Politics
Opinion: MAGA cynics have decided to destroy diversity efforts to prove we're all equal
Let’s be honest.
Conservatives didn’t come after former Harvard President Claudine Gay because she had plagiarized some of her academic research. They didn’t come after her because she gave Congress a morally indefensible answer to the question of whether calls for genocide of Jews on campus violated speech codes.
They came after her because she represented what her right-wing critics believe are the crimes of the diversity, equity and inclusion movement, and because the very existence of DEI is offensive to those who believe we live in a meritocracy where all start on a level playing field and excellence floats to the top. Basically, they decided she had to go, then reverse-engineered a campaign against her.
Opinion Columnist
Robin Abcarian
“While her resignation is a victory, it is only the beginning,” Christopher Rufo, the conservative activist who led the charge against Gay, wrote in the Wall Street Journal. Rufo also happens to be the architect of the phony panic over critical race theory. “If America is to reform its academic institutions,” he wrote, “the symbolic fight over Harvard’s presidency must evolve into a deeper institutional fight.”
Maybe Gay, despite thinner academic credentials than Harvard presidents past, would have been a superlative president, a phenomenal fundraiser, a visionary university leader. We will never know.
She is now a notch on the belt of the conservative ideologues seeking to undo what they consider to be left-wing ideological excesses pervading American universities.
“TWO DOWN,” trumpeted New York MAGA Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. Her calculated questions about whether students who called for the genocide of Jews in the aftermath of the gruesome Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel violated university speech rules also led to the resignation of University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill.
This is yet another salvo in the conservative war against the “woke” forces of higher education. “The campaign against me was about more than one university and one leader,” Gay wrote last week in a New York Times essay. “For the opportunists driving cynicism about our institutions, no single victory or toppled leader exhausts their zeal.”
She’s absolutely right. Gay’s ouster, according to the Wall Street Journal, “has emboldened Republican lawmakers and their conservative allies, who think they have fresh momentum and a new playbook to reverse what they deem the progressive takeover of American education.”
That effort was already well underway. Nearly half the states have proposed or passed laws outlawing DEI initiatives on public campuses.
Last year, Republican presidential aspirant and MAGA stuntman Gov. Ron DeSantis staged a high-profile takeover of the public New College of Florida, a liberal arts bastion with a large LGBTQ+ population. In: athletics. Out: gender studies. The diversity office was eliminated. (Rufo, not incidentally, is one of the newly appointed members of the school’s board of trustees.)
Bill Ackman, the billionaire investor and Harvard alum who pushed for Gay’s ouster, demanded last week that the members of the Harvard board who hired her should step down and that the university’s DEI office be closed and its staff fired.
“Having a darker skin color, a less common sexual identity, and/or being a woman doesn’t make one necessarily oppressed or even disadvantaged,” wrote Ackman in a 4,000-word statement posted on X.
He makes some good points in his long thread — among them that a climate of fear on campuses has led to self-censorship, that “microaggressions are treated like hate speech” and that “campus speakers and faculty with unapproved views are shouted down, shunned, and canceled.”
But Ackman’s statement also illustrates the particular cluelessness of privileged people who refuse to acknowledge that history did not begin last week, or last year, or that individuals are subject to social and political systems well out of their control.
And yes, while the color of your skin, your gender or sexual orientation won’t automatically condemn you to a life of oppression and poverty — that argument is a straw man — people possessing those traits have in fact been oppressed and disadvantaged and, in many cases, still are. Acknowledging that doesn’t make you some wide-eyed wokie. It means you’ve paid attention to American history.
I’ve spent plenty of time on college campuses in the last decade, and it’s clear to me that one of the most precious aspects of diversity — viewpoint diversity — has taken a back seat to political correctness, which is tragic. A few years ago, I had conversations with students at UC Berkeley, the cradle of the Free Speech Movement, who argued that speakers like then-popular conservative contrarian Milos Yiannopoulos should not be banned.
In the Washington Post last month, Harvard professor Danielle Allen, a contemporary of Gay’s, who teaches political philosophy, ethics and public policy, wrote about her experiences trying to balance competing values on campus. A proponent of DEI, she also — quite reasonably — believes it needs to be reformed.
“We have been focused so much on academic freedom and free speech,” she wrote, “that we have neglected to set standards for a culture of mutual respect.”
This might seem like a counterintuitive take from a liberal scholar who was a co-chair of Harvard’s Presidential Task Force on Inclusion and Belonging, which produced an 82-page blueprint focused on ways to promote inclusion and mutual respect among vastly different constituencies. But on further examination, it isn’t at all.
Allen is a realist: “Across the country, DEI bureaucracies have been responsible for numerous assaults on common sense” — certain mandatory diversity training initiatives come to mind — ”but the values of lowercase-i inclusion and lowercase-d diversity remain foundational to healthy democracy.”
They surely do, and despite the efforts of folks like Rufo and DeSantis, they always will.
Politics
Federal judge blocks Trump from cutting childcare funds to Democratic states over fraud concerns
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A federal judge Friday temporarily blocked the Trump administration from stopping subsidies on childcare programs in five states, including Minnesota, amid allegations of fraud.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian, a Biden appointee, didn’t rule on the legality of the funding freeze, but said the states had met the legal threshold to maintain the “status quo” on funding for at least two weeks while arguments continue.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns.
The programs include the Child Care and Development Fund, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, and the Social Services Block Grant, all of which help needy families.
