GIOR ANALYSIS: Christopher Ruffo Issues Manhattan Institute National Conservative Education Platform

Christo­pher Rufo and the Man­hat­tan Insti­tute have unveiled a com­pre­hen­sive blue­print to trans­form Amer­i­ca’s uni­ver­si­ties through fed­er­al fund­ing lever­age, tar­get­ing over $150 bil­lion in annu­al tax­pay­er sub­si­dies to enforce aca­d­e­m­ic stan­dards and elim­i­nate ide­o­log­i­cal bias. On 15 July 2025, The Free Press report­ed that Christo­pher Rufo and a coali­tion of aca­d­e­mics released the Man­hat­tan State­ment on High­er Edu­ca­tion, estab­lish­ing six core prin­ci­ples, includ­ing truth over ide­ol­o­gy, insti­tu­tion­al neu­tral­i­ty, and col­or-blind equal­i­ty as con­di­tions for con­tin­ued fed­er­al sup­port. The arti­cle begins:

Since tak­ing office in Jan­u­ary, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump has been engaged in a high-stakes con­flict with Amer­i­ca’s elite uni­ver­si­ties and, by proxy, Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties as a whole. The admin­is­tra­tion’s sup­port­ers have applaud­ed the pres­i­den­t’s deci­sion to strip bil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing from the Ivy League, while crit­ics have warned that such actions are an over­reach and will have a neg­a­tive impact on the hard sci­ences. Beneath the duel­ing head­lines, how­ev­er, there appears to be an uneasy, if often unstat­ed, agree­ment: Some­thing is deeply wrong with acad­e­mia, and no one is quite sure what to do about it. Con­ser­v­a­tives have long made the argu­ment that acad­e­mia has been cor­rupt­ed. And since the Black Lives Mat­ter riots of 2020 and the Hamas ter­ror cam­paign of 2023, an increas­ing num­ber of cen­trists and lib­er­als have joined the cho­rus, rec­og­niz­ing that many once-great uni­ver­si­ties had been cap­tured by destruc­tive ide­olo­gies and are no longer truth-seek­ing institutions.

           Read more: https://www.thefp.com/p/the-president-wants-to-fix-higher-education-policy-reform-campus-university

Key Points

• The Man­hat­tan State­ment demands that uni­ver­si­ties abol­ish DEI bureau­cra­cies and adopt col­or-blind equal­i­ty poli­cies, with 71% of Amer­i­cans sup­port­ing equal treat­ment regard­less of race or gender.
• Uni­ver­si­ties must cease direct par­tic­i­pa­tion in social and polit­i­cal activism, focus­ing on indi­vid­ual schol­ar and stu­dent crit­i­cism rather than cor­po­rate insti­tu­tion­al positions.
• The reform pro­pos­al includes swift penal­ties for stu­dents who dis­rupt speak­ers, van­dal­ize prop­er­ty, or occu­py build­ings, with 67% of Amer­i­cans sup­port­ing expul­sion for such activities.
• Christo­pher Rufo’s coali­tion pre­vi­ous­ly exposed Har­vard pres­i­dent Clau­dine Gay for pla­gia­rism and trans­formed New Col­lege of Flori­da into a clas­si­cal lib­er­al arts institution.

GIOR Analysis: Christopher Rufo, the Manhattan Institute, and National Conservatism

The Man­hat­tan State­ment on High­er Edu­ca­tion is a clear artic­u­la­tion of nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive ide­ol­o­gy, apply­ing its core prin­ci­ples to the aca­d­e­m­ic sphere. It por­trays elite uni­ver­si­ties as hav­ing bro­ken a civic com­pact by aban­don­ing truth in favor of rad­i­cal ide­olo­gies, par­tic­u­lar­ly racial iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics and pro­gres­sive social agen­das. In response, it demands a reasser­tion of col­or-blind equal­i­ty, insti­tu­tion­al neu­tral­i­ty, and West­ern civ­i­liza­tion­al val­ues, fram­ing these as not only edu­ca­tion­al prin­ci­ples but as nation­al imper­a­tives. The call to abol­ish DEI bureau­cra­cies and reori­ent uni­ver­si­ties around “truth over ide­ol­o­gy” echoes the nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive empha­sis on restor­ing cul­tur­al cohe­sion through edu­ca­tion ground­ed in tra­di­tion­al values.

Equal­ly aligned is the demand to con­di­tion pub­lic funding—over $150 bil­lion annually—on ide­o­log­i­cal com­pli­ance, reflect­ing a broad­er eco­nom­ic nation­al­ism that insists pub­lic insti­tu­tions serve the nation’s inter­ests. Uni­ver­si­ties are por­trayed not as inde­pen­dent cen­ters of thought but as way­ward arms of the state, to be brought back in line with their found­ing mis­sion: to edu­cate cit­i­zens in ser­vice of the repub­lic. This is nation­al con­ser­vatism in action—a strate­gic push to remake acad­e­mia as a guardian of nation­al iden­ti­ty rather than a vehi­cle for cul­tur­al subversion.

