They claim to oppose discrimination in the name of diversity, but they have criticized the White House for using administrative power to eliminate it in practice.
They want you to win a war but refuse to conduct it, and allows themselves to be judgemental on top of that while never having managed to score a single point against the woke bulldozer. Shameful behavior. Keep doing the good work.
There is and always has and will be a reluctance to sacrifice one's career and ability to support themselves and especially family, by speaking out against power. That's why we have tremendous respect for those who do make that sacrifice or take that risk.
There is a reason heroic courage to act is so rare. The founders rightly, bravely risked βTheir lives, fortunes and sacred honorβ - and that level of commitment is still needed in this day and age, when the Republic is threatened.
They did not make that sacrifice for us to respect them. They made that sacrifice because they have integrity. People in positions of authority need to walk the walk and if you agree with their beliefs you need to walk with them. We do not need martyrs.
We need leaders. He was a leader. I'm sorry he had no followers.
DEI was obviously ethically flawed from the start. And also obviously illegal and unconstitutional. When the Obama Adminstration started forcing this stuff on the academics they should have opposed it with the same vigor that they criticize Trump. They didnβt. There should have many acts of civil disobedience. There werenβt. They are just βmorally flexibleβ cowards.
Well, it would've been nice if anyone outside of RW media had bothered to report any of the stuff that the Obama admin was forcing down throats, at the time.
Like, say, Obama's 2016 "Dear Colleague Letter" that held universities hostage to "trans rights" demands to allow men into Women's restrooms, changing rooms, crisis counseling, sports, dorm roommate pools, EVERYWHEREβeffectively putting a bullet right into the head of Title IX.
There are a LOT more of us who first learned about that letter in 2018, ,or 2021, or even 2025, than in 2016 when it was actually issued. And countless more who STILL don't know about it.
It would also have been nice if there had been outrage about the Obama Administration attacking community colleges everywhere over BS. Also only in the right wing media. But we know the media arenβt on our side, donβt we.
Obama started the administrative war with his βDear Colleagueβ letters, and President Trump has returned fire with his recent letter to Harvard telling that corrupt and racist university that it is not eligible for future federal funding. Harvard may be able to keep its existing grants (courtesy of corrupt and racist judges) but cannot force the government to grant future funding. Harvard has no legal standing to contest grants it didnβt receive. Administrative procedures are the modern equivalent of warfare.
βThe real test of a manβs principles is not whether he holds them in the abstract, but whether he is able to advance or maintain them in reality.β
Where are the legal actions on all of this? I keep reading how these policies (e.g. race-based admissions, forced diversity statements) violate civil rights law, yet the behaviors continue and are embedded in the DNA of elite institutions. It is hard for individuals to speak out if legal protections are not behind them.
historically, we've had a President send the Army to enforce desegregation at schools.
should we expect that academies now under threat of losing grant money/tax-free status will use their extensive resources to grind the Trump DoJ (and Education Dept?) into fighting this battle legal case by legal case (much as Prog Libs are striving for regards deportation initiatives). there was a quick reference to needed legislation in the piece, but no mention of what that would look like and mean. the 64β civil rights act is current law. is that not a sufficient legal βvehicleβ to effect reversal of DEI?
I suspect that waiting for Univ Deans to lead the way is futile. I don't know of a way to hold anyone individually criminally negligible at the schools, (was that done in the 60βs?)
if, to paraphrase the author; βadministrative action is what you fight administrators withβ who owns that process, and does it have adequate levers to be pulled?
Thank you for your reply. I'm not an attorney, so I don't understand the legal nuances involved or how to respond to some of the questions you raise. In all the center-right podcasts or publications I subscribe to, it's universally stated that many of the DEI policies are in violation of civil rights laws. I support WILL--Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty--and they are taking the fight through the courts and finding much success. Why then aren't legal precedents being established? Nonetheless, I hope Chris gives us more guidance on how best to proceed.
