Leftist false-flagger tries to take down Christopher Rufo — but there's a major problem with her narrative



Lauren Windsor of Robert Creamer's Democrat-aligned Democracy Partners has repeatedly attempted to kneecap prominent conservatives and Republicans, including U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin.

Windsor recently tried to take down Christopher Rufo, a senior Manhattan Institute fellow and New College of Florida board member whose success in combating critical race theory, DEI, and academic dishonesty has made him a popular bogeyman on the left.

Despite fellow travelers' apparent desperation to believe in Windsor's latest narrative, it has quickly unraveled.

In August 2015, hackers targeted a website for would-be adulterers, Ashley Madison, and released over 25 gigabytes of data. On Thursday, Politico reported that an email address belonging to North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson (R) was among those registered on the website.

A spokesman for Robinson claimed that the Republican had not made an account on the site, which virtually anyone apparently could have done in his name.

In response to the hit piece, Windsor tweeted, "Are there other prominent conservatives on Ashley Madison? I may know of one."

The Democratic activist followed up with a message stating, "Email address belonging to conservative Chris Rufo found in Ashley Madison data dump."

'Leave my wife and children out of it, you disgusting hack.'

Windsor tried to make something of this supposed discovery, advancing the suggestion that "Rufo appears to have no qualms about attempting to fool around on the mother of his children."

She did, however, admit in subsequent messages that it is "possible that someone else registered his email to the site" and that at the time of the leaks, Rufo was unmarried.

When Windsor pressed Rufo for comment, the conservative apparently responded, "No, but I heard these guys did," along with a picture of the fake white supremacist rally Windsor helped stage with the Lincoln Project in 2021 to smear then-candidate Glenn Youngkin ahead of the Virginia gubernatorial election.

Extra to staging at least one false-flag event, Windsor — who serves as the executive director of the Democratic-aligned dark-money group American Family Voices — has spent time in recent years attempting to dox Project Veritas operatives and to take down others holding up Democrats' agenda.

For instance, in June, she tried in vain to provide Democrats with ammunition to take down Justice Alito, having posed as a conservative at an event in hopes of getting Justice Alito and his wife on tape saying something damning.

Rufo publicly called out Windsor, writing, "This is complete bull****, as you admit later in the threat. I have never used 'Ashley Madison.' If you want to attack me or my politics that's fine, but leave my wife and children out of it, you disgusting hack."

The Manhattan Institute fellow added in a subsequent message that Windsor's accusation was "verifiably false," stating:

This is verifiably false. I have never used this website and Lauren Windsor has provided zero evidence to the contrary. Moreover, her specific accusations are easily debunked. I was single in 2014, so the insinuation that I signed up for 'a website designed for married people seeking affairs' — or, even more grotesquely, that my son, whom I first met and then adopted years after this date, signed up for it using my credit card — is a total fabrication and a disgraceful slander against a child. Lauren Windsor has previously admitted to perpetrating the Youngkin Nazi hoax and this is an equally fake and partisan smear. A truly repulsive human being.

Rufo revealed Friday that his legal representatives at Dhillon Law Group contacted Windsor with a cease and desist letter, advising her to preserve evidence.

Krista Baughman, who runs Dhillon's First Amendment and defamation practice, noted, "It defies credulity that Mr. Rufo would register for a dating website marketed to people who are married in June 2014, when Mr. Rufo was an unmarried man," adding that Rufo met his wife in 2015, married her the following year, then legally adopted his son.

Rufo made clear he was contemplating suing Windsor.

Although Windsor has deleted one of her messages, specifically a quote tweet claiming that Rufo blamed his son, she has since amplified the suggestion by Steven Monacelli of the leftist blog Texas Observer that location data possibly supports her theory.

Harmeet K. Dhillon wrote, "Do NOT mess with our clients."

Dr. Jordan Peterson responded to the smear effort, writing, "Imagine that / Leftists tried to cancel @realchrisrufo / With lies / And stupid ill-thought through lies / Adding the sin of voluntary incompetence / To the sin of evil intent."

Seth Dillon, CEO of the Babylon Bee, noted that "it's a common tactic for leftists to sign conservatives up for porn sites and LGBTQ newsletters and other garbage like that as a way of trolling us."

"It isn't just annoying, though; it also gives them something to point to when data breaches happen later on. 'Oh look, we found your email on the gay dating site we signed you up for 2 years ago. Explain that!'" added Dillon.

