Latino Voters, White Grievance Politics, and the Limits of the Anti-Immigrant Strategy by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Latino Voters, White Grievance Politics, and the Limits of the Anti-Immigrant Strategy

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 9, 2026

Recent reporting on the Texas primaries suggests that Republicans are beginning to worry about something that once seemed improbable: that the Latino voters who helped power Donald Trump’s 2024 victory may be drifting away from the coalition they helped build.

In heavily Latino parts of Texas, Democratic primary turnout last week significantly outpaced Republican turnout. Local officials in the Rio Grande Valley—long considered a key testing ground for Republican gains among Latino voters—are now warning that enthusiasm for the GOP appears to be fading.

But in many ways, this should not come as a surprise.

The political coalition that helped Republicans expand their Latino vote in 2024 was always built on a fragile foundation. Latino voters, like other Americans, hold diverse views on issues such as the economy, education, religion, and public safety. Some were drawn to Republican messaging around economic opportunity or border management. Yet the broader ideological framework shaping the modern Republican Party remains deeply rooted in white grievance politics—a politics that often frames immigrants and communities of color as threats to national identity, culture, and security.

There is a limit to how long that contradiction can hold.

For years, anti-immigrant rhetoric has been a central organizing force within the party. But rhetoric has increasingly been translated into policy. The administration’s aggressive deportation campaign—promoted as the largest in U.S. history—has swept up not only recent arrivals but also long-time undocumented residents and families with deep roots in their communities. Federal raids, workplace enforcement, and high-profile immigration crackdowns have made the consequences of this politics visible in everyday life.

Even voters who supported tougher border enforcement did not necessarily anticipate policies that would reach so deeply into communities, workplaces, and families.

When a political movement is fueled by grievance—particularly grievance centered on race, demographic change, and national belonging—it inevitably produces policies that punish the very communities it seeks to court politically. Latino voters may swing between parties, as many analysts note, but they are also paying close attention to how policies affect their neighbors, their workplaces, and their families.

What the Texas primaries may be revealing is not a sudden shift, but the limits of a political strategy built on exclusion.

Coalitions built through fear and resentment are inherently unstable. And when policies begin to translate rhetoric into lived consequences, voters notice.

Texas primaries raise GOP alarm about Latino voters

Strong Democratic turnout last week in heavily Latino parts of Texas has some Republicans fearing they will struggle to maintain the coalition Trump built in 2024.

March 8, 2026 | Washington Post





By Hannah Knowles and Clara Ence Morse

The Republican mayor of McAllen, Texas, says he wasn’t surprised last week when Democrats saw robust primary turnout in his heavily Latino border region of the state.

“The excitement there was with the Hispanic community and the Republican Party is kind of waning,” Mayor Javier Villalobos lamented.

Some of Villalobos’s family members who voted for President Donald Trump in 2024 — fueling Republicans’ gains with Latino voters around the country — are telling him they think they made a mistake, the mayor said. Many people who initially cheered Trump for securing the border now think his immigration crackdown has gone too far.


Villalobos worries that Republicans’ hopes of picking up five House seats with a redrawn Texas map are fading — particularly because four of those districts are majority-Latino.

“There’s a good chance that we may lose one or two of those … maybe even more, based on the way that things are going right now,” he said.

Turnout last week in Texas was the latest fuel for GOP worries that the Latino voters who helped power Trump’s 2024 victory are slipping away ahead of this year’s midterm elections. Heavily Hispanic areas have swung back toward Democrats in key off-year races as polls show the public souring on Trump’s handling of the economy and immigration, among other issues.

People protest President Donald Trump's inauguration on Jan. 20, 2025, in McAllen, Texas.
(Eric Gay/AP)

Trump was elected on promises to carry out the largest deportation operation in U.S. history. But the scope of his administration’s crackdown has still surprised some supporters who expected him to focus more narrowly on violent criminals. His deportation push has ensnared undocumented immigrants living in the United States for years, including children, and his deployment of federal agents in Democratic-led cities drew intense backlash — especially after the killing of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), who has championed immigration reform legislation, said in an interview that Texas is part of a string of warning signs. She pointed to November’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, where the most heavily Latino counties swung most sharply toward Democrats.

Republicans, she said, are “understanding that because of those excesses of what happened the first year with immigration … the Republican Party has lost this great coalition that we put together in ’24.”

“Republicans must course-correct now before it’s too late,” she urged last week on social media.

Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida) says Texas is part of a string of warning signs for Republicans. (Marta Lavandier/AP)


Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Florida), who has championed immigration reform legislation, said in an interview that Texas is part of a string of warning signs. She pointed to November’s elections in Virginia and New Jersey, where the most heavily Latino counties swung most sharply toward Democrats.

Republicans, she said, are “understanding that because of those excesses of what happened the first year with immigration … the Republican Party has lost this great coalition that we put together in ’24.”

“Republicans must course-correct now before it’s too late,” she urged last week on social media.

“Democrats can burn piles of cash into a primary and temporarily juice their turnout, but that doesn’t change the reality on the ground that Latino voters are moving toward the Republican Party,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesman for House Republicans’ campaign arm.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said Trump got historic support from Latino voters and “is working diligently to deliver on his agenda to enforce federal immigration law, fix Biden’s affordability crisis, bring investment back to the United States, and more.”

