When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 30, 2026

When the Center Shifts: Bad Bunny and the Politics of Cultural Power

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 30, 2026

Bad Bunny’s Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show performance

united music fans around the world, according to real-time listening data from Apple Music and Shazam.

What does it mean for Latinas and Latinos to “win” the culture war? Not perform it. Not survive it. Not even just contest it. But win it—at a time when immigrants are under renewed political attack, when curriculum battles rage across states like Texas, and when the very meaning of belonging is once again being contested.

The answer came into sharp, unmistakable focus in that unforgettable cultural moment when Bad Bunny took center stage in a spectacle as massive and symbolically loaded as the Super Bowl.

What unfolded was not simply a performance—it was a cultural intervention at scale. An estimated 128.2 million viewers watched live in the United States alone, with the performance generating over 4.1 billion views globally within 24 hours across broadcast, streaming, and social media platforms (Brown, 2026; PR Newswire, 2026). This was not marginal visibility. This was mass presence—a re-centering of language, sound, and identity before one of the largest audiences in the world, without translation, dilution, or apology.

And it was deeply personal.

You could feel it—not as branding, not as choreography, but as conviction. This was not an artist accommodating an audience. This was an artist bringing his full world with him, insisting that the audience meet him there. Spanish was not a flourish; it was the foundation. Puerto Rico was not a reference; it was the frame. The performance did not ask for inclusion. It assumed presence.

That is what winning looks like.

But this moment also reveals something deeper. For generations, Latina/os have been cast through a narrow and racialized script—criminal, foreign, disposable. These narratives were not accidental; they were produced through institutions that controlled what stories could be told and how. Film, television, journalism, and publishing have long functioned as gatekeeping structures that shape public perception and, in turn, public policy. When a community is consistently misrepresented, it becomes easier to marginalize it politically, economically, and socially.

Culture, in this sense, governs. It shapes what feels legitimate, who is perceived as belonging, and which policies are seen as reasonable or necessary. It prepares the ground on which law and policy take hold.

This is why moments like Bad Bunny’s matter so profoundly. They do not simply “represent” Latina/os; they reconfigure the terms of representation itself. They shift the center. They expand what is legible, audible, and possible. They interrupt the long-standing assumption that Latina/o/x/e identity must be translated, softened, or made palatable to be accepted. More than visibility, this is a form of epistemic power—the authority to define reality rather than be defined by it.

But we must be clear: this kind of moment does not emerge out of nowhere. It is the result of years of refusal, experimentation, and risk. It is built on the insistence that one’s language, one’s rhythms, one’s histories are not obstacles to success—but the very source of it.

That insistence is political.

If we understand culture as a site of power, then “winning” the culture war requires more than visibility. It requires control over the production of meaning. It means moving from being objects of representation to being authors of narrative. It means asking not only who is on the screen, but who is behind the camera, who is writing the script, who is financing the project, and who ultimately decides what stories get told.

And this is where the analysis must turn to structure.

Latinas/os cannot rely on institutions that have historically excluded them to suddenly tell their stories with nuance and care. Change requires pressure—organized, sustained, strategic. It requires building alternative platforms while also demanding accountability from existing ones. It requires recognizing that culture industries respond to economic and reputational forces, and leveraging that reality to push for transformation. This is the work of building cultural sovereignty—not just inclusion within existing systems, but the capacity to shape them.

And this is where the analysis must also turn inward.

As a people, this requires more than visibility—it demands a deeper reckoning with who we are and how we show up for one another. Our diversity is not incidental; it is foundational. We are Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, Afro-Indigenous, Caribbean, Central and South American, immigrant and U.S.-born, multilingual, multiracial, and multigenerational. 

We also name ourselves in ways that reflect history, place, and struggle: Mexican, Mexican American, Chicana/o, Tejana/o, Cuban, Puerto Rican, Nuyorican, Guatemalan, Salvadoran, Brazilian, and more. We are also gender diverse, encompassing women, men, nonbinary, queer, and trans communities whose experiences and leadership have long been central to our survival and resistance.

These identities are not interchangeable, nor are they reducible to a single narrative. They carry distinct histories of migration, colonization, dispossession, resilience, and creativity. This is not a complexity to be managed or simplified for public consumption—it is a source of intellectual, cultural, and political strength. And yet, it is too often flattened, sanitized, or erased in ways that limit how we are seen—and how we come to see ourselves.

We are American.

We are not uninteresting. We have never been.

At the same time, we must confront a harder truth: there is no path to transforming cultural power without transforming ourselves. Colorism, anti-Blackness, and the persistent marginalization of Indigenous, Afro-Latina/o, and Afro-Indigenous voices are not peripheral issues—they are central to how power operates within our own communities. 

Consider, for example, how lighter-skinned Latina/os continue to dominate media representation, while Afro-Latina/o and Indigenous voices remain underrepresented or erased. Left unaddressed, these dynamics replicate the very logics of exclusion we seek to dismantle. A politics of representation that elevates only the most palatable, light-skinned, or culturally assimilated among us is not transformation—it is tokenization, fostering an illusion of inclusion.

If we are serious about reshaping the narrative, then we must be equally serious about building a cultural and political project that is explicitly anti-racist, anti-colonial, decolonial, and accountable to those most historically erased—particularly within our own ranks.

Winning, then, is not simply about being seen. It is about who among us gets seen, and how.

