If Civics Isn’t a Discipline, What Is? A Case for Policy Studies, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

If Civics Isn’t a Discipline, What Is? A Case for Policy Studies

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 19, 2026

By any measure, we are witnessing a rapid and politically charged expansion of “civics” across American higher education. State legislatures are mandating civics coursework. Trustees are authorizing new institutes. Philanthropic and ideological funding streams are accelerating their growth. 

At institutions like Ohio State University Board of Trustees, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the University of Florida, and the University of Texas at Austin, these developments have sparked faculty resistance, raised concerns about academic freedom, and, increasingly, prompted deeper questions about governance itself.

Yet beneath the surface of these controversies—debates over intellectual diversity, curricular control, and ideological balance—lies a more generative question: What is civics, and can it meaningfully function as a discipline?

The answer matters because the stakes are not merely curricular. They are institutional. And they are political.

It is worth recalling that the effort to formalize civics as a field did not originate with the conservative actors now spearheading many of these initiatives. Nearly two decades ago—as mentioned by Messer-Kruse (2026) in a recently- published piece appearing in The Chronicle of Higher Education, scholars such as Elinor Ostrom, Jane Mansbridge, and Peter Levine advanced an ambitious vision for what they called “New Civic Politics.” 

Their aim was not simply to teach students how government works, but to cultivate what they described as “civic artisanship”—the skills required for collective problem-solving in a participatory democracy. Civics, in this formulation, was not a static body of knowledge. It was a dynamic practice rooted in action, design, and co-creation.

That vision gained traction during the Obama era, particularly through A Crucible Moment: College learning and democracy's future, a report led by McTighe Musil (2012) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. The report called on colleges and universities to make civic learning and democratic engagement central to their educational mission. However importantly, it did not call for the creation of standalone civics departments. Instead, it envisioned civic learning as distributed across the curriculum—embedded in disciplines, not isolated from them.

Even then, critics on the right raised concerns that “New Civics” might blur disciplinary boundaries and undermine faculty autonomy. Organizations like the National Association of Scholars warned that such efforts could transform universities into sites of ideological training. What is striking, in retrospect, is how closely those earlier critiques mirror today’s concerns—only now they are voiced by faculty responding to the rapid proliferation of state-backed civics institutes.

What has changed is not simply who is advancing civics, but how it is being institutionalized.

Where earlier efforts emphasized integration and faculty governance, the current wave of civics initiatives often reflects a more centralized and externally driven model. Trustees, legislatures, and advocacy organizations are playing a decisive role in shaping curriculum, sometimes over the objections of faculty. 

At Ohio State, an “intellectual diversity center” was approved despite opposition from the faculty senate. At the University of North Carolina, transparency around the School of Civic Life and Leadership has been limited, with key findings withheld from public view. At the University of Florida, faculty members were investigated for allegedly interfering with the development of a new civics center—an action the faculty union characterized as a threat to academic freedom (Wang & Shanley, 2024).

At my own institution—and as documented by Price (2024)—the University of Texas at Austin has launched the School of Civic Leadership amid a broader conservative restructuring about which I have blogged that has raised urgent questions about shared governance, academic freedom, and who ultimately defines the civic mission of the university.

These developments are not isolated incidents but part of a broader reconfiguration of curricular governance—one reflected in policy and policy agendas, unfolding under sustained political pressure and increasingly visible to both faculty and the public.

What we are witnessing is not simply the addition of new programs, but a shift in who has authority over knowledge production and dissemination. In this context, civics risks becoming less a site of open inquiry and more an instrument through which particular ideologies and governance priorities are articulated, managed, and enforced (e.g., Wang & Shanley, 2024).

This raises a fundamental problem. When civics is defined externally—by political actors rather than scholarly communities—it risks becoming prescriptive rather than exploratory. It moves from asking questions to enforcing answers. And in doing so, it undermines the very democratic principles it claims to promote.

The difficulty of establishing civics as a discipline only deepens this concern.

Advocates often point to the urgency of civic education in a polarized society as justification for its elevation. But urgency does not make a discipline. To wit, there is no consensus on its core questions. 

• Is it about the structure of government or the practice of collective action? 
• Is it normative, prescribing how citizens should behave, or 
• analytical, examining how they actually do? 

Nor is there agreement on method. Civics draws from political science, sociology, philosophy, history, and education, but lacks a distinctive methodological framework of its own.

In this sense, civics is better understood not as a discipline, but as a site of convergence—a space where multiple fields intersect around questions of governance, participation, and power; it is precisely here that policy studies emerges as the discipline we may not only need, but urgently need more of.

At its best, policy studies already does what civics aspires to do. It examines how decisions are made, implemented, and contested. It situates governance within historical and social contexts. It equips students to analyze power, discourse, and institutional behavior. And it connects theory to practice through engagement with real-world problems.

Crucially, policy studies also teaches students to see policy not merely as text, but as process—as something lived, negotiated, and often resisted. It brings into focus the dynamics of bureaucratic discretion, institutional drift, and the chilling effects of politicized oversight. In doing so, it offers a far more nuanced and critical form of civic education than what many current civics initiatives provide.

To put it plainly, policy studies does not just teach about democracy. It teaches students how to navigate, question, and reshape it.

If we are serious about strengthening civic education in higher education, the answer is not to create parallel structures that impose narrow definitions of civic knowledge. It is to invest in interdisciplinary policy programs that integrate civic learning across the curriculum, albeit in contexts where faculty enjoy autonomy, together with a support for pedagogies that connect students to communities and institutions in meaningful ways.

This approach does not reject civics. It reclaims it.

The current wave of civics initiatives reflects a genuine concern about the state of American democracy. But if civics is to contribute meaningfully to that project, it must resist becoming a tool of governance rather than a subject of inquiry. It cannot be reduced to a set of sanctioned viewpoints or scripted conversations. Nor can it be engineered through administrative fiat.