Christo­pher Rufo has emerged as a cen­tral fig­ure in the Amer­i­can glob­al nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, blend­ing ide­o­log­i­cal com­bat with oper­a­tional tac­tics to reshape insti­tu­tions and pub­lic dis­course. Draw­ing from Gramsci’s the­o­ries of cul­tur­al hege­mo­ny, Rufo and his allies have invert­ed left­ist strate­gies to wage a coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion against pro­gres­sive dom­i­nance in acad­e­mia, media, and gov­ern­ment, fram­ing their efforts as a defense of nation­al iden­ti­ty and tra­di­tion­al val­ues against per­ceived elite over­reach. This ide­o­log­i­cal project is not con­fined to domes­tic pol­i­tics; Rufo and oth­er nation­al con­ser­v­a­tives have cul­ti­vat­ed transat­lantic alliances with Euro­pean right-wing lead­ers like Vik­tor Orbán, whose Hun­gary serves as both a mod­el and a node in a broad­er net­work chal­leng­ing lib­er­al inter­na­tion­al­ism and glob­al governance.

The oper­a­tional play­book includes tar­get­ing uni­ver­si­ties as bat­tle­grounds for cul­tur­al con­trol, lever­ag­ing exec­u­tive pow­er to defund or restruc­ture insti­tu­tions, and export­ing these tac­tics through con­fer­ences and media cam­paigns that ampli­fy nation­al­ist, anti-glob­al­ist, and anti-woke mes­sag­ing. These efforts are rein­forced by exten­sive per­son­al and insti­tu­tion­al ties between Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives and Orbán’s Hun­gary, cre­at­ing a feed­back loop where pol­i­cy ideas and rhetor­i­cal frames cir­cu­late across bor­ders, often with the tac­it or explic­it sup­port of actors seek­ing to desta­bi­lize the lib­er­al demo­c­ra­t­ic order.

The movement’s suc­cess hinges on its abil­i­ty to reframe com­plex social issues in Manichean terms, mobi­lize pop­ulist dis­con­tent, and exploit insti­tu­tion­al vulnerabilities—a strat­e­gy that has reshaped the Repub­li­can Party’s pri­or­i­ties and drawn scruti­ny for its poten­tial to empow­er author­i­tar­i­an actors both at home and abroad.

The fol­low­ing are the top five indi­vid­u­als who signed the Man­hat­tan State­ment in terms of their influ­ence on the Glob­al Nation­al Con­ser­v­a­tive Alliance (GNCA):

1. Yoram Hazony
   Role: Chair­man of the Edmund Burke Foundation
   Why: Archi­tect of the Nation­al Con­ser­vatism (Nat­Con) move­ment; orga­niz­er of the Nat­Con con­fer­ences; author of The Virtue of Nationalism
   Influ­ence: Ide­o­log­i­cal leader of the entire movement
2. Christo­pher Rufo
   Role: Senior Fel­low at the Man­hat­tan Institute
   Why: Chief strate­gist behind anti-CRT, anti-DEI cam­paigns; advi­sor to Ron DeSan­tis; trans­formed New Col­lege of Flori­da into a nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive model
   Influ­ence: Tac­ti­cal enforcer of nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive edu­ca­tion policy
3. Ben Shapiro
   Role: Co-founder of The Dai­ly Wire
   Why: Major media influ­encer pro­mot­ing nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive views on fam­i­ly, reli­gion, and edu­ca­tion; explic­it­ly sup­ports Hazony’s Nat­Con framework
   Influ­ence: Mass media mouth­piece for nation­al conservatism
4. Vic­tor Davis Hanson
   Role: Senior Fel­low at the Hoover Institution
   Why: Promi­nent defend­er of West­ern iden­ti­ty and anti-glob­al­ist nation­al­ism; reg­u­lar con­trib­u­tor to Amer­i­can Great­ness, Clare­mont Review of Books
   Influ­ence: Intel­lec­tu­al bridge between tra­di­tion­al con­ser­vatism and nation­al conservatism
5. Scott Yenor
   Role: Clare­mont Insti­tute Fellow
   Why: Lead­ing voice on nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive pol­i­cy for fam­i­ly and edu­ca­tion; author of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als to reshape gen­der norms via state power
   Influ­ence: Pol­i­cy the­o­rist for nation­al con­ser­v­a­tive social order

Exter­nal References:

1. Chris Rufo’s dan­ger­ous fic­tions — Vox

2. Christo­pher Rufo’s Trou­bling Path to Pow­er — The New Republic

3. Is Christo­pher Rufo a Right-wing Lenin­ist? — UnHerd

Disclaimer

The Glob­al Influ­ence Oper­a­tions Report (GIOR) employs AI through­out the post­ing process, includ­ing gen­er­at­ing sum­maries of news items, the intro­duc­tion, key points, and often the “con­text” sec­tion. We rec­om­mend ver­i­fy­ing all infor­ma­tion before use. Addi­tion­al­ly, images are AI-gen­er­at­ed and intend­ed sole­ly for illus­tra­tive pur­pos­es. While they rep­re­sent the events or indi­vid­u­als dis­cussed, they should not be inter­pret­ed as real-world photography.