Public defenders of DEI elide the difference between teaching what the tenets of critical studies are and promoting "Critical" viewpoints as true or by-default "normal" (the more common approach - attempting to "normalize" without debate or definition).
There is no legitimate reason to emphasize or include Critical approaches above or more comprehensively than, say, surveying Marxist views (whether orthodox (Lenin, etc.) or "heretical" (Mussolini, Gramsci, etc.). Even this approach applies to a very few disciplines - including it in, say, nursing pedagogy is propagandistic because the subject matter itself does not include the dissection and examination of such ideas.
Basically, outside of philosophy discussions per-se, there is very little reason for such theories to appear. As a confirmation of my statement: who talks about the the rival interpretations of Marxism proposed by Lenin and Mussolini these days? Only philosophy students - because neither version of Marxism is ascendant at this time. It is political ascendancy only which takes Critical Theory out of the Philosophy Department (and very adjacent areas such as history which refer-back to philosophy).
It is precisely the activist push for present and immediate cultural/political ascendancy which accounts for any appearance of Critical Theory outside of a philosophical examination of it, per-se. All else is advocacy - propagation (propaganda).
Your mission is worth very careful consideration, and you are taking it very seriously, as you should. Your resistance to the Provost demonstrated that your project has a chance of success. We have seen that florid public rhetoric - even when correct - accomplishes nothing lasting.
There is also the systemic risk of DEI compliance officers at all major universities, which permeate the university as a whole. Without aggressive protest and action, the indoctrination of our children which begins in K-12, will be the final blow to whatever remains of America’s shared identity and values based on individual freedom.
DEI must be the first target. It contributes zero to scholarship and is easier to abolish, since it's part of the administration, not the academic side.
The elimination of bureaucratic/administrative coercion coming from DEI administrators will significantly free students, and clarify the actual teaching, etc. of department heads and individual professors and others. Some may be persons of weak character, etc. who have good technical expertise to impart and perhaps good teaching skills. The hard-body ideologists and activists (mostly but not entirely overlapping groups) cannot be clearly identified except by eliminating the administrative element.
Yes. I often wondered about this - how these DEI programs can't be excised from the system since, as you point out, they are part of the administrative apparatus and not academia. Sort of how it was done at New College. These bloated programs accomplish nothing, even in the eyes of those who support them. I believe there have been surveys of university students done that indicate how useless these programs are in terms of increasing diversity, and accomplishing any of the stated goals.
One of the strategies of the DEI compliance vanguard in US universities is to inculcate the students with the idea that they can rely on mentors, counselors, advisors, coaches etc. in lieu of the students building grit strategies and mastery of subject matter.
Wonderful, Chris! I’ve watched this devolution my entire life. I am 62, was a precocious follower of current events and history. I missed the 60’s, but read all the major 60’s new left literature. Never bought into it; was an NR subscriber at age 20, lol.
By the mid 80’s, it was clear the crazy train was taking off. Like so many, I assumed it would crash and burn from its contradictions, nuttiness and fragility. I thought the Sokol scandal at NYU might have an impact. Instead, it has taken over entire generations of “educated” people.
Just downloaded and printed out the Jaffe article.
I am an executive recruiter and writer. If I can be helpful to you in any fashion, formal or informal, please let me know.
Yes, it's devolved slowly over time and now the average citizen is starting to understand what has happened. You'll enjoy the Jaffa article, which captures the spirit of the time.
Completely logical idea, makes too much sense and is easy to do. Like with any non-producing major, teach out remaining students and call it a day. However, in today's hysteria-fueled twitterverse and state-run-media messaging the internet would explode with faux rage and not-so-subtle calls for protest and a visit from the national Antifa office.
Knowing the probable reactions, it would take a university board, president and administration that will stick to its principles and actually do the right thing. You and Gov. DeSantis have laid out a viable blueprint that show this can be done. This outcome is not only doable but necessary. Keep grinding!!!!
The reactions are going to be hysterical, but it's possible that the reaction is cover for a deeper powerlessness. We lose nothing by calling their bluff.
