Trump Leans on This Disturbing Figure to Threaten Public Universities

Right-wing provocateur Christopher Rufo could help shape President-elect Donald Trump’s plan for higher education, according to a new report from The Wall Street Journal.

Rufo—a leading actor in right-wing culture wars, from the moral panic surrounding “critical race theory” to the hoax about Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio—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.”

A spokesperson for JD Vance told the Journal that the vice president-elect sees Rufo as “a leading voice in the movement to restore merit and excellence” to higher education, 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.”

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.”

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, including conservative commentator and comedian Andrew Doyle, who will teach a course on “wokeness.”

The overhaul of New College and Rufo’s actions as trustee have been met with resistance and sharp criticism from students and faculty. 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.”

According to the Journal, Rufo’s top concerns include ending race-based affirmative action at universities “with which the federal government does business” and defunding colleges “that continue to engage in DEI practices” in an effort to “recapture” them from the left—stances that resonate with president-elect’s thinking on higher ed.