Civics, if it is to matter, must be practiced—messy, contested, and alive.

And for that, we do not need a new discipline. We need to take seriously the one we already have.

Reference

McTighe Musil, C. (2012, Feb. 15). A crucible moment: College learning and democracy's future. Association of American Colleges and Universities North Carolina Campus Compact Tenth Anniversary Conference. https://www.elon.edu/images/e-web/org/nccc/A%20Crucible%20Moment%20NCCC%2010th%20Anniversary%20FINAL.pdf

Messer-Kruse, T. (2026, April 10). Civics is a cause, not an academic discipline: Before it was trendy on the right, it was trendy on the left—and always incoherent. The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/civics-is-a-cause-not-an-academic-discipline

Price, A. (2024, August 20). UT launches civics school amid conservative makeover. Axios. https://www.axios.com/local/austin/2024/08/20/ut-civics-school-conservative-curriculum

Wang, T., & Shanley, G. (2024, July 8). UF ends investigation into whether six faculty “interfered” with Hamilton Center following pressure from union, major donor, The Independent Florida Alligator. https://www.alligator.org/article/2024/07/uf-ends-investigation-into-whether-six-faculty-interfered-with-hamilton-center-following-pressure-from-union-major-donor

Civics Is a Cause, Not an Academic Discipline
Before it was trendy on the right, it was trendy on the left — and always incoherent.

by Timothy Messer-Kruse | Chronicle of Higher Education | April 10, 2026



The rapid expansion of funding for “civics institutes,” along with the spreading of state mandates that civics be taught as a core subject in colleges, has ignited much controversy. Debates focus on whether civics should be prioritized above other vital subjects, whether civics education should be concentrated in autonomous centers on campus, and whether states should dictate how it should be taught. Ohio State University’s trustees approved the creation of an “intellectual diversity center” over the objections of OSU’s Faculty Senate. At the University of North Carolina flagship, the results of an independent investigation of its School of Civic Life and Leadership, recently chartered amid faculty protests, were kept secret. The University of Florida investigated six faculty members for having allegedly “interfered” with curricular development at its newly created Hamilton Center Classical and Civic Education, which the UF faculty union condemned as “institutional censorship or discipline to circumvent academic freedom.” Beyond these problems lies a more fundamental question: Can civics become a proper discipline?

Ironically, the impetus to make civics a discipline came from progressive scholars nearly 20 years ago, not the conservatives now founding civics institutes across the country. In 2007, a group of political theorists including Harry Boyte, Rogers Smith, Peter Levine, Jane Mansbridge, and Elinor Ostrom (who two years later would win the Nobel Prize in economics) gathered at the University of Maryland and drafted a manifesto for what they called “The New Civic Politics.” Their aspirations were not humble; they believed that “New Civics” would soon become “a discipline.”

For this group, civics was not simply teaching facts about the structure of government. It was the science of citizen action in a participatory democracy. As their manifesto explained, “Existing fields and departments simply did not have room for thinking about citizens as ‘co-creators’ of our institutions and culture.” The goal was to teach students the “design skills” and the “civic artisanship” required to make a better world. “We need,” they proclaimed, “a civic intellectual community, a discipline, a forum for debates, in which these issues will be central.”

Their arguments caught wind during the Obama administration. In 2012 the Department of Education contracted with the Association of American Colleges and Universities under the direction of its senior vice president, Caryn McTighe Musil, to produce a report, “A Crucible Moment,” calling on colleges and universities to “embrace civic learning and democratic engagement as an undisputed educational priority.” Such trumpeting of civics was hardly new, though the report’s insistence that academe had “an obligation to build a broader theory of knowledge about democracy and democratic principles in this contemporary age marked as it is by multiplicity and division” was new. Civics was no longer seen as merely a body of facts that citizens needed to know, but a field of exploration where new discoveries can be made.

“A Crucible Moment,” nevertheless, did not specifically call for the founding of new departments of civics. Rather, the prevailing idea at the time was that “understanding the depth, complexity, and competing versions of what ‘civics’ actually entails” could take place in a distributed manner, throughout institutions and across the curriculum. But the work of institutionalization was quietly proceeding.

The Good Society, an academic journal that had previously concerned itself mostly with the pedagogy of civics, became the intellectual center of the emerging discipline. Most of the drafters of “The New Civic Politics” manifesto were brought on to join the journal’s editorial board; the journal began devoting space to the question of disciplinary formation. As one board member, Karen Edward Soltan, explained, The Good Society needed to become “more self-conscious” in development of “civic science,” which was necessary to developing “a distinctive formulation of the nature of this discipline.”

Back in those innocent days, conservatives worried that the “New Civics” was nothing but a cover for turning universities into training grounds for progressive activists, and so they formulated a sophisticated argument for why civics should not be considered a discipline. Peter W. Wood and David Randall of the National Association of Scholars defended traditional departments against the encroachments of New Civics programs, which they argued undermined established curricula with “‘cocurricular activities,’ run by nonacademic administrators.” They accused New Civics proponents of aiming to “destroy disciplinary instruction and faculty autonomy,” the same thing critics today say as conservative-controlled civics institutes sprout up like spring daisies under a warm shower of state funding.

The right-wing seizure of state educational structures in President Trump’s first term, and the conservative blockage of the Civics Secures Democracy Act in the Biden era, which would have appropriated $1 billion for civics education, forced New Civics proponents to turtle rather than advance. By the time states began mandating civics curricula and the federal government began tying funding to rooting out “wokeness,” progressive plans for elevating civics into a discipline were in disarray.