It appears that some of Windsor's more trollish detractors have evidenced the ease with which a personal email can be used by strangers to sign up for websites, creating an OnlyFans page with her name and email.

When asked by Monacelli if the OnlyFans account belonged to her, Windsor replied, "There are plenty of people posting about signing my email up for sites."

Blaze News reached out to Rufo for comment but did not receive a response by deadline.

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NPR boss accused of being something far more impactful than just another radical World Economic Forum anointee



A Peabody Award-winning senior business editor who worked for NPR for 25 years penned a damning exposé earlier this month, confirming critics' suspicions that NPR is a Democratic propaganda machine.

For speaking truth to power, Uri Berliner was suspended. He later resigned, writing, "I cannot work in a newsroom where I am disparaged by a new CEO whose divisive views confirm the very problems at NPR I cite in my Free Press essay."

The CEO who drove out this "EV-driving, Wordle-playing, tote bag-carrying coastal elite"-styled liberal is Katherine Maher.

Maher, a censorious alumna of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leader program, was announced as the president and CEO of the company in January. She previously served as CEO of Wikipedia's parent company, Wikimedia, and worked at the National Democratic Institute, which is primarily funded by George Soros' Open Society Foundations.

Blaze News previously explored some of the Orwellian revisionism that took place at Wikipedia under her leadership — where she made clear that "our reverence for the truth might be a distraction that is getting in the way of finding common ground and getting things done" — and also recently highlighted some of her radical, race-obsessed comments online.

It appears, however, that beside her complicated relationship with the truth, her knack for spotting racism in unlikely places, and her apparent intolerance for dissenting views, Maher might also be a bit player in the regime-change business.

Christopher Rufo recently suggested in City Journal that Maher may have been involved in various color revolutions abroad — and may now be involved in one stateside.

Color revolutions — such as the 2003 Rose Revolution in Georgia, the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004 — are political upheavals aimed at toppling supposedly illegitimate or abusive regimes and replacing them with supposedly liberal democratic regimes. In many cases, the revolutionaries appear to have been afforded help and direction by state actors and/or by non-governmental organizations, such as the outfits Maher has worked with.

Rufo noted, "The West's favored methods of supporting Color Revolutions include fomenting dissent, organizing activists through social media, promoting student movements, and unleashing domestic unrest on the streets."

Maher apparently toured the ground zeroes of various regime changes in recent years as they were unfolding.

Rufo claimed that beginning in 2011, the NPR CEO, who has a degree in Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies and has studied in Syria and Egypt, "traveled numerous times to Tunisia, working with regime-change activists and government officials. In 2012, she traveled to a strategic city on the Turkey-Syria border, which had become a base for Western-backed opposition to Bashar al-Assad. That same year, she traveled to Libya, where the U.S. had just overthrown strongman Muammar Gaddafi."

During her tour of toppled or toppling regimes in 2011 and for years afterward, Maher worked for the National Democratic Institute, which Rufo suggested was "a government-funded NGO with deep connections to U.S. intelligence and the Democratic Party’s foreign policy machine."

The Guardian indicated in 2004 that the NDI, founded in the early 1980s after Congress created the National Endowment for Democracy, was among the supposed NGOs dispatched by the U.S. to Ukraine and other nations to help "enginee[r] democracy through the ballot box and civil disobedience."

National security analyst J. Michael Waller suggested, "NDI is an instrument of Samantha Power and the global revolution elements of the Obama team."

"It has gone along with, and been significant parts of, color revolutions around the world. It is very much a regime-change actor," added Waller.

Waller told City Journal that Maher was "part of a revolutionary vanguard movement."

Rufo appears convinced the woke CEO has since turned her sights from the Orient to the United States.

According to the New College of Florida board member, the "summer of rioting following the death of George Floyd, which ushered in the new DEI regime, was in many ways a domestic Color Revolution."

Rufo did not produce a smoking gun concerning Maher's possible direct role in the DEI revolution while at Wikipedia, "a key strategic way station ... [that] defines the terms, shapes the narrative, and launders mostly left-wing political ideologies into the discourse, under the guise of 'neutral knowledge.'"

However, he noted that Maher, a longtime BLM supporter, made clear the general policy at Wikipedia was to "eliminate racist, misogynist, transphobic, and other forms of discriminatory content" and elsewhere highlighted her aim of rebelling against the idea of "radical openness," which she associated with a "white male Westernized construct."

