I own a company and am curious how he thinks I should talk with employees about DEI issues. Many of them are pretty woke. I value what they do and don’t want to chase them off. How do I explains that we strive to recruit the best talent we can find regardless of race, creed, or other non work related factors? I’d also be curious how he reacts to observations like: your leadership team (of four people) are all white. What’s the appropriate response to this statement of fact with obvious implications of wrong doing? It’s a common type of oblique criticism that you get when running a business. The person isn’t going to criticize you directly but are clearly implying something. My response so far has been I don’t know. It just happened that way. Running a business is hard and I’ve hired and fired many people looking for a god combo. I was just trying to keep my head above water.
My sense is that the woke employees won’t accept any answer here accept concessions of future affirmative action type policies, and grandiose mouth service in their favor.
So the options for management seem to be: do that (bad long term strategy), get rid of them (probably good long term strategy but comes at big up front cost), or maintain status quo which requires a persistent modest cost of having to deal with their accusations and unpleasantness.
One of the major standing disagreements between libertarians and other anti-progressives on the right is the question of what uses of state power to counter 'wokeness' would be legitimate. For example, would it be legitimate for the state to prevent the regulation of speech in public institutions, up to an including forbidding professors to impose speech codes for those attending their own classes? Is a law - as already exists in many states - prohibiting a private company from terminating an employee on the basis of speech acceptable? To what extent is the line between the state and the private sector clear or fuzzy, and should the law recognize a hard conceptual border between the two or take into consideration factors such as a company's primary function (e.g., exchange of speech, as with some social media platforms), market dominance, heaviness of regulation and need for government favor, 'soft' influences like extra-legislative 'requests' for 'voluntary' acts from the state? Should there be laws prohibiting any such coordination, direct or indirect, or even non-public communication between any state officials and any large company?
I'd very much like a detail discussion of this point. It often seems like the only internally consistent and likely to actually work option is to just cut all government ties with industry past basic purchasing functions, then say "Ok, do what you want." Unfortunately I don't see subsidies and other government entanglement going away anytime soon, so the second (or 5th) best option is worth worrying about.
What examples of university education done *well* does Rufo see? What colleges (if any) would he hold up as examples that other schools might follow in order to avoid the harms he outlines in his book?
What role does Rufo see for religious faith in the fight against wokeness/CRT/extreme leftism? Does he agree with the view that wokeness is a heresy or a distorted form of Christianity?
Defend the existence of New College of Florida as a trustee. Spending $34M from the Florida budget for New College of Florida's 650 students means the taxpayer is shelling out over $52,000 for each student per annum. This is indefensible profligacy. In 2020, a bill was introduced to subsume New College into FSU to save taxpayer money. It didn't pass; more is the pity.
That NCF is the "Honors College of Florida," is an odd, considering 1) students' SAT scores (required in Florida publics) are lower than six of the other public universities and 2) there are honors colleges attached to six other Florida public universities, with honors programs in the others (except Poly). NCF is superfluous.
As college counselors, we visited New College in 2022. It was a joyful place with hammocks strung high up in a Banyan tree. The denizens were not particularly articulate students, but were the desired product of higher education in the early 21st century: ardent social justice warriors.
Prior to our visit, we had been warned by several sets of furious parents of alumni about the poor quality of academic advising, (not uncommon in places committed to a liberal arts education), which resulted in underemployment and the necessity of additional courses (and cost) to enter veterinary school. The administration seemed committed to fixing that.
It may be helpful to describe the scene: A young blond man with a beard and slight build rocked a denim mini skirt; our female tour guides were heavily tattooed and pierced with shaved off eyebrows; professors sported multiple eyebrow rings; four in one brow was the record.
We couldn't help but notice how appropriate it was that the college flanks the Ringling [of the circus family] Museum. Must be something in the air.
In any case, Florida taxpayers should demand NCF be shut down immediately and its budget allocated elsewhere.
Thanks for that description. I'd never heard anyone say anything about this school except that it's a "hippie college", which is a phrase that paints a certain picture in my head but not something I have any experience with.
