

That will give us the

6:10

edge that is needed in

6:12

order to compete in this

6:14

new identity landscape. We didn't

6:16

actually do it. It was

6:18

more just a joke, but

6:20

the joke became very real.

6:22

And certainly after 2020, when

6:24

I moved into politics, journalism,

6:26

and then activism, that ethos

6:28

that had been really just

6:30

at the margins of American.

6:32

avant-garde, cultural institutions had captured

6:34

all of the major institutions.

6:36

And so was there a

6:38

moment of radicalization then? What

6:40

changes on the left from

6:42

your perspective in 2018 through

6:44

2020? What is, and we're

6:47

coming around obviously to DEA

6:49

and critical race theory and

6:51

so on, but give me

6:53

a concrete take on that

6:55

shift, what that means? Yeah.

6:57

You see it really from

6:59

2014 to 2020 slowly building

7:01

after the Great Recession was

7:03

over and the Occupy Wall

7:05

Street 99% narratives had subsided.

7:07

The narratives that were really

7:09

gaining energy and traction were

7:11

all related to race and

7:13

sexuality. You could see the

7:15

local kind of BLM chapters

7:17

or racial justice activists, you

7:19

know, gaining power. And then

7:21

all the sudden in 2020,

7:23

these movements that had been...

7:25

building just kind of catapulted

7:27

into prominence. And the moments

7:29

that you could say are

7:31

points of radicalization for me

7:33

were all in the wake

7:35

of George Floyd 2020, observing

7:37

and even doing on-the-ground reporting

7:39

in Seattle. And the politics

7:41

of that time that I

7:43

felt encapsulated in a very

7:45

small scale the entire derangement

7:47

that would then happen everywhere

7:49

was... In the couple-week period

7:51

of the Chas, if you

7:53

remember the Capital Hill Autonomous

7:55

Zone, 2020 riots, the mayor

7:57

of Seattle, instructs the police

7:59

department in the Capitol Hill

8:01

neighborhood, famously the most left-wing

8:03

neighborhood, to abandon their actual

8:05

department building, and then seed

8:07

multiple blocks of territory to

8:09

the left-wing radicals. They've taken

8:11

over territory, they've declared it

8:13

an autonomous zone, they've rewritten

8:15

all of the laws and

8:17

the rules. and then it

8:19

all goes into an immediate

8:21

and calamitous decomposition. They invited

8:23

all of the homeless from

8:25

Seattle to set up camp.

8:27

I mean, all of the

8:29

kind of academic theories were

8:31

put into this little miniature

8:34

model of governance. And what

8:36

happens? Vandalism, crime, destruction, chaos,

8:39

and then people start getting

8:41

killed. You have this autonomous zone in

8:43

the name of black liberation, and

8:45

who ends up getting murdered, you

8:48

know, young. black kids, including a

8:50

young boy, and I interviewed this

8:52

boy's father as part of the

8:54

reporting I was doing. And it

8:56

was this kind of, you know, this

8:59

poetic, miniature, and accelerated

9:01

timeline of, this is

9:03

what happens when you give

9:05

kind of governing power to

9:07

these ideas ends in heartbreak,

9:09

disaster, destruction. Or

9:11

it ends in employee retraining seminars.

9:13

Right? Well, because I mean, look,

9:15

you're taking, and I agree, this

9:17

is one of the most extreme

9:19

manifestations of left-wing radicalism, right? But

9:21

that was not the case that

9:23

people were, for the most part,

9:26

setting up those kind of armed

9:28

camps, right? It was mostly the

9:30

case that you had various kinds

9:32

of self-conscious or unself-conscious

9:34

ideological indoctrination as

9:37

part of the ordinary work

9:39

of a university or a big

9:41

corporation and so on. When we talk

9:43

about wokeness as a

9:45

phenomenon, most Americans who

9:47

experienced it, experienced it

9:50

that way, right? Yes, but I

9:52

think that the comparison is actually

9:54

really important because the, you know,

9:57

two and a half weeks of

9:59

chas... autonomous zone. It's the same

10:01

story as what happened over a

10:04

five-year time horizon in America's institutions.

10:06

As a metaphor, they're really the

10:08

same process. And so the reporting

10:10

that I did that really took

10:12

off, and this is something that

10:15

was surprising to me, I was

10:17

working on homelessness, I was working

10:19

on local issues, that was my

10:21

first foray into this world, but

10:23

I did get a tip from

10:26

a city of Seattle employee who

10:28

sent me documents from their race

10:30

and social justice initiative, kind of

10:32

HR training on race and social

10:34

justice. It was, you know, white

10:37

privilege, white fragility, systemic racism, unconscious

10:39

bias, disparate impact. It was Ibrahim

10:41

Kennedy, Robin Diangelo, the leading lights

10:43

of the George Floyd moment, and

10:45

they were doing it in the

10:48

city of Seattle in a racially

10:50

segregated manner, and I thought it

10:52

was going to be a one-off

10:54

story. But what happened was really

10:56

interesting, it not only took off

10:59

publicly, but I started getting leaks

11:01

and materials from dozens and then

11:03

hundreds and then thousands of other

11:05

places around the country. And so

11:07

the opportunity presented itself, say, oh,

11:10

this is a really interesting thread.

11:12

I'm going to chase this threat

11:14

and see where it leads. And

11:16

I think now in retrospect, it

11:18

led to... that you could call

11:21

it anti-woke, you could call it

11:23

a backlash, you could call it

11:25

a conservative counter-revolution, it really set

11:27

the stage, but to me again

11:29

it is a reaction to what

11:32

was happening that in my view

11:34

was a kind of derangement that

11:36

people are even people who participated

11:38

in it, I think are now

11:40

embarrassed to admit their participation in

11:43

the past. But one of the

11:45

things you did from the start

11:47

was... naming it, right, trying to

11:49

associate the specific term critical race

11:51

theory with all of these elements

11:54

of left-wing, left-leaning ideology. And it's

11:56

an... interesting phenomenon the whole thing

11:58

because almost everyone at this point

12:00

agrees that there was a big

12:02

ideological shift in American institutions in

12:05

the period you're describing. No one

12:07

has ever sort of quite had

12:09

a consensus on what to call

12:11

it in part because you know

12:13

the terms that activists often used

12:16

like anti-racist were terms that their

12:18

critics weren't likely to use right

12:20

because you don't want to sort

12:22

of concede the argument that one

12:24

side is the anti-racist side but

12:27

you get you know social justice

12:29

you get wokeness you get conservatives

12:31

using the phrase cultural Marxism why

12:33

did you decide that critical race

12:35

theory which is you know an

12:38

academic term of art for a

12:40

particular discipline and way of looking

12:42

at the world was the right

12:44

term to use. And what does

12:46

that term mean from your perspective?

12:49

Sure. I mean, the simplest reason

12:51

is that because it was correct.