You are correct but in fairness look what happened to Jordan Peterson at U Toronto, he exhibited all the courage you admire and was railroaded out of his university and eventually lost his license to practice psychotherapy. What happened to him was not lost on other administrators
I followed classic liberals/libertarians like Tabbarok and Richard Epstein for years. I think they have a distaste for hard knuckle politics. They think itβs unseemly, below them, and think DEI can be removed by small, targeted actions. I no longer believe that and find it ironic that academics, so deep in incentive structures and heuristics, canβt see the current structures are so pervasive and effective, that no tinkering around the edges, no carefully tailored, targeted, proportional response will have a big enough effect in a fast enough time to get the job done. Epstein in particular goes on about harm done in scientific research by taking away Harvard grants, especially to people who arenβt involved in DEI. They are aware, like tariffs, that they can be a bargaining position, but I donβt think they like deal making either. It reminds me of how idealistic people see treaties. In geopolitics, treaties last until conditions change. An idealist seems to think they are long lasting, but if you look at history, thatβs rarely the case. You find gold, the native Americans have little power to stop you, the treaty goes by the wayside. Itβs always been that way, regardless of the bad taste it leaves in your mouth.
I believe that it will take serious actions, potentially the Supreme Court (although I don't have much faith in the morality of the current court) to purge our country of DEI.
Many of the actions of DEI officers, officials, organizations or whatever are direct violations of civil rights laws, but I haven't seen any prosecuted that way. The Harvard versus Asians lawsuit went in the right direction but didn't seem to have nearly as much effect nationwide as I had hoped.
The big thing about the "centre-right" in Western politics is that it is not really Right at all....centre or otherwise. For over half a century, that centre-right has really been all about saying: "OK we'll go Left; get with the Progressive vibe and all but can we just go a bit slower.....Please?"
Flier and Tabarrok are engaged in a variation of Adolph Eichmann's defense, "I only followed orders.". Only here, the orders come not from the Fuhrer but from the miasma composed of the Academic Establishment, the leftist media, corrupt judges, the Democrat Party and various communistic acolytes. It is no less despicable and the only way for them and their ilk to restore their reputations and respect is, as Chris Rufo says, to take concrete action against the miasma, not just talk about it. That would take guts, a commodity in short supply among this crowd.
Identity politics and DEI come from the playbook of the Marxists. They look for grievances between people, to stoke anger. Karl Marx saw that the poor farmers were oppressed and eager to rally against the rich. They rose up, Communism resulted. They tried to deploy that plan here but it did not work. Christianity and capitalism kept our poor people hopeful and uninterested in revolution, so the Marxists needed something else. They honed in on race and gender as wedge issues to stoke the anger needed for revolution. Identity politics became the Marxist vehicle in America.
The game plan was simple "call people racist, grab their power, then use it to change the entire system." Go along with the plan or you will be fired. This is what has happened to the medical system. The white Christian medical staff were too complacent about being replaced by DEI (Marxists) from somewhere else. Under weak leadership, like that of these men, the Marxists have grabbed hold of the institutions and are turning them into something else. We are becoming a Communist-like country and the quality of life is quickly declining for the middle class. This process starts with weak leaders, who are unprepared to resist the Marxist playbook.
Please use the word Marxism because... those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
DEI/affirmative action is a death sentence to white civilization and I firmly believe that is the intention of DEI and AA. The Civil Rights Act of '64 was the beginning of the end. Disenfranchising whites to pander to a race that's known throughout history to be very limited in mental ability and morals is a deliberate, obvious attempt to destroy whites and the civilization we've developed over the centuries. It's communism.
There is nothing new about DEI; it's been around for decades under the name "Affirmative Action". And no, it's not going away just because Trump says so; your only reliable resource in this is yourself. How can you actively do something about Woke organizations and their "DEI"? You can STOP WORKING FOR THEM: "Workplaces to avoid if you are white, male, or straight": https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/workplaces-to-avoid-if-you-are-white
Not to get picky, but yes DEI is a natural progression of Affirmative Action, but the progression started when "men" allowed anti-human (anti-woman, anti-man) feminism to emerge. It unnaturally shamed women and men from displaying their inherent strengths. It capitalized on men's natural instincts to protect and be less confrontational with women, allowing this anti-human, pro-androgen movement to grow. I would say it started very early in the 20th century and has now grown into a cancer on all of mankind. Now we men and women are shamed into acting androgynous, and surprise, we have negative birth rates and the collapse of western civilization. π€·ββοΈ
DEI is flat out racism and has been around since before Biblical times. It just had different names over the ages. And now is more psychologically disguised because many of the actions are violations of civil rights laws.
