WITH PROPOSED FEDERAL RULES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION UPENDS HIGHER EDUCATION by Katie Rainwater

Friends,

Related to my earlier post this morning, I strongly encourage you to read this analysis by Drs. Katie Rainwater and John Warner on the impending disaster that we can totally avert if we act expeditiously. 

Don't get scared. Educate yourself with these documents and links I've shared and act. And act now! Time is of the essence.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

With Proposed Federal Rules, Heritage Foundation Upends Higher Education
Who is up for a little Christian Nationalism embedded into our higher education system?

Katie Rainwater and John Warner

Last week we promoted an informational webinar on how to participate in the public comment process for resisting a proposal originating with the Heritage Foundation that will fundamentally alter how higher education operates in the United States. Today, we’re fortunate to have expert analysis from Katie Rainwater, fellow at the AAUP’s Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, faculty at Florida International University, and a researcher on how national conservatism seeks to change education so that our systems that are meant to serve everyone are instead operating from an explicit right-wing vision. Prof. Rainwater tells us what these operators plan and how and why we must resist it - John Warner

WITH PROPOSED FEDERAL RULES, HERITAGE FOUNDATION UPENDS HIGHER EDUCATION

by Katie Rainwater

Heritage Foundation president Kevin Roberts recently declared that higher education requires a “moral reset.” Roberts – who professes that the founders envisioned a Christian nation and an American people who honor eternal truths – holds that higher education should be grounded in recognition of “one coherent, universal truth with a capital ‘T’.” Roberts and his Heritage Foundation colleagues envision a sharp departure from university systems premised on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and humanistic learning. They aim to drastically restrict the number of students pursuing 4-year degrees, arguing that the degrees are a costly and unproductive hindrance to the formation of male-headed households. Their goal is to vocationalize education while also ensuring the curriculum and research at universities supports Christian Right policy goals.

The Heritage Foundation’s path to transforming higher education runs through red states, especially those like Florida where they maintain close relations with the governor. Yet the capacity of states to change their higher education systems is constrained by federal legislation which requires universities to maintain accreditation with a federally recognized accreditor to access federal financial aid. Locking in state-level reform and achieving nationwide transformation thus requires - in Robert’s words - “totally upend[ing] the accreditation system.” Proposed changes to the rules revising the federal recognition of accreditors do just this, achieving nearly all the policy goals for accreditation set out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

Moralistic Teaching and Partisan Research

Guided by DeSantis, the Florida state legislature has given right-wing ideologues control of the general education curriculum and of newly created centers on public university campuses. The Heritage Foundation has been critical to both developments.

In 2023, the Heritage Foundation helped pass Florida Senate Bill 266, which took curricular decision-making authority for the general education curriculum away from faculty experts, instilling it in the Board of Governors (BOG). To make an initial cull of courses, the BOG turned to Scott Yenor, a Christian nationalist and misogynist who advised DeSantis for two years as a Tallahassee-based Claremont Institute director. When Yenor left Tallahassee to become a director at the Heritage Foundation, oversight of Florida’s general education curriculum was given over to Jason Jewell, a right-wing activist who formerly led a Great Books program at a conservative Christian college.

Last year, as Chief Academic Officer of the State University System, Jewell presided over the creation of a sanitized, Florida version of an open access sociology textbook. After faculty raised awareness that the state was censoring the textbook to exclude content on race and gender, the BOG removed “Introduction to Sociology” from the general education curriculum, relegating it to the same fate as already excluded courses like “Sociology of Gender and Social Problems.” Notably, “Families in the United States” is now the only sociology course that can be taken for general education credit in the state of Florida – a testament to the Heritage Foundation’s goal of bolstering the “traditional” family.

The “moral reset” of Florida universities has also included the creation of new centers through which the Heritage Foundation is leveraging millions of dollars of Florida taxpayer money in service of its own deeply partisan ends. Following advocacy by a council linked to the Heritage Foundation, the Florida state legislature established the Hamilton School on the University of Florida’s campus. The aim of the school and a related center which should be headed by a “serious right-wing politics person,” Yenor explained in an email obtained through a public records request, is to create “a generation of thoughtful, strong, practical leaders to head up the conservative movement” and to produce “a new group of young male leaders who could lead the state.”