12:53

I mean, what I did at

12:55

that time was try to figure

12:57

out, okay, well, where does this

13:00

ideology come from? Because what I

13:02

was seeing was essentially boilerplate coming

13:04

from all different corners of. American

13:06

society from big companies HR programs

13:08

to universities kind of humanities labs

13:11

to you know public schools to

13:13

all these places and in every

13:15

case I could trace it back

13:17

just looking at the footnotes doing

13:19

the reading kind of doing the

13:22

homework so well this all seems

13:24

to come from a discipline of

13:26

critical race studies critical race theory

13:28

critical whiteness studies and the universities

13:30

have formalized it under these disciplines

13:33

and sub disciplines. And so I

13:35

thought it was actually initially actually

13:37

the least loaded and the most

13:39

accurate way of framing it. But

13:41

as we started fighting it out,

13:44

I realized that in a sense

13:46

by accident, it was also the

13:48

most rhetorically effective framing because as

13:50

you said, it was not an

13:52

obvious pejorative because it was the

13:55

name that these folks gave to

13:57

their own discipline, but it had

13:59

the connotations that could then be

14:01

really loaded with maximum political energy

14:04

and used as a focal point,

14:06

and then it gave us a

14:08

concept that we could use to

14:10

political ends. Is there a form

14:12

of critical race theory that you

14:15

take seriously? Because I take it

14:17

all seriously. Well, I mean seriously

14:19

as, you know, obviously you are...

14:21

as an activist America is leading

14:23

critic of critical race theory, right?

14:26

But so if you said to

14:28

me 10 years ago before we

14:30

entered fully into this era, what

14:32

is critical race theory all about,

14:34

I probably would have said something

14:37

like, well, you know, it's a

14:39

view that racism isn't just about

14:41

personal animus, right? It's about structural

14:43

realities, impersonal realities, and that you

14:45

have aspects of American society handed

14:48

down from slavery and Jim Crow

14:50

that still affect America today, that,

14:52

you know, we should take seriously.

14:54

And that's a left of center

14:56

view, but it's one that I

14:59

as a conservative would have said,

15:01

you know, I take that view

15:03

seriously, I don't always agree with

15:05

it, but it makes some reasonable

15:07

points. And it also seems to

15:10

me that there's a difference between

15:12

that view and holding seminars organized

15:14

around a kind of psychological retraining

15:16

of white people to get at,

15:18

you know, the core of their

15:21

sort of... personal racial guilt and

15:23

racial animus and so on. So

15:25

I guess, yeah, I'm wondering, do

15:27

you think structural racism exists as

15:29

a category that's worth describing? Yeah,

15:32

it's a good question, but I

15:34

think that your description is euphemistic,

15:36

because if you actually read the

15:38

critical race theory literature, It is

15:40

Ibrahim Kendi and Robin Diangelo and

15:43

all of the excesses of left-wing

15:45

racialism. You have arguments for seizing

15:47

land and wealth and redistributing it

15:49

along racial lines. You have these

15:51

long kind of pseudoscientific studies about

15:54

racial microaggressions and kind of fair...

15:56

out racism and the subconscious of

15:58

white people, you have the whole

16:00

concept of whiteness itself, which is,

16:02

you know, reducing race to a

16:05

kind of an evil essence and

16:07

then trying to create re-education programs

16:09

to erase and replace, you know,

16:11

so-called whiteness. I mean, it's all

16:13

there. It was all there in

16:16

the 80s and the 90s and

16:18

the early 2000s. It was just

16:20

not taken seriously for a good

16:22

reason beyond the academic circles. And

16:24

so... The criticism that I got

16:27

at the beginning was, oh, we

16:29

just want to talk about the

16:31

legacy of redlining and Jim Crow.

16:33

And like you, great, we should

16:35

talk about that. That's totally fair.

16:38

We had systemic racial discrimination in

16:40

this country for a very long

16:42

time. It's had an effect on

16:44

how our society has developed. It's

16:46

had negative consequences for the people

16:49

who were on the receiving end

16:51

of that discrimination. There's a reasonable

16:53

argument to be had there. I'm

16:55

happy to have that. I'm not

16:57

a, you know, we solved the

17:00

problem in 1964 and now everyone

17:02

has to shut up forever. There

17:04

is a strain of conservatism that

17:06

takes that tack. I don't. But

17:08

it's totally at odds with the

17:11

actual substance of not only the,

17:13

say, woke movement, BLM movement, but

17:15

even the kind of supposedly reasonable

17:17

underpinnings of the theory itself. That's

17:19

really interesting and I want to

17:22

come back to those questions, but...

17:24

Let's sort of move forward toward

17:26

the present, right? It seems to

17:28

me, at least, like wokeness or

17:30

whatever you want to call it,

17:33

whatever term you want to use,

17:35

peaked probably in 2021, maybe in

17:37

2022, and then your activism began

17:39

to create a backlash, and public

17:41

opinion started to turn, institutions started

17:44

to shift. And in that sense,

17:46

I think it was really in

17:48

retreat, well before Donald Trump's re-election

17:50

campaign even really started. Is that

17:52

how you see it? I think

17:55

that's right. I think probably 2021

17:57

was at the fever pitch. 2022

17:59

is still relatively strong in the

18:01

spring of that. year, and then

18:03

I think that the political turn

18:06

was the DeSantis re-election in 2022.

18:08

Because look, the key political figure

18:10

in the kind of war on

18:12

Woke was Ron DeSantis, and they

18:14

said, oh, you can't fight Disney,

18:17

you can't fight CRT, you can't

18:19

abolish DEA, you can't take over

18:21

a public university, you're going to

18:23

pay a price, and then he

18:25

wins by 20 points. Was for

18:28

me an indicator that the political

18:30

calculus was changing. And certainly I

18:32

felt safer operating and taking bigger

18:34

risks in 2022 and 2023 than

18:36

in the years prior. But it

18:39

was still by no means assured.

18:41

And I think that had Kamala

18:43

Harris won in 2024, we would

18:45

be having a very different conversation

18:48

right now. Let's take a quick

18:50

break and we'll be right back.

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aligned with your strategy and

20:28

goals, at least to some

20:31

extent, and is applying some

20:33

kind of anti-DEI effort across

20:35

all federal agencies? What do

20:38

you think of the progress

20:40

of that effort from your

20:42

perspective as an activist? Well,

20:44

look, I laid out in

20:46

the transition period a

20:49

counter-revolution blueprint that outlined

20:51

my strategy for how the

20:53

president and the administration could...

20:55

take decisive action in the

20:57

war against these left-wing ideologies.

20:59

And to my great enjoyment,

21:01

five out of the six

21:03

of the recommendations, the ones

21:05

that I can remember off

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the top of my head,

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have been put into action,

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some even more aggressively than

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And we have now the

21:20

beginnings of a very successful

21:22

administration on these questions. And the

21:24

action on DEA was... Perfect, fantastic,

21:27

strong, decisive, abolishing the DEA

21:29

departments in all of the

21:31

federal government. But then taking

21:33

the second step, which I

21:35

recommended and they've followed up

21:37

on, which is to say,

21:39

if you are a federal

21:41

contractor or you receive federal

21:43

funding, the prohibition on DEA

21:45

also extends to you institutionally

21:47

because we've determined that it's

21:49

a violation of the 1964

21:51

Civil Rights Act. And so they're

21:53

pushing that pressure outward to

21:55

all of the institutions in

21:58

American society. Stripping the pay.

22:00

left-wing patronage from the federal government.

22:02

The first Trump administration was funding

22:04

tens of billions of dollars a

22:07

year towards left-wing causes. And I

22:09

remember I was in the White

22:11

House in October of 2020, and

22:14

one of the discussions we were having

22:16

was, you know, look at all

22:18

this money that is going to

22:21

left-wing NGOs, left-wing academic research, left-wing

22:23

activism. How can we actually just stop

22:25

the flow of funding? completely. And

22:28

it was an idea that seemed

22:30

impossible at the time.

