In Review: 2023 - A Year Spent Fighting DEI, Child Sex-Change Procedures, and Ideological Corruption in America’s Institutions

Christopher F. Rufo
2 January 2024

Each year, I structure my work around a number of “campaigns.” These typically involve creating model legislation, changing public opinion through investigative reporting, and working with elected officials to craft these ideas into successful policy. This is, in short, a form of conservative “activism” that I have developed through my work on critical race theory, gender ideology, and DEI programming.

Last year, I launched three campaigns – to abolish DEI, stop child sex-change procedures, and expose Harvard’s ideological rot. All proved successful. I will review them here.

Abolish DEI

My primary campaign this year was to abolish the DEI bureaucracy in state universities.

To launch the project, I authored model legislation with Manhattan Institute and introduced the concept at an event with Florida governor Ron DeSantis. Next, I published a series of investigative reports exposing the radical nature of DEI bureaucracies at state universities and wrote an op-ed for the New York Times making the case that DEI undermines the principles of classical liberal education.

The campaign was persuasive. Within months, the governors of Florida and Texas signed legislation abolishing the DEI bureaucracies in their state universities, and other states, including Iowa and Oklahoma, quickly followed suit, enacting policies to defund their own DEI bureaucracies.

Our campaign set a new standard for conservative policymaking, and I expect that more red states will pass similar bills this year.

Stop Child Sex-Change Procedures

My second campaign for 2023 was to stop child sex-change procedures in America’s hospitals.

To this end, I delivered a Hillsdale Imprimis lecture and directed a short film on the “transgender empire,” revealing the constellation of left-wing institutions pushing gender ideology onto American children.

In addition, I released a bombshell investigative report on the secret child sex-change program at Texas Children’s Hospital. Executives at the hospital had promised to stop these procedures, but as I demonstrated through whistleblower documents, doctors continued to provide puberty blockers and other treatments to children as young as 11.

Following my reporting, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton launched an investigation into the hospital and its so-called gender-affirming care program. Then Texas legislators passed a bill to ban these grisly procedures statewide. Another win.

Expose Harvard’s Ideological Rot

I finished the year with a campaign to expose ideological corruption at Harvard.

Following Harvard’s disastrous response to the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, I published a series of op-eds chronicling the ideological forces that led the university down this path. Next, I published an exclusive report with Christopher Brunet revealing that Harvard president Claudine Gay had plagiarized multiple passages of her Ph.D. thesis, as defined by Harvard’s own academic-integrity policies. This report set off a firestorm, generating hundreds of millions of media impressions and raising serious questions about President Gay as a leader and Harvard as an institution.

This reporting scored a victory in the broader campaign to fight left-wing hegemony at America’s prestige institutions. More will happen on this front in the coming year.

My commitment to readers is not only to provide thoughtful reporting on America’s most pressing challenges but also to deliver tangible outcomes in the political arena. 

© 2024 Christopher F. Rufo
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