Other university centers created by the state legislature are even more directly tied to partisan advocacy. The Adam Smith Center at Florida International University hosts the Heritage Foundation-conceived “Carvalho Dialogues” (named after the late, far-right Brazilian conspiracy theorist) to convene right-wing Latin American politicians in support of imperialist America First and conservative policy goals. The Institute for Governance & Civics at Florida State University employs faculty affiliated with the Heritage Foundation and the conservative Christian legal organization Alliance Defending Freedom to produce research and advocacy in support of Christian Right policy objectives like undermining public schools and upending anti-discrimination laws.

They Want Fewer People to Go to College

The education landscape in Florida is being changed in other, less transparently ideological ways. Yenor has observed that “as late as 1980, only 8% of the country went to college.” Yenor, who orchestrated the shuttering of DEI programs in Florida universities and who thinks women should be trad wives, proposes, “The United States should move toward 8% from its current 46%.” Project 2025 argues that postsecondary education policy should be “rebalanced to focus far more on bolstering the workforce skills of Americans.”

“When I became Governor,” DeSantis said at a February 2026 press conference, “I made the point very strongly that there is more than one way that you can succeed as a young person.” The Yale and Harvard graduate proceeded to explain, “Not everyone needs to go to a four-year brick and ivy university.” DeSantis recently declared Florida number one in the nation for workforce education. Under the DeSantis administration, Career and Technical Education has expanded in K-12 schools and more students participate in pre-apprenticeship programs.

DeSantis is careful to frame educational pathways as purely a personal choice. But if higher education contracts to 1960 levels of attendance, it is undoubtedly the working class and students of color who would lose access. Last month, the Heritage Foundation released model legislation that penalizes state universities for open admission policies. Cheered by the Heritage Foundation, Florida has, of course, already eliminated the Diversity, Equity & Inclusion programs designed to foster the success of once excluded groups.

The Proposed Rules

Much more prescriptive than the enabling legislation, the proposed rules specify ways that accreditors must assess - and must not assess - institutions. Here are the implications of a few of the most significant changes:

Accreditors Must Ensure Institutions Toe the State Line. The Heritage Foundation has long sought to change the law so that states can create their own accreditation systems. In 2014, DeSantis, then a US congressional representative, sponsored a failed Heritage Foundation-supported bill to this effect. As Governor, last year, DeSantis created a new state-run accrediting group to enable Florida and other member states to evaluate their state university systems according to standards that they devise.

The proposed rules lock in state control over higher education institutions by preventing accreditors from enforcing quality standards that contravene state law. Although the proposed rules introduce a new requirement for institutions to maintain academic freedom policies, faculty in states like Florida will not be empowered to exercise academic freedom as state law precludes teaching about systemic oppression in the general education (SB 266) or collaborating in research with colleagues in Venezuela (SB 846).

(It is also worth noting that the proposed rules unmoor academic freedom from two closely related principles: shared governance and tenure. The proposed rules eliminate a requirement for faculty involvement in accreditors’ decision-making bodies and require accreditors to evaluate institutions for “sufficient flexibility in instructional staffing” although job security is a necessary precondition for the exercise of academic freedom.)

Ideological Centers Are In. A provision of the proposed rules that requires accreditors to ensure institutions support intellectual diversity could be used to compel speech or to impose ideological centers like those that the state legislature created in Florida on campuses where they are not already in place.

Studies Degrees Are Out and So Are Some Students. The proposed rules change how accreditors evaluate institutions by requiring them to assess whether unspecified minimum expectations are met at the institutional and programmatic level on metrics of student success, including economic returns on degrees. Siri Terjesen, a Heritage Foundation-recognized Florida Atlantic University professor and a member of the committee that created the proposed rules, has identified "gradflation”– the production of more liberal arts degree holders than the job market can allegedly absorb – as a serious problem. The rules could be wielded to require universities to eliminate degree programs, like Women and Gender Studies, that the Right charges have a low return on investment.

Or, even more troublingly, student success metrics on completion and graduation rates could be used to require universities to cut student enrollment. Under Secretary of Education, Nicholas Kent has declared that the new rules will enable him to hold institutions accountable for enrolling students with a low likelihood of success. The proposed rules also prohibit accreditors from adopting any standards related to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Wielding the Secret Weapon

The Department of Education claims that the rule changes will enable them to address real problems with the higher education system such as increasing tuition and inadequate graduation rates. But these are not good-faith actors. Trump has called accreditation his “secret weapon”, and he has stocked the Department of Education with generals from the Heritage Foundation who are ready to take their shots. In a 2023 report, the Heritage Foundation’s Lindsey Burke argued that career bureaucrats needed to be disempowered; instead, entrusting “political appointees with both the legal and the policy sides of accreditation.” Last year Burke was appointed the Department of Education’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Policies and Programs. Former Heritage Foundation staffer Jay Greene now chairs the National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity [NACIQI]. which is charged with assessing accreditors.