22:32

A lot of moving parts, a

22:35

lot of chaos, a lot of

22:37

conflict and drama. Four years later,

22:39

the same people are now back

22:41

in the White House, ruthlessly going

22:43

through the budget line by line

22:46

and actually eliminating left-wing waste fraud

22:48

and abuse patronage. And so look,

22:50

I think that we're now six

22:52

weeks in more or less. the

22:54

opening salvos have been very strong,

22:56

and I think that it's time

22:59

now to try to push deeper

23:01

and try to go after some

23:03

of those more systematic reforms that

23:06

are possible, but we'll take a

23:08

lot of follow-through. All right, so

23:10

let's talk about the plan of

23:12

action you've just sketched, starting with

23:15

civil rights. Because one of the

23:17

things the Trump administration has done

23:19

is rolling back the affirmative action

23:22

executive orders that go back to

23:24

Lyndon Johnson that involve essentially advantages

23:26

for minority contractors with the federal

23:29

government that are sort of considered

23:31

the point of origin of modern

23:33

affirmative action programs. And these

23:36

are things that past Republican presidents

23:38

haven't touched. This is sort of

23:40

not just the rollback, but the

23:43

actual kind of counter-revolution. So I'm

23:45

assuming that you obviously support those

23:47

moves. I guess my question is

23:49

what aspects of the post-64 civil

23:52

rights bureaucracy do you support? Yeah, I know.

23:54

It's a great question. And this is,

23:56

look, this is a real tension on

23:58

the right. And I'm very... cognizant of

24:00

this tension, you have two competing

24:03

schools. There are some on the

24:05

right that have the kind of

24:07

Christopher Caldwell thesis that the Civil

24:10

Rights Act is really a second

24:12

constitution. It's usurped authority over the

24:15

original constitution. It's created this regime

24:17

of kind of state intrusion on

24:19

private life, social life, civic life,

24:22

etc. I mean, that's as a factual

24:24

matter. True. And so what I think

24:26

the president has done that is salutary,

24:28

at least as an opening step, is

24:30

to say we're going to try to

24:32

do what not only other Republican

24:34

presence haven't touched, but

24:37

they've actually assented to, agreed

24:39

to, expanded and strengthened. President

24:41

Nixon expanded the affirmative action

24:43

programs of President Johnson and

24:45

kind of all the way

24:47

down the line. you see

24:49

this consensus because Republicans have

24:51

been so scared of anything

24:53

involving civil rights, race, sexuality

24:55

that they have, you know,

24:57

I think, been kind of

25:00

pressured or in some cases

25:02

hoodwinked into expanding this regime

25:04

that we're talking about. Well,

25:06

but just to pause, it's

25:08

also that corporate America at a

25:10

certain point somewhere in the 1970s.

25:12

decided that certain kinds of diversity

25:15

programs were good for business. So

25:17

my sense is that, for instance,

25:19

in the Reagan era, there was

25:21

a sense that in fact Republicans

25:23

would lose support from parts of

25:25

big business if they went hard

25:28

after affirmative action. Part of the

25:30

post-civil rights consensus, I think, that

25:32

Republicans at least partially embraced a

25:35

certain point, was the idea that

25:37

there were sort of modest forms

25:40

of diversification. initiatives, right, that were

25:42

good for American society. And

25:44

the language and arguments that are

25:47

being used right now around those are basically

25:49

to say, as you just said, right,

25:51

that they are in fact in tension with

25:53

the original vision or at least the

25:55

letter of the law of the Civil

25:58

Rights Act because they discriminate against against

26:00

white Americans, right? Sure, yeah,

26:02

whites and Asian Americans, right, in

26:04

college applications. Yeah, which was not

26:06

the case in the 70s and

26:08

80s because the Asian population was

26:10

so small, but certainly now is

26:12

the case. But look, I think

26:14

you may be overestimating the support

26:16

in corporate America. I think it

26:18

was really just the kind of.

26:20

concession. Is it all right? Well,

26:22

this is the tax that we

26:24

pay and to bring up this

26:27

issue or to kind of politicize

26:29

this issue. There's probably more cost

26:31

or risk than benefit. And so it

26:33

was a tacit acceptance of, all right,

26:35

well, we are just 10 years out

26:37

of the Jim Crow era, some restitution,

26:40

some transition is good. And even the

26:42

Supreme Court says, well, you have this

26:44

kind of affirmative action is probably a

26:47

violation of the if not the letter

26:49

of the spirit of the 14th Amendment

26:51

and the Civil Rights Act, but it's

26:53

a transition period that will have to

26:56

accommodate and then eventually will

26:58

let it go. That was the common argument,

27:00

but I think that there are really two

27:02

avenues forward for the right. There

27:05

is one avenue that is the

27:07

most kind of radical libertarian. The

27:09

argument would be that the Civil

27:11

Rights Act is a fundamental infringement

27:13

on civil liberties and freedom of

27:15

association, freedom of speech. and

27:18

therefore it requires abolition. The

27:20

second argument and the argument that

27:22

I favor is to say, no,

27:25

the right needs to have its

27:27

own interpretation of civil rights law,

27:29

and it needs to take

27:31

over enforcement of civil rights

27:33

law, to have essentially an

27:35

alternative vision that is, in

27:38

my view, better grounded

27:40

in the Constitution and the law,

27:42

to say that we need

27:44

to have... a kind of

27:46

Spartan system of color blind

27:48

equality, there is no reward

27:50

or punishment based on ancestry.

27:52

And if you do that

27:54

in admissions, hiring, promotions, contracting,

27:56

you should pay just as

27:58

heavy a price. as if someone

28:00

was segregating the lunch counters in the

28:03

past. And I think my position in

28:05

2020-21 is now the majority position on

28:07

the right with almost no exceptions. Yeah,

28:09

I think that's, I think that's right.

28:11

But I think the left is going to have

28:14

to face this because they're going to have to

28:16

say, you know, do you want to have a

28:18

kind of color blind equality or

28:20

do you want to have this system

28:22

of racial spoils, racial favoritism, racial discrimination?

28:25

And my goal moving forward is to

28:27

push that debate as far leftward as

28:29

I can so that the establishment liberals

28:31

versus the kind of race radicals, you

28:34

know, they're going to have to fight

28:36

it out eventually. And I'd like to

28:38

see that the establishment liberals win this

28:40

fight. But from the point of view

28:43

of, let's say, the establishment liberals, like

28:45

whether you're in corporate America or

28:47

whether you're, you know, running a

28:49

major American university or any of

28:52

these kind of things. When you're

28:54

dealing with, I think, issues of

28:56

elite formation, there's always going to

28:59

be an interest in a diverse,

29:01

multiracial, multicultural society

29:03

in having diverse

29:06

representation in important

29:08

slots. And you see this,

29:10

obviously, even in Republican cabinets

29:12

and so on, right? I

29:14

think that, to some degree,

29:17

it may not put a

29:19

fundamental limit on how far the right...

29:21

wants to go in sort of sweeping

29:23

all affirmative action programs away. I think

29:25

at the very least though it puts

29:28

a pretty hard limit on how far

29:30

you could get sort of the center

29:32

left establishment to go along with your

29:34

argument. I think that I think like

29:36

if you're running a major American corporation,

29:38

I think there's always going to be

29:40

a world in which you're going to want to

29:43

find some way to take racial diversity

29:45

in representation into account. Don't

29:47

you think that's true? I don't

29:49

think so. I don't think that

29:52

that's the case. And I really

29:54

don't think that that's how the

29:56

majority of the population thinks. Yes,

29:58

in elite institutions. have been conditioned

30:00

to think in those terms, but I

30:02

actually don't think... I think, wait a

30:05

minute, wait a minute. I think, I

30:07

think, just stick with politics for a

30:09

minute, right? Representation in politics is a

30:11

completely normal part of American politics long

30:13

before you get to... the age of

30:16

affirmative action, right? It's always been the

30:18

case. You're like, you're trying to pick

30:20

a vice president and you're, you know,

30:22

you're trying to balance the country regionally.