USDA IMMEDIATELY SUSPENDS ALL FEDERAL FUNDING TO MINNESOTA AMID FRAUD INVESTIGATION
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would withhold funds for programs in five Democratic states over fraud concerns. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)
“Families who rely on childcare and family assistance programs deserve confidence that these resources are used lawfully and for their intended purpose,” HHS Deputy Secretary Jim O’Neill said in a statement on Tuesday.
The states, which include California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, argued in court filings that the federal government didn’t have the legal right to end the funds and that the new policy is creating “operational chaos” in the states.
U.S. District Judge Arun Subramanian at his nomination hearing in 2022. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
In total, the states said they receive more than $10 billion in federal funding for the programs.
HHS said it had “reason to believe” that the programs were offering funds to people in the country illegally.
‘TIP OF THE ICEBERG’: SENATE REPUBLICANS PRESS GOV WALZ OVER MINNESOTA FRAUD SCANDAL
The table above shows the five states and their social safety net funding for various programs which are being withheld by the Trump administration over allegations of fraud. (AP Digital Embed)
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is leading the lawsuit, called the ruling a “critical victory for families whose lives have been upended by this administration’s cruelty.” (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital has reached out to HHS for comment.
In what might be the most decisive critique yet of President Trump’s remake of the Kennedy Center, the Washington National Opera’s board approved a resolution on Friday to leave the venue it has occupied since 1971.
“Today, the Washington National Opera announced its decision to seek an amicable early termination of its affiliation agreement with the Kennedy Center and resume operations as a fully independent nonprofit entity,” the company said in a statement to the Associated Press.
Roma Daravi, Kennedy Center’s vice president of public relations, described the relationship with Washington National Opera as “financially challenging.”
“After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to part ways with the WNO due to a financially challenging relationship,” Daravi said in a statement. “We believe this represents the best path forward for both organizations and enables us to make responsible choices that support the financial stability and long-term future of the Trump Kennedy Center.”
Kennedy Center President Ambassador Richard Grenell tweeted that the call was made by the Kennedy Center, writing that its leadership had “approached the Opera leadership last year with this idea and they began to be open to it.”
“Having an exclusive relationship has been extremely expensive and limiting in choice and variety,” Grenell wrote. “We have spent millions of dollars to support the Washington Opera’s exclusivity and yet they were still millions of dollars in the hole – and getting worse.”
WNO’s decision to vacate the Kennedy Center’s 2,364-seat Opera House comes amid a wave of artist cancellations that came after the venue’s board voted to rename the center the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts. New signage featuring Trump’s name went up on the building’s exterior just days after the vote while debate raged over whether an official name change could be made without congressional approval.
That same day, Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) — an ex officio member of the board — wrote on social media that the vote was not unanimous and that she and others who might have voiced their dissent were muted on the call.
Grenell countered that ex officio members don’t get a vote.
Cancellations soon began to mount — as did Kennedy Center‘s rebukes against the artists who chose not to appear. Jazz drummer Chuck Redd pulled out of his annual Christmas Eve concert; jazz supergroup the Cookers nixed New Year’s Eve shows; New York-based Doug Varone and Dancers dropped out of April performances; and Grammy Award-winning banjo player Béla Fleck wrote on social media that he would no longer play at the venue in February.
WNO’s departure, however, represents a new level of artist defection. The company’s name is synonymous with the Kennedy Center and it has served as an artistic center of gravity for the complex since the building first opened.
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Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is leveling a stunning accusation at Vice President JD Vance amid the national furor over this week’s fatal shooting in Minnesota involving an ICE agent.
“I understand that Vice President Vance believes that shooting a young mother of three in the face three times is an acceptable America that he wants to live in, and I do not,” the four-term federal lawmaker from New York and progressive champion argued as she answered questions on Friday on Capitol Hill from Fox News and other news organizations.
Ocasio-Cortez spoke in the wake of Wednesday’s shooting death of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good after she confronted ICE agents from inside her car in Minneapolis.
RENEE NICOLE GOOD PART OF ‘ICE WATCH’ GROUP, DHS SOURCES SAY
Members of law enforcement work the scene following a suspected shooting by an ICE agent during federal operations on January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Video of the incident instantly went viral, and while Democrats have heavily criticized the shooting, the Trump administration is vocally defending the actions of the ICE agent.
HEAD HERE FOR LIVE FOX NEWS UPDATES ON THE ICE SHOOTING IN MINNESOTA
Vance, at a White House briefing on Thursday, charged that “this was an attack on federal law enforcement. This was an attack on law and order.”
“That woman was there to interfere with a legitimate law enforcement operation,” the vice president added. “The president stands with ICE, I stand with ICE, we stand with all of our law enforcement officers.”
And Vance claimed Good was “brainwashed” and suggested she was connected to a “broader, left-wing network.”
Federal sources told Fox News on Friday that Good, who was a mother of three, worked as a Minneapolis-based immigration activist serving as a member of “ICE Watch.”
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Ocasio-Cortez, in responding to Vance’s comments, said, “That is a fundamental difference between Vice President Vance and I. I do not believe that the American people should be assassinated in the street.”
But a spokesperson for the vice president, responding to Ocasio-Cortez’s accusation, told Fox News Digital, “On National Law Enforcement Appreciation Day, AOC made it clear she thinks that radical leftists should be able to mow down ICE officials in broad daylight. She should be ashamed of herself. The Vice President stands with ICE and the brave men and women of law enforcement, and so do the American people.”
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