Christopher Rufo

Rufo's appearances with Tucker Carlson on Fox News reportedly influenced President Donald Trump to issue an executive order in 2020 banning some topics from diversity training for the government and contractors; President Joe Biden rescinded the order in 2021. Rufo's rhetoric and work have been criticized by numerous sources. Rufo is a contributing editor of the conservative policy magazine City Journal, and a distinguished fellow of Hillsdale College.

Christopher Rufo studied at Rio Americano High School, Georgetown University and Walsh School of Foreign Service. The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is activism. Residence is recorded at Sacramento and Gig Harbor. Employment is recorded with Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, The Heritage Foundation and Claremont Institute.

• Name — Christopher Rufo • Birth Name — Christopher Ferguson Rufo • Born — 26 August 1984 • Education — Georgetown University (BS) Harvard Extension School (ALM) • Children — 3

Rufo was born on August 26, 1984. He was raised in Sacramento, California. His father was born in San Donato Val di Comino, Italy. Rufo received a Bachelor of Science in Foreign Service from the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in 2006. He received a Master of Liberal Arts in the field of government from the Harvard Extension School in 2022.

Rufo was a visiting fellow for domestic policy studies at The Heritage Foundation and a Lincoln Fellow at the Claremont Institute. Later, he was a research fellow at the Discovery Institute, a Christian think tank, where he was a director of its Center on Wealth, Poverty, & Morality. Rufo was a documentary filmmaker in his twenties and early thirties, with various overseas projects such as Roughing It: Mongolia, and Diamond in the Dunes, a film about baseball in Xinjiang. As the founder of American Studio, "a nonprofit organization dedicated to creating new work about the American experience", he has directed four documentaries, including America Lost, which attempts to tell the story of "forgotten American cities". As a filmmaker he generally "focused on urban areas". In 2017, Rufo was one of 30 plaintiffs in a lawsuit that successfully prevented Seattle from imposing a 2.25% income tax on sums above $250,000 a year for individuals and over $500,000 for couples. In 2018, he briefly ran for city council. In 2021, Rufo spoke at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando. In April 2022, he was reported to have 2,500 paid subscribers to his newsletter. In 2022, the SPLC called Rufo a "far-right propagandist". Rufo was one of several conservative education activists Florida Governor Ron DeSantis appointed to the board of trustees of New College of Florida in 2023. In 2025, he won the Bradley Prize.

Rufo has been a prominent advocate for bans on teachers discussing LGBTQ issues in classrooms. He supported Florida House Bill 1557 (The Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, commonly known as the "Don't Say Gay" bill), which prohibits teachers from discussing such matters in kindergarten through the third grade. Rufo appeared alongside Florida Governor Ron DeSantis when he signed a bill retaliating against Disney after the company criticized the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act. Rufo linked LGBTQ discussions at schools to grooming, the act of connecting with children for the purpose of sexually abusing them. He said that schools were "hunting grounds" for sexually predatory teachers and that parents had "good reason" to worry about grooming. Citing a study by Charol Shakeshaft, Rufo claimed that public school teachers are responsible for 100 times more child sexual abuse than Catholic priests. Shakeshaft said this was a misuse of her data, calling it "completely invalid". After Disney criticized the Florida Parental Rights in Education Act, Rufo suggested that Disney was involved in sexualizing children and rife with child sexual abuse. According to New York Times writer Trip Gabriel, "critics of Mr. Rufo, and of the broader right-wing push on LGBTQ issues, say the attacks represent a new era of moral panic, one with echoes of slanders from decades ago that gay teachers were a threat to children." For Salon, education journalist and political science lecturer Kathryn Joyce has written that Rufo's claims about public school teachers and pedophilia are part of his goal to "generally foster so much anger against public schools that it drives a nationwide popular movement to privatize education". American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten has said that Rufo and others who wish to privatize "public education are using Big Lies to undermine public schools." Rufo has said, "To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust." Rufo opposes "socio-emotional learning", saying it "serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism." Socio-emotional learning, which promotes self-awareness, self-management, responsible decision-making, social awareness and relationship building, was a fairly uncontroversial pedagogical technique before being criticized by Republicans and Rufo.

In December 2023, Rufo and co-author Christopher Brunet investigated the past research of Harvard University president Claudine Gay, who had recently attracted controversy for her handling of antisemitism at the university and her defense of Harvard's handling of the situation at a congressional hearing. Rufo and Brunet alleged that many of her articles, including her dissertation, were plagiarized. After further investigation of the plagiarism allegations in mainstream media outlets, Gay announced her resignation on January 2, 2024. In an interview with Politico, Rufo said that Gay's resignation "was the result of a coordinated and highly organized conservative campaign".

In September 2024, during an incident related to the Springfield, Ohio, cat-eating hoax, Rufo alleged that Haitian migrants were eating cats in Dayton, Ohio, based on an August 2023 video of skinned animals being grilled, which drew social media responses that the skinned animals resembled chickens. Dayton police responded that "there is no evidence to even remotely suggest that any group, including our immigrant community, is engaged in eating pets", while the Dayton mayor reported "absolutely zero reports of this type of activity". Rufo has offered a $5,000 reward for proof supporting the unsubstantiated allegation.

Rufo is married to Suphatra "Kip" Paravichai, a Thai American. She was once a computer programmer at Amazon Web Services. As of 2021, they live in Gig Harbor, Washington, with their three sons. He is Catholic.