30:24

You have, you know, and all the

30:27

way down, I know this is an

30:29

overused example, right, but all the way

30:31

down to Antonin Scalia, the great conservative

30:33

jurist, who was picked not only

30:35

as the first Italian-American on the

30:38

court, but that was a consideration.

30:40

I know, I think two things.

30:42

One is, look, I don't think

30:44

that people genuinely care about precise

30:46

mathematical representation across every institution. I

30:48

completely agree with that. I'm happy

30:50

that, you know, I think most

30:52

people accept that when they go

30:54

to the nail salon and it's...

30:56

being run by almost all Vietnamese

30:59

people, they're fine with that. When

31:01

you go to a kind of

31:03

programming floor, it's mostly East Asian and

31:05

South Asian males, since white males, like,

31:07

or court, you know, let's say athletes,

31:10

okay, most you're going to have heavily

31:12

black representation in the NBA. Like, the

31:14

world is complicated and most people

31:17

have a sense of different

31:19

groups, different cultures, different priorities,

31:21

different interests, different talents, and

31:23

they don't mathematically graft them

31:26

themselves. in an artificial way, onto

31:28

every institution, and that's okay, as long

31:30

as there's a sense that people are

31:32

being treated fairly, as long as a

31:34

sense that there's a path to advancement,

31:37

to people who merit advancement, and look,

31:39

we're talking about perception. And I think

31:41

that there is, even on the right, I think

31:43

this is true, you've been around

31:45

right-leaning institutions, as longer than I

31:47

have, people do have a sense

31:49

of thinking about this question of

31:51

representation that you're bringing it up. I

31:53

think that's fine. It's a fine gut check.

31:56

I think it's a normal reaction, and I

31:58

think there's something to be said about. that

32:00

is to kind of submerge it

32:02

and obscure it. It's something that

32:04

may be happening at the margins,

32:06

but you're making the argument. There's

32:08

perhaps some cath-like representation. He absolutely

32:10

does, but there is- To get

32:12

balancing all these questions. Okay, yeah,

32:14

that's a natural human thing, but

32:16

what is, I think the proper

32:18

approach for that is to kind of submerge

32:21

it and obscure it. It's something

32:23

that may be happening at the margins,

32:25

that maybe people have some heightened sensitivity

32:27

to. But we don't talk about it.

32:29

It's kind of done with the appearance

32:31

that it's not being done, is the

32:34

most humane, the most effective, and I

32:36

think the most honorable way to do

32:38

something like that. But what we have

32:40

is the opposite. We have like insane

32:42

hatred written into the operating manual of

32:44

our universities. It's like, we have to

32:47

get rid of all that. And then

32:49

if there's some kind of subtle

32:51

marginal tacit, you know, kind of

32:53

representation, provided that everyone meets

32:56

a threshold of excellence. I think

32:58

almost everyone can live with that.

33:00

That's fine. But what we have

33:02

is so far from that, that

33:04

almost seems like a nice dream

33:07

to have in relation to what

33:09

we have in real life. Right.

33:11

I guess all I'm saying is

33:13

I'll hear a lot from populist

33:16

conservatives, like, oh, you know, Ronald

33:18

Reagan was gutless, George H. W.

33:20

Bush was a coward, Trump is

33:22

doing all of these things that

33:24

they could have done and should

33:26

have, right. didn't try to sweep

33:28

away affirmative action was because it

33:31

was widely perceived as a version

33:33

of what you are conceding is sort

33:35

of a natural part of elite formation

33:37

and construction. You know, again, like... I

33:40

work in journalism. Yes. My wife works

33:42

in journalism. You run a big city

33:44

newspaper. The city is heavily African-American. You

33:46

have an awful lot of white reporters.

33:48

Are you going to want to hire

33:51

an extra African-American reporter? Of course you

33:53

are, right? I think a lot of

33:55

Americans, including Republicans, perceive that as sort

33:57

of the way the system already works.

34:00

and as a thing that was

34:02

then upset by wokeness, by the shift

34:04

in the 2010s. And so I agree

34:06

with you that there is a kind

34:08

of split on the right about like

34:10

how far back are you going? And

34:13

some people think this was all

34:15

built into the Civil Rights Act

34:17

itself, and you're in the position

34:20

of saying if we properly

34:22

interpret the Civil Rights

34:24

Act, then it will sort of... grow

34:26

back on the excesses of affirmative

34:29

action. I'm just sort of curious

34:31

where the stable equilibrium

34:33

is. Is it 1997 or is it

34:36

a little bit more anti affirmative action

34:38

than that? Yeah, this is a really

34:40

important debate on the right and I

34:42

have of course people to my right

34:45

that say no, no, the Civil Rights

34:47

Act is a problem and has to

34:49

get... repealed. Right. I think we can

34:51

both agree that the Civil Rights Act

34:54

is very unlikely to be repealed. That

34:56

is the first point in saying, all

34:58

right, well, this is a non-starter, so

35:00

your point gets you nowhere. I actually

35:03

think that there's a way to not

35:05

go backward. The question shouldn't be, do

35:07

we go back to 1997, to 1965,

35:09

or to 1963? I think we

35:11

have an opportunity to go

35:14

forward to say, hey what,

35:16

look, we've had this experiment

35:18

with affirmative action that metamorphosed

35:21

into woke ideology, into DEA,

35:23

into rampant discrimination, that rewards

35:25

and punishes people based on

35:27

their ancestry. We're done with that. We're

35:30

gonna reinterpret the law so that

35:32

we have, for the first time ever,

35:34

simple, strategic, color blind

35:36

equality through all of our institutions.

35:38

And if you want to have

35:40

a government that enforces civil rights

35:43

laws, we need to have a

35:45

government that enforces civil rights laws

35:47

for everyone, not just the favored groups,

35:49

but for every individual. And so

35:51

what does that look like? It

35:53

looks like what the Trump administration

35:55

is doing to say, hey, anti-white

35:57

bigotry should face just as severe

35:59

a sanction. anti-black bigotry and yet

36:01

you only see the institutions

36:04

practicing one of those. But

36:06

true color blind equality requires

36:09

equal enforcement. Right, okay but

36:11

so but on that point you're

36:13

still if you're the Trump administration

36:15

you're still going to have to

36:17

make choices about lawsuits and enforcement

36:20

all of the kind of choices

36:22

that liberals have been making.

36:24

in the past around where you're

36:26

going after a company, right? Like

36:29

what is the standard of racial

36:31

discrimination that you use, right? And

36:33

you're going to have universities

36:35

that say, okay. You know, we're in

36:38

compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling on

36:40

affirmative action, and you can tell that

36:42

we're in compliance because the white

36:44

and Asian share of our student body

36:47

went up by three or four

36:49

percent, and the African-American and Hispanic share

36:51

went down by three or four percent.