Bad Bunny’s rise—and moments like that Super Bowl performance—also remind us of something else: the power of imagination. When communities are consistently erased or distorted, their ability to imagine themselves differently is constrained. Cultural production—music, art, storytelling—is not ornamental. It is foundational. It shapes what people believe is possible, who belongs, and what futures can be envisioned.

That is why these moments resonate so deeply. They do not just entertain; they expand the horizon of the imaginable.

And yet, even as we celebrate them, we must resist the temptation to treat them as endpoints. They are not. They are openings—evidence of what becomes possible when the rules are broken, when the center shifts, when the story is reclaimed.

This brings us directly to Texas.

In Texas, where battles over education, curriculum, immigration, and public life continue to intensify, the stakes of this cultural struggle are especially clear. The fight over curriculum—what is taught, whose histories are included, whose knowledge is valued—is inseparable from the broader struggle over narrative power. Whether in the revision of social studies standards, attacks on ethnic studies, or policies that reshape access to higher education, we see again and again how narrative frames policy, and policy structures possibility.

This is why the question of “winning” matters.

Latinas/os will not win the culture war by asking to be included in someone else’s story. We will not win by translating ourselves into frameworks that were never designed for us. And we will not win by mistaking visibility for power.

We win by reshaping the story itself—by insisting that our languages, our histories, our cultures, and our communities are not peripheral, but central. We win by building and controlling the platforms through which meaning is produced. We win by confronting internal inequities even as we challenge external ones. And we win by refusing to separate culture from the broader structures of power that govern our lives.

What Bad Bunny showed us on that stage was not just performance.

Todd Rosenberg/Getty Images

It was posture.

A posture of refusal. Of affirmation. Of unapologetic presence.

And perhaps most importantly, a posture that said:

We are not asking to be part of the story.

We are here to rewrite it.

And we can rewrite it—centered in our own stories and in solidarity with broader struggles for justice that extend beyond us.

In doing so, we help open space for a future that is more just, more truthful, and more fully shared.

Because the story that comes next should belong to us all.

References

Brown, M. (2026, February 10). Super Bowl LX viewership second highest all-time; Bad Bunny has 128.2M viewers. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2026/02/10/super-bowl-lx-viewership-second-highest-all-time-bad-bunny-has-1282m-viewers/

PR Newswire. (2026, February 10). Bad Bunny sets global viewership record for most-watched Apple Music Super Bowl halftime show performance of all time, reaching 4.157 billion views. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/bad-bunny-sets-global-viewership-record-for-most-watched-apple-music-super-bowl-halftime-show-performance-of-all-time-reaching-4-157-billion-views-302701639.html 

Chaos as Policy: The Attack on the National Science Board of the National Science Foundation (NSF)

Friends:

This is actually a very big deal—and not in the routine, bureaucratic sense that Washington often invites us to ignore. The wholesale dismissal of the National Science Board is not just an administrative decision; it is a structural rupture in one of the nation’s most important safeguards for independent scientific judgment. 

Since 1950, the National Science Foundation has operated on a carefully designed premise: that knowledge production—especially in education, science, and human development—requires insulation from political volatility. That premise has now been deliberately undermined.

Let’s be clear about what this signals. 

When an entire board designed for staggered continuity is abruptly removed, it is not governance—it is destabilization. And destabilization is not incidental here; it is instrumental. Chaos and institutional fragility are not unfortunate byproducts—they are the governing logic. What we are witnessing is not simply an attack on a board, but on the very infrastructure that sustains evidence, expertise, and science as both a short- and long-term public good.

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. and Member
National Academy of Education

Statement from the NAEd Board of Directors on the Dismissal of National Science Board Members

Wednesday, April 29, 2026 — The National Academy of Education Board of Directors expresses deep concern about the dismissal of all members of the National Science Board (NSB), the independent governing body of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Since its creation in 1950, the NSF has represented a national commitment to discovery, evidence, and the long-term value of research. NSF investments support knowledge-building across fields, including education, the learning sciences, human development, and the social and behavioral sciences. These investments help to sustain the research infrastructure through which the nation prepares future scholars, strengthens teaching and learning, and addresses complex public problems.

The NSB is indispensable to this mission. Established as part of NSF’s founding structure, the Board provides independent oversight of NSF, helps set the strategic direction for the nation’s investment in scientific research, and advises the President and Congress on policy matters related to science, engineering, and education. The Board’s role is especially important given NSF’s responsibility for stewarding roughly $9 billion in annual federal investment in scientific research and education. The NSB helps to ensure that this public investment is guided by expert judgment and a national, long-term perspective.

The NSB’s structure reflects a deliberate nonpartisan design. It consists of 24 presidentially appointed members plus the NSF Director. The members serve staggered six-year terms, with one-third of the members replaced every two years. Thus, each administration makes appointments while preserving institutional memory and ensuring continuity across changes in political leadership.

The dismissal of all Board members interrupts that structure at a particularly consequential time. First, public confidence in science remains below its early-pandemic levels, and debates over scientific expertise have become increasingly polarized. At such a moment, the nation should be reinforcing, not weakening, the structures that protect independent scientific judgment. Second, NSF has been without a Senate-confirmed director since April 2025. Together, these circumstances leave one of the country’s most important research agencies without the stable, credible, and expert leadership structure it needs.

