Christopher Rufo

Christopher Rufo is former 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.

Archives

The Invisible Asylum

_{Christopher Rufo
March 26, 2021}

The story of American deinstitutionalization has become familiar. In a long arc—from President Kennedy’s Community Mental Health Act of 1963 to the present—federal and state governments dismantled mental asylums and released the psychiatrically disturbed into the world.

Senator Cotton’s Stand

_{The Arkansas lawmaker is introducing a bill to protect the military from critical race theory indoctrination.}_{Christopher Rufo
March 25, 2021}

Today, Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton introduced legislation to ban critical race theory trainings in the United States military. The bill is concise, and desperately needed.

Subversive Education

_{North Carolina’s largest school district launches a campaign against “whiteness in educational spaces.”}_{Christopher Rufo
March 19, 2021}

Last year, the Wake County Public School System, which serves the greater Raleigh, North Carolina area, held an equity-themed teachers’ conference with sessions on “whiteness,” “microaggressions,” “racial mapping,” and “disrupting texts,” encouraging educators to form “equity teams” in schools and push the new party line: “antiracism.”

Revenge of the Gods

_{California’s proposed ethnic studies curriculum urges students to chant to the Aztec deity of human sacrifice.}_{Christopher Rufo
March 11, 2021}

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the “decolonization” of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology.

Critical Race Fragility

_{The Left has denounced the “war on woke,” but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate.}_{Christopher Rufo
March 4, 2021}

The Left has denounced the “war on woke,” but it is afraid to defend the principles of critical race theory in public debate.

Failure Factory

_{Buffalo’s school district tells students that “all white people play a part in perpetuating systemic racism”—while presiding over miserable student outcomes.}_{Christopher Rufo
February 24, 2021}

Buffalo school administrators have adopted fashionable new pedagogies: “culturally responsive teaching,” “pedagogy of liberation,” “equity-based instructional strategies,” and an “emancipatory curriculum.”

Gone Crazy

_{A New York City public school principal calls on white parents to “subvert white authority.”}_{Christopher Rufo
February 19, 2021}

New York’s East Side Community School recently sent a letter encouraging white parents to become “white traitors” and advocate for “white abolition.”

Bad Education

_{In a Philadelphia elementary school, teachers are putting a premium on radicalism, not reading.}_{Christopher Rufo
February 12, 2021}

A Philadelphia elementary school recently forced fifth-grade students to celebrate “black communism” and simulate a Black Power rally in honor of political radical Angela Davis.

Spoiled Rotten

_{Students at the United Nations International School launch an anonymous social media campaign denouncing their teachers as “racists” and “oppressors.”}_{Christopher Rufo
January 28, 2021}

The United Nations International School has succumbed to the new racial hysteria.

“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.

Breaking: Stop CRT Legal Coalition Announced

_{Christopher Rufo
January 20, 2021}

The Center on Wealth & Poverty responds to President Biden doubling-down on critical race theory in the federal government.

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 white privilege,” …

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.