Totally 100% spot on again. It's a loud minority that has been appeased for too long. They are small in number but artificially amplified by the media and their benefactors. Florida is the proof of concept on how to defeat these people. All that is needed is governors and mayors to replicate the formula. The silent majority needs to yell back loudly!!!!!
Exactly. The weaker and less defensible their position, the more hysterical they will be. Their hysterics are a sign that we're over a vulnerable target and we should push even harder.
"The reactions are going to be hysterical, but it's possible that the reaction is cover for a deeper powerlessness."
This is a provocative thesis considering their institutional power - i.e. from the point-of-view of those of us who oppose their power. However, this intuitively catches the psychology of the ideologue - their opponents (their "enemies" - us) embody resistance to The Good, but it is "The World" (that is, reality) which they oppose - which, to their thinking, opposes them. They are trying to impose a kind of pattern onto resistant reality (of which we are agents). "Blank Slate" and reality-as-fundamentally-indeterminate are obligatory beliefs -not proven, but "backed into" to square the circle. They are the priors without which there is no "hope."
I was myself an ideologue for one year of my time at university. I recall the break from reality. I also recalled that it concluded a difficult time attempting to adjust to having an adult mentality (harder in my case than the transition to puberty). Nobody encouraged this - I was struggling and not sleeping, and read a book.
I got over it, became an adult. Others may be truly neurotic, and are encouraged by our emerging immersive fiction. They will cling to nonsense, but many can and should be freed, and given the opportunity to grow up.
There is a deep fragility at-work here, I believe. I recall it.
We must require that critical thinking and debating skills be part of the curriculum AND that a required number of conservative teachers be hired to teach in every academic department.
It is a problematic history, one that is carefully spelled out in the above referenced article. CRT is not some new-fangled concept that was dreamed up over the last few years, but a direct outgrowth of years and years of Marxist ideology imbedded in the American university system. It has also become a lucrative industry, evidenced by the many companies, consultants, training programs, and professional organizations that service academia and corporate America.
DEI is a cancer that has metastasized throughout our institutions. Perhaps there is some way to turn it against itself - the way the healthy immune system attacks malignancy. Continuing to provide real facts about the failure of this system is a good start, but it has to be a persistent and unrelenting pushback. I think, Christopher Rufo is off to a brilliant start!
Mar 20, 2023·edited Mar 20, 2023Liked by Christopher F. Rufo
It's time to defund colleges and universities that prioritize political activism over education. To understand how we got where we are today and why it matters, see "Legacy of Lies" in the latest issue of my Substack at https://2026.substack.com/p/legacy-of-lies
Mostly done w the Jaffa piece, it blows my mind. It is startling how few university presidents fought back in any real way. Hayakawa and Silber are the only ones I can think of.
I grew up in an academic environment, and have deep affection for what it once was. The good news is, there are very very few real revolutionaries among them. Most of them are academics (or admins, lol) because they are afraid of the big bad world.
For years, I’ve been saying we should starve the perverted rabbits. Finally, someone has started.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these so-called academic departments are made possible when the board of directors (also know as regents or other names) allows it to happen. Governors and state legislatures must pay attention to who is on these boards and insure they are people with conservative values who will order these faux academic departments shuttered. This is what's happening in Florida with the New College (name?) as I understand it. We must get control of our institutions -- you mentioned Roger Scruton, a guy who recognized the vital importance of institutions run by sensible people and not ideologues.
The board of directors of my daughters Catholic high school...asleep at the wheel with DEI. DEI does not belong in Catholic institutions. It is totally against our faith.
Exactly! So many are simply too busy/bored of it/not paying attention. Understandable, mostly. But when they see it--like you said--I think most Americans are like WTF is that??? 😂
I watched that disgrace and speculated on what it would be like if/when some of those screeching students sits on the bench. They've shown not only do they not want to hear arguments, but they will also crush any attempt at others to hear arguments and ideas. Stanford needs to change the criteria for admission to law school.