We urge Congress and the administration to reaffirm the statutory role and preserve the integrity of the National Science Board and to act promptly to restore stable, independent leadership at NSF.Copyright (C) 2026 National Academy of Education. 

All rights reserved.

The Missing Voice in the Border Wall Debate: If the Rio Grande Could Speak, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 29, 2026

The Missing Voice in the Border Wall Debate: If the Rio Grande Could Speak

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.  

April 29, 2026

At first glance, this article published in The Big Bend Sentinel appears to offer a compelling account of grassroots mobilization, documenting how Texans gathered in Austin to protest the proposed border wall and defend places like Big Bend National Park. Yet, upon closer examination, the piece reveals a far more troubling limitation. It foregrounds human sentiment—memory, attachment, identity—while failing to meaningfully engage the land, the river, and the more-than-human world as subjects of concern in their own right. In doing so, it ultimately diminishes the gravity of what is at stake.

The article’s most significant shortcoming is its deeply anthropocentric framing. By this, I mean that the Big Bend region and the Rio Grande are rendered primarily as sites of human experience—places to visit, enjoy, and remember. Protesters’ concerns that the wall would “ruin the aesthetic” or restrict access are not insignificant; however, they remain confined within a human-centered epistemology, or way of knowing, that obscures a more fundamental question: 

What obligations do we have to the land itself? What claims might the river assert, were it recognized as more than a resource? What of the animals whose lives and migratory pathways would be irreparably disrupted?

Here, the writings of Anishinaabe scholar John Borrows (2010, 2019) offers a critical intervention. He argues that law is not merely a system of codified rules but is constituted through relationships—among humans, and crucially, between humans and the natural world. Within many Indigenous legal traditions, land, water, and non-human beings are not objects external to law; they are integral to its formation and meaning. Law, in this sense, is relational and place-based, emerging from longstanding practices of reciprocity and responsibility.

The article gestures briefly toward the more-than-human world in its description of protestors holding images of bears, mountain lions, deer, and other wildlife. Yet this moment is not developed. It is treated as symbolic rather than substantive. There is no sustained engagement with the ecological consequences of the proposed wall—its role in fragmenting habitats, interrupting migratory routes, and destabilizing a desert ecosystem that has evolved over millennia. 

From Borrows’ perspective, such omissions are not merely journalistic gaps; they reflect a deeper failure to recognize that environmental degradation constitutes a rupture in the very relationships that law ought to sustain (Borrows, 2019).

Moreover, the article’s emphasis on land ownership and government overreach reproduces a familiar, and ultimately limiting, legal grammar. By centering questions of private and state control, it reinscribes a property-based framework that has long underwritten environmental exploitation. Land is treated as something to be owned, accessed, or regulated, rather than as a living system to which humans are accountable. 

Borrows (2010) challenges precisely this orientation, demonstrating that many Indigenous legal orders prioritize responsibilities to land over rights of domination—a shift that carries profound implications for how we understand governance, justice, and sustainability.

This brings us to a broader jurisprudential impasse. Contemporary legal systems in the United States remain structurally oriented toward the protection of human interests and property relations. Within such a framework, entities like the Rio Grande lack standing; they cannot assert claims, seek redress, or demand protection. Emerging movements around the “rights of nature” seek to address this limitation by recognizing ecosystems as legal persons.

Importantly, Borrows’ work reminds us that such developments are not without precedent. They resonate with longstanding Indigenous legal traditions in which the natural world is understood as part of a broader legal community (Borrows, 2019). To recognize this is not to romanticize Indigenous knowledge, but to acknowledge its ongoing relevance in confronting contemporary ecological crises.

What the article ultimately reveals, then, is not simply a contested infrastructure project, but the inadequacy of prevailing legal and journalistic frameworks to apprehend it. Even in moments of resistance, discourse remains tethered to anthropocentric assumptions that obscure the full scope of environmental harm. Protest is articulated in terms of human loss—access, aesthetics, identity—rather than as a defense of the integrity of ecological systems themselves.

This should alarm us. The waiving of environmental protections, the opacity surrounding federal actions, and the potential for irreversible ecological damage demand not only critical reflection but public accountability. Silence from state leadership is untenable. Greg Abbott should not remain absent from a matter of such consequence to Texas lands, waters, and communities. At a minimum, Texans deserve transparency, deliberation, and a clear articulation of the state’s position.

Accordingly, this is a moment that calls for engagement. Residents should contact their elected representatives and insist upon the protection of the Big Bend region and the ecosystems it sustains. Information on legislative representation in Texas is available at https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home. Such actions, while modest, are essential in signaling that these issues carry public weight and demand a response.

If we are to move forward, however, more fundamental shifts are required. Protecting places like Big Bend necessitates rethinking the conceptual foundations of law, governance, and ethics. It requires moving beyond a framework in which land is valued primarily for human use, toward one in which land, water, and non-human life are recognized as participants in a shared legal and moral order.

Until such a shift occurs, accounts like this one will continue to gesture toward crisis without fully apprehending its depth. And the land, the river, and the countless beings who depend on them will remain, quite literally, outside the law.

References

Borrows, J. (2010). Canada’s Indigenous constitution. University of Toronto Press.

Borrows, J. (2019). Law’s indigenous ethics. University of Toronto Press.

