108 Comments

DEI is truly the American Marxist cancer metastasizing all across American culture and institutions. It must be fought and defeated at all levels.

Expand full comment

It's a big problem.

Expand full comment

Do you think progress is being made in defeating DEI in any states, and if so, where?

Expand full comment

Friendly reminder that Monty Oum is being hailed as a saint by leftists on the internet for basically trying to encourage Rooster Teeth to ignore whatever integrity they had left to start preaching feminist DEI bullshit that was basically unchallenged by anyone who would've asked Youtube to ban the fetishization of making women "anti-racist".

Expand full comment

What is happening in Texas?? Sounds like California ! Wasn’t it a red state? Sickening!!

Expand full comment

Look at any public or private university-DEI has been spreading there like cancer for decades

Expand full comment

Note, all the DEI programs are merely weaponized agitation points put forward by white progressives to attack all other white people who disagree with them.

Expand full comment

Absolutely, it's a career path for left-wing minorities and a moral path for left-wing whites.

Expand full comment

who pays for their careers? Where does the funding come from? Please break it down in detail.

You can't blame people for taking available jobs. Ringleaders aside, I absolutely refuse to demonize people who are simply trying to find employment in a system that offers no alternatives.

STOP DEMONIZING ORDINARY PEOPLE

Expand full comment

I have zero trouble demonizing the useless, actually harmful BUREAUCRATS you call "ordinary people."

Expand full comment

I'm not talking about people knowingly devising harmful policies nor the cynical unhinged cheats and liars that through malice or amusement, spearhead and fund strategies to deliberately create a Toxic Society. Those people can all go die in a ditch for all I care.

The truly well-meaning but misguided have to get a pass though. (There but for the grace of God go us all etc.)

The simple truth is that a lot of people, the VAST majority of people just plug into whatever 'system' exists. This has always been so and will always be so.

And if you change the system - they'll plug into that one too. And what if it's a system that you believe to be pretty healthy and supportive of the common good and creates a pleasant society for all? What will your opinion be of these 'Bureaucrats' be then?

Expand full comment

"Just following orders" was not and is not an excuse.

Expand full comment

They *have* to get a pass? Nah. At some point we have to come to terms with what we've allowed. The Covid debacle alone is enough to indict your "well-meaning but misguideds." Nurses and doctors literally MURDERED people rather than endanger a paycheck. 🥴

Expand full comment

Research your local racial programs and see if they accomplish anything. You will find they either are ineffective or attack and defame white people.

Expand full comment

Well, isn't attacking and defaming white people the entire point, I mean, except for absolving black people from the natural consequences of their own actions?

Expand full comment

I have finals so I don't really feel like it. stay safe tho.

Expand full comment

You can always research it later.

Expand full comment
Comment deleted
May 4, 2023
Comment deleted
Expand full comment

First, your comment is off topic here. Second, you do not understand the argument I made in my article.

Expand full comment

I've been tracking the ideological cancer called "Critical Studies" since at least the Sokal Hoax and one of the more bizarre aspects to me is how all of these obviously political programs (poorly) disguised as scholarship have never once been checked by even the reddest of states and their representatives, but only ever rubber-stamped (or ignored and allowed to fester, which amounts to the same thing).

My various theories are: since this has always been a stealth political program that had to conceal its longer-term goals, and also conceal the boiling hot hatred that sits at the heart of its project, they had to take the first steps of their Long March quietly, and probably use various tricks to hide their budgets and syllabi; because the one tactic or idea the Crit Theorists are expert at is playing victim and shrieking "Bigot! Your genociding me!" any time they face a hurdle or disagreement, fighting them is like fighting a skunk, you're guaranteed to get sprayed w stink; and building on the last point, fighting these Official Defenders of the Oppressed™ will always read as callous bigotry to outsiders or anyone who takes their claims of Social Justice at face value, thus it just wasn't worth the hassle or the reputational damage (even rich Texan trustees have wives and daughters who don't want to be told their hubby or dad is a "Racist").

Thus here we are: the Long March is complete and the old 1776 Enlightenment-rooted America is pretty close to being suffocated to death by Repressive Tolerance.

What happens when a formerly liberal democracy gets hijacked by a religious cult that has conquered its entire culture, media and means of knowledge-production? I don't know but we're about to find out...

Expand full comment

Yes, we are about to find out—and it will get worse in the short term.

Expand full comment

“never once been checked by even the reddest of states and their representatives” exactly and why do we keep re-electing them?

Expand full comment

This is changing, luckily. I'm working with legislators in Florida and Texas on abolishing the DEI bureaucracy in public universities. They are very receptive to this and want to take action.