With Wikipedia still operating a "closed loop that operates surreptitiously, using its reputation for unbiased knowledge as a cover for its own disinformation," Rufo intimated that Maher has moved on to another key component in the "American Color Revolution" underway: NPR.

NPR "has formative power in many culture-shaping institutions and increasingly represents the voice of blue elites. It is state radio, in the Soviet sense: it produces propaganda to advance its own cultural power and move the nation toward a desired end-state," wrote Rufo.

Berliner previously highlighted how Maher's predecessor was already active in this regard.

"When it comes to identifying and ending systemic racism," former NPR CEO John Lansing allegedly noted in a company-wide article, "we can be agents of change."

"America's infestation with systemic racism was declared loud and clear: it was a given. Our mission was to change it," Berliner wrote earlier this month.

Maher, an apparent agent of change, wrote in a December 2010 NDI blog post, "Control over the flow of information in a closed society can be tantamount to control over the state."

Rufo indicated that Maher's remarks in the blog post, which concerned an electoral crisis in the Ivory Coast that led to civil war, were "more descriptive than prescriptive." Nevertheless, "[t]he production of media works in Cote d’Ivoire as it does in America; the difference is only a matter of scale and complexity."

Responding to the City Journal piece, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wrote, "I don't know if she is actual CIA, or just ideologically aligned. What is clear though is that she will assiduously advance establishment narratives."

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UCLA School of Medicine's radical DEI czar clumsily plagiarized vast portions of her dissertation on DEI: Report



Harvard is not the only woke university whose top race obsessives are unrepentant plagiarists. The University of California's David Geffen School of Medicine apparently also has at least one identitarian hack on staff earning hundreds of thousands of dollars annually at taxpayers' expense thanks in part to stolen scholarship.

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo and Luke Rosiak of the Daily Wire have revealed in a damning new report that the medical school's DEI czar plagiarized a significant portion of her dissertation on DEI. What little of the publication Natalie Perry ostensibly wrote on her own was largely spoiled by error and incoherence.

UCLA Med School has been in the news recently for promoting ideology about "Indigenous womxn," "two-spirits," and "structural racism." A guest speaker praised and two residents championed "revolutionary suicide." \n\nThe DEI director, who advances "anti-racism," is Natalie Perry.
— (@)

Perry, formerly an associate dean for academic programs at the American International College's School of Education in Springfield, Massachusetts, presently serves as the DGSOM's so-called "Cultural North Star Lead." The Cultural North Star initiative is the product of a 2017 culture audit conducted by the Dean's Office, serving to advance the cause of DEI at the school.

Perry's biographic statement on the school's website references her 2014 doctoral dissertation, "Faculty Perceptions of Diversity at a Highly Selective Research-Intensive University," noting that her "wealth of experience in understanding and improving the culture of higher education, including at an academic health system, will be invaluable to our ongoing efforts to embed our aspirational Cultural North Stars [sic] value in our organizational DNA."

It turns out that others may instead deserve credit for the "wealth of experience in understanding" Perry has submitted as her own.

Rosiak noted on X that Perry, "the DEI czar at UCLA School of Medicine, which blamed opiates on 'whiteness,' had doctors praise 'revolutionary suicide,' taught about 'two-spirits,' and led a class in chanting 'Free Palestine,'" is responsible for the "most egregious case of plagiarism" he and Rufo have so far encountered.

— (@)

According to Rosiak, Perry's wealth of published knowledge, reducible to a single paper, "stole thousands of words from 10 other papers." In one instance, the DEI czar ostensibly directly copied five continuous pages of material from someone else's work.

Perry apparently wasn't even stealthy when stealing other people's ideas, having lifted the first pages of her dissertation from the first page of other published works, including more than 100 words from the first page of a paper by Angela Locks, Sylvia Hurtado, Nicholas Bowman, and Leticia Oseguera.

In addition to sometimes porting over the exact text formatting from the works she was plagiarizing, Perry apparently also copied the parenthetical citations from uncredited authors without even factoring their source material into her final list of references.

Perry was so lazy that the first pages of her paper stole from the first page of multiple other papers. Here's a passage taken from a paper by Adalberto Aguirre Jr. and Ruben Martinez, who were never mentioned anywhere in Perry's paper.
— (@)

The only significant alterations Perry appears to have made to the elements she lifted from other writers were errors.

