Christopher Rufo
speaker
230 appearances
5 recordings
3 series
first heard Jan 2025
last heard 7 Sep
Christopher Rufo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I mean, Princeton has decided to take hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money, but that taxpayer money comes with basic terms and conditions, basic rights and responsibilities. And so the federal government is well within its right to say, we're not going to keep cutting you a blank check unless you meet certain basic standards and requirements that
are necessary for the good stewardship of these public dollars. And so Princeton had a choice many years ago to accept government money with the inevitable reciprocal responsibilities or to refuse government money and to maintain its academic independence and its academic freedom.
Hillsdale College, where I'm a distinguished fellow, decided to reject public funding so that it could maintain its institutional independence. Princeton is at liberty to make the same choice, to refuse taxpayer money and then to not have to negotiate with the taxpayers through the democratically elected administration to come to mutually beneficial and mutually agreeable terms.
Well, they were all given the binary choice. They all can accept public funds or they can not accept public funds, and they still have that choice available. Forgo public funding. and gain more academic independence. But the president of Princeton wants to have it both ways. He wants to have all of the entitlements without any of the responsibilities.
And so that's the mark of someone that is not looking at this in a mature way, but looking at this, I think, in a very greedy and very self-serving way. I think the president and the secretary of education should be fully ready
to say, if you don't want to make a deal, as you actually said, for the public good, I hope that the administration is ready to terminate that funding, not just on a temporary basis, but on a permanent basis. I think that's when you get a cascade effect. You're going to see other institutions recalculating in a very healthy way.
Well, so I actually would agree in part that, yes, obviously it is not practicable and probably not desirable for universities to say, hey, we're going to have kind of an ideological quota to have balance, to have every point of view represented, to have every religion. I mean, I would like to have a greater kind of philosophical balance.
But what I'm not calling for is like a one-to-one parody or that it has to reflect the particular political ideologies of the public. I don't think that that is the best way to do it. So that's why I say I agree in part. But what I don't agree on, the lesson of the last few years is that the university's
have not developed a sufficient and robust internal controls, internal critics, internal challenges. And even at Princeton, for example, I actually know quite a few members of the Princeton faculty, some of whom are conservatives who are essentially in hiding
Because the culture and the administration and the system of rewards and punishments are so openly and irrationally hostile to anyone that contradicts this kind of elite left-wing consensus that they don't even feel comfortable stating their opinions in public. And so that's not a university. That's not academic freedom. That's not a culture of civil debate. And so I don't take his word for it.
Either he doesn't know what's happening on his own campus, which is bad, or he does know and he's using this kind of misdirection, positing elite left wing ideals while doing the kind of cynical work of institutional management.
But again, this shows the remarkable level of egotism and entitlement. What do you mean? He's taking money from taxpayers. You have a reciprocal obligation to taxpayers. This idea that I can enter into contract with you, you can pay me hundreds of millions of dollars. And then I say, I'm not going to do anything in a reciprocal manner to meet my basic responsibilities is not academic independence.
You know, that's kind of an academic entitlement. And what I would say also is this, the political right has figured out how to use leverage effectively. The president of Harvard is gone. The president of Penn is gone. The president of Columbia is gone. That's a pretty good track record. That's three for three. You know, that's a hat trick right off the bat. Is that a threat? I mean, seriously.
That's up for interpretation. But what I would say is that if it's not a threat, and it could be, it's just a demonstration of the facts. And the facts are that the political right has a greater understanding of institutional politics than at any time in the past half century. And we've demonstrated willingness to not only talk about, but to use the power to advance the public good.
And we're not going to be intimidated or hamstrung or let around.
Well, the idea that I'm, you know, an equal power to, you know, the universities, which have collectively hundreds of billions of dollars in assets under management. They have, you know, lawyers and PR firms and lobbyists and other agents. But you just described the power that you have discovered online. to rebalance those dynamics. That's right. But it's a power, again, from leverage.
And so keep the context in mind is important. But the second question is, how do I know that I'm not abusing that power? It's a great question. It's an important question. But what I always have done, and I'm continuing to do,
is i'm always measuring the work that i do first against conscience right to make sure that my own moral intuitions my own moral sense keeps me in in check but because we live in a democratic society we have a constitutional republic i also want to make sure that the policies that i'm advancing also have broad support from the american people and so The president won the election.
He has the democratic mandate. These ideas have broad public support, and I think they meet the test of conscience. Got it.
What would that be? I mean, no, I think that would also be a success. And that's what's, I think, very... But how would that be a success? Because right now, the calculation for university presidents is in the back of their minds, they're thinking the administration might fold. But if the administration doesn't fold, I think we are entering a more serious politics.
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