Once progressives retreated from constructing a civics discipline, conservatives seized the initiative and, like hermit crabs, occupied their enemies’ homes. Pillars of the right like the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) took the lead, redefining civics as “civic thought.” In 2023, Benjamin Storey and Jenna Silber Storey, senior fellows at the AEI, authored “A Proposal for University-Level Civic Education,” noting that, although states were creating new civics institutes, academe had not yet recognized civic thought as an academic unit. To do so, civics requires the “articulation of a distinctive intellectual mission,” one that develops “a program of teaching and research with a particular scope of study and a characteristic approach, one that will train scholars in a demanding and recognizable discipline.”

The following year, the AEI partnered with the Johns Hopkins University to launch the Civic Thought Project, and in 2025 sponsored an invitation-only conference in Washington, D.C., to discuss the “Intellectual Foundations of Citizenship.” The event was packed with notable civics advocates from around the country, including Peter Levine, one of the signers of the New Civics manifesto. For the most part, however, there was less talk of the need to institutionalize civics as an academic discipline than there was of using the newly created civics institutes to give conservative voices a bigger megaphone on campus.

To the extent that the Civic Thought Project does promote the reformulation of civics as an intellectual discipline and not just a New Deal-style jobs program for conservatives, it assumes that once civics settles on a coherent set of “daunting, even paradoxical questions,” to quote the Storeys, it will have earned its place at the academic table. But there seems little agreement on what such elemental civics questions should be.

Recently some civics champions have boldly asserted that teaching the methods of deliberative democracy is essential to the entire academic enterprise. Proponents of civics institutes claim they are needed to arrest the coarsening of civil discourse and rebalance ideologically skewed campus cultures. Even assuming these are real problems, is there really much more to be investigated or discovered regarding the importance of listening and talking in turn? Do we really need a new field of inquiry to improve upon the timeworn principles universally taught at an age when pupils are given naps?

Most cheerleaders for the current state-mandated civics seem to assume that civics deserves a higher place in the university because of the supposed urgency of its knowledge. Students’ lack of basic understanding of how their government is structured and the ideals underlying it are often pointed to as the reason American society has become increasingly polarized and tribal. In the same year that Harvard’s Danielle Allen called for “a renewed focus on civic education” to combat “pernicious polarization,” Stanford University’s Debra Satz and Dan Edelstein editorialized in The New York Times that our society’s increasing “intolerance of ideas” in part “results from the failure of higher education to provide students with the kind of shared intellectual framework that we call civic education.” Both liberals and conservatives look to educators to solve the problem of hyperpartisanship by making better citizens.

But disciplines, as the philosopher Immanuel Kant showed, should not rest on the perceived contemporary importance of a problem. Disciplines rest on a body of related principles that purport to reveal something about the natural world or human meaning, as well as on a set of proven methods with which to test claims. The most glaring obstacle to civics’ path toward disciplinarity is that its potential community of scholars is deeply fractured over the question of which principles, and which methods, count.

For example, the Civic Thought Project’s conception of an appropriate subject for civic investigation is narrowly focused on the state and its “framework of laws.” This version of the discipline is crafted to exclude what conservatives have denounced as “action civics,” — a broader conception of popular involvement in governance that looks beyond the state to fostering direct action in community.

Karol Edward Soltan, an early advocate of elevating the field into a discipline, described civics in a way nearly opposite to the Civic Thought Project’s model. We should, she wrote, “consider the simple exercise of dropping the word ‘citizen’ entirely from the goal of this emerging field. Civic studies, we could say, aims to develop ideas and ways of thinking helpful to human beings in their capacity as co-creators of their worlds. I think that would be a good start.” Clearly, the scholars who have gathered under the umbrella of civics cannot agree on what is keeping them dry. To be a discipline, at minimum, there needs to be some agreement on what the boundaries of knowledge of this pursuit are. The deeply fractured state of the field is easily quantified. A check of the 228 faculty members who staff a dozen newly created civics institutes and centers against the 274 scholars who have contributed to The Good Society as either authors, editors, or members of the editorial board turns up not one name on both lists.  
Ultimately, civics is unlike all other pursuits that have graduated into disciplines. It is not itself a skill like reading, arithmetic, or foreign-language acquisition; it only borrows and applies the competencies it uses from other more fundamental fields. It is not a creative pursuit like painting, music, or poetry. It is not a codified branch of scientific research. Nor is it a field of structured disputation like philosophy or history. As long as its purpose is to ennoble rather than enlighten, civics will remain more of a crusade than a discipline.

Timothy Messer-Kruse
Timothy Messer-Kruse is a professor of cultural studies at Bowling Green State University and author of Slavery’s Fugitives and the Making of the United States Constitution (LSU Press, 2024)

Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Emilio Zamora on Art, Memory, and Movement: A Conversation We Cannot Miss

Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture featuring Dr. Emilio Zamora on Art, Memory, and Movement: A Conversation We Cannot Miss

“The young Chicano and Chicana artists who emerged in Austin during the 1970s were part of an unprecedented national flowering of creative expressions, galvanizing meanings, and rousing identities meant to serve their communities.” 

— Emilio Zamora

There are moments in our history when art does more than reflect the world—it helps make it. In Austin during the 1970s, Chicana and Chicano artists did exactly that. Through murals, prints, performances, and collective organizing, they gave visual and cultural form to a movement grounded in dignity, resistance, and community.

This Thursday, we have a special opportunity to revisit—and learn from—that powerful moment.

The Center for Mexican American Studies at The University of Texas at Austin invites us to a lecture by Professor Emeritus Emilio Zamora, titled, "The Emergence of the Chicano Art Movement in Austin, Texas." 

Drawing from history and the artists’ own voices, Dr. Zamora will walk us through the early days of this movement—when creative expression became a vehicle for confronting marginalization, imagining new futures, and asserting cultural and political presence.