Rosiak noted, for instance, that when plagiarizing a paper from John C. Smart, the DEI czar "changed a few words, and added errors almost every time (e.g. changing Smart's 'distinguishes between X and Y' to 'distinguish between X from Y')."

Perry seems virtually unable to write a single word without error. Here, she stole from John Smart, changed a few words, and added errors almost every time (e.g. changing Smart's "distinguishes between X and Y" to "distinguish between X from Y").
— (@)

The medical school's future Cultural North Star lead was afforded a chance to shine in a section in her dissertation devoted to original research. However, she instead cobbled together a few half-baked sentences containing spelling and grammatical errors.

"The positionality of the participants informed the perspective on the origins of the commission. /in response to the needs of the varios [sic] stakeholders within the university, the commission addressed issues of diversity on the faculty, undergraduate, graduate, and university level," she wrote in the ostensibly original section.

The Daily Wire indicated that neither the university nor Perry returned requests for comment.

Perry is the latest and perhaps the most brazen among the university professionals recently outed for passing off other people's work as their own.

Christina Ross, a race obsessive and assistant sociology professor at Harvard University, was accused last month of various form of plagiarism, including "verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources."

Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene was accused in February of 42 instances of plagiarism — just in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation.

In January, Claudine Gay resigned her post as Harvard's 30th president in disgrace after nearly 50 plagiarism complaints had been filed against her, implicating nearly half of her published works, including her doctoral thesis.

That same month, affirmative action expert Sherri Ann Charleston, the university's chief DEI officer, was slapped with a complaint identifying 40 examples of alleged plagiarism in two of her academic works.

Rufo and Rosiak reported earlier this month that Lisa D. Cook, a tenured professor at Michigan State University who was successfully nominated to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors in 2022, was also guilty of academic dishonesty, having based her most celebrated article on flawed data and misled about the quality of one of her other publications.

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Leftist professor 'shaking with rage' because her race-obsessive peer at Harvard was outed as possible plagiarist



Yet another race obsessive on faculty at Harvard University has been exposed for alleged plagiarism. While scholars might take satisfaction that grifters are being outed, this latest revelation concerning assistant sociology professor Christina Cross has left one leftist professor "actually shaking with rage."

Quick background

Harvard University has been rocked in recent months by plagiarism scandals.

Claudine Gay resigned her post as Harvard's 30th president on Jan. 2 after nearly 50 complaints had been filed against her, implicating seven of her 17 published works, including her 1997 doctoral thesis. Despite disgracing the institution, Gay was able to remain on faculty.

Later that month, affirmative action expert Sherri Ann Charleston, the university's chief diversity and inclusion officer, was slapped with a complaint identifying 40 examples of alleged plagiarism in two of her academic works, including her 2009 dissertation.

A complaint submitted to the chair of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences' professional conduct committee in February accused Harvard Extension School administrator Shirley R. Greene of 42 instances of plagiarism — just in her 2008 University of Michigan dissertation.

Critically plagiarized race studies

The latest Harvard plagiarism scandal concerns Christina Cross, an assistant professor of sociology and a faculty affiliate of the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University. Cross — like Greene, a University of Michigan graduate — is apparently an up-and-comer in the field of critical race studies.

In addition to having an impactful article attributed to her in the New York Times, which downplayed the importance of the two-parent family, Cross has enjoyed support from the National Science Foundation.

Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo reported Tuesday that a new complaint has been filed with Harvard's office of research integrity, this time against Cross, claiming her work suffers multiple instances of plagiarism, including "verbatim plagiarism, mosaic plagiarism, uncited paraphrasing, and uncited quotations from other sources."

Rufo indicated Cross did not respond to his request for comment.

According to Rufo, Cross is accused of lifting "an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby — the latter of whom was her dissertation advisor — without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations" in her 2019 dissertation.

The most serious allegation in the complaint is that Cross lifted an entire paragraph nearly verbatim from a paper by Stacey Bosick and Paula Fomby\u2014the latter of whom was her dissertation advisor\u2014without citing the source or placing verbatim language in quotations.
— (@)

In addition to apparently appropriating this entire paragraph without attribution, Cross allegedly plagiarized another full paragraph from Bosick and Fomby later in the paper, making only slight alterations. The complaint indicates that again, Cross failed to place the copied content in quotation marks or properly cite the actual authors.