Bubacz, K. (2026, April 5). Thousands of Texans protest border wall at state capitol. The Big Bend Sentinel. https://bigbendsentinel.com/2026/04/05/thousands-of-texans-protest-border-wall-at-state-capitol/

Thousands of Texans protest border wall at state Capitol

by Kate Bubacz April 5, 2026 | The Big Bend Sentinal

Texans from across the state join Big Bend residents for a rally against the border wall at the Capitol in Austin Saturday. Kate Bubacz photo.

Santa Elena Canyon was an alternate rally for river enthusiasts

Over 2,000 Texans stood on the steps of the state Capitol in Austin to sing, dance and protest the border wall that is planned in the Big Bend region. Undeterred by the rain and the Easter holiday weekend, attendees asserted their pride in the beloved, wild western corner of the state and their disbelief that both private and public land could be needlessly harmed by outside forces.

“I think being out here and being so angry helps define who is a true Texan,” said John Riddle, an Austin resident who visited the Big Bend National Park with friends last spring. The cause has united people from across the state and from both sides of the aisle. Everyone in the crowd seemed to have a story or a special memory about visiting the parks, and many seemed to feel personally offended that the Texas government would allow a federal administration to interfere with their private and state land.

“Nobody says we don’t need border security. A wall would keep us out of our treasured landscapes,” said retired park ranger Raymond Skiles, who led an enthusiastic chant of, “Don’t wall us out.”

The citizens who gathered were entirely volunteer led. Drew Heugel, a tech employee who lives in Austin, was one of the original event organizers. He was visiting the Big Bend region in February when news of the border wall broke. When he posted an idea of protest on his Facebook, he expected a few hundred likes. Instead, the idea took hold, attracting the support of thousands.

“I’m impressed with how people have rallied,” he said, under a tent that was bustling with volunteers handing out information to people walking up to the Capitol. Heugel worked in coordination with several local volunteer groups that have organized in the last two months, including Save Big Bend and the No Big Bend Wall groups.

Judah Hill, 14, came with his family from Houston specifically to attend the protest on Easter weekend. His family has a tradition of going to Big Bend to climb mountaintops. He held a sign that said, “The wall doesn’t match the aesthetic,” a playful Gen Z nod to how it would ruin the landscape.

The peaceful protest had a joyful but determined air as people gathered in the chilly afternoon to listen to two hours of speakers and singers, including Willie Nelson’s daughter Amy and Jimmy Dale Gilmour, along with an array of politicians from both parties.

Some 500 miles away at Santa Elena Canyon in Big Bend National Park, about 150 people showed up by cars and boats to what they termed a “picnic” that featured protest signs and paintings along with speakers on bullhorns and chants against the wall.

Paddlers at Big Bend National Park’s Santa Elena canyon make their thoughts on a border wall 

known at a Saturday rally on the river. Jennifer Pittinger photo.

Protestors waded in the river, and dozens of boats lined the shore. “Really, we’re giving Mexico the Rio Grande and our border land,” read one sign. Another group of people stood in the river holding giant, painted cardboard cutouts of animals—beavers, bears, mountain lions, javelina and deer.

Back in Austin, Brandon Herrera and Katie Padilla Stout, staunch opponents vying for the region’s district congressional seat, both spoke at the Capitol against the wall. “We are here today to remind people you don’t mess with Texas,” said Stout, to cheers. “Nobody wants the wall in Big Bend,” said Herrera, minutes later.

In the six weeks since the wall was announced in Big Bend Sentinel, stiff opposition to it has organized and gained traction. A Customs and Border Patrol map originally showed a 517-mile steel wall planned, including the state and national park. The same map now shows smart technology planned through the parks and a steel structure through the remaining 175 miles upstream between Fort Quitman and Presidio. The map has become a key source of information, changing several times without warning or explanation, but Customs and Border Protection has never commented on the changes.

Protestors show off their signs against a Big Bend border wall at a protest at the Capitol in Austin Saturday. Kate Bubacz photo.

No details about what detection technology entails have been provided, sparking unease about disruption to a delicate ecosystem. Surveyors and contractors have started to show up in the region, keeping landowners and locals on edge that they stand to lose access to both their land, and the Rio Grande, the key water source for hundreds of miles. Twenty-eight environmental and archaeological protections for the region have been waived as over $6 billion in contracts have been awarded. Gov. Greg Abbott has maintained his near silence on the issue, which was noted by the signs in the crowd.

“Why isn’t Abbott speaking up for Texas lands? Come out and say something” said Mary Ann Robinson, who drove from Alpine, Texas, to attend the Capitol event.

Abbott’s office did release a statement to KXAN TV in Austin saying the governor talked to the “Border Patrol chief, who told him no physical walls would be erected in the national or state park.”

“Don’t Tread on Me” and “Come and Take It” flags were flown and worn with pride in Austin as calls about government overreach were met with cheers. Frustration has been mounting for what protesters see as a lack of clear answers on an issue that defies sense for the rugged landscape, impedes on private property and water rights and would cost a fortune to American taxpayers.

“We just want them to leave the whole damn thing alone,” said Democratic Congressman Lloyd Doggett. “As far as a wall through Big Bend, it seems like nature did that herself a few millennia ago.”

The fight against the wall is far from over. Local groups are seeking to address letters received by private landowners from the federal government seeking access to their land, the restoration of environmental protections and revocation of contracts that have been awarded.

Christina Hernandez, a Presidio resident and member of People of La Junta, told the Austin crowd: “People were living in relationship with this land before pyramids were built, and today we’re being told that this land can be cut through by people far away.”