Expand full comment

This is great news. Looking forward to learning more about these initiatives as they are implemented. Remember, though, 'personnel is policy'; meaning, the funding of this noxious DEI bureaucracy must be diverted to more worthwhile educational programs (or returned to the taxpayers of Florida). Either way, those behind the woke takeover of these universities should be polishing their resumes and contacting their Linked-in networks.

Expand full comment

for about 30 yrs Republican pols have treated Republican voters much like how Colonel Sanders treated chickens...

The priorities they fought for were: tax cuts, corporate profits, more tax cuts, open borders, the destruction of wages and unions; then when election season rolled around they added unlimited guns and the protection of fetuses.

These represent the successes of the modern Conservative movement. Things like education, esp the Humanities, coded as effete to them, or something adults in the real world only scoff at ("wait till those French poetry majors hit the real world!"), and thus the Humanities became the beach-head their opponents conquered on the way to conquering the entire country.

Expand full comment

We need to recapture the humanities. Now.

Expand full comment

Indeed. And now they have created a creature which now has destroyed their business schools, law schools and medical schools. As it’s has always been said, and has always been true, the politician thinks about the next election, and the statesman thinks about the next generation. When have we seen a statesman?

Expand full comment

Good question...I'm 54 and can't think of one in my lifetime.

I guess this is what happens to wealthy powerful empires, that there are just so many opportunities for leaders to score fabulous wealth (for themselves and their friends and families), that every other priority vanishes and governing is replaced by looting?

But really, to be charitable, hindsight is always easy and who could have predicted a neo-Marxist takeover of America? Led by an alliance of campus radicals, corporate execs, Deep Staters and enabled by a societywide epidemic of cowardice and careerism? Even a decade ago it would have seemed preposterous and impossible.

But the Trojan Horse called Critical Studies had already been wheeled inside the walls of our country, and while we were focused on other things, the enemies of civilization were biding their time and sharpening their weapons...

Expand full comment

Who could have predicted a neo-Marxist takeover of America? Soviet defector Yuri Bezmenov, back in, ironically, 1984. The late Yuri not only predicted the takeover, he detailed the exact methodology used to do it - his old videos are still remarkably available on Youtube.

Expand full comment

The indoctrination of successive generations resulted in the creation of a critical mass of true believers, who just recently entered career track jobs. They are applying the beliefs they have been taught, and are doing so with an apparent conviction of certainty in the exclusive righteousness of their positions. There definitely has been a dramatic shift towards Invasion of the Body Snatchers experiences within the past five years, and it is accelerating where I live.

Expand full comment

"Invasion of the Body Snatchers" !!

i think this all the time, who knew how prescient a weird old scifi film cd be...

yes, agree w all your points, whether u wanna call it a cult, a religious movement, or some sort of political theology, the True Believers are filled w zeal and certitude (plus an appetite for destruction) and they will not be backing down or ceding any of the power they've dreamed of for decades, but will fight their hardest to install their beliefs anywhere and everywhere...

James Lindsay calls it "Maoism w American characteristics" and i find it hard to disagree w him.

Expand full comment

Culture is where the culture wars started -- with the arts and humanities. And as you note, conservatives, deluded into thinking these activities peripheral or effete, conceded that ground to the post-modernists, relativists, and other nihilists. With the results we see today. Big mistake to ignore the arts. Conservatives have a lot of catching-up to do, and they can't do it with patriotic symbols, cowboy art, or Grandma Moses images of small-town America.

Expand full comment

Oh yes so much 'catching up'. Catching up like there being 2 million tax payer funded progressive extremist Civil Society groups with monopoly decision making & influence powers in every town across the United States.

Catching up like opposition leaders to this extremism (conservatives, moderate liberals, libertarians) having managed to only set up 0.02% of these 2 million groups effectively leaving them to run rampant unopposed.

How is this level of universal 'stupidity' not totally and laughably deliberate?

Expand full comment

Yes, certainly an imbalance there. If taxpayers ever get a hold of what their taxes have been paying for,... there will be hell to pay.

Expand full comment

And the Democrats in the WH under Obama & Biden? Happy with their performance?

Expand full comment

Awareness, through research and reports like Rufo's, and comments like yours, can work wonders. That's why such thoughts are censored on campus -- the academic consensus is actually quite fragile. Fortunately there are other ways of recovering common-sense, as in Substack.

Expand full comment

Chris and Ron are a deadly combo...1 down 49 to go!

Expand full comment

"even the reddest of states and their representatives, only ever rubber-stamped (or ignored and allowed to fester)"

Precisely on point - and might I add they have also allowed all the licensing and accreditation agencies to "rubber stamp" with impunity too.

