conservative activist christopher ruffo, who helped orchestrate the effort to out-gay wrote on x, quotecas institutions. we will expose you. you will -- now, in an op-ed, in the new york times, gay described the racist and violent threats she has been receiving. he writes, quote, the campaign against me was about more than one university, and one -- this is merely a single skirmish in a broader war to unravel public faith in pillars of american society. joining me now to discuss this and more is sean harper, a -- professor at the university of southern california, where he founded the schools way's race and equity center. he also advises ceos and leaders on -- professor, thank you so much for joining me tonight. i really appreciate it. i first want to start with your take on sort of the plagiarism accusations against professor gay, and particularly how you see the republican party really leverage that to their advantage. >> sure. thanks for having me. i will start by acknowledging that plagiarism is not okay. i have been an academic for the past 20 years. and we take plagiarism and acad

christopher ruffo does not do it alone.hly coordinated campaign to force claudine gay to resign from harvard was a three pronged attack. that's what he told politico's ian ward last week. quote, this was a team effort which involved three primary points of leverage. first, was the narrative leverage. it was done primarily by me, christopher burnett, and erin saberi and. secondly is the financial leverage, led by bill ackman and other harvard owners. finally, there was the political leverage, led by congresswoman elise stefanik's masterful performance with claudine gay at her hearings. when you put those three elements together, narrative, financial, and political pressure, and you squeeze hard enough, you see the results that we got today, the resignation of america's most powerful academic leader, and quote. there it is, clear as day, christopher ruffo's own words. this crew of strange bedfellows help to bring down the president of harvard not because of who she was or what she did but to advance their own particular cause

and who looked at presidents gay as a symbol of those things that they were anti-and as christopher ruffoaid in an interview, they essentially triangulated that combination of capturing the media never, bringing financial pressure, and capturing, creating the political echo chamber of and diversity, and equity and inclusion political group to target her and ultimately create the conditions we're shape decided she could no longer effectively laid the institution. >> one of the things that got me and that national action network involved, and other groups, is the clear inference, probably not even inference, but explicit that she was a dei choice. like she wasn't qualified to pay that president of harvard. and both before and since the supreme court decision overturning college affirmative action, i've contended th it wouldn't stop there. and the new york times is reporting today that house icans are planning to expand their inquiry into campus dei efforts, purportedly to protect jewish students from present antisemitism at ivy league and some private universities. what do you make of this?

. >> that was a conservative activist, christopher ruffo, in september of 2020, making an explicit request president trump issue an executive order abolishing critical race theory training from the federal government. ruffo is likely the reason your conservative uncle knows at the phrase, critical race theory, to begin with. he is the reason that fox news became obsessed with it, and the recent a trump camp with the process with it, because it's a buzz term for pretty much anything to do with race. we know thanks to a reporter for the washington post that one made as requests, trump was watching. within a month, trump issued an executive order, demanding that no federal money be used for critical race theory. chris ruffo got what he asked for. after that, ruffo's anti-crt campaign agenda pulled up enough concerted pressure against nicole hannah jones, the cofounder of the 1619 project, at the university of north carolina denied her tenure. jones had a pulitzer prize of mcarthur genius grant and support from the schools chancellor and faculty, but conservative pressure worked. ruffothen set

that is the goal of christopher ruffo and his gang. >> we saw the same thing with critical race theorywhere again, he telegraphed and said he was going to associate that term with every negative connotation that people could imagine. irrespective of what the term actually represented, a very specific and particular body of legal scholarship around the efficaciousness of civil rights litigation. very highly particularly kinds of scholarly inquiry. but by the time he was done, it was kind of cold war, mccarthyite level hysteria. they're running the same playbook, now we have individuals being attached to it, and for the record, when we saw elise stefanik, representative stefanik tweet she would always deliver in the aftermath of the resignation, i was like, was that something youcome pained on? was that what your district wanted? we voted for you in order to dispatch the president of harvard university. >> apparently. >> pure cultural warfare in the guise of intellectual inquiry and ethical concern. >> yeah, and there's no intellectual inquiry about it. they're trying to take out women a