Alex is a libertarian economist. So is Tyler Cowen, his academic partner. Libertarians try to wrap everything into a market-based paradigm. So... by Alex's thinking, if there's a market for colleges that favor DEI, those colleges should exist. And if there's a market for those that don't, we'll get colleges that don't.
This is incredibly naive, and speaks to just how cloistered from reality George Mason professors really are. But Alex and Tyler and Don Boudreaux and Dan Klein are all inconvincible, because The Market has become their God. It took me 10 years and lots of philosophical study to give up my own libertarianism -- ideology is very seductive.
One of the things that pushed me over the edge is a quote from Saint John Paul II: "The market was made for man, not man for the market."
βThis requires more than the right ideas; it requires guts. The real test of a manβs principles is not whether he holds them in the abstract, but whether he is able to advance or maintain them in reality.β
Absolutely. Example Jordan Peterson, who left his teaching position in Canada because the truth is more important than going along to get along. Spines are hard to find in teaching. (I was once one.) Fear is a merciless task master. And every dean and administrator in academia knows it. They hold the keys to every career. Speak out, lose everything. Unless, you are one of the self possessed ones who just donβt care about any of it and just want the truth.
They want you to win a war but refuse to conduct it, and allows themselves to be judgemental on top of that while never having managed to score a single point against the woke bulldozer. Shameful behavior. Keep doing the good work.
It was the same during COVID. All of these Orange Line Libertarians sided with their "class" over their principals when the chips were down.
There is and always has and will be a reluctance to sacrifice one's career and ability to support themselves and especially family, by speaking out against power. That's why we have tremendous respect for those who do make that sacrifice or take that risk.
There is a reason heroic courage to act is so rare. The founders rightly, bravely risked βTheir lives, fortunes and sacred honorβ - and that level of commitment is still needed in this day and age, when the Republic is threatened.
Yes!
They did not make that sacrifice for us to respect them. They made that sacrifice because they have integrity. People in positions of authority need to walk the walk and if you agree with their beliefs you need to walk with them. We do not need martyrs.
We need leaders. He was a leader. I'm sorry he had no followers.
DEI was obviously ethically flawed from the start. And also obviously illegal and unconstitutional. When the Obama Adminstration started forcing this stuff on the academics they should have opposed it with the same vigor that they criticize Trump. They didnβt. There should have many acts of civil disobedience. There werenβt. They are just βmorally flexibleβ cowards.
Well, it would've been nice if anyone outside of RW media had bothered to report any of the stuff that the Obama admin was forcing down throats, at the time.
Like, say, Obama's 2016 "Dear Colleague Letter" that held universities hostage to "trans rights" demands to allow men into Women's restrooms, changing rooms, crisis counseling, sports, dorm roommate pools, EVERYWHEREβeffectively putting a bullet right into the head of Title IX.
There are a LOT more of us who first learned about that letter in 2018, ,or 2021, or even 2025, than in 2016 when it was actually issued. And countless more who STILL don't know about it.
It would also have been nice if there had been outrage about the Obama Administration attacking community colleges everywhere over BS. Also only in the right wing media. But we know the media arenβt on our side, donβt we.
Report to whom? To the cowards who did nothing day in and day out? And everybody knew!
Obama started the administrative war with his βDear Colleagueβ letters, and President Trump has returned fire with his recent letter to Harvard telling that corrupt and racist university that it is not eligible for future federal funding. Harvard may be able to keep its existing grants (courtesy of corrupt and racist judges) but cannot force the government to grant future funding. Harvard has no legal standing to contest grants it didnβt receive. Administrative procedures are the modern equivalent of warfare.
And thatβs why nobody respects them anymore.
βThe real test of a manβs principles is not whether he holds them in the abstract, but whether he is able to advance or maintain them in reality.β
True words
who is that statement accredited to?