I suppose my thought would be: remaking NCF along more conservative lines might make sense as an experiment that hasn't been tried before (to my knowledge). A model for other conservative states to learn from if it works. On that basis, I think it's worth trying at least once. But if it's a flop, then I'd say you probably have the right advice for other states.
The best, most successful grifters on society are those that - like a foot in the door - start with a grain of truth, however powerful, that others can relate to. Everything else, lies, half-truths, deception, and narcissistic fantasies, becomes a sideshow. Like mount Olympus off on the horizon. Rufo is like Tucker Carlson. You’re burning your own credibility, Bryan. But go ahead, just “ask questions”. It’s what’s hot.
I think your point was ‘this isn’t Twitter’ but when that’s followed by a string of bitter and pointed ad hominems it’s a little jarring. This ISN’T Twitter... so why are you acting like it is?
I'd never heard of Rufo until the day before yesterday, and still don't know much -- but if he's not dressed like the grand wizard of the KKK or flying a nazi flag I would offer 10 to 1 that Caplan's credibility will survive contact with him. Have a little faith.
Agree. Sorry to Noah. I find Rufo - spiritually seated in the front row of the political variety show - right alongside MTG and a widening cast of preying, dastardly evil doers who get publicly through shock and awe, preying upon people who don’t follow the weekly antics. I’m not saying Rufo does not believe what he says - but I believe what I see and hear with my own eyes.
Rufo is a highly partisan activist who spends his visible time looking for division, writing books with trolling titles, posting trash on Twitter. Like Tucker, he’s not an activist and he’s not an intellectual as much as an entrepreneur and entertainer. Why Bryan is getting pulled into these current and eddys is obvious to the cynical, curious to his long time followers, but increasingly surprising and disappointing to people like me.
Bryan Caplan seems to be doing little to advance an intellectual dialogue here in favor of doing a bit of sharecropping. Should he interview AOC? How about Michael Moore? The incentives are plain and with so much water under the “Rufo bridge”, I probably should have just reapondd to Noah with a pre-populated Google search on “Chris Rufo”.
I suspect Bryan would interview AOC or Moore if they were willing to sit for him. And why not? They’re important promoters of their movements.
And though I do t follow him closely, the comparison with MTG seems absurd. I don’t doubt Rufo is highly partisan. So are 90% of Americans. So are most American intellectuals by the way if one pays attention to them. Even ones who do good work academically, if you follow their Twitter accounts, are usually disappointingly shallow hacks when it comes to popular politics.
It's not clear to me that Rufo is highly partisan. Like Bryan said, he doesn't appear to be anti-immigrant. He's just laser-focused on a single issue, and has rightly concluded the way to accomplish his goals is by influencing Republicans.
Doesn’t need to be either. In fact, I start looking for other outlets when I start to sniff-out grievance trolls and toadies. This is a bad look, Bryan (nevermind positive affirmations from the erstwhile dittoheads, Tucker fans, and other anti-intellectual thought police seeking cool salves for the pain of a restless universe).. Rufo is a whiner more than anything, serving up angry ditto-speak, saying nothing new. As an entrepreneur, I appreciate Caplan seeking bumps from the hit train. It just gets only and terribly unproductive.
A stranglehold over hiring was only the first step. Having made the long march through the institutions and gained majorities on the relevant faculty committees and seized control of university administrations, they are just getting started. I retired from the University of California's systemwide administration a little over a year ago, so I can offer some tips about what is coming next; it might be interesting to compare notes with what Rufo thinks will be the next.
One sinister development I have observed is that they have set up Diversity-Inclusion-Equity bureaucracies that are parallel to the traditional lines of authority. Empowering D.I.E. bureaucrats means that faculty committees and mid-level administrators are going to lose power. D.I.E. officers are functioning as political commissars tasked with administering loyalty oaths and political reeducation classes, making sure that trigger warnings are issued to and struggle sessions inflicted on outspoken dissidents, and generally sabotaging all the traditional functions of a university to make sure that everything is sufficiently "diverse" and that no "microaggressions" or trafficking in "misinformation" goes unpunished.
