Biden Dept. of Ed targets DEI fighter Rufo
U.S. Dept. of Education's Office of Civil Rights filed a complaint over "misgendering."
Over the past few months, More To The Story has highlighted how under the Biden administration the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR) has engaged in activities aimed at school boards working with parents on dealing with sexually explicit and inappropriate books.
Catch up on those articles here:
The OCR has now turned its attention to Christopher Rufo and has opened an investigation and filed a complaint directed at the New College located in Sarasota, Florida.
Rufo posted on his website that the investigation is for alleged “discrimination on the basis of disability” coming from complaints of “misgendering.”
“The investigation stems from a complaint by unnamed “students, faculty, and staff” alleging, in part, that the college’s trustees and administrators violated civil rights law by removing “gender neutral” signage from bathrooms, defunding the DEI and gender studies programs, and “misgendering” the former DEI director, who uses “ze/zir” pseudo-pronouns,” wrote Rufo.
Rufo, who serves on New College’s board, went on to say, “This is a brazen attempt to subvert the democratic governance of New College and entrench left-wing ideological programs under the guise of civil rights law.”
“Although the complaint is wholly without merit, this does not mean it will automatically fail,” wrote Rufo. “The Biden Administration has demonstrated repeatedly that it is willing to weaponize the federal law enforcement apparatus against school board parents and other conservative reformers.”
In a Sept. 11 post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Rufo wrote, “Left-wing activists and the Biden Administration have launched an attack against New College of Florida, but the real ambition is to use civil rights law to entrench left-wing ideologies in all of America's institutions. We must resist. No surrender.”
The following day, Rufo posted a video of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appearing in a Fox News segment with Laura Ingraham in which the governor blasted the OCR’s targeting of New College.
Here’s the clip:
More To The Story
Rufo has made a name for himself in the past few years fighting Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 public schools and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs.
The Southern Poverty Law Center, a far-left organization that labels groups holding ideological or political views that differ from their own as extremists, unironically dubbed Rufo a "far-right propagandist.”
Rufo is consistently referred to in most publications as a “conservative activist,” who has a history in filmmaking and is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research.
It was during his rise in covering CRT in K-12 public schools that I had interactions with Rufo, specifically related to Wake County Public Schools (WCPSS) and an event called “EdCamp Equity.”
For those who don’t live in North Carolina, WCPSS is the 15th largest district in the country, the largest district in the state, and has a budget of around $2.16 billion this year. There are 198 schools serving just over 158,400 kids and WCPSS employs over 20,000 people in total and close to 11,000 teachers.
In Sept. 2020, I published an article on Edcamp Equity that included items received through records requests detailing discussions on “whiteness in Ed spaces,” “microaggressions at work,” forming “Affinity Groups,” and a lot of CRT-laden topics.
One alarming piece in the “whiteness in Ed spaces” were discussion notes on how to shut down parental pushback when bringing CRT and “anti-racism” laced lessons into the classroom:
In March 2021, Rufo wrote about my Edcamp Equity findings in an article in City Journal. In the article, he touches on the organizing source of EdCamp Equity: WCPSS’ Office of Equity Affairs.
The budget for the Office of Equity Affairs (OEA) is well beyond the figure in Rufo’s 2021 article. As of January 2022, records show over $8.69 million had been funneled into the OEA since its inception during the 2014-15 school year. By October of the same year, staff changes along with new data increased that total to over $8.9 million.
According to the district’s former communications director, the OEA has no metrics or accountability measures beyond individual employee performance reviews.
What the OEA does have is a track record of CRT training for staff in every school across the district. Read my multi-part series on this training at North State Journal:
SERIES: Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County public schools
Critical Race Theory themed training in Wake County Public Schools: Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy
Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County public schools: Anti-Racist Education
Critical Race Theory-themed training in Wake County Public Schools: Antibias Education
That training included an OEA-linked CRT “professional development” course that was pulled after I inquired about it.
The course was called “Critical Race Theory 101” and was to be conducted by a DEI outfit called The Equity Collaborative, founded and still run by then-state representative turned-state Sen. Graig Meyer of Durham.