Critics will say, and not without merit, that this is a different form of cancel culture. I believe it is better to fight these departments' untruths with truth. I understand that right now the universities and some segments of the culture at large seem to be captured by the "woke" narrative which muzzles the truth. But if you believe truth will always win -- even if it is a slow slog -- these ideologically captured departments will fail. If they do not, then perhaps they are on the side of truth. My main concern and fear is that censoring these departments will only make their ideology stronger. This effort will be distrusted by half the country just as the effort to censor so-called "right-leaning" ideologies is distrusted by the other half. It is in my opinion that a state-enforced effort to shut down the activist academic departments will be, in retrospect, a huge mistake. A better approach may be to do just what you and others are doing: Create universities that are committed to a classical education without DEI and grievance study departments. Patience will pay off as such universities and their students will rise to the top.
This is partly true, but also why I have never bought into the "cancel culture" narrative. Societies always cancel, the question is for what reason. Some are good, some are bad. But the question here about the state is misplaced—I'm talking only about public universities, which are already part of the state and, therefore, must be accountable to legislatures. Otherwise, we don't have democratic oversight and it becomes a tyranny of tenured academics.
Yes, and at the same time, we do elect legislatures and governors to regulate our publicly funded enterprises. As Chris pointed to on the JP podcast recently, WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who are supposed to have the power through our elected officials. When bureaucratic bloat at universities run counter to the ideals of our founding, then it's within every right to manage them through legislation - ESPECIALLY when their policies are illegal and violate civil rights laws. The legislation must be TIGHT so as to not overreach too far the other direction and violate laws all the same. That's the onus on Chris and those who are taking action to reclaim our universities.
We can leave the sorting to the market when the market is in play. Let Disney suffer losses as consumers see it for what it is. But state universities are insulated from market discipline. Taxes are extracted from people and used to fund people and activities which are anathema to those same people. Those people have a right to stop the funding.
If the woke ideology gets stronger in blue states, so be it. Their universities will suffer the loss of the best professors and students, who will gravitate to climates of rigor and freedom (actual freedom, not the freedom to conform to woke orthodoxy). Boston is already losing its allure to VC's. The environment at a free Georgia Tech will further pressure MIT can clean up its act.
If culture did not culminate in politics, then your argument would be stronger - it would all be a matter of opinion which could be reasonably waited-out. Foolishness does come to ruin, eventually.
Including politics in the discussion - as they must be - means that allowing this to proceed means that the entirety of the citizens lose part - perhaps a very large or even the largest part - of their legal/civil rights while we wait for the ascendant nonsense to fail - and all of us with it. Are we obliged to forfeit those things?
As for truth winning out in a particular culture/polity - neither Socrates (the Republic) nor St. Augustine (City of God) affirm that this will ever happen. For Catholics (and I believe Orthodox Jews), the conversion of Nineveh was an act of God. Waiting for God is one thing - waiting on human wisdom to appear from foolishness quite another.
Somehow in the 21st-century secular liberals pin all their fading hopes on the great god of Reason at last descending and routing all his enemies, while people rooted in religion and religious traditions know to take a longer view and prepare to fight for their freedoms through debate and argument.
The priests are professors and the professors are priests!
And all as the secular liberals succumb or watch their neighbors succumb to a kind of gnostic pseudo-religion! If they don't choose to defend Liberalism, then they will be left hoping for a kind of resurrection, themselves. The Enlightenment is slipping through their fingers as they fuss over the propriety of restorationist politics and Democratic legitimacy.
Liberalism is a kind of political "truce" which is no longer holding. I certainly consented to it , and kept my reservations private. It seemed workable, if not lovable - peace being better than war. But I look to principled Liberals to defend their order - as C. Rufo is doing.
Herbert Marcuse and his minions saw Popper's Paradox of Tolerance and marched an entire army right through it:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
Americans always care first and foremost about business (the true national religion) and can easily be swayed by appeals to Protestant guilt and utopian sales pitches (esp if the benefits seem immediate and the costs far down the road).
Allowing an entire occupying army to control large swaths of culture and academia seemed mostly irrelevant—just some wacky kids in California!—and by the time the New Left Army achieved critical mass and installed one of their commissars in almost every college and corporation, it was too late and all we could do was complain here on the internet.
We will see if Liberalism bends not breaks, but as the Left in America controls the means of cultural production, there will be a lot of damage and a great deal of wreckage to clean up.