Itβs in the article
Where are the legal actions on all of this? I keep reading how these policies (e.g. race-based admissions, forced diversity statements) violate civil rights law, yet the behaviors continue and are embedded in the DNA of elite institutions. It is hard for individuals to speak out if legal protections are not behind them.
Deanβ¦I was wondering the same thing?
historically, we've had a President send the Army to enforce desegregation at schools.
should we expect that academies now under threat of losing grant money/tax-free status will use their extensive resources to grind the Trump DoJ (and Education Dept?) into fighting this battle legal case by legal case (much as Prog Libs are striving for regards deportation initiatives). there was a quick reference to needed legislation in the piece, but no mention of what that would look like and mean. the 64β civil rights act is current law. is that not a sufficient legal βvehicleβ to effect reversal of DEI?
I suspect that waiting for Univ Deans to lead the way is futile. I don't know of a way to hold anyone individually criminally negligible at the schools, (was that done in the 60βs?)
if, to paraphrase the author; βadministrative action is what you fight administrators withβ who owns that process, and does it have adequate levers to be pulled?
Mr Rufo, please come back and fill in the blanks.
Thank you for your reply. I'm not an attorney, so I don't understand the legal nuances involved or how to respond to some of the questions you raise. In all the center-right podcasts or publications I subscribe to, it's universally stated that many of the DEI policies are in violation of civil rights laws. I support WILL--Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty--and they are taking the fight through the courts and finding much success. Why then aren't legal precedents being established? Nonetheless, I hope Chris gives us more guidance on how best to proceed.
You are correct but in fairness look what happened to Jordan Peterson at U Toronto, he exhibited all the courage you admire and was railroaded out of his university and eventually lost his license to practice psychotherapy. What happened to him was not lost on other administrators
That's why they did it to him for the chilling effect on everyone else. Like the Nazi shooting one Jew falling out of line to get the mob to comply.
Yes, same tactic used more recently by the CCP in Hong Kong.
Or in the UK against people speaking out on Social Media.
βζιΈ‘εη΄β (shΔ jΔ« jΗng hΓ³u), which literally means βkill the chicken to warn the monkey.β
Fortunately the public did and do appreciate Peterson greatly, with bestselling books and sold-out lecture tours.
No thanks to academia of course.
I followed classic liberals/libertarians like Tabbarok and Richard Epstein for years. I think they have a distaste for hard knuckle politics. They think itβs unseemly, below them, and think DEI can be removed by small, targeted actions. I no longer believe that and find it ironic that academics, so deep in incentive structures and heuristics, canβt see the current structures are so pervasive and effective, that no tinkering around the edges, no carefully tailored, targeted, proportional response will have a big enough effect in a fast enough time to get the job done. Epstein in particular goes on about harm done in scientific research by taking away Harvard grants, especially to people who arenβt involved in DEI. They are aware, like tariffs, that they can be a bargaining position, but I donβt think they like deal making either. It reminds me of how idealistic people see treaties. In geopolitics, treaties last until conditions change. An idealist seems to think they are long lasting, but if you look at history, thatβs rarely the case. You find gold, the native Americans have little power to stop you, the treaty goes by the wayside. Itβs always been that way, regardless of the bad taste it leaves in your mouth.
I believe that it will take serious actions, potentially the Supreme Court (although I don't have much faith in the morality of the current court) to purge our country of DEI.
Many of the actions of DEI officers, officials, organizations or whatever are direct violations of civil rights laws, but I haven't seen any prosecuted that way. The Harvard versus Asians lawsuit went in the right direction but didn't seem to have nearly as much effect nationwide as I had hoped.
Keep at it Chris - you are a brave soul and are moving the needle.
The big thing about the "centre-right" in Western politics is that it is not really Right at all....centre or otherwise. For over half a century, that centre-right has really been all about saying: "OK we'll go Left; get with the Progressive vibe and all but can we just go a bit slower.....Please?"