This talk is part of the Américo Paredes Distinguished Lecture Series, which honors Américo Paredes—a towering figure in Mexican American Studies, a musician, scholar, and the founding director of CMAS in 1970. His leadership came at a pivotal time, when student activists demanded a university that recognized their histories, their communities, and their ways of knowing. This lecture continues that legacy.

There is something especially meaningful about gathering in this moment—when questions of representation, voice, and belonging remain as urgent as ever. The Chicano Art Movement was never only about aesthetics; it was about claiming space, telling truth, and building community through culture.

Join us:

📍 Texas Union, Santa Rita Room (UNB 3.502)
🗓 Thursday, April 16, 2026
🕓 4:00–6:00 PM
🎟 Open to all

I hope you can be there. I hear you need to get there early to get a good seat.😊

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

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

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 15, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a proud day. And a necessary one.

ANNOUNCEMENT: "First They Came for My College" Documentary

A new documentary, First They Came for My College, is drawing national attention for its powerful portrayal of the transformation of New College of Florida. As it premieres at major film festivals across the country, the film invites us to reflect on a pressing question: What happens when political forces reshape the mission, governance, and everyday life of a public university?

-Angela Valenzuela

Dear friend,

First They Came for My College, our feature-length documentary about the “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida, just had its world premiere at the True/False Film Festival, followed by SXSW. And it’s getting rave reviews. The Guardian calls it “gripping” and “a cautionary tale.” This week, the film will have its Florida premiere in competition at the Florida Film Festival, before playing six more festivals, including the San Francisco International Film Festival (see below for more festivals and screening info). We’re constantly updating our website, NewCollegeFilm.com, where you can find details about our upcoming screenings, request a screening near you, see recent media coverage, and donate to help us bring this important film to campuses and communities around the U.S.

If you haven’t seen it yet, check out our three-minute trailer:

After three years of intense effort, this is a dream come true for all of us who worked on and appear in the film and for the vast network of alums who have supported us every step of the way.

For this inaugural issue of our newsletter to supporters—and as neat trick to outwit spam blockers—we’d be grateful if you’d take just one minute to write us back with what you think is the biggest threat facing higher education today OR, if you’ve seen the film, one scene that stuck with you. We’d love to hear from our audience!

At True/False, we sold out theaters as large as 1,200 seats and got standing ovations at every screening—sometimes two standing ovations. Dr. Pat Okker, the first woman president of New College, who was ignominiously fired by the junta appointed by Ron DeSantis, graciously introduced the documentary, saying,

This is a film that documents the history that could have easily been lost. Back in January 2023, there were a lot of people telling us things like, well, that could never happen on our campus. Is anybody saying that these days? Nobody's saying that anymore.

At the film’s premiere at SXSW in Austin, Texas, a leader of the American Association of University Professors praised the film as “a master class in organizing.” Check out the photos of Dr. Okker, our team, our protagonists, and some of our student filmmakers on stage!

We hope you’ll join us at a screening at one of five major festivals in April (with more festival announcements coming soon):

-the San Francisco International Film Festival (April 27);
-the Independent Film Festival in Boston (April 23), where we’ll be screening in the 840-seat Sommerville Theater; 

-the Florida Film Festival near Orlando (April 11 (sold out) and 16); 

-the River Run Film Festival in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (April 23); and
-the Ashland Independent Film Festival in Oregon (April 23, 25, 26).

Professors, students, and regular folks from around the country have written to ask for screenings near them using our “request a screening” form on the “screenings” page of our website. All of this information, and more, can be found on our website or socials linked in the footer of this email.

Todd Wolfson, the president of the American Association of University Professors, recently told the Citations Needed podcast, “As goes higher education, so goes democracy.” And in a recent report, America’s Censored Campuses, former New College professor Amy Reid and her colleagues at PEN America described what’s happening in colleges and universities as “a catastrophe.” These publications and more media coverage of the film can be found on our “Press” tab on our website.

But the enthusiastic reception to First They Came for My College has convinced us that Americans understand the stakes and are ready to build a powerful movement to defend the freedom to teach and learn free of government censorship, a movement to defend universities as bastions of truth-telling and inclusion.

If you can help us in this urgent work, we hope you’ll support this project and spread the word. We look forward to seeing you at a screening soon!

Sincerely,

Holly, Patrick, Harry, and the whole film team

P.S. If you’re getting this email, it’s because you’ve signed up on our website, NewCollegeFilm.com, or because we know you’re a supporter of this important film. We’ll only send these newsletters occasionally.

Check us out onVisit our website for more.

Neither Erase Nor Enshrine: Toward a Collective Memory Beyond César Chávez, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., April 9, 2026

Neither Erase Nor Enshrine: Toward a Collective Memory Beyond César Chávez

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
April 9, 2026

I offer this reflection with care—and with urgency. I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on this question—not in the abstract, but as a consequence of direct involvement. 

I served on the committee that met regularly to plan and ultimately establish the César Chávez statue that now stands prominently on the West Mall at the University of Texas at Austin. That process was deeply intentional: it was about recognition, visibility, and affirming a history too often pushed to the margins of public memory.

Today, that work is being revisited more broadly. Across cities and campuses, communities—especially within Mexican American and farmworker communities—are debating whether to remove street names, rename schools, and alter murals tied to César Chávez. 

While, to my knowledge, there is no current effort at the University of Texas at Austin to remove the Chávez statue, it is important to anticipate such debates and invite reflection on its presence and meaning within our own campus landscape.

César Chavez statue—UT-Austin

The terms of the debate are stark: preserve or erase, honor or condemn.

But this binary is not only intellectually insufficient—it is politically dangerous.

It flattens complexity at precisely the moment when complexity is most needed. And it unfolds within a broader context in which the machinery of erasure is already accelerating—across public education, libraries, and curriculum. In such a moment, we must be especially vigilant about what—and whose—histories are made to disappear.