I never dreamt that I would affirm anything said by Karl Popper, but...truth is truth!
I have come to think less of Marcuse since we first mentioned him. That poor man truly embarrassed himself. In the end, he just sold off his name to people intent on profiteering and social aggression. The fall of Western philosophy from Machiavelli to Marcuse is a sad story.
I must confess a personal bias, Marcuse always reeked of dishonesty to me. An obvious condescending misanthrope disguised as a professed savior and benefactor of humanity.
Conservatives who wring their hands and say, "The universities are lost" aren't looking closely enough. PARTICULAR departments are lost while others are merely intimidated.
Excising the cancerous parts will allow the rest to spring back to health. But the cancer must be excised - pulled up by the roots - not temporarily pruned back or tamped down.
Exactly. It seems like it's a huge majority that support this stuff but I think in reality it is a radical and loud minority who are true believers, and they're intimidating the majority into silence. Also there's the money aspect, where there are just a lot of jobs linked to DEI, so it advances that way. They may not be true believers but they like the money.
I like how you are circling the wagons here and using past history to bolster your arguments Chris R.
I also like your pivot to taking action and ending the critique phase of this movement. I like many, are growing bored of the framing stage that casts a wide net of divergent discovery. Now is the time to converge on action and take out the trash.
Concurrently, I think we need to begin the new dialogue of what does this new pursuit of truth and telos look like. Push it through the same critique phase that leads action. What does the new academic rigor include? How will it be measured?
The standards have been so degraded, it will be difficult at first to establish new ones. But we can look both to the great universities of the past, as well as some standout universities of the present, such as Hillsdale. We've had universities in the West for 1,000 years—we simply have to look for the essence.
Agreed, standards have vectored way off course to support the desired statistical DEI outcomes. I worked in China and taught at the undergraduate level in South Korea for 12 years. When you compare what is going on with students in those countries with American student's, academic grit is roughly 50% due to DEI influences in USA.
The structure that many US based students require to complete simple assignments has many on the cognitive level of a nursing care patient. I surmise that it is at the high school level where the seeds of DEI retardation are sewn...
And, consistent with what you say, proceeding to action does not stop us from our ongoing examination of the situation. If anything, the essentially-completed analysis will grow more precise and comprehensive upon examination of the details.
We do know what we are looking at - and will see it more clearly as we examine it.
Mr. Rufo, thank you for this excellent work and the commitment to New College. Thank you for saving this College. Could you also send some expertise, wisdom and backbone to the Sarasota County School Board members!!! We are hiring a superintendent, have any suggestions of candidates that will follow your lead and save Sarasota County Schools!! :)
Thank you for taking on the work of helping to course-correct the education system! You are so right, the conservative fatalistic approach has left hands wringing and a wide open field for the “enemy” to advance. You are right, it’s a mental battle. Allowing something to fall into decay is a choice, and all it takes is courage and a decision to remedy it.
Those were great examples of how other universities made choices to manage departments going off the reservation, so to speak. Universities can stand in their right to enact bold solutions in addition to just identify and bemoan the problems. Here’s to the courage to take that step.
Public defenders of DEI elide the difference between teaching what the tenets of critical studies are and promoting "Critical" viewpoints as true or by-default "normal" (the more common approach - attempting to "normalize" without debate or definition).
There is no legitimate reason to emphasize or include Critical approaches above or more comprehensively than, say, surveying Marxist views (whether orthodox (Lenin, etc.) or "heretical" (Mussolini, Gramsci, etc.). Even this approach applies to a very few disciplines - including it in, say, nursing pedagogy is propagandistic because the subject matter itself does not include the dissection and examination of such ideas.
Basically, outside of philosophy discussions per-se, there is very little reason for such theories to appear. As a confirmation of my statement: who talks about the the rival interpretations of Marxism proposed by Lenin and Mussolini these days? Only philosophy students - because neither version of Marxism is ascendant at this time. It is political ascendancy only which takes Critical Theory out of the Philosophy Department (and very adjacent areas such as history which refer-back to philosophy).