Elsewhere in the dissertation and another paper, Cross allegedly lifts work from a number of sources, with minor word substitutions, without placing the copied language in quotation marks or properly citing the authors.
— (@)

Rufo stressed that "Cross cannot plead unfamiliarity with the source: Fomby served on Cross's dissertation committee, making the offense even more egregious."

Throughout the paper, the prospective CRT star ostensibly passed off others' ideas and language as her own. In one instance, she allegedly lifted a passage from a paper coauthored by another academic who served on her dissertation committee, again without using direct quotations.

When allegedly adopting real scholars' language as her own, it appears Cross, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants, did not even bother to change their unique use of parenthetical notes or italics.

Rufo noted that Cross' apparent trouble expressing herself without adopting the language of others is not limited to her dissertation. The complaint suggests that Cross also plagiarized in a 2018 paper published in the journal Population Studies.

The Manhattan Institute fellow highlighted that Cross' alleged improprieties constitute plagiarism according to Harvard's own definition. The "Harvard Guide to Using Sources" states that "it is considered plagiarism to draw any idea or any language from someone else without adequately crediting that source in your paper."

According the university's latest student handbook, "Students who, for whatever reason, submit work either not their own or without clear attribution to its sources will be subject to disciplinary action, up to and including requirement to withdraw from the College."

The fact that Gay, Greene, and Charleston have not been ousted bodes well for Cross, as it appears faculty and staff are not held to the same standard as students.

Literally shaking

Heba Gowayed, an associate professor of sociology at CUNY Hunter College, was devastated to hear about her peer's possible bout of plagiarism — not that Cross had allegedly engaged in it but that she had been caught.

Gowayed, a race-obsessive critic of Israel who has advocated for abolishing border policing and the U.S. citizenship exam, tweeted Thursday, "So today I sat down to work, to write a talk. I then got a text from a friend that a colleague is being attacked purely & solely because she's Black by the same assholes who attacked Claudine Gay. And now it's an hour and a half later. These months have seen so much stolen time."

While evidently more concerned about stolen time than stolen ideas, Gowayed exhausted more time persevering on Cross' forthcoming fall from grace.

"I am actually shaking with rage," continued Gowayed. "I cannot stop obsessing over it. It's KKK level s**t. And I don't know what to do about it. I've never been more worried about what the near future has in store."

@victorerikray I am actually shaking with rage. I cannot stop obsessing over it. It's KKK level shit. And I don't know what to do about it. I've never been more worried about what the near future has in store.
— (@)

Gowayed was not the only academic left trembling by Cross' outing as a likely plagiarist.

Karen Benjamin Guzzo, professor of sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, wrote, "I'm just absolutely livid about this."

@kbguzzo @hebagowayed @victorerikray @donmoyn The name's Karen, huh?
— (@)

Guzzo added, "What a nightmare for her to have to go through."

Gowayed and Guzzo were both apparently fired up by Georgetown University professor Don Moynihan's Substack article alleging that exposés such as Rufo's "are examples of backlash, of a post George Floyd Politics" aimed at feeding "a culture of fear within research institutions."

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Joe Rogan loses it over leftist push to rebrand pedophilia as another identity: 'For what reason?'



The titular host of "The Joe Rogan Experience" recently spoke with Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo about the ongoing culture wars over race and gender that have transformed American homes, schools, and HR departments into battlefields.

While Rufo and Rogan touched on various issues in Tuesday's episode, including the perniciousness of DEI practices and the left's tactical mischaracterization of Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, the host's most biting commentary concerned recent efforts by Democrats and other leftists to normalize evil, particularly the kind animated by a desire to prey on children and destroy innocence.

Early in the podcast, the duo discussed the importance of moral structure and well-enforced rules in a society.

Rogan suggested that it "all goes out the window" when deviant behavior is left unchecked. This prompted Rufo to reflect on his time living in Seattle.

The conservative activist noted that when walking his son to kindergarten in the Democrat-run city, they would "have to be avoiding schizophrenics, avoiding tents, avoiding people shooting up, avoiding people just s***ting in the street."

Rufo noted that when he raised his concerns with city administrators, he was told, "Oh, well, you know, we have to be compassionate to our houseless neighbors," to which his reply was apparently, "No we don't. This is a danger to kids."