36:53

But someone in the civil rights bureaucracy,

36:56

now it's going to be a

36:58

fan of, you know, Christopher Ruffo, rather

37:00

than a critical race theorist, let's say,

37:02

right, is going to have to

37:04

decide, okay, this percentage, this percentage,

37:07

change signals continued anti-white discrimination,

37:09

and that percentage change

37:11

signals what you're conceding

37:13

is always going to happen a

37:15

little bit of normal, you know, we're trying

37:17

to balance the class, we don't

37:19

want to have a racial monoculture,

37:22

right? You're still going to have

37:24

a government bureaucrat under your ideal

37:26

system, now a conservative bureaucrat, deciding

37:28

where is the line between normal

37:31

racial balancing and racial discrimination? That

37:33

decision point doesn't go away. Correct.

37:35

Yeah, and it cannot go away as

37:37

long as you have a Civil Rights

37:40

Act. Right. And so my argument is

37:42

that conservatives have to live with the

37:44

status quo and to do the best

37:47

that we can with that status quo

37:49

and therefore need an alternative policy. But

37:51

there's an interesting wrinkle here that I

37:53

think is really important. You know, first,

37:56

yes, I think the Trump administration should

37:58

take a maximalist approach. they should

38:00

say if you have discriminatory

38:02

DEA programs, if you have

38:04

discriminatory admissions procedures, or discriminatory

38:06

hiring and promotion practices, you'll

38:08

be stripped of federal funding,

38:10

which in a sense means

38:12

bankruptcy for many universities, and

38:14

they should do it. They

38:16

should actually follow through on

38:18

the threat in at least one

38:20

symbolic fight that then changes the

38:23

incentives everywhere and sends people scrambling

38:25

to comply with the law. But

38:27

the question that I think you're

38:29

raising or about to raise is

38:31

another good one to say, well,

38:34

what happens if Harvard's

38:36

admissions numbers change dramatically

38:38

and fewer black or

38:41

Hispanic students are admitted

38:44

to X, Y, or Z

38:46

university? You may see some

38:48

recomposition of the numbers. If

38:50

the critique of all these

38:52

programs, the whole point is that

38:54

These schools don't have meritocratic admissions, they don't

38:56

have color-blind admissions. If they had color-blind admissions,

38:59

the numbers would look quite different, right? Yes,

39:01

as a whole. I mean, the top university

39:03

may be able to reach the threshold, but

39:05

even going down a few, you're going to

39:08

have that going down more, you're going to

39:10

have it even more dramatically. I mean, the

39:12

first off, the answer is quite simple, is

39:14

to say, you either have meritocratic

39:17

admissions or you don't, and you

39:19

live with the consequences. Conservatives are

39:21

so eager to solve that problem

39:23

in theory that they forget an

39:25

important lesson. That isn't a problem

39:27

that our opponents will have. I

39:29

mean, if our opponents are, let's

39:32

say, administration of elite universities, I

39:34

consider those people my political opponents.

39:36

You create a problem for them.

39:38

They have to explain why the

39:41

numbers have changed. They have to either

39:43

defend the previous system or defend

39:45

the current system. But one thing

39:47

I think is a really important

39:49

political lesson is never solve your

39:51

opponent's problems for them. Certainly don't

39:53

solve them in advance. You create a standard,

39:55

you enforce the standard, and then let them

39:58

grapple with the outcomes. That to me... seems

40:00

the best course of action and

40:02

then as they adapt then you

40:04

know our position can adapt you

40:06

know in response. I agree I

40:08

guess all I'm stressing is when

40:10

you say create the standard and

40:12

enforce the standard the question

40:14

of enforcement is your problem

40:16

right it will be the

40:18

Trump administration's problem and there

40:20

will have to be a

40:23

set of decisions made about

40:25

what kind of recomposition of

40:27

student bodies suggests a good faith

40:29

move away from racial preferences and

40:32

what doesn't. And I'm just arguing

40:34

that it is inherently a gray area,

40:36

to some degree. Yeah, I think it is, I

40:39

think there's perhaps some gray, like all

40:41

things, but I think it's less

40:43

than maybe you're suggesting here. And

40:45

I think that there's two things

40:47

that we could do to help

40:49

solve this problem or help even

40:51

just to reveal the problem. The

40:53

first is that every university that

40:55

receives federal funding should be required

40:57

to... publish disaggregated data for

40:59

race, sex, GPA, SAT scores,

41:01

and then class rank at

41:04

the back end. Publish your

41:06

numbers. Make them available so

41:08

that if there is the appearance

41:10

that there is a large,

41:12

say, disparity in SAT scores

41:14

in GPA based on groups

41:16

and admissions, you then create

41:19

the opening for a public

41:21

inquiry. I think that's a

41:23

really good way where... increased

41:25

transparency could lead to kind

41:27

of automatic accountability, right? And the

41:29

other thing that's really important is

41:31

that admissions is like important, but I

41:33

would put it down a couple

41:36

wrongs from the most important related

41:38

to discrimination, etc. I think the

41:40

DEI bureaucracies are a much more

41:42

fruitful line of attack, and I

41:44

think we start there because you're

41:46

creating a culture that is the

41:48

problem beyond just the mathematical problem

41:50

of admissions and statistics and SAT

41:53

scores. All right, let's take a

41:55

quick break and we'll be right back.

42:19

This is Someni Sengupta. I'm a

42:22

reporter for the New York Times.

42:24

I've covered nine conflicts written about

42:26

earthquakes, terror attacks, floods, many humanitarian

42:29

crises. My job is to bear

42:31

witness. Right now, I'm writing about

42:33

climate change, and I'm trying to

42:36

answer some really big and urgent

42:38

questions about life on a hotter

42:40

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42:43

to climate change? Should we redesign

42:45

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42:48

differently? What happens to the millions

42:50

of people who live by

42:52

the coast as the oceans

42:54

rise? To make sense of

42:56

this, I talk to climate

42:58

scientists and vendors, activists. Mostly,

43:00

I document the impact of

43:02

global warming, and that impact

43:04

is highly, highly unequal. My

43:06

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43:08

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43:10

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subscribe, go to nytimes.com/ subscribe

43:18

and thank you. All

43:21

right, so you mentioned

43:23

the idea of people

43:26

in the Trump administration

43:28

going line by

43:31

line through grants

43:33

and programs that

43:36

are essentially grants

43:38

to left-wing ideological

43:40

organizations. However, take the biggest

43:43

thing the Trump administration has put

43:45

on the chopping block, right, it's

43:47

been USAID, which absolutely contains

43:50

many programs that fit the description

43:52

that you've offered. It also contains

43:54

a lot of other programs, right?

43:57

I think it's fairly hard to

43:59

argue that... PEPFAR, the program

44:01

that tries to ameliorate AIDS and

44:03

HIV in Africa, should be seen

44:06

primarily as just funding for left-wing

44:08

groups, or for that matter a

44:11

kind of DEAI program. And so

44:13

the approach the Trump administration has

44:15

taken there has been less a

44:17

kind of line-by-line we're eliminating specific

44:20

programs and more, a much broader...

44:22

you know, we consider this whole

44:25

effort sort of ideologically rotten and

44:27

therefore we are cutting programs generally.

44:29

There's a similar question with the

44:32

Department of Education where the Department

44:34

of Education contains within it

44:36

grants and programs that absolutely

44:38

fit the description of what you're

44:41

criticizing. It also does a lot of other

44:43

stuff, right? Yeah. So to what extent

44:45

is it makes sense and

44:47

is it defensible for the

44:49

Trump administration to be essentially...