It is precisely the activist push for present and immediate cultural/political ascendancy which accounts for any appearance of Critical Theory outside of a philosophical examination of it, per-se. All else is advocacy - propagation (propaganda).
Very thoughtful comment. Pinned it to the top of the post!
Your mission is worth very careful consideration, and you are taking it very seriously, as you should. Your resistance to the Provost demonstrated that your project has a chance of success. We have seen that florid public rhetoric - even when correct - accomplishes nothing lasting.
Incredibly well said. Thanks!
Thank you, Mr. Cheifetz.
There is also the systemic risk of DEI compliance officers at all major universities, which permeate the university as a whole. Without aggressive protest and action, the indoctrination of our children which begins in K-12, will be the final blow to whatever remains of America’s shared identity and values based on individual freedom.
DEI must be the first target. It contributes zero to scholarship and is easier to abolish, since it's part of the administration, not the academic side.
"...it contributes zero to scholarship."
The elimination of bureaucratic/administrative coercion coming from DEI administrators will significantly free students, and clarify the actual teaching, etc. of department heads and individual professors and others. Some may be persons of weak character, etc. who have good technical expertise to impart and perhaps good teaching skills. The hard-body ideologists and activists (mostly but not entirely overlapping groups) cannot be clearly identified except by eliminating the administrative element.
Agreed.
Yes. I often wondered about this - how these DEI programs can't be excised from the system since, as you point out, they are part of the administrative apparatus and not academia. Sort of how it was done at New College. These bloated programs accomplish nothing, even in the eyes of those who support them. I believe there have been surveys of university students done that indicate how useless these programs are in terms of increasing diversity, and accomplishing any of the stated goals.
One of the strategies of the DEI compliance vanguard in US universities is to inculcate the students with the idea that they can rely on mentors, counselors, advisors, coaches etc. in lieu of the students building grit strategies and mastery of subject matter.
Yes - the program includes the formation of therapeutic social networks.
We should acknowledge the great importance of social networks, generally, for everyone. The "Therapeutic" is another matter.
For an excellent and plain spoken explanation of the of the pathology of micro-aggression theory, one of the corrupt roots of the DEI tree, see https://open.substack.com/pub/freeblackthought/p/the-best-microaggression-training?r=17itk0&utm_medium=ios&utm_campaign=post
Was an interesting reading. Thank you for recommending.
Wonderful, Chris! I’ve watched this devolution my entire life. I am 62, was a precocious follower of current events and history. I missed the 60’s, but read all the major 60’s new left literature. Never bought into it; was an NR subscriber at age 20, lol.
By the mid 80’s, it was clear the crazy train was taking off. Like so many, I assumed it would crash and burn from its contradictions, nuttiness and fragility. I thought the Sokol scandal at NYU might have an impact. Instead, it has taken over entire generations of “educated” people.
Just downloaded and printed out the Jaffe article.
I am an executive recruiter and writer. If I can be helpful to you in any fashion, formal or informal, please let me know.
Yes, it's devolved slowly over time and now the average citizen is starting to understand what has happened. You'll enjoy the Jaffa article, which captures the spirit of the time.
My best sense is that almost no one who is centrist or center left is confronting this yet
Completely logical idea, makes too much sense and is easy to do. Like with any non-producing major, teach out remaining students and call it a day. However, in today's hysteria-fueled twitterverse and state-run-media messaging the internet would explode with faux rage and not-so-subtle calls for protest and a visit from the national Antifa office.
Knowing the probable reactions, it would take a university board, president and administration that will stick to its principles and actually do the right thing. You and Gov. DeSantis have laid out a viable blueprint that show this can be done. This outcome is not only doable but necessary. Keep grinding!!!!
The reactions are going to be hysterical, but it's possible that the reaction is cover for a deeper powerlessness. We lose nothing by calling their bluff.
Totally 100% spot on again. It's a loud minority that has been appeased for too long. They are small in number but artificially amplified by the media and their benefactors. Florida is the proof of concept on how to defeat these people. All that is needed is governors and mayors to replicate the formula. The silent majority needs to yell back loudly!!!!!
Exactly. The weaker and less defensible their position, the more hysterical they will be. Their hysterics are a sign that we're over a vulnerable target and we should push even harder.