The question before us is not simply what to do with monuments to César Chávez. The deeper question is who controls memory—and to what end. Because if we are not careful, the debate over Chávez will not remain about Chávez. 

It will become yet another opening through which the broader history of the Chicana and Chicano movement—and the farmworker struggle in particular—can be quietly, systematically erased.

We are living in the midst of an aggressive political project—aligned with Christian nationalist and right-wing agendas—that seeks to narrow what can be taught, remembered, and valued. From book bans to curricular restrictions to the policing of “controversial topics,” we are witnessing an effort not just to contest history, but to discipline it.

In this context, calls to simply “remove” Chávez risk being folded into a broader logic of disappearance—one that does not stop at individuals, but extends to movements, communities, and entire histories and epistemologies.

And yet, let us be equally clear: uncritical celebration is untenable.

To enshrine Chávez as beyond critique is to betray the very movement he helped lead. It replaces history with mythology. It silences those within the struggle—particularly women and rank-and-file workers—whose experiences complicate the narrative. It insulates power from accountability under the guise of reverence.

If we are serious about justice, then we must be equally serious about truth.

History has never required perfection to warrant remembrance. Figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—both enslavers—remain central to the national narrative, not because they were without contradiction, but because their historical significance is institutionally secured. Their legacies have not been erased; rather, they have been increasingly contextualized.

But Chávez’s legacy does not occupy the same protected terrain.

Unlike Washington or Jefferson, the history of the farmworker movement remains fragile—its presence in curriculum, public memory, and institutional recognition still contested. To collapse that movement into Chávez—and then to dismantle Chávez without preserving the movement—is to risk losing the very history that made possible labor rights, dignity, and collective struggle for generations of Mexican American and immigrant workers.

The farmworker movement was never the work of one man.

It was built through the labor and leadership of countless individuals—many of them women, undocumented workers, and community organizers whose names remain far less known, but whose contributions were indispensable. To engage Chávez critically should not narrow our historical lens; it should widen it.

And this is where the current debate must evolve. The choice is not between erasure and enshrinement. It is between a politics of disappearance and a politics of transformation.

In this moment, I do not support removing the Chávez statue.

Not because it is beyond critique—but because the conditions into which it would be removed are already structured by erasure. To take it down now, without a clear and collectively grounded plan for what replaces it, risks creating a vacuum into which the broader history of the farmworker movement may also vanish.

But neither should the statue remain as it is—unquestioned, uncontextualized, and singular.

Instead, we should treat this as a transitional moment.

We should keep the statue in place until we are prepared to replace it with a representation that more fully and accurately reflects the collective nature of the farmworker movement itself. 

There are exquisite representations to choose from. 

That future representation might take the form of a broader memorial—one that honors the movement as a whole, rather than centering a single figure. It could include the iconic imagery of the United Farm Workers, such as the Aztec eagle, a symbol of collective struggle, resilience, and self-determination.

Such a shift would not erase Chávez. It would situate him—properly—within a larger history.

It would move us away from hero worship and toward collective memory. Away from individualization and toward movement-building. Away from static commemoration and toward living history.

This is the work of recontextualization—not erasure.

It requires community engagement, especially with farmworker communities themselves. It requires curricular and institutional commitments to Ethnic Studies and labor history—fields that are themselves under threat. And it requires political clarity about the moment we are in.

This decision does not occur on neutral ground.

In another time, removal might function as accountability. But in this moment—when the state is already engaged in a broader project of historical narrowing—we must ask: What will be lost? And who benefits from that loss?

Rejecting erasure is not the same as defending harm. It is a refusal to allow critique to be weaponized against communities whose histories are already precarious.

The task before us is harder than choosing sides.

It requires us to hold contradiction—to recognize that Chávez can be both consequential and flawed, that movements are always larger than their most visible leaders, and that public memory is not fixed, but contested terrain.

But this is precisely the work of education.

If we do this right, the result is not silence, nor mythology, but a richer and more democratic public memory—one that tells the truth, honors collective struggle, and resists the forces that would prefer we forget.

Because the greatest danger is not that we will remember Chávez imperfectly.

It is that we will stop remembering the movement at all.

References

Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. (n.d.). George Washington and slavery. https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington-and-slavery

Thomas Jefferson Foundation. (n.d.). Slavery at Monticello. https://www.monticello.org/slavery/introduction

Surveillance Without Rules: Texas’ New Ombudsman Office and the Quiet Policing of Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Surveillance Without Rules: Texas’ New Ombudsman Office and the Quiet Policing of Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 6, 2026

A state agency with the power to investigate universities—and potentially cut off their funding—should, at minimum, have clear rules for how it operates. In Texas, it does not.

As recently reported by the Texas Tribune, the Office of the Ombudsman housed within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board has been accepting complaints for months alleging violations of anti-DEI laws and new limits on faculty governance. Yet it has no written policies explaining how investigations are conducted—no standards of evidence, no clear procedures, no defined rights for those accused, and no appeals process. This is not a bureaucratic gap. It is a warning.

When an office holds power without rules, what fills the vacuum is discretion. And discretion, in a political environment like this one, is rarely neutral. 

The stakes are significant. If the office determines that a university has violated state law and the institution fails to remedy the issue, it can recommend that lawmakers cut off access to state funds. 

That is extraordinary authority for a body that cannot explain how it decides what constitutes a violation, what evidence matters, or how findings are reached. We do not know what triggers an investigation, how complaints are evaluated, or what recourse exists for those accused. What we are left with is governance by ambiguity.

Ambiguity, however, is not merely a flaw. It is productive. It creates an environment in which institutions cannot clearly identify the boundaries of compliance and therefore default to over-compliance. 