Maybe faculty will be able to defend their tenure, but maybe not. In any event, students and staff won't be able to protect themselves. Moreover, many of the prerogatives that faculty take for granted today, like control over grading, the right to publish one's research, etc., as well as the basic premise that universities are supposed to be about education and research, will be under ferocious assault. Before I left UC, standardized admissions testing had already been eliminated, and there were serious discussions at high levels about interfering with grading, with publication submission and review, and even with disclosures of patentable inventions ("too many white and Asian" inventors according to a systemwide Vice President).
Another D.I.E. priority is to greatly increase the number of degrees being awarded. At least at UC, the plan is to churn out by 2030 a vast horde of certified conformists, not focus on continuing to provide top-quality education and research opportunities to the top 10% of California's high school graduates. The explicit targets at UC are to increase graduate and undergraduate degrees by 20% while eliminating gaps in graduation rates for "Pell, first-generation, and underrrepesented" groups. The formal elimination of affirmative action (which happened in California decades ago) hasn't stopped UC from "diversifying" itself already by gradually eliminating whites (see the data at: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/uc-2030-dashboard ).
The underlying ideology here is that awarding degrees is a form of "equity" has become an end in itself, unconnected to preparing students to function as independent intellectuals or to empower faculty and students to make original contributions to scholarship or to promote the dissemination of knowledge across society. Woke universities are like cargo cults where degrees are now magical pieces of paper to be given to the most loyal and deserving members of the tribe.
Griggs vs Duke Power is commonly acknowledged as the Supreme Court case that places a substantial burden on companies that want to use cognitive tests to filter job applicants. Partly in response to the Wards Cove Packing Co. v Antonio case and others, holdings from Duke Power were also codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. As a result of these actions, college is the main alternative mechanism that employers have to filter job applicants by cognitive ability, which has been a factor increasing the importance of a college education. Is there any interest in revisiting that act with respect to the treatment of cognitive tests for job applicants? Alternately, is there any way to revise how the executive department handles this issue without passing new laws?
I know many libertarians who argue the anti-CRT laws Rufo supports are a threat to free speech. I do not agree with those libertarians, as I think they wrongly disregard the free speech implications for the taxpayers who are being forced to pay for woke speech. Nonetheless, this seems to be a common criticism of Rufo that appears in our space and I would to see you two dive into that and what ethical, free speech respecting, regulations on what can be taught in schools and universities should look like.
I don't know his position super well, but I've seen him say that he doesnt really think its important to understand the actual woke literature. You can see him say as much in the "Christopher Rufo: Critical Race Theory and Woke Capital video from Claremont Institute" at the 8:00 mark. I get why he would say this (most of it is bad/a tough read), but it is also fundamentally unscholastic and unserious. When I heard him say this, I really had trouble not dismissing him. Ask him why he doesnt think he has an obligation to be conversant in the woke literature. In what other area of scholarship would this be acceptable? To just dismiss your opponent as trash and not even bother reading their stuff.
I know, and I agree, and it’s not reasonable to expect someone to go and get Ph.D. level understanding of a field just to take issue with it. But when you say you can’t be bothered to even read the literature, it does immediately reveal you to be unserious and unscholarly. Your opponent is just going clip that and say, “How do you even know what you claim to be arguing against, you haven’t read the literature?”
For context, the question regards Florida's Stop WOKE Act (Florida HB7).
In defense of the bill, Rufo notes: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1611966699456331776 that it doesn't ban all DEI training in companies - only some DEI training in companies. He clearly acknowledges that the bill he is defending bans workplace speech - he just insists that the banned speech is unsavory.
To quote: "The...legislation did not bar businesses from providing diversity training to employees, only those trainings that promote racial scapegoating."
The questions for Rufo would therefore be, first, why he thinks that government should decide which private speech is prohibited.
