There Was an Actual Conspiracy to Redefine CRT and DEI. Now They Have a New Target

The billionaire-funded propaganda group that demonized CRT and DEI just released a plan to make universities white again.

(Envato Elements)

From 1958-1966, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, a little-known philanthropic organization called the John M. Olin Foundation “secretly served as a bank for the CIA” and funded “anti communist intellectuals and publications." According to Jane Mayer’s book Dark Money: The History of the Billionaires Behind the Radical Right, shortly after the Olin Foundation provided “crucial start-up funds for the Federalist Society” in 1982, the group elected James Piereson as executive director. Under Piereson, the “venture capital fund for the conservative movement” discovered a new venue for introducing right-wing propaganda into the American mainstream.

Elite universities.

“Between 1990 and 2001, fifty-six of the eighty-eight Olin fellows at the Harvard program continued on to teach at the University of Chicago, Cornell, Dartmouth, Georgetown, Harvard, MIT, Penn, and Yale,” Mayer writes. “Like an academic Johnny Appleseed, the Olin Foundation underwrote 83 percent of the costs for all Law and Economics programs in American law schools between the years of 1985 and 1989.” And to give its far-right army of “intellectuals” a soft landing spot, the foundation essentially bankrolled projects and careers for conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, Laura Ingraham and Ann Coulter.

Piereson ultimately left Olin to become a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing “think tank” founded by former CIA chief William Casey and funded by the Olin Foundation. In August 2021, James Copland, Piereson’s fellow senior fellow at the far-right collective, authored “How to Regulate Critical Race Theory in Schools.” Among his many achievements, Copland has testified before Congress, authored policy briefs and written for illustrious publications, including the Harvard Business Review, the Yale Journal and the Wall Street Journal. According to Copland’s bio, he also “holds a J.D. and an M.B.A. from Yale, where he was an Olin Fellow in Law and Economics.”

Along with manufacturing seven “divisive concepts” Copland identified as definitive markers for critical race theory, the report included an addendum with “model legislation.” Instead of using the definition of critical race theory provided by scholars, professors and experts on the subject, Republican lawmakers copied and pasted the Manhattan Institute’s fake definition into at least 60 anti-CRT bills in 40 states. If legislators or concerned parents had even bothered to check Copland’s works-cited page or the sources in the Manhattan Institute’s sample legislation, they would have easily exposed this well-financed white academic fraud.

Christopher Rufo is not a scholar. Although Rufo’s supporters tout his Harvard credentials, he actually attended Harvard Extension School, an open-enrollment “back door” to the elite Ivy League institution. Because of its commitment to “access, equity and transparency,” SAT scores and grades are not required for the school where Rufo studied absolutely nothing related to critical race theory or education. However, despite Rufo’s lack of education, training or experience in academics, history or teaching, Rufo somehow secured a job as the senior fellow and director of the initiative on critical race theory at the Manhattan Institute.

That’s right, the Manhattan Institute’s senior fellow wrote a study on critical race theory based on “research” from a Manhattan Institute senior fellow who has never actually studied or researched the subject on which he’s cited as an expert. Even though Rufo fits the right’s definition of an unqualified diversity hire, the failed filmmaker-turned-”far-right propagandist” does have a well-known plan to address CRT:

Just make stuff up.

And just like that, white men had redefined an academic field pioneered by Black scholars.

On Tuesday, the Manhattan Institute’s best and brightest billionaire-funded DEI hires came together like the Caucasian Avengers to publish “The Manhattan Statement on Higher Education.” Like their fictional research on CRT, the Superfriends of white mediocrity’s manifesto used fabricated facts to attack the “liberal agenda.” But this time, to appeal to their legion of unwashclothed MAGAmericans, they went even further. I wish I were making this up, but – I bullshit you not …

They wrote a white Declaration of Independence.

No seriously. When it comes to some privileged white boys wrapping themselves in Caucasian indignation, look at these excerpts and tell me who wore it best:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
— The Declaration of Independence

Now, the truth is undeniable. Beginning with the George Floyd riots and culminating in the celebration of the Hamas terror campaign, the institutions of higher education finally ripped off the mask and revealed their animating spirit: racialism, ideology, chaos.
— The Manhattan Institute

…Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.
— Declaration of Independence

The troubles of the current era are neither light nor transient …
— The Manhattan Institute

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
– Declaration of Independence

The universities have brazenly, deliberately, and repeatedly violated their compact with the American people. They have engaged in a long train of abuses, evasions, and usurpations, which, with every turn of the ratchet, have moved our society toward a new kind of tyranny—one in which ideology determines truth, and the university functions as a political agent of the Left.

