Rufo: A New Civil-Rights Regime

Elite universities have long used diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies to justify hiring based on race rather than merit—effectively institutionalizing discrimination. Now, the Trump administration is pushing back. It has begun withholding federal funds from schools that refuse to end these practices.

President Trump shouldn’t ease up, argues Manhattan Institute fellow Christopher Rufo. For too long, Ivy League leaders have cloaked themselves in virtue while promoting policies that sort and stereotype students and faculty by race. “They are among the most active practitioners of racial discrimination, stereotyping, and segregation in America today,” Rufo writes. He outlines here how the Right can build a new civil-rights framework—one that defends colorblind equality and rejects the race-based ideologies now entrenched in American higher education.

Manhattan Institute Fellow Daniel Di Martino, a Ph.D. candidate in economics at Columbia University, recounts in his latest piece how he recently received an email from the university’s new Office of Institutional Equity (OIE), an entity tasked with addressing anti-Semitism on campus. The message accused him of engaging in “conduct that could constitute discriminatory harassment.”

The conduct in question: social media posts that Di Martino says simply expressed his Catholic faith—not hate or harassment. “The entire episode confirmed my worst fears: Columbia is willing to use bureaucratic pressure to silence students who express Christian beliefs,” he writes.

See the posts, and read about the meeting “investigators” had with Di Martino, here.

In Talbott v. Trump, eight plaintiffs argue that President Trump’s executive order banning transgender individuals from military service constitutes unlawful discrimination. Central to their case: the claim that transgender identity is innate and immutable.

That claim doesn’t hold up, contends Christina Buttons. “Decades of desistance research suggest that 85 to 90 percent of children with gender dysphoria who do not undergo medical transition eventually outgrow those feelings,” she says—most later identifying as gay or lesbian.

In her new piece, Buttons reviews the evidence challenging the immutability argument—and explains why its collapse has consequences that extend far beyond military policy.

Since 2011, Wisconsin’s Act 10 has limited the collective-bargaining rights of public employees, requiring unions to win an annual vote to keep representing workers.

More than a decade later, new research suggests the law has helped students. By restricting teachers’ unions, Act 10 encouraged school districts to allocate resources more strategically—leading to improvements in teaching quality.

Now, as Robert VerBruggen explains, the law’s future is uncertain. A court recently ruled that Act 10 violates the Wisconsin constitution’s equal-protection clause, and the state supreme court may soon weigh in.

Read VerBruggen’s analysis of the law’s legacy—and the high-stakes legal battle ahead.

“You referred to ‘a straight A Columbia student.’ Excuse me? They are all ‘straight A students’ now.”

Photo credits: William Thomas Cain / Stringer / Getty Images News via Getty Images