And further, even if he's right that this particular speech is so terrible, that banning it is worth the violation of free speech, doesn't he recognize that laws can have unintended consequences and that a ban originally limited to (what he believes to be) truly terrible speech, is likely to not remain limited to it?
Does he really fail to see the potential for a bill to backfire that defines a prohibition on racial discussion as "not prohibiting discussion...provided such training or instruction is given in an objective manner?"
I think there's a legitimate question of whether a "training" that includes gross racial stereotypes as part of the curriculum counts as discrimination - e.g. if a company had a Nation of Islam race relations trainer come in to tell everyone about Yakub and the Jews, and say they need to remember that in the workplace, I think there would be a hostile work environment lawsuit coming in hot. The only argument for the seriously wacky DEI trainings is that they're teaching good discrimination to counter the bad discrimination.
That said, that seems to be an issue that should be resolved by courts, not preemptive legislation barring speech.
Or, long comment short, discriminatory workplace training is already illegal. And IIRC there's currently a professor suing his employer over a hostile work environment created by the school's DEI apparatus.
Why does he think De Santis's campaign has flopped? He has the mans ear.
Awhile back I suggested on his sub stack that De Santis offering federal matching funds for school choice states and he liked it, but I haven't seen any national school choice plan put out by De Santis. He just keeps talking about what he did in Florida without saying what he's going to do at the national level.
I am uncomfortable with education policy at the federal level. We have centralized domestic policy more than is good for us. It raises the stakes in federal politics. It fosters one-size-fits-all policies too often disconnected from reality.
This is one problem with electing former governors to the White House. They have experience working with the legislature and overseeing the executive, but they tend to focus to much on domestic policy. They try to solve state problems at the federal level.
I would like to get government _out_ of employment decisions. Hiring on criteria other than merit requires government enforcement, because otherwise the incentives are against it.
What do you find objectionable about federal matching fund for school choice?
Florida gives you $8k, the feds match $8k. Most of these state funding ESAs only give about half the total per capita spending, so this brings it up to equality.
If a blue state doesn't want to have ESAs they don't get any money, so transfer from enemies to friends.
If blue states do decide to implement ESAs to get the "free federal money" then we brought school choice national. Once enough people are used to ESAs it will be very hard for public education to keep it stranglehold.
It’s yet another straw on the camel’s back. We load too much on the federal government as it is.
The efficiency and effectiveness of any organization is inversely proportional to complexity of its mission and the length of its management chain. The federal government has the longest governmental management chain, and we’ve multiplied the complexity of its mission.
Furthermore, federal money always comes with strings attached. That restricts local officials freedom of action and encourages them to dodge responsibility.
You can make a case for each and every federal policy, in isolation. Not for their cumulative effect.
"federal money always comes with strings attached"
Any money can come with strings attached, including state and local money. I've heard this excuse from the anti-voucher crowd before, as if 90% of people being unable to afford private school is a good solution.
"We load too much on the federal government as it is."
Literally the one thing the federal government does reasonably well is cut checks. My mom gets her social security check on time every time.
I own a company and am curious how he thinks I should talk with employees about DEI issues. Many of them are pretty woke. I value what they do and don’t want to chase them off. How do I explains that we strive to recruit the best talent we can find regardless of race, creed, or other non work related factors? I’d also be curious how he reacts to observations like: your leadership team (of four people) are all white. What’s the appropriate response to this statement of fact with obvious implications of wrong doing? It’s a common type of oblique criticism that you get when running a business. The person isn’t going to criticize you directly but are clearly implying something. My response so far has been I don’t know. It just happened that way. Running a business is hard and I’ve hired and fired many people looking for a god combo. I was just trying to keep my head above water.
"we strive to recruit the best talent we can find regardless of race, creed, or other non work related factors?"
I think you said it the best way possible right there.
My sense is that the woke employees won’t accept any answer here accept concessions of future affirmative action type policies, and grandiose mouth service in their favor.