Preventing the Heritage Foundation from using the accreditation system to decimate higher education will require faculty to organize our campuses and communities to support our colleges and universities as an indispensable public good. Most immediately, faculty and the public should submit comments on the proposed rule changes. For the proposed rule changes to go into effect next year, the Department of Education must meet a November 1 deadline for addressing all public comments. We can impede the adoption of the proposed rules by submitting public comments that document specific harms that will result if the rules are adopted. Consult this AAUP guidance to learn how to submit your proposed comment by midnight on September 21. You can also watch a recording of the previously mentioned webinar that shares additional guidance and suggestions.

Guidance for Submitting Comments to the AIM Committee

In response to Trump’s April 2025 executive order, the Accreditation, Innovation, and Modernization (AIM) committee at the Department of Education issued proposed rule changes that would completely rewrite how the accreditation process works.

The AIM committee is currently stocked with Heritage Foundation operatives and Ron DeSantis allies, who have been working for years to shatter the non-partisan and independent accreditation process. The proposed changes would have a catastrophic effect on higher education, which will lock in MAGA education priorities for years to come. Check out AAUP resources for an overview of what is at stake with accreditation.

The AIM committee is currently receiving public comments on these proposed rules changes. It is critical that AAUP members, faculty, staff, and students submit comments to demonstrate the breadth and depth of the issues at stake. All comments must be responded to by the Department of Education, which only has until November 1 to respond. Strong comments can: 1) result in positive changes to the proposed rules; 2) slow the process down; and 3) serve as the basis for future legal action.

Strong comments:

Cite the specific proposed regulatory change

Use your personal experience and circumstances to describe a specific harm.

Please see the templates below for ideas about how to shape your comments. You can upload comments any time before Monday, September 21 at 11:59 p.m. EDT. Additional resources can be found at the American Federation of Teachers, Alliance for Higher Education, and EdTrust

The AAUP is also looking to publicize concerns raised by our members. If you are interested in making your comments public, or want support drafting your comments, please contact: cdaf@aaup.org.

A guest post by Katie Rainwater Sociologist in Florida writing about the National Conservative movement's decimation of public education. Subscribe to Katie

You Can Help Prevent a Major Disaster for Higher Education, Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, Sept. 11, 2026

Friends:

Sometimes the most consequential threats to higher education arrive disguised as technical changes that few people notice until their effects are already felt. The proposed federal changes to accreditation deserve our attention now, especially with the public-comment deadline of September 21 approaching. The encouraging news is that this is still a moment when faculty, students, administrators, and members of the public can learn what is being proposed and make their voices heard.

Reference

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, August 19). U.S. Department of Education Issues Proposed Rule to Overhaul and Improve America’s Higher Education Accreditation System, https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-department-of-education-issues-proposed-rule-overhaul-and-improve-americas-higher-education-accreditation-system

You Can Help Prevent a Major Disaster for Higher Education

An opportunity for your voice to be heard.

Sep 11, 2026

Imagine you had the ability to go back in time and stop Elon Musk and DOGE minions from wrecking USAID, an established institution providing demonstrable benefits to people around the world, delivering outsized impacts relative to resources spent.

Post-secondary education is confronting a DOGE-like threat, an attempted takeover by right-wing ideologues, using a model crafted by the people who brought you Project 2025. You don’t need a trio of precogs bathing in a milky pool to tell you that these folks are not interested in broad-based democratic representation or a diversity of views in higher ed.

The vehicle through which this is being attempted is institutional accreditation. Accreditation on its face is not interesting. It is time-consuming, bureaucratic, and the kind of thing most college faculty want to avoid so they can do their work of teaching and research.

But accreditation rooted in principles of academic freedom is a necessity for this work to happen free from external interference and partisan political oversight. Currently, there is a very real attack on these principles through an attempt to create new accrediting bodies that will be empowered to erase these rights.

We previously covered this issue through the “Academic Freedom on the Line” podcast with Bob Shireman, an expert on accreditation:



Academic Freedom on the Line Podcast: Accreditation, with Bob Shireman

John Warner and Bob Shireman
·
June 6, 2025
Listen now

We also featured an interview with Matthew Boedy about Ron DeSantis’s creation of the Commission for Public Higher Education, an attempt to create alternative accrediting bodies that will allow institutions to operate without many of the protections currently in place.