As Liliana Garces and others have documented, universities in Texas are already responding to the broader anti-DEI policy climate by exceeding what the law requires. Faculty are being encouraged to avoid certain language in their research, even when their work is legally protected. 

Administrators are consulting legal counsel preemptively, not because violations have occurred, but because the consequences of miscalculation are unclear. In such a context, the safest course of action becomes silence.

This is not simply policy implementation; it is a form of governance that operates through uncertainty. Michel Foucault described this as disciplinary power—a system that shapes behavior not primarily through punishment, but through the internalization of surveillance. 

When individuals and institutions cannot predict how rules will be applied, they begin to regulate themselves. The chilling effect is not incidental; it is the mechanism through which power operates most efficiently. The Ombudsman’s office, even in its procedural absence, has already begun to reshape the terrain of higher education by signaling that scrutiny is ever-present and standards are undefined.

Supporters of the office have described it as a neutral forum for resolving disputes, a place where concerns can be addressed without escalating into public controversy. But neutrality requires more than intention. It requires transparency, consistency, and due process. None of these are currently evident. 

Instead, the office has declined to release even basic information about its activities, including how many complaints it has received or the nature of those complaints. It has sought permission to withhold such data, even as it acknowledges that it has yet to develop the written procedures required by law.

At the same time, its staffing draws from ideological networks aligned with anti-DEI efforts, including individuals with ties to the Texas Public Policy Foundation. While political affiliation alone does not determine outcomes, it does shape institutional orientation. In this case, the alignment between the office’s mission and the broader political project to curtail DEI and Ethnic Studies is difficult to ignore.

The structure of the complaint system itself raises additional concerns. In the absence of clear evidentiary standards, complaints can be filed for a wide range of reasons, including those that are political or strategic in nature. Even if unsubstantiated, such complaints can generate administrative burdens, reputational damage, and institutional anxiety. 

Without a formal appeals process, those accused are left navigating a system that offers limited protection and little clarity. Under these conditions, the complaint process becomes less a tool of accountability and more a tool of vulnerability, that is, a risk to those targeted.

What is perhaps most striking is that the office does not need to exercise its full authority to be effective. Its mere existence, combined with its opacity, is sufficient to produce behavioral change. Universities begin to anticipate scrutiny. Faculty adjust their research and teaching. Administrators prioritize risk management over intellectual exploration. In this way, the office functions not simply as an enforcement body, but as a signal that higher education is subject to continuous monitoring. The result is a gradual shift from open inquiry to managed knowledge.

This moment must be understood as part of a broader struggle over who gets to define knowledge in public institutions. Battles over curriculum, Ethnic Studies, and representation have long revealed that what counts as “official knowledge” is deeply contested. What is new here is the mechanism of enforcement: a state office with expansive authority operating without clear procedural constraints. 

In my own work, I have described similar dynamics as part of a colonial matrix of power—a system that governs not only institutions, but the very boundaries of thought. When educators are compelled to anticipate political consequences without knowing the rules, the result is not simply compliance, but constraint.

In a democratic society, the exercise of power must be bounded by procedure. Rules are not bureaucratic formalities; they are the foundation of legitimacy. They ensure that decisions are made fairly, that evidence is evaluated consistently, and that those affected have recourse. An investigative body that operates without such rules does not strengthen accountability; it undermines it.

If Texas is serious about restoring public confidence in higher education, it must begin by ensuring that its own oversight mechanisms are transparent, accountable, and grounded in due process. Until then, the Office of the Ombudsman stands as a troubling development: a system in which uncertainty governs, surveillance shapes behavior, and the future of higher education is being quietly but profoundly remade.

This state agency was created to investigate Texas universities. How that works is a mystery.

Office of the Ombudsman has no written policies on how to investigate allegations that education laws are being broken, even though it’s been accepting complaints for three months.

by Jessica Priest April 3, 2026, 5:00 a.m. Central | Texas Tribune


Illustrated posters reading “We Belong Here” sit on the Capitol’s rotunda floor during Texas Students for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’s protest of anti-DEI initiatives for public universities, on Mar. 23, 2023. One responsibility of the new Office of the Ombudsman is to investigate allegations that anti-DEI laws have been broken. Leila Saidane/The Texas Tribune

A new state office with the power to investigate whether public universities in Texas are violating laws on diversity, curriculum and campus decision-making has no written policies explaining how those investigations work, even after accepting complaints for nearly three months.

The Office of the Ombudsman, housed within the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board and led by a gubernatorial appointee, was created last year to address GOP concerns that universities had become too focused on promoting liberal viewpoints instead of preparing students for the workforce.

The ombudsman accepts complaints from students, faculty and staff alleging violations of two state laws:A 2017 ban on diversity, equity and inclusion offices, programs and training at public colleges and universities.
A 2025 law limiting faculty’s role in some curriculum, grievance and discipline decisions.

The stakes are high: If the office finds a university violated a law and the school does not fix the problem within a set time, the ombudsman can recommend that lawmakers cut access to state funds until the school complies.

State law requires the office to provide complainants and subjects of complaints with a copy of its policies and procedures for complaint investigation and resolution. But when The Texas Tribune asked for those documents, Ombudsman Brandon Simmons pointed to a page on the office’s website that describes how complaints are filed and sets deadlines for when universities must be notified and respond and when the office must issue reports. It is unclear whether that satisfies the law’s requirements.

The webpage does not explain how the office decides an investigation is warranted, what standard of proof it applies in reaching findings or what recourse universities or employees have if they believe the ombudsman’s findings are wrong.

Clear, written policies can ensure investigations are conducted fairly and consistently, higher education experts say.

Neal Hutchens, a professor at the University of Kentucky’s College of Education who studies higher education law and policy, said people also need to understand how the system works to have faith in it. Without that clarity, the office’s authority could feel open-ended and intimidating to institutions and faculty members alike.