44:51

shuddering departments or collapsing departments

44:54

in an effort to get

44:56

at DEAI? Yeah, let me take

44:58

the example of Department of

45:00

Education. I know it much

45:02

better than I do USAID

45:04

and PEPFAR and AIDS in

45:06

Africa, which is not in

45:08

my area of expertise at

45:11

all. So what's happening at

45:13

the Department of Education, rather, is

45:15

a USAID-ID-style dismantling? But what I

45:17

would recommend in particular for that

45:20

institution is to bracket out those

45:22

programs that are worthwhile, that are

45:24

politically popular, that are going to

45:27

be very difficult to cut even

45:29

if you wanted to do so.

45:32

And so with Department of Education,

45:34

I look at it as three

45:36

buckets. You have, you know, $120

45:39

billion a year more or less

45:41

of federal financial aid for colleges

45:43

and universities, student loans, student

45:46

grants, etc. I think that

45:48

number should be reduced over time.

45:50

I think that the assets, the

45:52

kind of loan asset portfolio should

45:55

be spun off and privatized, but

45:57

in the immediate blitz, I think.

45:59

you have to say the student

46:02

loan programs will not change, it'll

46:04

be spun off into its own

46:06

independent agency, and then you can

46:08

implement the particular reforms, reductions, privatization

46:11

down the line. The second area

46:13

that I think you have to

46:15

continue or kind of safeguard is

46:18

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

46:20

special ed programs. These are very

46:22

politically popular. And you say, hey,

46:24

we're not, we're going to actually

46:26

keep this the same or slightly

46:29

increase it. And we're going to

46:31

block granted to the states so

46:33

that it can be, you know,

46:35

better utilized for local conditions and

46:37

the people who actually run the

46:40

education systems. The third bucket,

46:42

which is numerically smaller than

46:44

K-12 aid and federal financial

46:46

aid. is everything else that

46:48

the department does. The ideological

46:50

programs, the grants for, you

46:52

know, critical race theory and

46:54

gender ideology and liberatory pedagogy,

46:56

whatever you may have, all

46:59

of that needs to just be

47:01

burned to the ground. I mean, really

47:03

truly, it needs to be gutted and

47:05

dismantled. And so what you have at

47:07

the end is something that is simpler,

47:09

that is reduced to the essential components.

47:12

and that that can be parceled out

47:14

and decentralized so that the power is

47:16

not within the kind of very very

47:18

far left leaning administration of the Department

47:21

of Education, but it's simply granted out

47:23

to the state so that Governor DeSantis

47:25

can take that money and do do

47:27

something better than, you know, for example,

47:29

Governor Newsome. Okay, here's what that to

47:32

me seems defensible. All right, good. So

47:34

here's what I don't understand about

47:36

this plan. The Trump administration is

47:38

in charge of the Department of

47:40

Education. The administrators of the Department

47:42

of Education are appointed by the

47:44

Trump administration. Obviously, the Trump administration

47:47

wants to claim increased authority to

47:49

hire and fire and so on,

47:51

but we'll take that as a

47:53

given for the perspective of this

47:55

conversation, right? Why do you need

47:57

to... I mean, first of all, it's not even

47:59

clear... that you can legally abolish the

48:01

Department of Education without congressional action,

48:04

right? But why would you even

48:06

want to? Why wouldn't you just

48:08

say, we're going to have a

48:10

Department of Education, it's going to

48:12

do the things that you yourself

48:14

have described as the biggest financial

48:16

portion of what it does, right,

48:18

from special ed, student loans, and

48:20

so on? We're going to continue

48:22

to do educational research of

48:25

various kinds, longitudinal research.

48:27

I personally know. more than a

48:29

handful of center-right wanks, we're

48:31

very happy to do educational

48:33

research that is not woke

48:35

or progressive or ideological, right?

48:37

And maybe we're just going to

48:39

purge the ideological programs that

48:41

you describe, or, you know, maybe

48:44

we're going to sort of substitute

48:46

some other set of right-leading programs.

48:49

Like, why wouldn't you want to

48:51

just run the actual bureaucracy especially

48:53

since? Yes. If you block grant

48:55

things to the states, some things

48:57

will go to Ron DeSantis in

48:59

Florida and to, you know, sort

49:02

of conservative leaning state governments. But

49:04

it's not like the educational bureaucracy

49:06

in the states is super right

49:08

wing. And obviously there are plenty

49:10

of straightforward blue states where block granting

49:13

to the states leads to policies that

49:15

you, Chris Ferrufo, would never support in

49:17

a million years, right? So what is

49:20

the gain to conservatism of

49:22

doing away with this? major tool

49:24

for federal influence over education policy.

49:26

Yeah, I mean, look, the gain

49:28

or the rather the problem and

49:30

the potential gain is this. The

49:32

strategy you're outlining is a strategy

49:35

that we've already been doing. I've

49:37

done reporting on some of the

49:39

grantees, NGOs, and other institutions that

49:41

are almost entirely or entirely funded

49:43

by the Department of Education. They're

49:45

kind of monolithic left wing. And

49:47

as I've done this reporting and

49:49

brought it to public attention, contracts

49:51

have been cut for dozens of

49:54

these NGOs, which would effectively cripple

49:56

them moving forward, and the total

49:58

amount of funding for these programs

50:00

that has been cut by the Doge

50:02

team at Department of Education is now

50:04

more than a billion dollars. And so

50:07

yes, what you're saying is, you know,

50:09

to kind of, I'm saying you could

50:11

declare, to clear victory and you still

50:13

have the Department of Education doing

50:15

the popular things it does. We all

50:17

know that, you know, most education is

50:19

funded at the local level in the

50:22

US, so you're not actually talking about

50:24

a huge part. Go ahead. Here's the

50:26

problem though. It's very easy to cut.