Exponential Knowledge, Narrowing Worlds: Justice in an Unequal Global Order, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Exponential Knowledge, Narrowing Worlds: Justice in an Unequal Global Order

By

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 28, 2026

Scholars who study the growth of knowledge have consistently found that it expands at an exponential rate. The foundational figure in this field is Derek J. de Solla Price, whose landmark book Little Science, Big Science demonstrated that scientific publications, journals, and research communities have historically doubled approximately every 10 to 15 years in the modern era (Price, 1963). 

Author: Derek J. de Solla Price

Price showed that science does not grow linearly but compounds: each generation of researchers builds upon an expanding archive of prior work, producing accelerating output. Subsequent bibliometric research has confirmed sustained exponential growth in scientific publishing, particularly in the post–World War II period and into the digital age (e.g., Bornmann & Mutz, 2015).

However, when viewed through the lens of epistemic coloniality, this exponential growth appears far less neutral. Knowledge does not reproduce itself evenly across the globe. The infrastructure that enables exponential growth—research universities, funding systems, indexed journals, citation databases, and English-language dominance—is heavily concentrated in the Global North. 

What counts as “knowledge” in these measurements is typically what is published in recognized scientific outlets and indexed in dominant databases. Thus, exponential growth reflects not only intellectual vitality but also geopolitical concentration.

Decolonial thinkers such as Walter D. Mignolo and Sabelo J. Ndlovu-Gatsheni argue that modern knowledge production has long been structured by colonial matrices of power (Mignolo, 2011; Ndlovu-Gatsheni, 2018). The metrics used to measure growth—journal counts, citation indexes, and impact factors—privilege Euro-American institutions and epistemologies. 

Meanwhile, knowledge traditions rooted in Indigenous, African, and other marginalized cosmologies often circulate outside these measurable systems or are incorporated only through translation into Western disciplinary frameworks.

In this sense, the exponential reproduction of knowledge can also entail the exponential reproduction of hierarchy. As global publication output accelerates, so too can the consolidation of epistemic authority in already dominant regions and languages. 

The growth curve identified by Price (1963) remains empirically compelling. Yet when situated within analyses of coloniality, it becomes clear that expansion does not automatically translate into epistemic plurality. Instead, it may intensify asymmetries of recognition, visibility, and institutional power.

References

Bornmann, L., & Mutz, R. (2015). Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(11), 2215–2222. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23329

Mignolo, W. D. (2011). The darker side of Western modernity: Global futures, decolonial options. Duke University Press.

Ndlovu-Gatsheni, S. J. (2018). Epistemic freedom in Africa: Deprovincialization and decolonization. Routledge.

Price, D. J. de S. (1963). Little science, big science. Columbia University Press.

The Wrong Crisis: What the Yale Report Misses in the Age of Manufactured Mistrust, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Wrong Crisis: What the Yale Report Misses in the Age Manufactured Mistrust

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 28,2026

Yale University’s Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education is aserious and welcome act of institutional self-scrutiny. It names real concerns: rising costs, opaque admissions, grade inflation, bureaucratic growth, and public skepticism about the university’s purpose. Its call to recommit to the creation and dissemination of knowledge is important.

But it is also incomplete.

Because what we are living through is not simply a crisis of trust in higher education. It is a restructuring of higher education itself.

When elite institutions diagnose declining public confidence, they tend to look inward—toward institutional practices, campus climate, and internal reform. These matter. But from the vantage point of Texas, where policy is rapidly reshaping universities, the problem is not only perception. It is power.

To its credit, the Yale report defends free speech and academic freedom. But it stops short of centering what is fundamentally at stake: the university’s role in a democracy. Universities do not exist merely to produce credentials or workforce skills. At their best, they protect society’s capacity to ask difficult questions, examine power, and cultivate the habits of mind necessary for democratic life.

And it is precisely this function that is under threat.

Today’s attacks on higher education are not simply expressions of public distrust. They are part of a coordinated political project to reshape what universities are, what they do, and who they serve.

This is not new. Since Lewis Powell’s 1971 memo to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, universities have been understood by corporate and political actors as key sites in the struggle over ideas and public power. While not meant for circulation at the time, it suggested a broad, organized effort to shape public discourse. Here is a helpful succinct synopsis of it on Instagram.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ashley B (@ashleytheebarroness)

That vision has matured into a well-funded infrastructure aimed at influencing curriculum, research agendas, and public discourse (Stewart, 2025). It has been reinforced by ideological movements—such as the Seven Mountains Mandate—that explicitly frame education as terrain to be captured (Wallnau & Johnson, 2013).

Seen in this light, calls for institutional reform—however well-intentioned—cannot fully address the moment we are in.

Because the terrain has already shifted.

In Texas, the issue is not simply distrust. It is restructuring through law and governance that redounds to manufacture distrust. By this, I mean the deliberate erosion of public confidence in knowledge-producing institutions through the strategic production of doubt, distortion, and political intervention through a growing number of anti-democratic policies like SB 17 and SB 37.

Senate Bill 17 (2023), under the banner of neutrality, dismantles diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across public universities—removing not only offices, but the infrastructures that made institutions more accessible and accountable to historically marginalized communities. Senate Bill 37 (2025) goes further, weakening faculty governance and shifting authority to politically appointed boards, inserting new oversight into curriculum, hiring, and programmatic decisions.