"The reactions are going to be hysterical, but it's possible that the reaction is cover for a deeper powerlessness."
This is a provocative thesis considering their institutional power - i.e. from the point-of-view of those of us who oppose their power. However, this intuitively catches the psychology of the ideologue - their opponents (their "enemies" - us) embody resistance to The Good, but it is "The World" (that is, reality) which they oppose - which, to their thinking, opposes them. They are trying to impose a kind of pattern onto resistant reality (of which we are agents). "Blank Slate" and reality-as-fundamentally-indeterminate are obligatory beliefs -not proven, but "backed into" to square the circle. They are the priors without which there is no "hope."
I was myself an ideologue for one year of my time at university. I recall the break from reality. I also recalled that it concluded a difficult time attempting to adjust to having an adult mentality (harder in my case than the transition to puberty). Nobody encouraged this - I was struggling and not sleeping, and read a book.
I got over it, became an adult. Others may be truly neurotic, and are encouraged by our emerging immersive fiction. They will cling to nonsense, but many can and should be freed, and given the opportunity to grow up.
There is a deep fragility at-work here, I believe. I recall it.
We must require that critical thinking and debating skills be part of the curriculum AND that a required number of conservative teachers be hired to teach in every academic department.
The roots of DEI are deeply imbedded in culture, too.
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/the-radicalization-race-philanthropy-and-dei
It is a problematic history, one that is carefully spelled out in the above referenced article. CRT is not some new-fangled concept that was dreamed up over the last few years, but a direct outgrowth of years and years of Marxist ideology imbedded in the American university system. It has also become a lucrative industry, evidenced by the many companies, consultants, training programs, and professional organizations that service academia and corporate America.
DEI is a cancer that has metastasized throughout our institutions. Perhaps there is some way to turn it against itself - the way the healthy immune system attacks malignancy. Continuing to provide real facts about the failure of this system is a good start, but it has to be a persistent and unrelenting pushback. I think, Christopher Rufo is off to a brilliant start!
It's time to defund colleges and universities that prioritize political activism over education. To understand how we got where we are today and why it matters, see "Legacy of Lies" in the latest issue of my Substack at https://2026.substack.com/p/legacy-of-lies
Mostly done w the Jaffa piece, it blows my mind. It is startling how few university presidents fought back in any real way. Hayakawa and Silber are the only ones I can think of.
I grew up in an academic environment, and have deep affection for what it once was. The good news is, there are very very few real revolutionaries among them. Most of them are academics (or admins, lol) because they are afraid of the big bad world.
For years, I’ve been saying we should starve the perverted rabbits. Finally, someone has started.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but these so-called academic departments are made possible when the board of directors (also know as regents or other names) allows it to happen. Governors and state legislatures must pay attention to who is on these boards and insure they are people with conservative values who will order these faux academic departments shuttered. This is what's happening in Florida with the New College (name?) as I understand it. We must get control of our institutions -- you mentioned Roger Scruton, a guy who recognized the vital importance of institutions run by sensible people and not ideologues.
Yes, many boards have been asleep at the wheel. Very true.
The board of directors of my daughters Catholic high school...asleep at the wheel with DEI. DEI does not belong in Catholic institutions. It is totally against our faith.
The boards of directors are mostly people from industry who have their very own DEI offices at their companies, with their full blessing. See eg this report from Google: https://about.google/belonging/diversity-annual-report/2022/
Every large corporation in the US has something similar.
Yeah that recent Stanford spat says it all. Do we even need college anymore? Kidding. Sort of.
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/p/george-orwells-politics-and-the-english
We need to boost more of these stories. When people see DEI in action, they revolt against it.
Exactly! So many are simply too busy/bored of it/not paying attention. Understandable, mostly. But when they see it--like you said--I think most Americans are like WTF is that??? 😂
I watched that disgrace and speculated on what it would be like if/when some of those screeching students sits on the bench. They've shown not only do they not want to hear arguments, but they will also crush any attempt at others to hear arguments and ideas. Stanford needs to change the criteria for admission to law school.