50:28

external contracts, external

50:31

funding, etc. It's very

50:33

difficult to take an institution

50:35

and the kind of permanent

50:37

bureaucracy of that institution and

50:40

to change its culture. I

50:42

think that at USAID from

50:44

what I've read, but I

50:46

know for a fact at

50:48

Department of Education, you know,

50:50

replacing the management, you know, at

50:53

the building, does not... really

50:55

replaced the broader culture and a cabinet

50:57

secretary in the first Trump administration told

50:59

me an interesting story. This person said

51:01

to me, you know, had a meeting

51:03

with some of the career staff, the

51:06

permanent staff in this agency, wasn't

51:08

Department of Ed. And the career staff

51:10

was not complying with what this person

51:12

was trying to do, was running circles

51:14

around him, couldn't get anything done, and

51:16

eventually said, just tell me what the

51:18

deal is. Like, just level with me,

51:20

what's the deal? And the career staff said,

51:22

we know that we're going to be here. in

51:24

four years or eight years or 12 years or

51:26

16 years, and we know that you're going to

51:29

be gone in two years or six years,

51:31

whatever it might be. And so you have

51:33

a system that is unaccountable,

51:35

and when the culture of that system

51:37

and the vast bulk of the

51:39

bureaucracy of that system is

51:41

captured, you get the status

51:43

quo from the first Trump

51:46

administration, which was Department of

51:48

Education was radically left-wing, funding

51:50

only radical left-wing causes. And

51:52

I just think that there

51:54

has to be a kind of binary

51:56

choice, agency by agency. Can

51:58

this agency be? reformed or

52:00

can this agency only be abolished

52:03

or dismantled to the maximum

52:05

extent permissible by law? I think

52:07

Department of Education is in the

52:10

latter camp. FBI, I think FBI

52:12

could be maybe reformed, other agencies

52:15

can be perhaps reformed, but Department

52:17

of Education in my view is

52:19

beyond reform and so you have

52:22

to spin off liquidate, terminate, and

52:24

abolish to the furthest extent you

52:26

can by law while maintaining... your

52:29

political viability and your statutory compliance

52:31

right for those things that are

52:33

essential that are required by law

52:36

and that are politically popular you

52:38

always want to maintain the popularity

52:40

but can you but this it

52:43

just seems weird to me first

52:45

of all why put it this

52:48

way Chris if you can't find

52:50

enough right leaning or centrist

52:52

people to staff a strip down

52:54

and slimmer department of education to affect

52:56

american education in the way you want

52:58

how are you ever gonna find enough

53:00

personnel to do it at the state

53:03

level like i mean a big reason

53:05

that american education writ large is left

53:07

leaning is that many many people who

53:09

go into it are left leaning you

53:11

and i know this very well you

53:13

know some of my best friends are

53:15

you know left leaning graduates of america's

53:17

many fine educational schools and it just

53:19

seems like it's sort of preemptive despair

53:22

on the part of conservatives to say,

53:24

well we have political control over

53:26

this agency that has a certain

53:28

kind of influence over American education and

53:30

we're just going to give it up

53:33

because we can't find enough people, like

53:35

you're assuming a capacity to fire people,

53:37

right? Yes. But you don't assume any

53:39

capacity to hire new people? Well, this

53:42

gets to another point, and maybe

53:44

I can answer your question more

53:46

effectively from the other side. You're

53:48

asking essentially, well, why can't you

53:50

just replace the bad folks with

53:52

the good folks? Well, just to

53:54

be clear, you are advocating eliminating

53:56

all of the people who you think

53:59

are sort of... irredeemably left

54:01

wing right but I think that the

54:03

answer they will not have jobs anymore

54:05

the unfortunate answer yes yes I mean

54:07

they're redeemable as people but they don't

54:10

aren't entitled to lifetime federal employment with

54:12

no accountability but absolutely I'm not I'm

54:14

not I'm not I'm not making a

54:16

moral case for their right to a

54:18

job I'm saying but you're arguing we

54:21

can we can we can yes you're

54:23

saying we can fire them Yeah, I believe

54:25

that to be true as part

54:27

of an overall reorganization. Right. But

54:29

I think the other problem that

54:31

you're identifying is one that I

54:33

take seriously, and the unfortunate answer

54:35

is no. Conservatives cannot fully

54:38

staff the Department of Education.

54:40

Conservatives cannot. fully compete for

54:42

education grants, for university level

54:44

research programs. No, conservatives can't

54:46

do any of those things. And

54:48

so we have to figure out

54:50

what can we do, where can

54:53

we have leverage, where can we

54:55

take over or recapture an institution,

54:58

and if we can't do those

55:00

things, which things we have to

55:02

shut down. Shutting things down is

55:05

actually a very effective strategy

55:07

in this regard. But you're

55:09

not actually shutting down the schools

55:12

themselves, right? Americans are going to

55:14

continue to want to send their

55:16

kids to colleges and universities. I

55:19

agree with you that if you

55:21

asked me tomorrow to staff all

55:23

of America's colleges and universities with

55:26

people whose politics are in the then

55:28

diagram between the two of us, I

55:30

couldn't do it. That's right. But, you

55:32

know, there's no... solution where conservatives

55:34

are like, oh, we don't have enough

55:36

academics, I guess we're going to close

55:39

down the American university system, and if

55:41

that were our policy, it would be

55:43

extremely unpopular, right? Well, no, I would

55:45

take issue for two reasons. One is

55:48

that we can do that at the

55:50

state level. I mean, Governor DeSantis has

55:52

done it in Florida, governors in Ohio

55:55

and Arizona and Tennessee have opened up

55:57

conservative research institutions within their flagship state

55:59

university. and then other affiliated state

56:01

universities. Yes, they have set up

56:03

small, I agree, they have set

56:05

up small institutes and that is

56:07

a great start. I think it's

56:09

very important. It opens up the

56:11

possibility for growth, even in theory

56:13

geometric growth in the future. But

56:15

I actually think that your other

56:17

point is not quite right. And

56:20

I actually think that the corrective

56:22

that is required is not to

56:24

say, oh, we're going to shut

56:26

down all the universities. Yeah, that's

56:28

not possible. But I think with.

56:30

by spinning off, privatizing, and then

56:33

reforming the student loan programs,

56:35

I think that you could, by a degree

56:38

or two degrees of separation, put

56:40

the university sector as a

56:42

whole into a significant recession.

56:44

And I think that would

56:47

be a very salutary thing.

56:49

I think that putting the

56:51

universities into contraction, into a

56:53

recession, into a declining budgets,

56:56

into a greater competitive market

56:58

pressure, would discipline them in

57:00

a way that you could

57:02

not get through administrative oversight

57:05

with 150 extra department of

57:07

ed bureaucrats. And a medium-term

57:09

goal, maybe longer-term goal of mine,

57:12

is to figure out how to

57:14

adjust the formula of finances from

57:16

the federal government to the universities

57:19

in a way that puts them

57:21

in kind of an existential

57:23

terror to say, uh-oh, unless we

57:25

change what we're doing, we're not

57:27

gonna be able to meet our

57:29

budget for the year, we're gonna

57:32

have to, you know, swine certain

57:34

things down, and then make the

57:36

universities make those hard decisions. So let's

57:38

end there. What is it in fact

57:40

that you want them to do? besides

57:42

get rid of DEAI, right? You're

57:45

on the board of the

57:47

new College of Florida, which

57:49

Rhonda-Santis took over, so you're

57:52

involved in curricular debates, right?

57:54

Like, what is the alternative

57:56

curriculum? Part of the

57:58

appeal, I think... of everything associated

58:01

with DEAI was that it

58:03

offered itself up to left-of-center

58:05

people as a narrative about

58:07

America, you know, a very critical narrative

58:09

obviously, a narrative that said America

58:12

was unjust, but a powerful one

58:14

for, you know, a 21st century

58:17

diverse society and so on. Is

58:19

there a conservative version of that?

58:21

Like what affirmative things would you

58:24

want to see elite or non-elite

58:26

schools doing when it comes to... teaching

58:28

about American history, teaching about

58:31

America right now. Yeah, I think that's

58:33

what we're cobbling together at New

58:35

College of Florida. I think it's

58:37

also what some of the reforms

58:39

in Florida have been designed to

58:41

do in the other state universities.

58:43

I mean, look, some students, our

58:45

universities are no longer liberal arts

58:48

universities. There's these kind of mega

58:50

complexes that have scientific arms, research

58:52

arms, financial arms, but if we're

58:54

talking about just the humanities. I

58:56

think we need a total overturning

58:58

of the ideology of the humanities

59:00

and a return to the classical

59:03

understanding of the humanities.

59:05

Of course, adapted for modern

59:07

conditions, popularized for those large

59:09

state universities, but you can

59:11

have a classical liberal arts

59:13

curriculum that takes the ideology

59:15

out and what we're doing

59:17

at new colleges, reintroducing the

59:20

eternal human questions. So in

59:22

our new college mission statement,

59:24

which we revised. was essentially

59:26

it's a community of scholars

59:28

and learners that have a

59:30

shared commitment to a culture

59:32

of civil debate and inquiry

59:34

leading towards the true, the good, and

59:36

the beautiful and continuing the great

59:39

tradition of the Western civilization that has

59:41

provided us with these opportunities. And so

59:43

that is kind of big overarching message.