So the options for management seem to be: do that (bad long term strategy), get rid of them (probably good long term strategy but comes at big up front cost), or maintain status quo which requires a persistent modest cost of having to deal with their accusations and unpleasantness.
One of the major standing disagreements between libertarians and other anti-progressives on the right is the question of what uses of state power to counter 'wokeness' would be legitimate. For example, would it be legitimate for the state to prevent the regulation of speech in public institutions, up to an including forbidding professors to impose speech codes for those attending their own classes? Is a law - as already exists in many states - prohibiting a private company from terminating an employee on the basis of speech acceptable? To what extent is the line between the state and the private sector clear or fuzzy, and should the law recognize a hard conceptual border between the two or take into consideration factors such as a company's primary function (e.g., exchange of speech, as with some social media platforms), market dominance, heaviness of regulation and need for government favor, 'soft' influences like extra-legislative 'requests' for 'voluntary' acts from the state? Should there be laws prohibiting any such coordination, direct or indirect, or even non-public communication between any state officials and any large company?
I'd very much like a detail discussion of this point. It often seems like the only internally consistent and likely to actually work option is to just cut all government ties with industry past basic purchasing functions, then say "Ok, do what you want." Unfortunately I don't see subsidies and other government entanglement going away anytime soon, so the second (or 5th) best option is worth worrying about.
What examples of university education done *well* does Rufo see? What colleges (if any) would he hold up as examples that other schools might follow in order to avoid the harms he outlines in his book?
What role does Rufo see for religious faith in the fight against wokeness/CRT/extreme leftism? Does he agree with the view that wokeness is a heresy or a distorted form of Christianity?
What does Rufo think the SCOTUS affirmative action ruling means for DEI at universities? What about at companies?
Defend the existence of New College of Florida as a trustee. Spending $34M from the Florida budget for New College of Florida's 650 students means the taxpayer is shelling out over $52,000 for each student per annum. This is indefensible profligacy. In 2020, a bill was introduced to subsume New College into FSU to save taxpayer money. It didn't pass; more is the pity.
That NCF is the "Honors College of Florida," is an odd, considering 1) students' SAT scores (required in Florida publics) are lower than six of the other public universities and 2) there are honors colleges attached to six other Florida public universities, with honors programs in the others (except Poly). NCF is superfluous.
As college counselors, we visited New College in 2022. It was a joyful place with hammocks strung high up in a Banyan tree. The denizens were not particularly articulate students, but were the desired product of higher education in the early 21st century: ardent social justice warriors.
Prior to our visit, we had been warned by several sets of furious parents of alumni about the poor quality of academic advising, (not uncommon in places committed to a liberal arts education), which resulted in underemployment and the necessity of additional courses (and cost) to enter veterinary school. The administration seemed committed to fixing that.
It may be helpful to describe the scene: A young blond man with a beard and slight build rocked a denim mini skirt; our female tour guides were heavily tattooed and pierced with shaved off eyebrows; professors sported multiple eyebrow rings; four in one brow was the record.
We couldn't help but notice how appropriate it was that the college flanks the Ringling [of the circus family] Museum. Must be something in the air.
In any case, Florida taxpayers should demand NCF be shut down immediately and its budget allocated elsewhere.
I would have loved to have gone to that circus college
Thanks for that description. I'd never heard anyone say anything about this school except that it's a "hippie college", which is a phrase that paints a certain picture in my head but not something I have any experience with.
I suppose my thought would be: remaking NCF along more conservative lines might make sense as an experiment that hasn't been tried before (to my knowledge). A model for other conservative states to learn from if it works. On that basis, I think it's worth trying at least once. But if it's a flop, then I'd say you probably have the right advice for other states.
The best, most successful grifters on society are those that - like a foot in the door - start with a grain of truth, however powerful, that others can relate to. Everything else, lies, half-truths, deception, and narcissistic fantasies, becomes a sideshow. Like mount Olympus off on the horizon. Rufo is like Tucker Carlson. You’re burning your own credibility, Bryan. But go ahead, just “ask questions”. It’s what’s hot.