So, Clever Pseudonym that's TWO of us calling out this angle in a sea of deafening silence. Please do join us one and all - because even brief logical inquiry can ONLY end in these questions - and yet how extraordinary that these same questions have completely escaped our 'Think Tanks' for decades.

Expand full comment

U Michigan DIE annual budget is something like $16M. Insanity.

Expand full comment

Michigan is out of control and the legislature will not stop it. There's still hope that Texas legislators will abolish the DEI bureaucracy, which is why I'm focusing my reporting there for the next few weeks.

Expand full comment

Despite Rufo's defeatism I encourage the good people of Michigan and particularly centrist democrats to relentlessly oppose those extremist policies that you find harmful to your communities and institutions and that are in direct opposition to the public good.

You won't find any Civil Society collective action groups to support you (you being the majority of people) - so you'll have to take your community organizing skills and activist toolkits with you and set up your own groups.

Expand full comment

Good strategy. Concentrate efforts where they have the greatest possibility of success.

Expand full comment

As a U Michigan alum, I've read that they are spending $18 million just on the wages of personnel with the word "diversity" in their job titles. When you add support staff, office space, administration, and other costs in, I have no doubt the total is much higher.

Expand full comment

My stat is likely a bit old. And it's terrible.

Yours is likely more accurate. And even more terrible.

But thanks for the update.

:-)

Expand full comment

I appreciate you Chris! Texas A&M’s DEI Department is larger than UT DEI Department right now. It’s a cancer that’s infected nearly all of our public institutions. Choking off the money supply is like chemo for communism and it can’t happen quick enough.

Expand full comment

Thank you. I have a story coming about Texas A&M. Get ready for it!

Expand full comment

I would not be surprised to see outside funding sources fill the void and support these efforts through student clubs and other organized activities. It won’t go away completely.

Expand full comment

Maybe so, but just as in the corporate world, it's 'go woke, go broke'. Without taxpayer subsidies, these DEI bureaucracies will wither on the vine.

Expand full comment

They will indeed wither on the vine.

Expand full comment

Fine. Let the Wealth holders feed their hideous power addictions ON THEIR OWN DIME. They don't get to monopolize 99.9% of all discretionary government spending on their schemes. Currently it's TAX DOLLARS that provides over 80% of their 2 million extremist monopoly groups that have been infesting every community and institution.

Texas & Florida should also suspend all funding and tax concessions for the school licensing and accreditation bodies and strip them of their authority pending an investigatory commission. They have proven themselves UNFIT by miserably failing to provide sound governance and oversight and are obviously incapable of providing ANY sense of checks and balances whatsoever - so what is the point of them?

Expand full comment

DEI is the new woke religion. The left has always been an ardent supporter of the separation of public institutions and religion. Therefore, DEI should not be part of any public institution. Any government funds going to DEI is a violation of the woke’s obligation to support the separation of church and state. The ouroboros should be their logo.

Expand full comment

Unfortunately, this argument would not hold up in court. People have explored it, but it's a dead end.

Expand full comment

Interesting. Can you give a brief explanation as to why not?

Expand full comment

What about the argument that Civil Society and their tax exempt 501's should not be monopolized by a single extremist ideology that not even 5% of the people actually want. There's so much more that can be done and challenged in court.

As one of the tiny number of conservative/classical liberal Civil Society groups - what is the Federalist Society doing about this? Why aren't they challenging this? Why aren't they encouraging opposition groups?

Expand full comment

I know sadly this is true. However, it shows the absurdity of their ideology.

Expand full comment

Thanks for that information. I was wondering if that could be an option.

Expand full comment

"...to work on “undermining the system of oppression and privilege that hurts all of us.”

No, let's be honest about your goal UT - it is to UNDERMINE the entire system upon which this country was built, which, imperfect as it was, still offers more opportunities, more freedom, and more respect of individual civil rights than any other country in the history of the world!

Trying re-phrasing your goal honestly and adding the disclaimer that you think you are the smartest people in the room and therefore should be given free reign to dismantle, and then "rebuild" the world according to YOUR vision, which has failed every single time it has been tried!

At the end of the day, we simply cannot overcome the fallen nature of man and must instead figure out a way to live within the confines of reality and truth!

Expand full comment

"No, let's be honest about your goal UT - it is to UNDERMINE the entire system upon which this country was built, which, imperfect as it was, still offers more opportunities, more freedom, and more respect of individual civil rights than any other country in the history of the world!"

Well said.

Expand full comment

Great work Chris, exposing this illegal program that violates student rights.

Expand full comment

Appreciate it.