Critics will say, and not without merit, that this is a different form of cancel culture. I believe it is better to fight these departments' untruths with truth. I understand that right now the universities and some segments of the culture at large seem to be captured by the "woke" narrative which muzzles the truth. But if you believe truth will always win -- even if it is a slow slog -- these ideologically captured departments will fail. If they do not, then perhaps they are on the side of truth. My main concern and fear is that censoring these departments will only make their ideology stronger. This effort will be distrusted by half the country just as the effort to censor so-called "right-leaning" ideologies is distrusted by the other half. It is in my opinion that a state-enforced effort to shut down the activist academic departments will be, in retrospect, a huge mistake. A better approach may be to do just what you and others are doing: Create universities that are committed to a classical education without DEI and grievance study departments. Patience will pay off as such universities and their students will rise to the top.
This is partly true, but also why I have never bought into the "cancel culture" narrative. Societies always cancel, the question is for what reason. Some are good, some are bad. But the question here about the state is misplaced—I'm talking only about public universities, which are already part of the state and, therefore, must be accountable to legislatures. Otherwise, we don't have democratic oversight and it becomes a tyranny of tenured academics.
Yes, and at the same time, we do elect legislatures and governors to regulate our publicly funded enterprises. As Chris pointed to on the JP podcast recently, WE THE PEOPLE are the ones who are supposed to have the power through our elected officials. When bureaucratic bloat at universities run counter to the ideals of our founding, then it's within every right to manage them through legislation - ESPECIALLY when their policies are illegal and violate civil rights laws. The legislation must be TIGHT so as to not overreach too far the other direction and violate laws all the same. That's the onus on Chris and those who are taking action to reclaim our universities.
We can leave the sorting to the market when the market is in play. Let Disney suffer losses as consumers see it for what it is. But state universities are insulated from market discipline. Taxes are extracted from people and used to fund people and activities which are anathema to those same people. Those people have a right to stop the funding.
If the woke ideology gets stronger in blue states, so be it. Their universities will suffer the loss of the best professors and students, who will gravitate to climates of rigor and freedom (actual freedom, not the freedom to conform to woke orthodoxy). Boston is already losing its allure to VC's. The environment at a free Georgia Tech will further pressure MIT can clean up its act.
If culture did not culminate in politics, then your argument would be stronger - it would all be a matter of opinion which could be reasonably waited-out. Foolishness does come to ruin, eventually.
Including politics in the discussion - as they must be - means that allowing this to proceed means that the entirety of the citizens lose part - perhaps a very large or even the largest part - of their legal/civil rights while we wait for the ascendant nonsense to fail - and all of us with it. Are we obliged to forfeit those things?
As for truth winning out in a particular culture/polity - neither Socrates (the Republic) nor St. Augustine (City of God) affirm that this will ever happen. For Catholics (and I believe Orthodox Jews), the conversion of Nineveh was an act of God. Waiting for God is one thing - waiting on human wisdom to appear from foolishness quite another.
Somehow in the 21st-century secular liberals pin all their fading hopes on the great god of Reason at last descending and routing all his enemies, while people rooted in religion and religious traditions know to take a longer view and prepare to fight for their freedoms through debate and argument.
The priests are professors and the professors are priests!
And all as the secular liberals succumb or watch their neighbors succumb to a kind of gnostic pseudo-religion! If they don't choose to defend Liberalism, then they will be left hoping for a kind of resurrection, themselves. The Enlightenment is slipping through their fingers as they fuss over the propriety of restorationist politics and Democratic legitimacy.
Liberalism is a kind of political "truce" which is no longer holding. I certainly consented to it , and kept my reservations private. It seemed workable, if not lovable - peace being better than war. But I look to principled Liberals to defend their order - as C. Rufo is doing.
Good to see you!
Good to see you!
Herbert Marcuse and his minions saw Popper's Paradox of Tolerance and marched an entire army right through it:
"Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them."
Americans always care first and foremost about business (the true national religion) and can easily be swayed by appeals to Protestant guilt and utopian sales pitches (esp if the benefits seem immediate and the costs far down the road).