Agreed. I can't believe Bryan would be so foolish as to interview someone whose views I disagree with.
This isn’t Twitter. We are actually subscribers to Bryan Caplan. Not just fly by night “likers”, “reply-guys”, and lonely trolls.
I think your point was ‘this isn’t Twitter’ but when that’s followed by a string of bitter and pointed ad hominems it’s a little jarring. This ISN’T Twitter... so why are you acting like it is?
Ironic that you ask this re: Chris Rufo.
I'd never heard of Rufo until the day before yesterday, and still don't know much -- but if he's not dressed like the grand wizard of the KKK or flying a nazi flag I would offer 10 to 1 that Caplan's credibility will survive contact with him. Have a little faith.
What did Rufo do that's so bad?
Do your own homework.
Agree. Sorry to Noah. I find Rufo - spiritually seated in the front row of the political variety show - right alongside MTG and a widening cast of preying, dastardly evil doers who get publicly through shock and awe, preying upon people who don’t follow the weekly antics. I’m not saying Rufo does not believe what he says - but I believe what I see and hear with my own eyes.
Rufo is a highly partisan activist who spends his visible time looking for division, writing books with trolling titles, posting trash on Twitter. Like Tucker, he’s not an activist and he’s not an intellectual as much as an entrepreneur and entertainer. Why Bryan is getting pulled into these current and eddys is obvious to the cynical, curious to his long time followers, but increasingly surprising and disappointing to people like me.
Bryan Caplan seems to be doing little to advance an intellectual dialogue here in favor of doing a bit of sharecropping. Should he interview AOC? How about Michael Moore? The incentives are plain and with so much water under the “Rufo bridge”, I probably should have just reapondd to Noah with a pre-populated Google search on “Chris Rufo”.
I suspect Bryan would interview AOC or Moore if they were willing to sit for him. And why not? They’re important promoters of their movements.
And though I do t follow him closely, the comparison with MTG seems absurd. I don’t doubt Rufo is highly partisan. So are 90% of Americans. So are most American intellectuals by the way if one pays attention to them. Even ones who do good work academically, if you follow their Twitter accounts, are usually disappointingly shallow hacks when it comes to popular politics.
It's not clear to me that Rufo is highly partisan. Like Bryan said, he doesn't appear to be anti-immigrant. He's just laser-focused on a single issue, and has rightly concluded the way to accomplish his goals is by influencing Republicans.
Not "what's hot" in the academy, unfortunately. The opposite isn't just hot-it's all that's acceptable in many places at this time.
Doesn’t need to be either. In fact, I start looking for other outlets when I start to sniff-out grievance trolls and toadies. This is a bad look, Bryan (nevermind positive affirmations from the erstwhile dittoheads, Tucker fans, and other anti-intellectual thought police seeking cool salves for the pain of a restless universe).. Rufo is a whiner more than anything, serving up angry ditto-speak, saying nothing new. As an entrepreneur, I appreciate Caplan seeking bumps from the hit train. It just gets only and terribly unproductive.
Rufo, Tucker, MTG, DeSantis are not revolutionaries.. they make us all look bad.
A stranglehold over hiring was only the first step. Having made the long march through the institutions and gained majorities on the relevant faculty committees and seized control of university administrations, they are just getting started. I retired from the University of California's systemwide administration a little over a year ago, so I can offer some tips about what is coming next; it might be interesting to compare notes with what Rufo thinks will be the next.
One sinister development I have observed is that they have set up Diversity-Inclusion-Equity bureaucracies that are parallel to the traditional lines of authority. Empowering D.I.E. bureaucrats means that faculty committees and mid-level administrators are going to lose power. D.I.E. officers are functioning as political commissars tasked with administering loyalty oaths and political reeducation classes, making sure that trigger warnings are issued to and struggle sessions inflicted on outspoken dissidents, and generally sabotaging all the traditional functions of a university to make sure that everything is sufficiently "diverse" and that no "microaggressions" or trafficking in "misinformation" goes unpunished.