Although Rogan agreed with Rufo that there must be "reasonable limits" on compassion as well as on tolerance for bad behavior, he seized upon the word "houseless."

"I love when these terms like 'the houseless' — like, you already have a word for it. Yeah, stop trying to dress it up with a new word," said Rogan.

Rogan then highlighted another euphemism he had come across that has similarly been used to disguise a grim reality.

"This one's been driving me f**king crazy lately: 'minor-attracted person,'" said Rogan. "I saw two politicians in two different speeches talk about protecting 'minor-attracted persons.' You're talking about pedophiles."

"That's what we're talking about," Rufo confirmed.

Karen Berg, a Democratic state senator in Kentucky, employed the term last week during a committee hearing concerning legislation that would make it a felony to possess a sex doll fashioned to resemble a child.

Berg appears to say in one video of the hearing, "There are what they call 'MAPS,' minor-attracted persons, and the limited amount of research that's done on these dolls, guys, suggest that they actually — for people who are attracted to minors — that these dolls actually decrease their proclivity to go out and attack children."

This might be the most disturbing thing you see today. Watch KY Democratic Senator Karen Berg propose Child Sex Dolls for Pedophiles. This type of disturbing proposition has no place in the Commonwealth.
— (@)

The term has entered circulation in some leftist circles, but there has been resistance in the alphabet community.

Center Square indicated in 2020 that the then-new movement to use the terms "minor-attracted persons" or "non-offending minor attracted persons" was ultimately an effort to normalize pedophilia. It apparently had caused concern among elements of the gay community who wanted to make sure that the so-called MAPS flag wouldn't be flown at LGBT parades.

There appears to be continued support for the term and the corresponding effort on university campuses.

Sociology professor Allyn Walker penned a book normalizing pedophilia called "A Long, Dark Shadow: Minor-Attracted People and Their Pursuit of Dignity," which was published by University of California Press. Facing significant backlash over the book and related research, Walker was ultimately squeezed out of Old Dominion University in Virginia in 2021.

However, the ouster revealed an ideological infection in the academy. Newsweek revealed that 60 professors in mental health, human sexuality, and other fields defended Walker's activism, calling it "important and ground-breaking" scholarship.

"It must be that these people have no children," Rogan told Rufo. "It must be. I don't know. If they do, they're monsters. This idea that you're going to minimize the harm caused by evil criminals who steal children's lives, ruin their lives forever. And you're just going to call them a 'minor-attracted person' and try to say that it's an identity. ... For what reason?"

Rufo noted that efforts to normalize perversity targeting children appear to be coupled with efforts to shut down criticism.

"You look at even something that has been propagandized at length: drag queen story hour. Let's just break it down to the basic facts. These are adult men dressing up in women's clothing ... dancing and performing for other people's children," said Rufo. "That should be a red flag for people but ... they've couched it in this language like you're talking about — euphemisms. Very, very soft-sounding words [like] tolerance, inclusion."

"But you're concealing from people the fact that it's like, actually, no, this is kind of uncomfortable," continued the conservative activist.

Rufo noted that while most people understand that what's going on is wrong, many have been cowed into silence by the threat of being branded a "bigot."

— (@)

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'Approximately 1,619 Kendis': Ibram Kendi arrives late to debate about quantifying racism, then fails to get the joke



Anti-white activist Ibram Kendi arrived late to a recent debate regarding the quantification of racism — but just in time to embarrass himself.

The set-up

A political science professor at Kentucky State University suggested in the pages of the National Review last week that intersectionality "is just a badly done 'woke' version of regression analysis."

Dr. Wilfred Reilly wrote that "racism or sexism can only be said to exist where we find that pretty much identical people, who differ only in terms of the characteristic of race or sex, are still being treated differently — after all of the other factors which might explain performance differences between them have been accounted for."

"This sort of real bigotry is, today, fairly rare," said Reilly.

"Many 'intersectional' studies that purport to find giant residual effects of race or sex on some specific thing — individuals' chances of going to prison, let's say — literally just consist of unadjusted comparisons between citizens in two or more different groups," continued Reilly. "This, however, is not how serious people conduct this sort of analysis."

Reilly's assertion prickled one Harvard Ph.D. student who apparently found himself in the unserious camp.

Kareem Carr, a self-described statistician, claimed on X that the argument that racism and sexism "are essentially non-existent because their effects on stuff like income disappear if you control for all relevant variables like education, work history and so on" is wrong.