A Stealth Threat to Academic Freedom That We Can Stop in Its Tracks

John Warner
·
September 2, 2025

Read full story

This news is worrying, but the good news is that there are established mechanisms for resistance, resistance which comes from individuals expressing their disapproval of these attempts to unmake our public-serving institutions and turn them into vassals of one political party.

On Monday, September 14, at 7 p.m. ET, the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom will be hosting “Accreditation and You,” a webinar to learn about the far right’s attempt to capture higher ed accreditation, what is changing and why it matters, and how you can join in the fight and take action. In this webinar, you will learn how to write and submit effective comments—in advance of an important September 21 deadline—about the federal Department of Education’s dangerous proposed revision of the rules that govern accreditors, get resources (faculty senate resolutions, analysis, information sheets), connect with academic workers in your states and nationally, and help problem solve and plan our campaign.

This is our opportunity to head off an attack that could have generational impacts, if successful. Individual resistance matters. Every voice counts.

Please consider joining us for the event.

More professors want to leave Texas this year, citing political climate, censorship, survey says, by Milla Surjadi, Dallas Morning News 9.15.26

Friends:

The piece suggests that what we are witnessing in Texas higher education is no longer simply faculty dissatisfaction with a single law or university administration, but the emergence of a broader climate of uncertainty about whether professors can continue to do their work with professional independence.

SB 37 gives governing boards substantially greater authority over curriculum and institutional governance, while recent system-level policies have intensified scrutiny of particular areas of teaching and scholarship. At the same time, faculty are increasingly reluctant to recommend Texas as a place to build an academic career. 

My own students have expressed discouragement about the current state of affairs, and I understand why. Without a doubt, this is a difficult moment to be a student or a faculty member, and we should not sugarcoat what is happening. 

I hope the broader public is paying close attention and remains civically engaged, because the consequences will extend well beyond university campuses. When talented faculty conclude that they can teach, research, and build their careers more freely elsewhere, Texas universities risk losing not only individual scholars but also the intellectual vitality, mentorship, research capacity, and institutional reputation that take decades to build—and are not easily recovered.

-Angela Valenzuela

More professors want to leave Texas this year, citing political climate, censorship, survey says

A larger percentage of Texas respondents said they plan to look for a job in another state this year compared to last year, according to a survey by the American Association of University Professors.

By Milla Surjadi,Staff Writer

Sep 14, 2026

The University of North Texas campus in Denton. 

The Dallas Morning News Staff
A greater percentage of Texas professors want to leave the state this year than last year, citing its political climate and concerns about censorship, according to a recent survey conducted by the American Association of University Professors.

Of more than 1,000 Texas respondents, about a third said they had applied for a job in another state in the last two years, and about 35% said they planned to do so in the next hiring cycle. That’s an increase from last year, where about a quarter of respondents answered that they had applied for a job or were planning to do so.

Get Digital Access and Stay Informed With Trusted Local News.ACT NOW

A majority of the Texas professors, around 70%, also said they would not encourage graduate students or faculty colleagues to seek a job in the state. That percentage is up from 60% of respondents last year.

The annual survey from the professors union polled nearly 3,000 faculty members in public and private institutions in the South. Fewer professors responded to the survey this year. There were 2,763 total respondents this year, down from 3,926 last year. In Texas, there were 1,023 respondents, down from 1,126 last year.

Related: Republicans are remaking Texas' public universities. Some professors are leaving
Professors cited their state's broad political climate as the top reason they wanted to leave for another job. Many Texas professors who said they had applied for an out-of-state job cited the political climate, concerns about academic freedom, shared governance and DEI issues. Many also expressed frustration with recent restrictions at their institutions around how race and gender can be taught.

The survey provides a rare glimpse into how many professors are eyeing exits as Texas’ universities undergo a Republican-led overhaul to root out perceived liberal bias on campus and in classrooms. Public data on how many Texas professors have left the state or profession is sparse.

In the past year, a new state law has given governor-appointed regents more oversight over public universities, including course offerings. Several university systems are cutting classes and academic programs related to race and gender as Republican lawmakers target those fields.

Related: Republican lawmakers praise new college oversight law. Critics say it’s led to censorship

Many Texas professors have raised concerns university leaders have gone further than the law prescribes in restricting what can be taught. A third of Texas respondents said they had syllabuses or curriculum choices questioned or changed by administrators in the last year.

“I would suspect that the many events in higher education that have happened in Texas in the last year made those numbers go up in significant ways,” said Matthew Boedy, president of the Georgia AAUP chapter who oversees the survey. “Texas is at the center of a lot of attacks.”