Flier and Tabarrok are engaged in a variation of Adolph Eichmann's defense, "I only followed orders.". Only here, the orders come not from the Fuhrer but from the miasma composed of the Academic Establishment, the leftist media, corrupt judges, the Democrat Party and various communistic acolytes. It is no less despicable and the only way for them and their ilk to restore their reputations and respect is, as Chris Rufo says, to take concrete action against the miasma, not just talk about it. That would take guts, a commodity in short supply among this crowd.
Identity politics and DEI come from the playbook of the Marxists. They look for grievances between people, to stoke anger. Karl Marx saw that the poor farmers were oppressed and eager to rally against the rich. They rose up, Communism resulted. They tried to deploy that plan here but it did not work. Christianity and capitalism kept our poor people hopeful and uninterested in revolution, so the Marxists needed something else. They honed in on race and gender as wedge issues to stoke the anger needed for revolution. Identity politics became the Marxist vehicle in America.
The game plan was simple "call people racist, grab their power, then use it to change the entire system." Go along with the plan or you will be fired. This is what has happened to the medical system. The white Christian medical staff were too complacent about being replaced by DEI (Marxists) from somewhere else. Under weak leadership, like that of these men, the Marxists have grabbed hold of the institutions and are turning them into something else. We are becoming a Communist-like country and the quality of life is quickly declining for the middle class. This process starts with weak leaders, who are unprepared to resist the Marxist playbook.
Please use the word Marxism because... those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it.
DEI/affirmative action is a death sentence to white civilization and I firmly believe that is the intention of DEI and AA. The Civil Rights Act of '64 was the beginning of the end. Disenfranchising whites to pander to a race that's known throughout history to be very limited in mental ability and morals is a deliberate, obvious attempt to destroy whites and the civilization we've developed over the centuries. It's communism.
Good for you, Chris.
A man is not what he thinks.
He is certainly not what he says.
A man is to act.
These center right wonders lack the courage to suffer and put careers at risk for what is right.
There is nothing new about DEI; it's been around for decades under the name "Affirmative Action". And no, it's not going away just because Trump says so; your only reliable resource in this is yourself. How can you actively do something about Woke organizations and their "DEI"? You can STOP WORKING FOR THEM: "Workplaces to avoid if you are white, male, or straight": https://daveziffer.substack.com/p/workplaces-to-avoid-if-you-are-white
Not to get picky, but yes DEI is a natural progression of Affirmative Action, but the progression started when "men" allowed anti-human (anti-woman, anti-man) feminism to emerge. It unnaturally shamed women and men from displaying their inherent strengths. It capitalized on men's natural instincts to protect and be less confrontational with women, allowing this anti-human, pro-androgen movement to grow. I would say it started very early in the 20th century and has now grown into a cancer on all of mankind. Now we men and women are shamed into acting androgynous, and surprise, we have negative birth rates and the collapse of western civilization. π€·ββοΈ
DEI is flat out racism and has been around since before Biblical times. It just had different names over the ages. And now is more psychologically disguised because many of the actions are violations of civil rights laws.
Alex is a libertarian economist. So is Tyler Cowen, his academic partner. Libertarians try to wrap everything into a market-based paradigm. So... by Alex's thinking, if there's a market for colleges that favor DEI, those colleges should exist. And if there's a market for those that don't, we'll get colleges that don't.
This is incredibly naive, and speaks to just how cloistered from reality George Mason professors really are. But Alex and Tyler and Don Boudreaux and Dan Klein are all inconvincible, because The Market has become their God. It took me 10 years and lots of philosophical study to give up my own libertarianism -- ideology is very seductive.
One of the things that pushed me over the edge is a quote from Saint John Paul II: "The market was made for man, not man for the market."
Self-castrating men are useless and dangerous.
βThis requires more than the right ideas; it requires guts. The real test of a manβs principles is not whether he holds them in the abstract, but whether he is able to advance or maintain them in reality.β
Absolutely. Example Jordan Peterson, who left his teaching position in Canada because the truth is more important than going along to get along. Spines are hard to find in teaching. (I was once one.) Fear is a merciless task master. And every dean and administrator in academia knows it. They hold the keys to every career. Speak out, lose everything. Unless, you are one of the self possessed ones who just donβt care about any of it and just want the truth.