Allowing an entire occupying army to control large swaths of culture and academia seemed mostly irrelevant—just some wacky kids in California!—and by the time the New Left Army achieved critical mass and installed one of their commissars in almost every college and corporation, it was too late and all we could do was complain here on the internet.
We will see if Liberalism bends not breaks, but as the Left in America controls the means of cultural production, there will be a lot of damage and a great deal of wreckage to clean up.
I never dreamt that I would affirm anything said by Karl Popper, but...truth is truth!
I have come to think less of Marcuse since we first mentioned him. That poor man truly embarrassed himself. In the end, he just sold off his name to people intent on profiteering and social aggression. The fall of Western philosophy from Machiavelli to Marcuse is a sad story.
I must confess a personal bias, Marcuse always reeked of dishonesty to me. An obvious condescending misanthrope disguised as a professed savior and benefactor of humanity.
Lord save us from human saviors!
Paddy Chayefsky got it right!
Conservatives who wring their hands and say, "The universities are lost" aren't looking closely enough. PARTICULAR departments are lost while others are merely intimidated.
Excising the cancerous parts will allow the rest to spring back to health. But the cancer must be excised - pulled up by the roots - not temporarily pruned back or tamped down.
Exactly. It seems like it's a huge majority that support this stuff but I think in reality it is a radical and loud minority who are true believers, and they're intimidating the majority into silence. Also there's the money aspect, where there are just a lot of jobs linked to DEI, so it advances that way. They may not be true believers but they like the money.
We have to reverse the incentives and show that the bullies will no longer be tolerated.
Yes, the school of engineering isn't interested in being woke, but they're scared of the loud minority.
They're scared because the loud minority are now their bosses, with control over their salaries.
Administrative bloat is one of the cancerous roots...
Totally agree. When a department is eliminated we need to pare back all the way up the organization.
I like how you are circling the wagons here and using past history to bolster your arguments Chris R.
I also like your pivot to taking action and ending the critique phase of this movement. I like many, are growing bored of the framing stage that casts a wide net of divergent discovery. Now is the time to converge on action and take out the trash.
Concurrently, I think we need to begin the new dialogue of what does this new pursuit of truth and telos look like. Push it through the same critique phase that leads action. What does the new academic rigor include? How will it be measured?
The standards have been so degraded, it will be difficult at first to establish new ones. But we can look both to the great universities of the past, as well as some standout universities of the present, such as Hillsdale. We've had universities in the West for 1,000 years—we simply have to look for the essence.
Agreed, standards have vectored way off course to support the desired statistical DEI outcomes. I worked in China and taught at the undergraduate level in South Korea for 12 years. When you compare what is going on with students in those countries with American student's, academic grit is roughly 50% due to DEI influences in USA.
The structure that many US based students require to complete simple assignments has many on the cognitive level of a nursing care patient. I surmise that it is at the high school level where the seeds of DEI retardation are sewn...
It could probably be modeled after Hillsdale College.
And, consistent with what you say, proceeding to action does not stop us from our ongoing examination of the situation. If anything, the essentially-completed analysis will grow more precise and comprehensive upon examination of the details.
We do know what we are looking at - and will see it more clearly as we examine it.
Mr. Rufo, thank you for this excellent work and the commitment to New College. Thank you for saving this College. Could you also send some expertise, wisdom and backbone to the Sarasota County School Board members!!! We are hiring a superintendent, have any suggestions of candidates that will follow your lead and save Sarasota County Schools!! :)
Thank you for taking on the work of helping to course-correct the education system! You are so right, the conservative fatalistic approach has left hands wringing and a wide open field for the “enemy” to advance. You are right, it’s a mental battle. Allowing something to fall into decay is a choice, and all it takes is courage and a decision to remedy it.
Those were great examples of how other universities made choices to manage departments going off the reservation, so to speak. Universities can stand in their right to enact bold solutions in addition to just identify and bemoan the problems. Here’s to the courage to take that step.
I also leave this timely post by Dr. Robert Malone that reveals where all of this coordinated propaganda is coming from. We must revise our universities, and now is the time. https://open.substack.com/pub/rwmalonemd/p/top-universities-tools-of-the-wef
Excellent!
:-)