He added that the survey also reflects professors who may want to leave their state, but cannot due to personal circumstances or academic discipline.

Some professors and Democrats have warned recent reforms could lead to a brain drain — an exodus of Texas’ most intellectually capable professors and years of tumultuous recruitment and retention. Supporters of higher education reform have pushed back on such predictions, arguing that addressing ideological biases and aligning universities with workforce needs will attract more professors, students and jobs to Texas.

Texas Tech University System Chancellor Brandon Creighton, a former senator and the architect of recent conservative laws reshaping higher education, told The Dallas Morning News in February the system was seeing record-high faculty interest.

The AAUP survey, which was open through August, polled professors from 13 states: Texas, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Arkansas. The survey has been conducted by the Georgia AAUP chapter since 2022, and added Oklahoma for the first time this year.

The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.

The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab's journalism.

Milla Surjadi
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Turning Civil Rights Against Civil Rights: Compact 2.0 and the New IRS Threat to Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. Sept. 14, 2026

Turning Civil Rights Against Civil Rights: Compact 2.0 and the New IRS Threat to Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

September 14, 2026

In 1983, the Supreme Court decided by a vote of 8 to 1 that Bob Jones University could not hold a federal tax exemption while prohibiting interracial dating and marriage among its students. The reasoning was compact enough to state in a sentence: An institution may not claim a public subsidy while maintaining a policy that violates a fundamental public policy of the United States.

On September 3, 2026, the Treasury Department and the IRS proposed a rule that keeps that sentence intact and changes what it points at.

Under the proposal, a private school would lose its exempt status under section 501(c)(3) if it "adopts, maintains, or enforces a policy or practice that discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national or ethnic origin"—in admissions, scholarships, financial aid, athletics, facilities, or any other school-supported program. The IRS estimates that as many as 18,000 private educational institutions could be affected (Internal Revenue Service [IRS], 2026).

A rule against racial exclusion has become a rule against race-conscious inclusion. The doctrine built to keep a segregated university from drawing on the public purse is now aimed at universities trying to widen who gets in.

The hinge is the word "fundamental"

The Bob Jones holding depended on a prior determination: That opposition to racial discrimination in education was a fundamental public policy, settled, national, and not seriously contested. Justice Powell, concurring separately, was uneasy about precisely this. He worried about an arrangement in which the IRS decides which policies are fundamental without clear direction from Congress.

That concern has aged into the present tense. Whoever supplies the content of "fundamental public policy" controls the exemption. In 1983 the content came from Brown, from the Civil Rights Act, from two decades of national struggle. In 2026 the content comes from an administration that reads Students for Fair Admissions as having settled not just what universities may do in admissions but what the nation fundamentally believes about race.

The image we are invited to see here is the ouroboros—the serpent swallowing its own tail, the civil rights movement's own logic arriving at last at its conclusion, the circle closing itself. That is the entire argument for colorblindness compressed into a picture, and it is a seductive one, because it asks us to understand what is happening as completion rather than reversal. 

But an ouroboros is a closed system. The snake acts on itself. This circle, however, is not closed at all; someone reached in and intervened. The doctrine did not turn on itself: It was turned, by an administration that did not write it, did not win it, and does not share its purpose.

The proposal would delete sections 3.02 and 4.05 of Revenue Procedure 75-50 and modify Revenue Ruling 71-447—the provisions that, for half a century, allowed schools to run programs favoring racial minority groups where the purpose was to create or maintain a racially nondiscriminatory educational environment. Schools may still consider income, geography, first-generation status, individual hardship, military-family status, or academic achievement. What they may not do is act on race, color, or national or ethnic origin.

So a university rule forbidding interracial relationships and a scholarship intended to increase the number of Black physicians are to be treated as the same kind of thing, because both notice race. One was built to preserve separation. The other exists because separation worked. Collapsing them requires ignoring purpose, history, and effect—which is to say, requires ignoring everything that made the original rule make sense.

Comments are due November 3, 2026. The regulations would apply to taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027. And in a dispute, the school would carry the burden of establishing its own compliance.

That last detail deserves more attention than it has received. Burden-shifting is not an administrative technicality: It is the mechanism by which a proposed rule starts operating before it exists.

The part nobody is discussing: national origin

Source: HACU

The proposal does not stop at race. It reaches national or ethnic origin, and that distinction has barely registered in the coverage.