Taken together, these policies do more than reform universities. They redefine them.

They narrow what can be taught. They reshape who has authority. They recalibrate what counts as legitimate knowledge.

This is the problem.

The Yale report gestures toward declining trust but largely avoids the political and economic forces driving these transformations—decades of public disinvestment, the rise of market logics, and, increasingly, the direct intervention of the state in regulating knowledge. What remains is a technocratic conversation about institutional repair.

But repair assumes stability.

In Texas, there is no stable baseline to repair.

“Free speech” here is not an abstract principle; it is a contested policy site. Faculty report self-censoring—not because of student protest or intellectual disagreement, but because of vague directives on “controversial topics,” the chilling effects of SB 17, and the structural reordering introduced by SB 37. Programs such as Mexican American Studies and Ethnic Studies—longstanding sites of scholarly inquiry—find themselves weakened, consolidated, or quietly marginalized.

This is what I and others describe as anticipatory compliance and shadow censorship: institutions narrowing themselves in advance of enforcement, reshaping academic life without the need for explicit bans.

None of this can be understood if distrust is treated as a matter of perception alone.

Nor can it be understood without acknowledging the racialized dimensions of this moment. When claims of “bias” are mobilized to target fields that examine race, inequality, and power, this is not a neutral call for balance. It is a struggle over whose knowledge counts—and whose histories are allowed to be told.

History offers a warning.

The Frankfurt School’s Institute for Social Research was forced into exile after the rise of Nazism (Jay, 1973; Wiggershaus, 1995). Its scholars understood that authoritarianism does not begin with book burning alone. It begins with delegitimizing critical inquiry, demonizing intellectuals, and disciplining institutions that produce inconvenient knowledge.

The echo today is not identical. But it is unmistakable.

Across states like Texas and Florida, we see efforts to dismantle DEI, restrict curriculum, weaken faculty governance, and recode academic freedom as ideological capture. These are not isolated developments. They are part of a broader campaign to remake higher education into a more compliant institution—less critical, less democratic, less public.

So yes, universities should reflect on how they have contributed to public distrust.

But that is not enough.

Because the more urgent question is whether we are willing to confront the restructuring already underway.

If higher education is to remain a democratic institution, it must defend more than its reputation. It must defend its purpose.

That means protecting academic freedom not just in principle, but in practice. It means sustaining shared governance as more than a symbolic ideal. It means refusing policies that narrow inquiry, erase histories, or subordinate knowledge to political agendas.

The crisis, in other words, is not simply that higher education is misunderstood.

It is that it is being remade.

And the question before us is not how to restore trust.

It is whether we are willing to defend the university as a democratic public good—before it is fundamentally transformed into something else.

References

Jay, M. (1973). The dialectical imagination: A history of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research, 1923–1950. Little, Brown. 

Powell, L. F., Jr. (1971, August 23). Attack on American free enterprise system [Memorandum to Eugene B. Sydnor Jr., U.S. Chamber of Commerce]. (Powell Memo)

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, Lies, and God. Bloomsbury Publishing.

Wallnau, L., & Johnson, B. (2013). Invading Babylon: The 7 mountain mandate. Destiny Image Publishers

Wiggershaus, R. (1995). The Frankfurt School: Its history, theories, and political significance (M. Robertson, Trans.). MIT Press.

Yale University. (2026). Report of the Committee on Trust in Higher Education. Yale University.

Where Are the Democrats? Why Ignoring the Assault on Higher Education Is a Strategic Mistake By Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Where Are the Democrats? Why Ignoring the Assault on Higher Education Is a Strategic Mistake

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 25, 2026

At a moment when Texas is rapidly remaking higher education, the question posed at a recent gathering at the University of Texas—“Where are the Democrats?”—should not be dismissed as rhetorical. It is a warning.

Over the past three years, Texas Republicans have not merely criticized universities; they have systematically restructured them. Through Senate Bill 17, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been dismantled. Through Senate Bill 37, faculty governance has been weakened and authority shifted upward to politically appointed boards. Beyond legislation, we are now witnessing the installation of former lawmakers as university system chancellors, direct pressure campaigns on faculty and programs, and the quiet but consequential narrowing of curricula—particularly in Mexican American Studies and Ethnic Studies more broadly.

This is not episodic policymaking. It is coordinated governance.

And yet, as Lily Kepner, writing for the Austin American-Statesman reports, Democratic leadership has largely chosen to sideline higher education as a central political issue heading into the midterms, citing the press of “kitchen table” concerns like affordability and health care. The calculus is familiar: higher education is perceived as politically risky, too easily caricatured, and insufficiently resonant with voters. 

This is precisely the miscalculation.

Higher education is a kitchen table issue. It is where students decide whether they belong. It is where families encounter the rising costs of tuition and the shrinking availability of programs that reflect their histories. It is where future teachers, nurses, engineers, and civic leaders are formed. To wit, it provides access to all of the professions. 

And increasingly, it is where political actors—rather than professors who have devoted their lives and careers to scholarship and teaching—are deciding what can be taught, what can be researched, and what can be said.

To treat this as peripheral is to concede the terrain.

Republican leaders understand this well. Their messaging—casting universities as sites of “indoctrination”—has been paired with policy that transforms governance structures, disciplines faculty speech, and reorients curriculum. As one policy advocate bluntly stated, the work of “getting rid of stuff” is giving way to a new phase: building a reordered university. That includes proposals to center “Western civilization” in core curricula, monitor foreign influence, and further regulate academic standards.

