Chuck Darwin<p>Right-wing provocateur <a href="https://c.im/tags/Christopher" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Christopher</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/Rufo" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Rufo</span></a> could help shape President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for <a href="https://c.im/tags/higher" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>higher</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/education" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>education</span></a>, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.<br>Rufo—a leading actor in right-wing culture wars, <br>from the moral panic surrounding “critical race theory” to the hoax about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio<br>—reportedly “has an invitation to Mar-a-Lago, where he will present the president-elect’s team with a 🆘plan to geld American universities by withholding money if they don’t pull back on diversity measures.”</p><p>A spokesperson for JD Vance told the Journal that the vice president-elect sees Rufo as <br>“a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to higher education, <br>who “recognizes schools and universities exist to equip American students to face tomorrow’s challenges, not to indoctrinate them with the fringe beliefs of the far left.”<br>To see such lofty aims in action, one can look at how the New College of Florida has transformed -- since Governor Ron DeSantis appointed Rufo and other conservative activists to the school’s board of trustees in 2023 in his “war on woke.”<br>Under its new leadership, New College has undergone significant changes, most recently hiring a number of “ideologically aligned rightwing faculty and staff for a range of positions,” per The Guardian,<br>including conservative commentator and comedian Andrew Doyle, who will teach a course on “wokeness.”<br>The overhaul of New College and Rufo’s actions as trustee have been met with resistance and sharp criticism from students and faculty. <br>One such critic, a visiting history professor, was threatened by Rufo and later dismissed after co-writing an op-ed against the new administration, in what the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression called “a clear violation of the public college’s First Amendment obligations.”</p><p>According to the Journal, Rufo’s top concerns include <br>ending race-based affirmative action at universities “with which the federal government does business” <br>and defunding colleges “that continue to engage in DEI practices” in an effort to “recapture” them from the left<br>—stances that resonate with president-elect’s thinking on higher ed. <br><a href="https://newrepublic.com/post/188800/donald-trump-christopher-rufo-woke-schools" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">newrepublic.com/post/188800/do</span><span class="invisible">nald-trump-christopher-rufo-woke-schools</span></a></p>