In 2024-25, there were 645 Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the United States, enrolling 68.2 % of all Hispanic undergraduates. Roughly 200 of them are private (Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities [HACU], 2026). The private nonprofits among those are 501(c)(3) organizations, and the rule reaches them directly.

I want to be careful here, because the precise claim matters. HSI status is not a preference. It is a federal designation based on enrollment composition—an institution qualifies at 25 percent Hispanic undergraduate full-time-equivalent enrollment. My own institution, the University of Texas at Austin, is an HSI. The IRS proposal targets what a school does, not what its enrollment happens to look like.

But consider what HSIs actually build: recruitment pipelines into predominantly Latino high schools; scholarship funds established by donors for students of Mexican American or Puerto Rican descent; bilingual advising; culturally sustaining curricula; mentoring programs; and summer bridge initiatives—many of them described, funded, and evaluated in explicitly ethnic terms because that is what they were designed to address. These are "school-supported programs." Under the proposed language, the relevant question becomes whether a private institution can defend each of them without reference to national origin.

And this is not the only pressure point. In June 2025, the State of Tennessee and Students for Fair Admissions sued the Department of Education over Title V grants to HSIs, arguing the 25 percent threshold is unconstitutional. The Department declined to defend the statutory provisions establishing the programs. Two of the three challenged Title V programs have since been defunded, and the case remains pending in the Eastern District of Tennessee (Meltzer Center, 2026).

Two tracks, then. One through the tax code, one through the grant programs. Neither requires Congress to pass anything.

Where Compact 2.0 comes in

The original Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, circulated October 1, 2025, opened by naming what institutions receive from the federal government: "(i) access to student loans, grant programs, and federal contracts; (ii) funding for research directly or indirectly; (iii) approval of student and other visas in connection with university matriculation and instruction; and (iv) preferential treatment under the tax code." Institutions remained free to develop other models, the document said, "if the institution elects to forego federal benefits" (Trump administration, 2025).

Eleven months later, the fourth item has a proposed mechanism.

I am not claiming these are the same initiative or that they were coordinated. The IRS proposal has its own legal rationale and its own administrative track. What I am saying is narrower and, I think, harder to dismiss: an inventory of leverage was published, and we are now watching items on that inventory acquire operational form.

Against that backdrop, read Secretary McMahon's August 3 letter. It asks institutions to publish, by the end of 2026, a clear public statement of commitment across seven areas—admissions transparency, free speech, intellectual pluralism, affordability, academic rigor in the age of AI, research security, and American workforce priorities (U.S. Department of Education, 2026). University leaders were reportedly told there would be "no carrots and no sticks," even as a Department official described the goal as "radical reform" and suggested the government might prefer to work with institutions that share its priorities (Diep, 2026).

Francie Diep asked whether this is an olive branch or a gloved fist. I would suggest the distinction matters less than it appears. The letter arrives at boards that have just watched the fourth item on the Compact's list acquire a proposed rule. Whatever the letter intends, that is the room it is read in.

The governance of knowledge

This is what I mean when I talk about the governance of knowledge.

The state does not need to walk into a classroom and tell a professor what to teach. It instead adjusts the conditions under which knowledge-producing institutions survive, and lets the institutions do the rest. Three features make this work.

It aggregates the following: Research funding, Title IV aid, accreditation, visas, federal contracts, civil-rights enforcement, and tax status. Each of these is individually defensible, and each is litigated, analyzed, and debated on its own terms. But no provost experiences them one at a time. Legal analysis proceeds lever by lever. Governance is felt as a weight, anchored in accumulated experience—in what these institutions have already watched happen to others.

It anticipates. The comment period is open. The rule would not apply until taxable years beginning after May 31, 2027. Yet the scholarship reviews are happening now, in general counsel offices, this fall. When the burden of proof sits with the institution, preemptive retreat is not cowardice—it is the rational response to uncertainty. 

The chilling effect is not a side effect of the policy. Under these conditions it is the policy, and it operates whether or not the rule is ever finalized.

It launders attribution. Because the university acts, the university is the actor of record. No one is ordered to close a program. The program simply becomes too risky to defend, and its closing appears in the minutes as institutional prudence. This is what makes the arrangement so difficult to contest politically. There is no defendant. There is only a series of ostensibly reasonable decisions made by people trying to protect their institutions.

None of this means federal oversight is illegitimate. Universities that accept public benefits are properly subject to law and to public accountability, and there are real questions about admissions, cost, and governance that higher education has been slow to answer for itself.

But there is a difference between the government enforcing a rule and the government making certain commitments feel too expensive to hold. The first is accountable. The second is practically invisible.