Let us enumerate the facts …
— The Manhattan Institute

Stop laughing.

And like their ancestors forefathers (white people don’t have ancestors, right? I’m pretty sure they only have “kinsmen,” “patriarchs” and “forbearers”), they came up with a way to stop the anti-white tyrants from oppressing their fellow kinspeople.

Steal their money.

That’s right. These conservatives, who are supposedly anti-big government and pro-“freedom of thought,” want to withhold federal dollars from taxpayer-funded institutions that don’t share their Caucasian ideology. “Enough,” they wrote whitely. “The American people provide status, privileges, and more than $150 billion per year to the universities…To that end, we call on the President of the United States to draft a new contract with the universities, which should be written into every grant, payment, loan, eligibility, and accreditation, and punishable by revocation of all public benefit.”

Along with advancing “truth over ideology” and “merit-based decision-making,” the individuals whose education and jobs were funded by wealthy donors who paid them to promote an ideology that lacks merit also want universities to:

• Stop participating in social and political activism: Of course, “social and political activism” probably includes culturally responsive teaching but not Prager University.

• Abolish DEI bureaucracies and racially segregated programs: As long as the majority-white non-revenue sports continue to benefit from Black athletes, and white sororities and fraternities can keep the school legislatures white.

• End race-based discrimination in admissions, hiring and contracting: Which don’t include legacy admissions or conservative laws mandating that colleges hire conservative professors.

• Adhere to colorblind principles: Except the part where they can steal billions from HBCUs.

• Protect freedom of speech and civil discourse: Turning Points USA can invite Kyle Rittenhouse to speak at a college, but a Black professor advocating for armed self-defense is dangerous. If Nikole Hannah-Jones comes on campus, rules don’t count.

• Collect and publish information on race, admissions and post-college success: I don’t know how you fulfill this obligation on a “colorblind” campus. The Department of Education already does this anyway, so… Oh, wait.

The best part of this Discrimination Proclamation is the signature section. Of course, Rufo is the first signee. But the second signature belongs to Jordan Peterson. Not only is the scientific racism advocate considered to be one of the forefathers of the alt-right movement, but Peterson isn’t even American. To be fair, Peterson is not even in the top five racists who signed the letter. That honor either belongs to Ben Shapiro or white identity politician (no, seriously) Eric Kaufmann, who also isn’t an American.

They really had to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Apparently, 82-year-old Congresswoman Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) scribbled her name down before leading the vote to suppress the Epstein files. I didn’t even know Dr. Peter Boghossian was still alive after Dr. Marc Lamont-Hill murdered the “white grievance” professor on live television. Joshua Katz signed it, but he hates when college students take a stand against racism … unless the students agree to have sex with him.

The list isn’t all-white. Ward Connerly, who struck the first blow that ultimately killed affirmative action, affixed his name to diversify this inequity. Anti-reparations, pro-George Zimmerman activist Carol Swain signed on, too.

But before you dismiss this new Bill of Whites, here’s another story.

In the early 1980s, a broke, aspiring spy novelist was working as a field evaluator for newly integrated schools, welfare programs, daycare centers and other social services. But, after burning crosses in high school, graduating from Harvard and working in the Peace Corps, he lost his wife and grew tired of working at his dead-end government job. During the time he spent spreading propaganda for the U.S. military, his fellow Republicans told him that, as a conservative and a professional liar, they knew someone who might give him a DEI job spreading misinformation.

In 1984, after spending a year at the Manhattan Institute in a position bankrolled by the Olin Foundation, Charles Murray’s book Losing Ground, about the “welfare state,” was released, making him an instant darling of the right and the left. It inspired Bill Clinton’s promise to “end welfare as we know it” by cutting cash assistance and Aid to Families with Dependent Children. The “book that many people believed begat welfare reform” also served as the heart of the GOP’s Contract With America in the 1990s. And it made Murray a star. For his next book, Charles Murray published The Bell Curve, a pseudoscientific treatise based on the white supremacist belief that IQ is related to race.

Whether it’s Elon Musk or Donald Trump, a lot of people – white, Black, conservative and liberal – actually believe that welfare is destroying the country, that Black people are intellectually inferior, that dumb DEI hires are making airplanes fall from the sky or that critical race theory is a Marxist plan to indoctrinate white kids. But remember, all of those ideas came from certified liars whose research was funded by a billionaire “charity” who laundered money and spread misinformation for the CIA.

It’s a conspiracy theory that’s actually true.

And it could only happen in a predominantly white institution called America.