In other words, the project is not simply subtractive. It is reconstructive.

Democrats who choose not to engage this arena are not avoiding risk; they are absorbing it. By ceding narrative control, they allow higher education to be defined by its critics while alienating students, faculty, and communities already mobilizing in defense of it. They also miss an opportunity to connect higher education policy to the very concerns they claim to prioritize. Affordability, workforce development, and democratic participation are all shaped—profoundly—by what happens on our campuses.

There is also a deeper issue at stake: democracy itself.

When faculty self-censor out of fear, when programs like Mexican American Studies are administratively weakened or eliminated, when governance is restructured to minimize dissent, the university ceases to function as a space of inquiry and becomes instead a managed environment. What we are witnessing is not simply policy change, but a redefinition of the public university’s role in a democratic society.

This is why the current moment demands more than quiet concern or behind-the-scenes conversations. It requires a clear, public, and sustained defense of higher education as a public good.

To be sure, Democrats face real constraints in Texas. They do not control the legislature, and they are navigating multiple urgent crises. But political limitation is not the same as political absence. Messaging, coalition-building, and agenda-setting remain powerful tools—even, and especially, in minority positions.

Indeed, we have seen glimpses of what this could look like: public statements in defense of students, testimony challenging vague restrictions on classroom speech, and convenings that center free expression. But these efforts remain fragmented, intermittent, and insufficient to match the scale of the transformation underway.

Meanwhile, the consequences are anything but abstract. Students report feeling unheard. Faculty describe narrowing their syllabi. Entire fields—especially those grounded in the histories and experiences of communities of color—face an uncertain future.

And still, the question lingers: Where are the Democrats?

If higher education continues to be treated as a secondary issue, the answer will become increasingly clear—not in press conferences or policy papers, but in the very structure of our universities.

By 2027, when the Texas Legislature reconvenes, the groundwork being laid today will shape what is politically possible tomorrow. The choice is not whether to engage, but whether engagement comes too late.

Because by then, the question may no longer be where the Democrats are.

It may be whether there is anything left to defend.

As Texas conservatives reshape higher ed, advocates ask: Where are the Democrats?

Going into the midterms, Texas Republicans say they have momentum to build conservative values in higher ed. Some advocates say Democrats aren’t doing enough.

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterApril 22, 2026

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, left, with Texas AFT President Zeph Capo,

 speaks at a news conference at the AFL-CIO in Austin on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. Weingarten said in April

 that Democrats need to do more to address conservative reforms of higher education.

Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

Randi Weingarten could have chosen anywhere to launch the American Federation of Teachers’ plan to elevate higher education issues in the midterm elections. She chose the University of Texas.

Weingarten, the president of the national teachers' union, last week spoke before a crowd of about 100 people gathered to oppose threats to academic freedom and protect ethnic studies programs at higher education institutions.

At UT, President Jim Davis has promised to address conservative concerns that the university has let indoctrination replace inquiry by recommitting his institution to “balance” and civic education. The changes during Davis' first year in office — including the consolidation of gender and ethnic studies and leadership shakeups — have made some faculty fearful that UT is changing in response to political pressure, not input from students, staff or the public.

Get the latest UT news from Lily Kepner delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for Inside UT.

At a time when Republicans are successfully reforming higher education, Democrats, Weingarten said, are not doing enough to stop them or to advocate for universities.

“We know where the Republicans stand,” Weingarten said. “We see this stripping out of people’s right to learn, right to teach, and we’re seeing the undermining of pluralism. And so part of my question — and I say this as a lifelong Democrat — is where are the Democrats? Where is the fight?”

Ahead of midterm elections, changes to higher education should be a central issue for Democrats, Weingarten said. But as conservatives are shaping Texas universities in their image, Democrats, experts say, can’t keep up — and may not benefit strategically from trying.

Michael Harris, dean of Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development and an expert in university behavior, said Republicans in Texas “without question,” have controlled the narrative around higher education for decades.

But how Texas conservative leaders have reshaped the state’s colleges and universities is unlikely to be a big factor in the midterm elections for Democrats given the success Republicans have already had and the other pressing national issues dominating the news, he said.

Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said that the party considers education access a “kitchen table issue” and is concerned about how political interference will impact educator retention. But Texas Democrats are limited in what they can message on as other issues like affordability or health care intensify, he said.

The party isn’t intentionally sidestepping higher education, but it is prioritizing other pressing concerns families face, he said.

“I understand this frustration from these organizations with us, I get it, but the challenge that Democrats are facing is that we’re drinking through a fire hose,” Scudder said. “Of course, these issues are important to us. I mean, we are the ones who created these institutions and invested in them in the first place, and that could be part of why Republicans are trying to tear them down.”

‘Now we can finally start’

As Democrats fight other battles, Republicans will want to center education in the midterms because their messaging works, said Cal Jillson, a politics professor at SMU.

“They’re running against universities as hotbeds of socialism,” Jillson said. “And that intimidates and frightens lots of parents.”

Republicans are also in a position of power to drive the debate around higher education in Texas, Harris said.

Since 2023, Texas Republican lawmakers — who hold a majority in the Texas Senate and House and every statewide seat — have banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs at universities, weakened tenure, curbed free speech and gutted faculty’s role in governing their schools.