Having indicated he could explain why Reilly and others were wrong, Carr suggested that "[s]ocial forces like sexism and racism aren't magical. They act through specific mechanisms in the physical world."

After granting sexism and racism special powers, Carr then had his followers imagine that the impact of the "racism" could be tracked and measured.

— (@)

Carr later admitted that it is "hard to frame this issue objectively."

The Kendi scale

Christopher Rufo, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, responded to Carr's post, asking, "What is the scientific definition of 'racism' here? How do you measure it quantitatively? How do you determine the causal influence from racism to intermediary institutions to individual income?"

"With what controls?" added Rufo. "And what is the current quantity of racism in the United States?"

Colin Wright, the evolutionary biologist behind "Reality's Last Stand," had an answer ready for Rufo: "Depends on what units you use. But assuming you're using the Kendi scale, as is standard in the US, then approximately 1,619 Kendis."

Wright clarified, "For those not familiar with the Kendi scale, 1 Kendi refers to the quantity of racism, measured in Kendis, in order to reach 1 Kendi."

Ibram Kendi, originally Ibram Henry Rogers, is the identitarian academic who runs the Center for Antiracist Research at Boston University — the race-obsessed center that recently fired half its staff and is facing an inquiry over allegations of employee exploitation, poor pay, failing to provide any halfway decent research, and a mismanagement of $43 million in donations, according to the Washington Post.

As the inquiry may soon confirm, Kendi's expertise is not managing think tanks but rather in accusing multitudes of Americans of racism. His antidote is, evidently, more racism.

"The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination," Kendi wrote in 2019. "The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

The figure Wright used in his joke appears to have been aimed at "The 1619 Project," Nikole Hannah-Jones' fact-averse revisionist history, which spun out a derivative containing direct contributions from Kendi.

Rufo pressed the joke further, writing, "Can't believe we're approaching 1,619 ku of racism in America, in 2024. We need the Department of Antiracism to shut it down—15 days to slow the spread."

On Sunday, Kendi seized upon Wright's days-old joke, writing, "In your imaginary, racism does not exist but the 'Kendi scale' does exist? I am not familiar with the 'Kendi scale' but I am familiar with racism."

"I suspect this is one reason why people like this become propagandists. It is easy to deny reality and make things up," added Kendi.

— (@)

Colin Wright responded to Kendi, "It's just a joke dude."

Wright later noted with apparent glee, "Kendi thought my post about measuring racism in America using the 'Kendi scale,' which I said came out to '1619 Kendis,' was serious. I even defined the units of the Kendi scale with Kendi-esque circularity."

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Leftist professors flee state thanks to DeSantis' war on woke: 'Good riddance'



Liberal publications decrying the exodus of leftist academics from the Sunshine State have unwittingly underscored the extent to which Gov. Ron DeSantis has made good on his vow to ensure that "Florida is where woke goes to die."

The New York Times picked up Monday where the Nation left off in September, bemoaning the apparent reconquest of the academy by Americans keen on institutions that educate rather than indoctrinate.

"Many are giving up coveted tenured positions and blaming their departures on Governor DeSantis and his effort to reshape the higher education system to fit his conservative principles," wrote the Times' education reporter Stephanie Saul.

Among its education-facing accomplishments, Florida under DeSantis has pushed back against identitarian propaganda; university DEI programs, revisionist histories; men in girl's sports; LGBT agitprop in grades K-3; and discrimination based on race, color, sex or national origin in public institutions.

DeSantis also opened the year with the appointment of six individuals to New College of Florida's 13-member board of trustees. The board, which now includes Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo, has since replaced former college president Patricia Okker with DeSantis appointee Richard Corcoran, a former GOP House speaker and education commissioner; axed the school's gender studies program; and revealed tenure would henceforth be earned.

Concerning the university's previous direction and the restoration underway, DeSantis said, "The mission has been I think more into the DEI, CRT, the gender ideology than what a liberal arts education should be," reported the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

The Times cited "liberal-leaning" economist and tax law scholar Neil Buchanan among the academics to recently leave Florida behind.

Buchanan wrote in a recent blog post, "Florida Republicans' increasingly open hostility to professors and to higher education more generally was as close to a but-for cause of my decision as one could imagine."

The economist admitted his departure as a small victory for conservatives in the state, writing, "It is fair to describe my situation as one in which 'the other guys won.'"