Maybe faculty will be able to defend their tenure, but maybe not. In any event, students and staff won't be able to protect themselves. Moreover, many of the prerogatives that faculty take for granted today, like control over grading, the right to publish one's research, etc., as well as the basic premise that universities are supposed to be about education and research, will be under ferocious assault. Before I left UC, standardized admissions testing had already been eliminated, and there were serious discussions at high levels about interfering with grading, with publication submission and review, and even with disclosures of patentable inventions ("too many white and Asian" inventors according to a systemwide Vice President).
Another D.I.E. priority is to greatly increase the number of degrees being awarded. At least at UC, the plan is to churn out by 2030 a vast horde of certified conformists, not focus on continuing to provide top-quality education and research opportunities to the top 10% of California's high school graduates. The explicit targets at UC are to increase graduate and undergraduate degrees by 20% while eliminating gaps in graduation rates for "Pell, first-generation, and underrrepesented" groups. The formal elimination of affirmative action (which happened in California decades ago) hasn't stopped UC from "diversifying" itself already by gradually eliminating whites (see the data at: https://www.universityofcalifornia.edu/about-us/information-center/uc-2030-dashboard ).
The underlying ideology here is that awarding degrees is a form of "equity" has become an end in itself, unconnected to preparing students to function as independent intellectuals or to empower faculty and students to make original contributions to scholarship or to promote the dissemination of knowledge across society. Woke universities are like cargo cults where degrees are now magical pieces of paper to be given to the most loyal and deserving members of the tribe.
The D.E.I. bureaucracy are commissars. That’s all you needed to say.
Griggs vs Duke Power is commonly acknowledged as the Supreme Court case that places a substantial burden on companies that want to use cognitive tests to filter job applicants. Partly in response to the Wards Cove Packing Co. v Antonio case and others, holdings from Duke Power were also codified in the Civil Rights Act of 1991. As a result of these actions, college is the main alternative mechanism that employers have to filter job applicants by cognitive ability, which has been a factor increasing the importance of a college education. Is there any interest in revisiting that act with respect to the treatment of cognitive tests for job applicants? Alternately, is there any way to revise how the executive department handles this issue without passing new laws?
Question for Rufo: Is Enlightenment/Classical Liberalism doomed in the long-run to be succeeded by some other ideology?
I know many libertarians who argue the anti-CRT laws Rufo supports are a threat to free speech. I do not agree with those libertarians, as I think they wrongly disregard the free speech implications for the taxpayers who are being forced to pay for woke speech. Nonetheless, this seems to be a common criticism of Rufo that appears in our space and I would to see you two dive into that and what ethical, free speech respecting, regulations on what can be taught in schools and universities should look like.
I don't know his position super well, but I've seen him say that he doesnt really think its important to understand the actual woke literature. You can see him say as much in the "Christopher Rufo: Critical Race Theory and Woke Capital video from Claremont Institute" at the 8:00 mark. I get why he would say this (most of it is bad/a tough read), but it is also fundamentally unscholastic and unserious. When I heard him say this, I really had trouble not dismissing him. Ask him why he doesnt think he has an obligation to be conversant in the woke literature. In what other area of scholarship would this be acceptable? To just dismiss your opponent as trash and not even bother reading their stuff.
One can observe the ill effects of the process without being conversant with its supposed theological underpinnings.
I know, and I agree, and it’s not reasonable to expect someone to go and get Ph.D. level understanding of a field just to take issue with it. But when you say you can’t be bothered to even read the literature, it does immediately reveal you to be unserious and unscholarly. Your opponent is just going clip that and say, “How do you even know what you claim to be arguing against, you haven’t read the literature?”
At some point we must judge by the results. I don’t need to be a trained car mechanic to know that the car doesn’t drive properly after an oil change.
Ask him if he agrees with DeSantis passing a law to regulate what private companies can and cannot do concerning DEI training.
The answer is that Rufo does agree with it.