“It just has a big question mark for everyone,” he said.

The ombudsman office also asked the Texas attorney general for permission to withhold from the Tribune basic complaint data, including how many complaints it has received, when they were filed, the laws allegedly violated and the status of investigations.

Gov. Greg Abbott appointed Simmons as the office’s first ombudsman in October. Records obtained by the Tribune show he was the only person considered for the job. Simmons, a former technology executive, venture capitalist and corporate attorney, stepped down as chair of the Texas Southern University System Board of Regents to take the position. He had served on the board since 2023, part of a period later examined by a state audit that found significant weaknesses in Texas Southern’s financial controls, contracting and reporting processes.

His office began accepting complaints through an online portal Jan. 9.

That same month, Simmons agreed to an interview with the Tribune but canceled and instead responded to questions in writing.

Asked how the office planned to investigate complaints, he did not provide specifics. Asked how Texans should judge whether the office is working as intended, Simmons offered no concrete benchmarks, saying: “This office seeks to increase public confidence in higher education and to support the continuing ascent of Texas universities’ student success and research and development.”

Later, in response to a public records request, the office said it did not possess written policies or procedures for conducting investigations. The Tribune followed with 10 emails — the majority sent over the past two weeks — asking how the office was handling complaints but did not get an answer until two days before publication, when Simmons pointed to the office’s web page detailing how to file a complaint and listing deadlines.

“Additional policies and procedures will continue to be developed as outlined by Texas law,” Simmons added.

The law does not define when an investigation is necessary, but it says if the office determines one to be necessary, it can request information from a university, which has 30 days to respond. Afterward, it must submit a report to the institution’s board of regents determining whether a violation occurred and recommending corrective action if needed.

If a university does not resolve a violation within 180 days, the office can refer the matter to the state auditor and recommend that lawmakers block the institution from spending state funds until it complies.

The law also requires the office to keep a file on each complaint and submit annual reports to state officials, including the governor and legislative leaders, summarizing how many complaints it received, how many investigations it conducted and what it found.

Unable to get information from the ombudsman, the Tribune asked the state’s public university systems whether the office had sent them any notices of complaint and for related records. Six systems said they had not been notified of any complaints, one had not answered by publication, and the University of Texas System indicated it had responsive records but asked the attorney general if it could withhold them.

The lawmakers who helped shape the office offered different views on how it should function and how much it should disclose.

State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, the new chair of the Senate Higher Education Committee, told the Tribune the office will need to develop “some type of complaint procedure” and said Simmons should come prepared to talk about it at a Higher Education Committee hearing this summer. He said the office should disclose the number of complaints filed, adding he had already asked for those counts.

Asked what protections should exist for universities or employees accused in complaints, including what standard of proof should apply and whether there should be an appeals process, Bettencourt said, “I’m going to leave that one open.”

He said he saw the ombudsman as more than an enforcement arm — a “neutral place” where people could bring problems for resolution that also could keep disputes from being “adjudicated on social media,” pointing to last year’s Texas A&M controversy, which began after a state representative shared a student’s secret recording of a classroom discussion about gender identity.

In a separate interview, state Rep. Matt Shaheen, House sponsor of the bill that created the office, said he was “very satisfied” with the process described on the office’s website, which restates the law’s complaint timeline and reporting requirements but does not explain key investigative standards or procedures. He cautioned against disclosing information about pending complaints, saying they could be false or “malicious in nature,” though he said he would be comfortable with releasing complaint data after the process played out.

Asked about a lack of appeals, Shaheen said those who believed the ombudsman’s findings were unfair could raise their concerns with lawmakers and would have “the opportunity to have their side of the story heard.”

Before the ombudsman office was created, the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board handled a narrower set of student complaints, typically reviewing whether universities followed state rules on issues like tuition and financial aid, consumer protections and certain academic requirements. Students generally had to first exhaust a university’s internal grievance process before the board would review a complaint, and the agency did not have the authority to direct universities to change policies or recommend they be blocked from spending state funds.

So far, Simmons has drawn from conservative legal and policy circles to staff the ombudsman office. On April 1, Simmons announced that Ryan D. Walters, a former deputy attorney general for legal strategy and former attorney at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, had joined as deputy director and general counsel. Simmons also hired Edgardo Mondolfi, also a former Texas Public Policy Foundation employee, as his assistant.

Other Texas agencies are more transparent about how they investigate complaints. The Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation says investigators typically interview the complainant, the respondent and pertinent witnesses, gather relevant documents and can visit a business or site tied to the complaint before submitting a report to a prosecutor. If the agency seeks penalties, it weighs factors such as the seriousness of the violation, whether it was intentional, whether the respondent tried to address the violation after it was discoveredfix it and whether stronger punishment was needed to deter future misconduct. Respondents can then request a hearing before an administrative law judge and later seek rehearing or judicial review.

Critics fear what an office with broad authority and unclear procedures could mean for teaching, research and open inquiry at public universities.

Liliana Garces, a professor at UT-Austin’s College of Education, said such fear is not theoretical.

In a study of how the state’s anti-DEI law was implemented at UT-Austin, she and her research team interviewed nearly 100 administrators, faculty and students over more than a year and found that the flagship went beyond what the law required. For example, university officials encouraged faculty to have their research proposals reviewed by a university lawyer and to avoid using certain language, even though research was exempt.

Garces said the overcorrection was driven in part by undercover videos that appeared to show university employees discussing ways to continue DEI initiatives, followed by pressure from Republican state leaders suggesting universities were not complying. She said that created an environment in which universities felt they were being watched and became more likely to go beyond the law’s requirements.

“Compliance became this moving target where just any kind of visibility created liability for the institution,” she said.

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.