Expand full comment

It is really unbelievable, except that it is only too believable. This garbage seems to be taking over education at all levels. How does a professor get away with saying something as ridiculous as “white supremacy is so pernicious . . . it is responsible for virtually every ill that we see within our communities.” Whitey isn't making nearly 75% of black births be to a single mother. Whitey isn't making black students call their academically oriented classmates "Oreos," as they did at the integrated public schools I went to. Whitey isn't making black high school students spend, on average, half as much time doing homework as white students and only a quarter as much time as their Asian counterparts. Utter garbage and the Texas taxpayers are paying for it and the students are paying tuition to be told fairy tales.

Expand full comment

More like being told nightmares. Fear is a powerful weapon of suppressing what you don’t like. “Let them hate provided that they fear.”

Expand full comment

Thank you, Mr. Rufo, for exposing this evil darkness. Let us cry out to God like Azariah in the fire in Daniel 3:26-90.

Expand full comment

Chris this appalling! This is a racist institution, and an abomination to call itself a higher learning education. How much do they pay to be taught such drivel? It is no wonder that gen z generation is so depressed and anxious and completely lost if this is perspective of the world they are being taught! It should be shut down and rebuilt. Is this what we want for our youth?

Expand full comment

I’ve always enjoyed listening to you & now reading your articles.

Expand full comment

Thanks!

Expand full comment

I identify as King of France, pronoun His Majesty. kiss the ring and validate Us, peasants.

What? You don't like the word "peasant"? Why, it is not hateful, peasant, like the word "cis." It simply means someone who is not born of noble blood, just like someone who is not trans is "cis." Why do you hate Us, peasant? Kiss the ring and validate Us. We are an oppressed minority since 1792. This invalidation is actual violence, We feel unsafe

Expand full comment

Nothing new. What major Universities have not created a Totalitarian DEI bureaucracy? Second question: What concrete actions are taking place on a large scale to counter the Progressive onslaught?

Lots of well thought out reason directed at the problem, but no Aggressive counter attack is in the works with an equally aggressive time frame for implementation.

Expand full comment

I've authored model legislation to solve this problem: https://www.manhattan-institute.org/model-dei-legislation.

Expand full comment

I read the PDF. Whilst it's difficult to foresee every attempt that will be made to try and game , loophole and sidestep such legislation (and fine tune the wording accordingly) on face value it looks like an earnest attempt to curb the harmful institutional adoption of Progressive Extremism and I would like to see it succeed in every state.

Do you know if there are plans to create Civil Society groups in each state so that people can push for this legislation to be adopted in their state? Such an organization could provide expert resources, support and also seek allyships with other groups as well as training on advocacy, lobbying and activism strategies. Such a group can also not fail to attract an enormous numbers of supporters in each state.

But even that would mean only 50 new Civil Society groups. Will there need to be a huge drive to secure Government funding & tax exempt status for a further 2 million non-progressive extremist groups? (currently 0.02% of all groups). To start bridging the gap between the 2 million groups aligned with Progressive Extremism?

And how do you suggest interested parties tackle the roadblock created by the lack of Federal "funding opportunities" for groups that are NOT aligned with progressive extremism? A state of affairs which is true under BOTH Democrat and Republican Administrations? Has it ever been challenged that such a narrow application of civil society funding going, as it has for many years, almost exclusively to deeply unpopular and extremist causes that are counter to the wishes of 90% of the people - is clearly unconstitutional?

Expand full comment

Bc corporations are captured as well by ESG/CEI scores. Hence Dylan Mulvaney on BudLight cans. Both dems and repubs are in bed w corporations...

Expand full comment

true. I think the torch of this political extremism is in the process of being handed over from the 2 million progressive civil society groups to the corporations. BOTH systems need to be aggressively challenged.

Expand full comment

Yeah. The silence is disturbing..

Expand full comment

This is why we spent two weeks in Italy looks at schools with our son even though we live in Austin. UT is shot through with pure evil. It’s rotting. Chris if you can induce these politicians to attack this poison who would otherwise prefer to ignore it so they can stare their alumni rings and enjoy football games, you will be accomplishing an act of amazing heroism.

The university is also, like most, radically over staffed. They can fire 80% of the administration and I’m certain the product would improve.

Expand full comment

I have made similar remarks on other Substack threads so bear with me when I submit that when emotions and feelings are used to access and filter information rather than objective criteria, this is the result. Phobias have been invented to label those not wishing to join in the DEI emotional parade. Clearly there are those who like the fat pay envelope given the sums of money being spent on these programs that do not add value to a degree program. How does knowing the tenants of "land acknowledgement" make one a better engineer, chemist, or mathematician?

Expand full comment

Yeah it's job security for all the ridiculous and useless people who have degrees in this crap. They get paid a ton of money to lecture everyone else about their oppression and count the number of black faculty members at the university.

Expand full comment