This year, conservatives have secured non-legislative wins too, pressuring universities to fire professors and eliminate classes and departments targeted for being too liberal. Since the beginning of 2025, three former conservative lawmakers were named chancellors of state university systems, putting them in a position to further change how their universities operate.

Texas Tech University Chancellor Brandon Creighton is one of those newly

Sen. Brandon Creighton looks over paperwork with his staff at a Senate Committee on Education hearing.

Creighton now leads the Texas Tech University System as chancellor. He is one of several Republicans appointed to higher education leadership positions in 2026.

Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman

appointed conservative leaders. He authored major higher education reforms laws as a state senator and was critical of perceived indoctrination at universities. At a recent conference hosted by the conservative think tank Texas Public Policy Foundation, he told the audience that there was “garbage” in higher education curriculum that he and others had to root out.  

Glenn Hegar, the newly appointed chancellor of the Texas A&M University System is now overseeing a vast overhaul of how LGBTQ, gender and race topics are taught at all his system campuses.

Before 2027, when the Texas Legislature next meets for a regular session, Republicans are planning how to be more proactive around higher education policy.

“We’ve been getting rid of stuff in higher ed, and now finally we can actually start to pass things instead of clearing the way,” said Kate Bierly, higher education policy director for TPPF.

In an interview, Bierly said the think tank is planning future changes, including drafting legislation that would center Western civilization in core curriculum, curb foreign influence and target grade inflation.

‘An assault on public education’

Higher education is certainly not above reproach, according to the Pew Research Center, which found 70% of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction. Universities are to blame for the public’s lack of trust, a report from a specially appointed Yale University committee concluded this week.

The committee, charged with investigating public distrust in higher education, found that grade inflation, varied intellectual experience, political correctness, affordability challenges and investments into areas outside of a university’s core academic purpose detract from universities’ ability to build public trust and grow and produce knowledge.

“Both sides of the political aisle should be alarmed and even appalled at the lack of quality civic education that kids are getting at universities,” Bierly said in an interview before the report was released. She added that her organization’s suggested policies could gain bipartisan support.

But Weingarten said the Republican-controlled discourse discredits the good higher education already does and distracts from pressing issues like affordability and equal college access.

AFT’s policy blueprint for the midterms centers around broad issues with wide appeal, including regulating artificial intelligence and enhancing career education and innovation. The teachers’ union higher education platform also outwardly opposes the federal government’s “unprecedented campaign to control higher education” through research and program cuts that threaten the institutions, she said.


Weingarten said the policies are something either party could adopt to get higher education back on track. But Democrats aren’t engaging, she said, and in doing so, they’re leaving higher education behind.

Centering higher education’s value and adopting AFT’s platform before the midterms would be an unnecessary political risk for Democrats with little potential reward, Jillson, the political scientist, said.

Because of the Republican majority, “it is very difficult for Democrats in Texas to shape issue definition, let alone policy,” he said. With affordability issues and the declining trust in President Donald Trump’s leadership, Democrats, he said, “should play the hand that they hold right now.” They should focus on attacking Republican policies instead of trying to define new ones, Jillson said.

“Much of the public believes that there are issues and problems that need to be addressed and resolved. So you can’t just be a proponent of higher education as it currently exists without some danger,” said Jillson. “Certainly they don’t want to make it a midterm issue.”

That wasn’t always the case. Two years ago, Democrats often stood with students in opposition to Republican policies on college campuses. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, visited UT with other Democrats the day after dozens of people were arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest. Texas Democrats also drafted statements and made public remarks opposing UT’s decision to fire staff after it adopted Senate Bill 17, a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion support for students.

At the AFT press conference last week, Casar, who is up for reelection, decried Texas’ “extremist politicians trying to control what gets taught in our classroom,” but left before questions. Colin Diersing, a spokesperson for Casar, declined to respond to criticism from AFT on Democrats’ lack of action or answer if Casar has reached out to Texas university leaders directly.

Still, some Texas Democrats are paying closer attention and weighing in on higher education changes in their own way. Last December, the Texas House Democratic Caucus held a virtual “People’s Caucus” on free speech in December to counter an official interim hearing focused on civil discourse after Charlie Kirk’s murder.

In November, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, who is the vice chair of the House Higher Education Committee, testified against the UT System Board of Regents’ policy limiting how professors can discuss controversial topics. The lawmaker said she feared the policy would be too vague and could chill classroom debate. The board thanked her, but passed the policy regardless.

At the same press conference Casar spoke at, Howard said she has met privately with UT President Davis to share her concerns on academic freedom and pressure from conservatives and the federal government. She said she knows leaders may be “hesitant” to meet with a Democrat in this political climate.

“There is probably less communication going on than there should be and that I would like to see,” Howard said about the relationship between Democrats and university leaders. “The leadership of the institutions have been put in a very difficult position.”

UT did not respond to requests for comment.

On the windy march to the Texas Capitol where Weingarten launched AFT’s higher education policy platform, students, professors and community members chanted: “Save UT.”

Professors spoke of censoring themselves out of fear of retaliation if they said the wrong thing. Students spoke of their desire to be heard in university decisions impacting the classes and programs available to them.

“If you are fighting against the assaults on higher education and trying to make the case about how important it is to the next generation of students,” Weingarten said. “Why not go right to the place where the fight is?”


April 22, 2026

Lily Kepner
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.