From the Forty Acres to the Capitol: Reclaiming Higher Education as a Public Good, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 15, 2026

From the Forty Acres to the Capitol: Reclaiming Higher Education as a Public Good

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 15, 2026

Last Monday, under the unforgiving Texas sun, I walked alongside students,faculty, and community members from the University of Texas at Austin to the Texas State Capitol. I took the video myself—one small act of documentation in what felt like a much larger moment of collective purpose. Despite the heat, there was an unmistakable energy among participants: determined, hopeful, and unyielding.

We marched not just in protest, but in affirmation—of what higher education should be.

That same day, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) jointly launched a sweeping new policy framework: A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education. Timed ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the platform directly confronts the escalating, far-right attacks on colleges and universities across the country—attacks that many of us in Texas know all too well.

At its core, the blueprint insists on something both simple and profound: higher education is a public good, not a corporate enterprise.

The platform centers four urgent pillars: restored public funding so that college is a democratic right rather than a debt sentence; freedom to learn, with protections against ideological policing and political interference; shared governance that restores faculty and staff authority over curriculum and institutional priorities; and labor reform that ends the exploitation of contingent faculty while securing fair wages and collective bargaining rights.

These are not abstract principles. They are urgent interventions in a moment defined by what can only be described as the attempted political capture of our institutions.

It was especially powerful to have Randi Weingarten, national president of the AFT, with us on the ground. In the video I captured, you can also see Todd Wolfson—who also serves as AFT Vice President—alongside UT Austin’s own Christopher Bryan, speaking to the stakes of this moment with clarity and conviction.

What we are witnessing is not just policy debate—it is a struggle over the very purpose of the university.

Will our institutions serve democracy, or will they be hollowed out and repurposed for ideological control?

The AAUP–AFT blueprint answers this question with clarity and resolve. It calls on all of us—educators, students, policymakers, and community members—to actively defend academic freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to protest, while restoring meaningful shared governance and the full protections of tenure. These are not abstract ideals; they are the conditions that make it possible for us to carry out our core missions of teaching, research, and service—and to sustain universities as institutions accountable to the public good rather than to political or corporate control.

As we made our way to the Capitol, step by step, chant by chant, I was reminded that these rights are never simply granted—they are claimed, defended, and renewed through collective struggle.

It was a proud day. And a necessary one.