Christopher Rufo

Christopher Rufo is the director of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth & Poverty.

He has directed four documentaries for PBS, Netflix, and international television, including his latest film, America Lost, that tells the story of three "forgotten American cities.” Christopher is currently a contributing editor of City Journal, where he covers poverty, homelessness, addiction, crime, and other afflictions.

Christopher is a magna cum laude graduate of Georgetown University, Claremont Institute Lincoln Fellow, and has appeared on NPR, CNN, ABC, CBS, HLN, and FOX News.

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“Antiracism” Comes to the Heartland

_{A Missouri middle school forces teachers to locate themselves on an “oppression matrix” and watch a video of “George Floyd’s last words.”}_{Christopher Rufo
January 20, 2021}

For years, Americans have watched as educators have pushed deeply divisive “antiracism” programs in coastal cities such as Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle. Now “antiracism” has come to the heartland.

Woke Elementary

_{A Cupertino elementary school forces third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”}_{Christopher Rufo
January 13, 2021}

An elementary school in Cupertino, California—a Silicon Valley community with a median home price of $2.3 million—recently forced a class of third-graders to deconstruct their racial identities, then rank themselves according to their “power and privilege.”

Radicals in the Classroom

_{San Diego’s school district tells white teachers that they are guilty of “spirit murdering” black children and should undergo “antiracist therapy.”}_{Christopher Rufo
January 6, 2021}

The San Diego Unified School District has been radicalized. In recent months, the district has announced mandatory diversity training for teachers, added a new “ethnic studies” curriculum focused on racial grievance, and even abolished the requirement to turn in homework on time—all in the name of becoming, in the words of school board member Richard Barrera, “an anti-racist school district.” Last month, I reported on one of these training sessions, focused on “white privilege,” in which white teachers were accused of being colonizers on stolen Native American land and told “you are racist” and “you are upholding racist ideas, structures, and policies.” The trainers demanded that the teachers “confront and examine [their] white privilege,” “acknowledge when [they] feel white fragility,” and “teach others to see Read More ›

Indoctrinating An Entire School System in PC Racism

_{Seattle school district claims education system is guilty of “spirit murder” against black children.}_{Christopher Rufo
December 18, 2020}

What’s the goal here? Simply put, to transform Seattle schools into activist organizations. At the conclusion of the training, teachers had to explain how they will practice “anti-racist pedagogy,” address the “social-justice movements taking place” and become “anti-racist outside the classroom.”

The New Untouchables

_{Seattle policymakers want to provide the city’s underclass with blanket immunity for misdemeanor crime.}_{Christopher Rufo
December 4, 2020}

The poor, in the logic of Seattle’s progressive elites, are thus forced to commit crimes — including violent crimes — to secure their very existence. Therefore, as society is the perpetrator of this inequality, the crimes of the poor must be forgiven.