59:46

And then on the secondary level, you

59:48

get rid of... About America, though, right?

59:50

So I'm a, you know, I'm a

59:52

fan of classical education. I think the

59:55

rise of the classical school movement in

59:57

America is one of the healthiest signs.

59:59

in our culture. At the same time, when

1:00:01

I look at those programs, I'm not talking

1:00:04

about new college in particular, right, but they

1:00:06

tend to be, they're very great books heavy,

1:00:08

they're really good at sort of figuring out,

1:00:10

you know, the right balance of the ancient

1:00:12

Greeks and the medievals and the Renaissance and

1:00:14

so on. But so much of the debate around

1:00:17

critical race theory and DEAI and everything

1:00:19

else is about the story we tell

1:00:21

about America. Yes. But there is a

1:00:23

kind of conservative patriotic, patriotic education that

1:00:26

you and I've both encounteredoundered. that has

1:00:28

a certain kind of sterility to it,

1:00:30

right? It's like, you know, the founders

1:00:33

are awesome and Lincoln perfects it and

1:00:35

then you needed Martin Luther King to

1:00:37

finish things off, but that's right, but

1:00:39

that's like the story we're telling, right?

1:00:42

And I feel like America is

1:00:44

a big, you know, it's a

1:00:46

big complicated messy society and I

1:00:48

feel like certain versions of that

1:00:50

kind of conservative patriotic education, they

1:00:52

don't feel sort of as deep

1:00:54

and rich as America deserves. So

1:00:56

a macro question is... Can

1:00:58

conservatism become less superficial and then

1:01:00

and then the particular thing is like

1:01:03

you know just to pick up point

1:01:05

some of your critics tend to make

1:01:07

right like if you are Setting out

1:01:10

to sort of eliminate CRT critical race

1:01:12

theory as sort of an ideological

1:01:14

influence on education. What does that

1:01:17

mean for? the professor at New

1:01:19

College who wants to assign Tanahasie

1:01:21

Coates, right, who wants to assign

1:01:24

sort of figures who are associated

1:01:26

with radicalism and wokeness as part

1:01:28

of the American story. What do

1:01:31

conservatives think about radicalism and

1:01:33

how can conservatives figure

1:01:35

out how to teach about radicalism?

1:01:37

Yeah, we actually did this at

1:01:40

New College. We had the satirist

1:01:42

Andrew Doyle who was the artist

1:01:44

behind the... Tidiana McGrath, satire handle

1:01:46

on Twitter. And so he taught

1:01:49

a course this past winter, looking

1:01:51

at exactly what we're talking about,

1:01:53

the war surrounding woke ideology.

1:01:56

And his approach, I think,

1:01:58

was the right approach. He

1:02:00

paired Tanahizi coats with my book.

1:02:02

He paired Ebrum Kendi with Eric

1:02:04

Kaufman, the conservative social scientist. And

1:02:07

so what they did was they

1:02:09

had a kind of grappling with

1:02:11

this phenomenon of the last 10

1:02:14

years and providing the best

1:02:16

arguments from both of the

1:02:18

major sides or traditions and

1:02:20

then trying to relate them

1:02:22

to these enduring human questions.

1:02:24

Does this get us closer to justice?

1:02:27

Does this interpretation of American history, does

1:02:29

it get us closer to the truth?

1:02:31

And these great questions, where you're not

1:02:34

just having a kind of narrow ideological

1:02:36

debate, but you're trying to guide people

1:02:38

to the right answer. And so I

1:02:40

think that is a really good way

1:02:43

to do it, if you wanted to

1:02:45

answer that particular question. Your other

1:02:47

critique is important. Look, I

1:02:50

mean, the patriotic education from

1:02:52

a lot of these conservative

1:02:54

organizations is sterile, one-dimensional, jingoistic.

1:02:56

You need to have something

1:02:59

better. Conservatives need a more

1:03:01

arresting, a more sophisticated, a

1:03:03

more complex story that we

1:03:06

tell about the country that

1:03:08

still captures the essence of

1:03:10

the goodness of this country.

1:03:12

the genius of this country, the

1:03:15

talent and virtue of the people

1:03:17

of this country. And I think

1:03:19

that that is a story that

1:03:22

is absolutely possible to be told.

1:03:24

And then administratively, you can reorganize

1:03:26

the institutions around that fundamental narrative.

1:03:28

Gender studies is out, DEI is

1:03:31

out, a more complex history is

1:03:33

in. Andrew Oil's course on the

1:03:35

War of Woke is in, and

1:03:37

then you go forward from there.

1:03:40

And so in that sense, I

1:03:42

think that you have to have a strong

1:03:44

alternative to present. I

1:03:46

think it's not there yet. We

1:03:49

haven't done so in a

1:03:51

way as big as sophisticated, as

1:03:53

glossy as our opponents, but I

1:03:55

think that it can be done

1:03:57

and it will be done in

1:03:59

the future. All right, last

1:04:01

question. You're in charge of

1:04:03

a curriculum, let's say. You have

1:04:05

to include one author who you

1:04:07

think students can read and benefit

1:04:10

from reading who you are opposed

1:04:12

to. Who do you pick? Oh,

1:04:14

I think that without a doubt,

1:04:16

Herbert Marcuse, the New Left philosopher,

1:04:19

who was the leading philosophical intellectual

1:04:21

light of the New Left in

1:04:23

the late 60s, early 70s. I

1:04:25

think you have to read Marcuse.

1:04:28

for catastrophic errors and judgment, you

1:04:30

know, for a kind of repulsive,

1:04:32

you know, politics in outcome, there

1:04:35

are certain insights that can be

1:04:37

salvaged from his work. And it's

1:04:39

certainly the most brilliant and rich

1:04:41

defense of left-wing ideologies that have

1:04:44

been on the rise in

1:04:46

the last half century. And

1:04:48

I think that's a very

1:04:50

valuable work that could be

1:04:52

taken seriously. And I've benefited

1:04:54

from reading Marcusa. All right,

1:04:56

we're going to leave you

1:04:58

planning the Herbert Marcuzza seminar

1:05:00

at New College in Florida.

1:05:02

Chris Rufo, thanks so much for

1:05:04

joining me. Thank you. And thank

1:05:06

you, listeners. As I said at

1:05:08

the outset, we're going to take

1:05:11

a brief break before we officially

1:05:13

launch the new interview show.

1:05:15

But in the meantime, we'll

1:05:17

still be sharing interesting conversations

1:05:19

from my colleagues. So please

1:05:21

keep your eye on this

1:05:23

feed. and will be back

1:05:25

soon, I promise, with the

1:05:27

new show itself. Until then,

1:05:29

thanks again for listening. This

1:05:31

episode was produced by

1:05:33

Sophia Alvarez-Boid, Elisa Gutierrez,

1:05:35

and Andrea Battanzos. It

1:05:37

was edited by Jordana

1:05:40

Hokman. Our fact-check team

1:05:42

is Kate Sinclair, Mary

1:05:44

Marge Locker, and Michelle

1:05:46

Harris. Original music by

1:05:48

Isaac Jones, Etheme Shapiro,

1:05:50

Carol Saboro, and Pat

1:05:52

McCusker. Mixing by Pat

1:05:54

McCusker. Audience strategy by

1:05:56

Shannon Busta and Christina

1:05:58

Samueluski. executive producer

1:06:01

is Annie Rose Strasser.