Disclosure: Texas Public Policy Foundation, University of Texas System and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

Rationing Opportunity: The War on Children and the Dismantling of Plyler v. Doe, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Rationing Opportunity: The War on Children and the Dismantling of Plyler v. Doe

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 6, 2026

Visit MALDEF.org that played a central role litigating Plyler v. Doe

As you can read for yourselves in this article published by thehill.com titled GOP calls to get undocumented children out of public schools grow authored by Lonas Cochran (2026), there are moments when the law does more than interpret policy—it draws a line around who counts. In 1982, the U.S. Supreme Court did exactly that in Plyler v. Doe, holding that undocumented children are entitled to a free public K–12 education under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

That line is now under direct attack.

Recent reporting details a coordinated push—stretching from state legislatures to federal actors—to dismantle Plyler. Texas Congressman Chip Roy has called for overturning the decision, framing it as a “burden” on taxpayers. At the same time, Stephen Miller has reportedly encouraged Texas lawmakers to consider cutting funding for undocumented students. Tennessee is advancing legislation that would require proof of immigration status at school enrollment, a move widely understood as a precursor to legal challenge.

Let’s be clear: this is not random. It is a strategy.

The most likely pathway to overturning Plyler is not legislative repeal—it is engineered litigation. A state passes a law that restricts access to education, gets sued, and uses the case to invite a newly configured Supreme Court to revisit precedent. We have seen this playbook before. It is deliberate, incremental, and designed to normalize what once seemed unthinkable.

But much of the rhetoric surrounding this effort depends on misdirection.

First, the claim that Plyler represents “judicial overreach.” It does not. The Court did what it has long done: interpret the Constitution. The Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause applies to “persons,” not just citizens. This principle is not new. It dates back to cases like Yick Wo v. Hopkins (1886), which affirmed that noncitizens are entitled to constitutional protections.

Second, the assertion that Congress holds plenary power over immigration. True—but irrelevant here. Plyler is not about immigration enforcement. It is about whether a state can deny children access to education. That question falls squarely within constitutional limits on state power.

Third, the fiscal argument—that undocumented students strain public resources. This is not a constitutional argument; it is a political one. And it collapses under scrutiny. Public schools are funded through formulas tied to attendance. In an era of declining birth rates, many districts depend on stable or increasing enrollment to remain viable. Excluding students does not save systems—it destabilizes them. More importantly, denying education produces far greater long-term social costs: poverty, unemployment, and diminished civic participation.

What is unfolding, then, is not a good-faith debate about policy. It is a reframing of rights as liabilities.

And that reframing has consequences.

The article also points to a troubling operational shift: the erosion of long-standing norms that treated schools as protected spaces. With changes to federal enforcement posture, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity near or on school grounds is no longer off-limits. Reports of arrests involving parents and community members in proximity to schools are already emerging.

We need to name this for what it is: the transformation of schools from sites of learning into sites of surveillance.

When families fear school, they do not send their children. Attendance drops—not just among undocumented students, but across entire communities. Teachers become frontline responders to trauma. Classrooms become quieter, emptier, more precarious. And the damage extends far beyond immigration status.

There is also a deeper legal horizon to consider. Some observers have speculated that challenges to Plyler could intersect with broader efforts to reinterpret the Fourteenth Amendment, including debates over birthright citizenship. While the connection is not guaranteed, the logic is clear: narrow the definition of who counts as a constitutional “person,” and a cascade of exclusions becomes possible.

This is how rights erode—not all at once, but through strategic pressure points.

In my own work, I have described this as "discursive inversion": the process by which inclusion is reframed as excess, and rights are recast as threats. Under this logic, providing children with an education becomes an unfair advantage. Equal protection becomes preferential treatment. The moral universe flips, and exclusion begins to appear reasonable—even necessary.

We have seen this before. Historically, arguments about “limited resources” and “taxpayer burden” have been used to justify segregation, exclusion, and the rationing of opportunity. What changes are the targets, not the logic.

And here, the target is children.

Let us pause on that.

Plyler v. Doe did not create a broad new right. It prevented the state from imposing a devastating harm. The Court recognized that denying education to children—who have no control over their immigration status—would impose a “lifetime hardship,” effectively foreclosing their ability to participate meaningfully in society. Education, the Court reasoned, is foundational to individual dignity and democratic life.

To undo Plyler is to accept that some children can be rendered permanently disposable.

That is not a budgetary decision. It is a moral one.

It is also a profound shift in how we understand public education. For generations, public schooling in the United States has been grounded—however imperfectly—in the idea of universality. Not equality achieved, but equality aspired to. The notion that schools belong to the public, and that the public includes all who reside within it.

Overturning Plyler would mark a departure from that principle. Education would become conditional—granted not on the basis of presence or personhood, but on legal status. The classroom would no longer be a shared civic space, but a filtered one.

And once that line is drawn, it will not hold.

Because the question will not stop at undocumented children. It will expand—quietly at first—into other domains, other populations, other forms of conditional belonging.

This is how institutional unraveling begins. Not with a single decision, but with a redefinition of who is entitled to protection.

The Court answered that question in 1982. It affirmed that children, regardless of status, are persons under the Constitution and deserving of access to education.

The fact that we are now poised to revisit that decision should give us pause.

Not because precedent is sacred—it is not—but because the direction of change matters.

We are being asked, once again, to decide whether schools are instruments of democracy or tools of exclusion.

And this time, the answer will not be abstract.

It will be lived—in classrooms, in communities, and in the futures of millions of children watching closely to see whether this country believes they belong.

References

Lonas Cochran, L. (2026, March 30). GOP calls to get undocumented children out of public schools grow. The Hill. https://thehill.com/homenews/education/5804304-undocumented-kids-public-schools-plyler/

Plyler v. Doe, 457 U.S. 202 (1982).

Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U.S. 356 (1886).