The public policy doctrine was built to stop an institution from claiming public support while practicing exclusion. If that same doctrine can be turned around to stop an institution from widening access, then it was never a protection. It was an instrument, and it belongs to whoever holds the pen.

That is bigger than DEI. It is a question about who governs knowledge in the United States, and by what means—and about whether the answer is now determined less by law than by the accumulated weight of what universities decide they can no longer afford to defend.

References

Diep, F. (2026, August 3). For higher ed, Trump's Compact 2.0 is either an olive branch or a gloved fist. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/for-higher-ed-trumps-compact-2-0-is-either-an-olive-branch-or-a-gloved-fist

Duehren, A., & Bender, M. C. (2026, September 3). Trump moves to strip tax exemption from schools that aid minority students. The New York Times. https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/nation-politics/trump-moves-to-strip-tax-exemption-from-schools-that-aid-minority-students/

Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities. (2026). Hispanic-Serving Institutions across the nation total 645. https://hacu.net/hispanic-serving-institutions-across-the-nation-total-645/

Internal Revenue Service. (2026, September 3). Treasury, IRS move to end tax-exempt status for discriminatory practices in private schools (IR-2026-103). https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/treasury-irs-move-to-end-tax-exempt-status-for-discriminatory-practices-in-private-schools

Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging. (2026). State of Tennessee et al. v. United States Department of Education et al. Advancing DEI Litigation Tracker, New York University School of Law. https://advancingdei.meltzercenter.org/cases/state-of-tennessee-et-al-v-united-states-department-of-education-et-al-district/

Trump administration. (2025, October 1). Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/10/Compact-for-Academic-Excellence-in-Higher-Education-10.1.pdf

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, August 3). U.S. Secretary of Education Linda McMahon issues national call to action to university presidents and governing boards. https://www.ed.gov/about/news/press-release/us-secretary-of-education-linda-mcmahon-issues-national-call-action-university-presidents-and-governing-boards

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, August 3). A national call to action to university presidents and governing boards. https://www.ed.gov/media/document/national-call-action-university-presidents-and-governing-boards-114351.pdf

U.S. Department of the Treasury & Internal Revenue Service. (2026, September 4). Racial nondiscrimination in private schools. Federal Register, 91, 56811–56819. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/09/04/2026-18127/racial-nondiscrimination-in-private-schools

The Political Transformation of UT Austin: 2020 - 2026, by the Austin chapter of AAUP-Texas AFT

Friends:

For those interested—and I hope there are many—here is a timeline compliments of the UT-Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) of our political transformation over a 6-year time period. To this, I add “A Funeral for Academic Freedom at UT: Five Videos from a Day of Grief, Witness, and Resistance" and our highly successful People's Hearing that took place on August 12, 2026 that I also covered in this blog titled, "'I Will Not Submit': A Powerful Day at the Historic Texas People’s Hearing." (Video)

Though neither the funeral nor the People's Hearing were specifically sponsored by the UT-Austin chapter, members, myself included, certainly participated in these.

So much of what I write about of late is UT-Austin, but also other Texas universities together with various concerns I've expressed over not just academic freedom and faculty governance, but the governance over knowledge that accounts for why curtailing the former are so vital to the latter as forces about which all citizens, voters, and taxpayers should be concerned.

Whether you are or not at UT-Austin, consider signing up for AAUP/Texas AFT membership here. 

I appreciate my colleagues for providing this. Very helpful.

In solidarity.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Political Transformation of UT Austin

2020 – 2026

2020–21

●  June 2020  — "Eyes of Texas" controversy erupts.

●  August 2020  — Amid COVID restrictions, the UT System Board of Regents names Interim President Jay Hartzell the sole finalist for the permanent presidency — a departure from the Board’s typical national search process.

●  September 2020  — Hartzell appointed President at $1.25 million/year, $255,000 (roughly 25%) over  predecessor Greg Fenves.

●  March 2021  — A UT report on "Eyes of Texas" finds "no racist intent," but the president says athletes and band members won’t be required to sing or participate.

2022–23

●  July 2022  — Civitas Institute founded with Hartzell’s cooperation and $6M each from UT and state/system funds, backed by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s office and the Texas Legislature.

●  May 2023  — Board of Regents approves the School of Civic Leadership, a new college created to house the Civitas Institute.

●  July 2023  — The Texas Legislature passes Senate Bill 17, which mandates the closure of all diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at state-funded institutions. The law prohibits DEI-related staffing, training mandates, and diversity statements, while requiring strict disciplinary measures and regular state audits for enforcement.