For context, the question regards Florida's Stop WOKE Act (Florida HB7).
In defense of the bill, Rufo notes: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1611966699456331776 that it doesn't ban all DEI training in companies - only some DEI training in companies. He clearly acknowledges that the bill he is defending bans workplace speech - he just insists that the banned speech is unsavory.
To quote: "The...legislation did not bar businesses from providing diversity training to employees, only those trainings that promote racial scapegoating."
He similarly praises the bill: https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1501991015791530006 for "prohibit[ing] schools, corporations, and government agencies from promoting race essentialism..."
The questions for Rufo would therefore be, first, why he thinks that government should decide which private speech is prohibited.
And further, even if he's right that this particular speech is so terrible, that banning it is worth the violation of free speech, doesn't he recognize that laws can have unintended consequences and that a ban originally limited to (what he believes to be) truly terrible speech, is likely to not remain limited to it?
Does he really fail to see the potential for a bill to backfire that defines a prohibition on racial discussion as "not prohibiting discussion...provided such training or instruction is given in an objective manner?"
I think there's a legitimate question of whether a "training" that includes gross racial stereotypes as part of the curriculum counts as discrimination - e.g. if a company had a Nation of Islam race relations trainer come in to tell everyone about Yakub and the Jews, and say they need to remember that in the workplace, I think there would be a hostile work environment lawsuit coming in hot. The only argument for the seriously wacky DEI trainings is that they're teaching good discrimination to counter the bad discrimination.
That said, that seems to be an issue that should be resolved by courts, not preemptive legislation barring speech.
Or, long comment short, discriminatory workplace training is already illegal. And IIRC there's currently a professor suing his employer over a hostile work environment created by the school's DEI apparatus.
Why does he think De Santis's campaign has flopped? He has the mans ear.
Awhile back I suggested on his sub stack that De Santis offering federal matching funds for school choice states and he liked it, but I haven't seen any national school choice plan put out by De Santis. He just keeps talking about what he did in Florida without saying what he's going to do at the national level.
I am uncomfortable with education policy at the federal level. We have centralized domestic policy more than is good for us. It raises the stakes in federal politics. It fosters one-size-fits-all policies too often disconnected from reality.
This is one problem with electing former governors to the White House. They have experience working with the legislature and overseeing the executive, but they tend to focus to much on domestic policy. They try to solve state problems at the federal level.
I would like to get government _out_ of employment decisions. Hiring on criteria other than merit requires government enforcement, because otherwise the incentives are against it.
What do you find objectionable about federal matching fund for school choice?
Florida gives you $8k, the feds match $8k. Most of these state funding ESAs only give about half the total per capita spending, so this brings it up to equality.
If a blue state doesn't want to have ESAs they don't get any money, so transfer from enemies to friends.
If blue states do decide to implement ESAs to get the "free federal money" then we brought school choice national. Once enough people are used to ESAs it will be very hard for public education to keep it stranglehold.
It’s yet another straw on the camel’s back. We load too much on the federal government as it is.
The efficiency and effectiveness of any organization is inversely proportional to complexity of its mission and the length of its management chain. The federal government has the longest governmental management chain, and we’ve multiplied the complexity of its mission.
Furthermore, federal money always comes with strings attached. That restricts local officials freedom of action and encourages them to dodge responsibility.
You can make a case for each and every federal policy, in isolation. Not for their cumulative effect.
"federal money always comes with strings attached"
Any money can come with strings attached, including state and local money. I've heard this excuse from the anti-voucher crowd before, as if 90% of people being unable to afford private school is a good solution.
"We load too much on the federal government as it is."
Literally the one thing the federal government does reasonably well is cut checks. My mom gets her social security check on time every time.
You can make a good case for almost every federal program. The cumulative effect comes out negative.
By the way, have you looked at the rules and regulations around social security? Byzantine.
What is his routine for mental health?
I'd like to know his opinion of how much of the DEI and woke movement is caused by the increased feminization of society over the last 60 years.
His fight is laudable but how does he plan to scale it?