In a follow-up blog post, Buchanan indicated that "some fights are simply not winnable, at least not in the moment," again decrying Republicans' success in the state.

While acknowledging that the University of Florida has a turnover rate under the national average and is not experiencing "unusual" issues with hiring, the Times built an anecdotal case for why dozens of purported scholars have sought after bluer pastures.

Walter Boot, a tenured psychology professor, told the paper he left Florida State for New York in part due to a 2022 state law limiting LGBT propaganda in elementary schools.

Boot, who is non-straight, noted in an August piece for the Tallahassee Democrat that following the passage of the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, "it became increasingly clear that LGBTQ students, faculty, and staff at Florida State University had targets on their backs."

Hope Wilson, another LGBT activist who was up until recently a professor of education at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville, took issue with the state's interest in how taxpayer dollars were being spent, reported the Times.

"It just felt very dystopian all the way around," said Wilson, who has a gender dysphoric child.

Rufo stressed in a statement to the Times, "To me, this is a net gain for Florida."

"Professors who want to practice D.E.I.-style racial discrimination, facilitate the sexual amputation of minors, and replace scholarship with partisan activism are free to do so elsewhere. Good riddance," wrote Rufo.

DeSantis certainly shares Rufo's sentiment, having noted in a speech at an American Legislative Exchange Council meeting in July, "The media will say, 'Oh, some of these professors are leaving, like New College. Like, isn't that bad? Is that a brain drain?'" reported the Tampa Bay Times.

"Well, you know, if you're a professor in like, you know, Marxist studies, that's not a loss for Florida if you're going on," said DeSantis. "Trust me, I'm totally good with that."

In addition to driving radicals out of higher education in the state, the Nation indicated Republican legislation in the state is also prompting elementary school leftists to keep their extreme views to themselves.

"Teachers don't know what to say, or what not to say, and so they're opting to not say anything, not only because of fear of getting fired but of potentially getting arrested and being charged," Nikki Fried, chair of the Florida Democratic Party told the Nation in September.

Fried was apparently referencing HB 1467, legislation ratified in March 2022 by DeSantis that requires elementary schools to make public what books are on offer in their school libraries and enables parents to file objections to obscene materials.

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Christopher Rufo fires back after woman claims a banyan tree-inspired mascot resembles 'an angry, threatening brown individual'



Democratic Public Education Caucus of Manasota President Robin Williams has authored a piece suggesting that New College of Florida's new mascot, the "Mighty Banyan," is problematic.

The mascot, which is a human-like tree that has bulging arm muscles, a chest, and a face, is a reference to the banyan trees on the school's campus.

Williams took issue with the mascot, suggesting that it looks like an mad and threatening brown person.

"To anyone with even a cursory knowledge of racial stereotypes, the new mascot should have set off alarms. It turns out the original student version of the mascot was very different in appearance and was unlikely to have raised any concerns. Yet Interim President Richard Corcoran and the New College Board of Trustees, which includes culture warrior Christopher Rufo among its members, supported and chose an altered mascot that depicts a tree that has been anthropomorphized to closely resemble an angry, threatening brown individual," Williams wrote.

"It is an image that is also reminiscent of the historically offensive imagery perpetuated by the 'Tarzan' books, which featured a main character who lived in an African jungle and boasted of being a 'killer of beasts and many black men.' Though generations have passed, there is no getting around the reality that the 'Tarzan' literary series remains one full of vile racial stereotyping, with Black men portrayed as 'primitive natives' and 'savages,'" she continued.

"'The Mighty Banyan' mascot also appears to bear similarities to race-oriented memorabilia that was especially popular during the Jim Crow era in the United States and, unfortunately, served to ingrain racial stereotypes in the American psyche," she added.

Rufo hit back at Williams' criticism, tweeting, "Advice for white libs: if you see a tree and immediately think 'looks like a scary minority to me,' you might be the racist."

\u201cLocal affluent white female liberal claims that the New College mascot, a banyan tree, "closely resemble[s] an angry, threatening brown individual."\n\nAdvice for white libs: if you see a tree and immediately think "looks like a scary minority to me," you might be the racist.\u201d
— Christopher F. Rufo \u2694\ufe0f (@Christopher F. Rufo \u2694\ufe0f) 1687194433

According to New College, the new mascot is based on a student's design. Corcoran noted that "we are proud that this mascot was born from one of our student’s designs."

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