2023–24

●  January 1, 2024  — SB 17 takes effect: the Multicultural Center, Gender and Sexuality Center, Monarch Program, and other offices close.

●  April 2024  — Hartzell fires roughly 60 staff formerly working in DEI programs.

●  April 2024  — Hundreds of campus, city, and state police respond to Palestine protests on campus; 136 students and faculty are arrested.

●  April 2024  — UT Austin AAUP, led by chapter president Pauline Strong, delivers a no-confidence letter signed by 500+ faculty (~16% of UT faculty).

●  May 2024 — UT Austin lecturer Rich Heyman fired after having been arrested at Palestine protests.

2024–25

●  Fall 2024  — COLA Dean Ann Huff Stevens is not renewed. In an email, she says Hartzell prevented her renewal.

●  Jan 2024 – Jan 2025  — Eight top administrators resign, are demoted, retire, or are not renewed — including five vice presidents, nearly half of UT’s 12 VP positions.

●  January 2025  — Hartzell announces he is departing for SMU. 

●  February 2025  — Jim Davis is named interim president.

●  Fall 2024 – Spring 2025  — Provost turmoil: Provost Sharon Wood asked to resign with no explanation; Rachel Davis Mersey (Dean, Moody School) becomes interim provost in Sept. 2024, is promoted to provost in Jan. 2025, then is pushed out; CNS Dean David Vanden Bout replaces her as interim provost in Feb. 2025.

●  April 2025  — UT ends its flags program mid-semester with no replacement.

●  June 2025  — Texas Legislature adopts SB 37, limiting shared governance: faculty senates exist only by board permission, presidents make half of appointments, and a new ombudsman can recommend cutting state funds for noncompliant schools.

●  July 2025  — Interim President Jim Davis’s role is made permanent as sole finalist; salary $1.25 million/year.

●  July 2025  — Texas Legislature adopts SB 2972, regulating campus speech and undoing 2019 legislation that designated campuses “traditional public forums.”

2025–26

●  August 2025  — William Inboden is named Provost as sole finalist; he previously led UT’s Clements Center and directed the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida.

●  August 2025  — UT’s Faculty Council is abolished: going beyond SB 37, which would have allowed a 50% elected faculty senate.

●  September 2025  — College of Education Dean Charles Martinez is not renewed.

●  October 2025  — Senior Vice Provost for academic Affairs Art Markman is fired “due to ideological differences.” 

●  October 2025  — Graduate Student Assembly is blocked by UT from considering two resolutions opposing SB 17 and SB 37.

●  December 2025  — Lillian Mills resigns as the first woman to serve as Dean of the McCombs School of Business.

●  January 2026 — Claudia Mora departs her position as Dean of the Jackson School of Geosciences.

●  January 2026  — Provost Inboden closes the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Office of Community Engagement, the Vick Advising Excellence Center, and the Office of Undergraduate Research.

●  February 2026  — President Davis announces consolidation of three programs — including the School of Information — into one interdisciplinary unit within the College of Natural Sciences.

●  February 2026  — Davis announces closure of seven COLA departments, merging into two new departments: Social and Cultural Analysis (African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) and European and Eurasian Studies (Slavic and Eurasian Studies, French and Italian, Germanic Studies). Originally set for Fall 2027, the timeline is expedited to Fall 2026.

●  April 2026  — LBJ School Dean JR DeShazo is not renewed. More than ⅓ of dean positions — 7 of 18 leaders — are now in flux.

●  June 2026  — UT leaders fire KUT general manager Debbie Hiott.

●  June 2026  — A new Vice Provost for the Arts position moves oversight of the Blanton Museum and Texas Performing Arts into the Provost’s office.

●  July 2026  — New Center for Humanities appears online. The Center’s website indicates it will focus on teaching and research related to the Core Curriculum. The Center is housed under the Provost’s office but shares faculty ties with the School of Civic Leadership. 

●  August 2026  — President Davis announces the new core curriculum, created by a faculty committee including many members from the School of Civic Leadership. The proposal narrows general education to focus on topics like Western civilization and U.S. history, cuts required credit hours from 42 to 36, reduces STEM hours and reduces 10 areas of study into three pillars: Arts and Humanities, Social Sciences, and STEM. Full implementation planned for fall 2027.

●  August 2026  — The School of Civic Leadership, now with 44 faculty, announces new degree programs for Fall 2027: Civics Honors, Great Books Honors, and Strategy & Statecraft.