"Scalped," Christopher Rufo gloated. Using this single word posted on the social media network X on January 2, the American conservative activist claimed a trophy. Claudine Gay, president of the prestigious Harvard University in Massachusetts, had just announced her resignation, triggered by a plagiarism case involving her doctoral thesis. Rufo had been the first to reveal her ethical failings.

Gay's position had already been weakened by anti-Semitic incidents on her campus and an appearance before Congress, where she proved incapable of explicitly condemning calls for Jewish genocide. At Harvard, and at several of the country's other elite universities, a wave of anti-Semitism has spread after the Hamas attacks in Israel on October 7, 2023.

Rufo has been engaged in a fierce battle against the left since 2020 and has put universities, which he deems responsible for the moral collapse of the United States, at the heart of his fight. In his bestseller America's Cultural Revolution: How the Radical Left Conquered Everything (Broadside Books, 2023), he argued that the radical left has a complete stranglehold on higher education.

According to him, it is committed to disseminating Marxist-inspired theories and reducing US history to white supremacism. Progressive hegemony permeates the whole of society, with "unity" now existing between "the university, the media, the state, the corporation."

Contacted by Le Monde in Washington state, where he lives, Rufo affirmed his belief that anti-Semitism is a manifestation of the harmful influence exerted by "post-colonial and neo-Marxist ideologies." "The radical left in the United States wants to see the full decolonization of Israel and the West more broadly. And it's not merely intellectual, it's physical," he said. "They want to see the physical annihilation of anyone who is deemed an oppressor."

'Recapture'

"Christopher Rufo opposes real phenomena, notably the left's propensity to want to limit debate. But he is not credible in his defense of freedom of expression. His aim is to replace one orthodoxy with his own," remarked Yascha Mounk, a professor at John Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, who is as interested in the excesses of the right as he is in those of the progressive camp.

No matter, Rufo is determined to "recapture" institutions, as he wrote on his blog. In January 2023, he achieved his first "victory" by taking part in what he called a "coup." The assault targeted a public university, New College, in Sarasota, southwest Florida. Appointed by Ron DeSantis, the state's Republican governor, Rufo joined the New College board of trustees on January 6, along with five other trustees, all radical right-wing intellectuals or well-known figures close to the Grand Old Party.

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