When Consolidation Is Elimination: Ethnic Studies, Faculty Governance, and Power at UT
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
April 24, 2026
UT President Jim Davis talks with Daily Texan
News Editor Maryam Ahmed in his office during the
first sit-down interview of his tenure.
At issue is not whether combining departments yields intellectual “fullness,” as Davis suggests. Ethnic Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and Gender and Sexuality Studies are already deeply interdisciplinary by design. They were built to cross boundaries, challenge siloed thinking, and interrogate power. The claim that they must be consolidated to achieve interdisciplinarity reflects not innovation, but a misreading—or dismissal—of their intellectual foundations.
What remains unspoken is that “consolidation” is rarely neutral. It often functions as a quiet form of elimination—not of people, but of departmental standing, autonomy, and power. Departments carry budget authority, hiring lines, curricular control, and institutional visibility. Collapse them, and you reduce the number of sites where faculty exercise collective authority. This is not merely organizational—it is political. Power moves upward and inward, away from the very units that have historically produced the most sustained critiques of inequality.
Equally flawed is the premise that these fields are not already in dialogue. Ethnic Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies have long operated in robust conversation—through joint appointments, cross-listed courses, and shared theoretical frameworks. To suggest they must be administratively merged to “see from different angles” misreads their history and erases existing collaboration. What is presented as integration risks becoming administrative diminishment.
When department chairs raised objections, Davis acknowledged “difference of opinion,” but deferred to a “consensus recommendation.” The question is unavoidable: whose consensus—and under what conditions was it produced?
That question takes on added urgency in light of Texas Senate Bill 37. The elected Faculty Council has been replaced with an appointed advisory body that, by Davis’s own admission, is “not intended to be representative.” This is not a procedural adjustment; it is a redefinition of governance itself. Representation is not incidental—it is the democratic core of faculty authority. What replaces it is curated input: invited voices without collective power.
Davis casts this shift as a move from “discord” to “stewardship.” But governance without disagreement is not governance—it is management. The Faculty Council’s openness enabled contestation, visibility, and record. Informal conversations, however frequent, cannot substitute for structures that allow faculty to deliberate, dissent, and hold leadership accountable. They invite candor, perhaps—but not power.
Seen in this light, the consolidation of Ethnic Studies is not an isolated decision. It is part of a broader transformation in how authority is organized and exercised. When representative structures weaken, decisions about curriculum and resources become more susceptible to top-down rationales—especially those framed in neutral administrative language. Terms like “efficiency” and “balance” function as what critical policy scholars call “discursive cover,” recasting political choices as technical necessity (Fairclough, 1992; Tauber & Wolf, 2018).
Davis denies that political pressures shaped the decision. Yet this claim must be read within the context of Texas Senate Bill 17, which has already dismantled DEI infrastructure and chilled institutional commitments to equity. Even without explicit directives, universities operate under conditions of anticipatory compliance—aligning themselves with perceived political expectations to avoid risk. In such an environment, structural changes to fields like Ethnic Studies rarely occur in a vacuum.
The same ambiguity surrounds resources. Davis insists that “nothing has changed,” yet acknowledges uncertainty ahead. Faculty concerns about moving from multiple funding streams to fewer reflect well-established patterns: consolidation often leads to internal competition, diminished autonomy, and eventual contraction. The metaphor of a recombined pie obscures a central reality—who controls the knife.
There is also an intellectual cost. Ethnic Studies does not simply add perspective; it anchors critical inquiry into race, power, colonialism, and inequality. When absorbed into larger units, its distinctiveness—and its capacity to challenge dominant frameworks—can be diluted. The result is not interdisciplinarity, but incorporation: difference folded into sameness.
Public trust will not be restored through consolidation or administrative redesign. It is built through transparency, accountability, and genuine shared governance. It requires not only listening to faculty, but ensuring they have real, representative power in shaping institutional direction.
UT Austin is not just reorganizing departments—it is redefining who gets to decide what counts as knowledge, whose voices carry authority, and which fields are allowed to remain visible as distinct sites of critique.
And that is the real stakes of this moment: not whether programs are combined, but whether the university still has the structural capacity—and the political will—to sustain knowledge that speaks back to power, rather than being quietly reorganized out of it.
References
Ahmed, M. (2026a, April 9). Exclusive: UT President Jim Davis reflects on first year leading University. The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2026/04/09/exclusive-ut-president-jim-davis-reflects-on-first-year-leading-university/
Ahmed, M. (2026b, April 9). Read the full transcript of UT President Jim Davis’ first interview since taking office. The Daily Texan. https://thedailytexan.com/2026/04/09/read-the-full-transcript-of-ut-president-jim-davis-first-interview-since-taking-office/
Fairclough, N. (1992). Discourse and social change. Polity Press.
Tauber, R., & Wolf, S. (2018, December 5). Students, faculty discuss free speech. The Williams Record. https://williamsrecord.com/4037/news/students-faculty-discuss-free-speech/
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