There are caveats to Democrats’ high turnout in Texas’s primaries last week. In heavily Hispanic Starr County, for instance, many voters in the Democratic primary did not pick a Senate candidate, suggesting a disconnect with the broader party.

Still, Democrats’ turnout edge was striking in a red state where both parties held expensive and competitive primaries on Tuesday. Among the 21 Texas counties that are at least 75 percent Hispanic, 20 cast more votes in the Democratic primary for Senate than in the Republican race.

Democratic turnout was also higher in key House races in heavily Latino districts that Trump won handily in 2024. Among 10 Texas districts where the voting-age population is majority-Hispanic, several broke for Trump in 2024 by 10 or more points and last week saw more Democrats than Republicans vote in their House primaries.

Trump set off an unprecedented mid-decade gerrymandering push in Texas last summer in an effort to maintain GOP control of the House. Trump has openly expressed concern that Democrats — who responded with a redrawn map in California and have an effort underway in Virginia — could investigate him and his administration if they win back control of the chamber.

Texas Republicans passed a redrawn map they hope will net five additional GOP seats. But Democrats could hold some of the seats if Republicans fall significantly short of Trump’s 2024 performance.

In the redrawn 34th District, where Trump won by 10 points, about 56,000 people cast primary votes for Democratic House candidates on Tuesday, while about 34,000 cast primary votes for Republican candidates.

“November’s still a long way away. … We have to be careful and thoughtful,” said Democratic Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who is seeking reelection to the district. “But it looks to be a potential blue wave if the election was today.”

Gonzalez said voters are upset about the cost of living, the cost of health care and the aggressiveness of Trump’s immigration crackdown. Local builders who have been supportive of Trump have been sounding the alarm about their loss of labor. The executive director of the South Texas Builders Association, a Trump voter, traveled to Washington last month to warn lawmakers that “South Texas will never be red again.”

Dave Carney, a GOP strategist and adviser to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R), said Republicans still “feel great” about South Texas. They plan to make major investments in races there and have recruited candidates to run for local offices that previously went uncontested, he said.

Like many Republicans, he also suggested the backlash to Trump’s immigration policies would ease after recent administration changes. Trump in January sidelined a controversial border official amid an uproar over federal agents’ killings of U.S. citizens in Minneapolis and last week replaced Kristi L. Noem as head of the Department of Homeland Security. It’s unclear whether the new leadership will result in significant changes to Trump’s immigration policy.

“I think we’re going to see many of the headlines, and the crisis being fanned by the left, dissipate to a great extent,” Carney said.

But Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist focused on Latino voters, said he’s been struck by the consistency of the trend lines among different Latino communities around the country — from Dominican Americans in New Jersey to Mexican Americans in the Rio Grande Valley.

His takeaway: Latino voters are “de-aligned and detached from both parties,” meaning they can swing back and forth between Democrats and Republicans. Right now, Madrid said, Republicans have “completely overplayed their hand.”

Scott Clement and Teo Armus contributed to this report.

Nikole Hannah-Jones Comes to UT Austin: History, Democracy, and the Next Generation of Truth-Tellers

FREE AND OPEN TO THE PUBLIC

Tomorrow evening at 5:30 PM at the Bass Lecture Hall located at the LBJ School for Public Affairs, the University of Texas at Austin will host one of the most influential journalists and public intellectuals of our time. Nikole Hannah-Jones will speak at Bass Lecture Hall, bringing her powerful voice on history, democracy, and racial justice to campus at a moment when these conversations feel more urgent than ever.

Hannah-Jones is best known for creating The 1619 Project, the landmark initiative published by The New York Times that reframed the story of the United States by centering the legacy of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans to the nation’s democratic ideals. For this work, she received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 2020, helping spark a national conversation about history, memory, and the meaning of democracy itself.

Notably, the book associated with this project—The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story—holds a unique and troubling distinction in Texas. Under Texas Senate Bill 3, it is the only specific book referenced in statute language as material that cannot be used to fulfill curriculum requirements in Texas public schools.

At a time when books are being challenged, curricula scrutinized, and honest discussions of race and history increasingly politicized, Hannah-Jones has remained steadfast in her commitment to rigorous historical inquiry and public dialogue. Her work reminds us that democracy depends not on comfortable myths, but on our willingness to confront the past honestly.

Tomorrow’s event will also feature two powerful voices from our own community.

Joining Hannah-Jones is Cameron Samuels, a youth leader and master’s student at the LBJ School of Public Affairs whose advocacy for intellectual freedom and student rights has resonated nationally. Samuels represents a generation of young organizers who understand that the fight over knowledge—what can be taught, read, and debated—is inseparable from the future of democracy.

Also participating is Karma Chávez, chair of the Mexican American and Latino Studies Program at UT Austin and a leading scholar whose work examines migration, social movements, and rhetorical strategies of resistance. Chávez’s scholarship reminds us that the struggles over voice, belonging, and justice have always been deeply connected to the power of narrative.

Together, these three speakers—together with Jonathan Friedman of PEN America as their moderator—represent something important: the intersection of journalism, scholarship, and youth activism in the ongoing struggle over how we tell the story of this country.

Events like this matter. Universities should be places where difficult histories can be explored, debated, and understood—not silenced. They are spaces where students encounter ideas that challenge them to think more deeply about the society they inhabit and the future they hope to build.

If you are in Austin, consider attending. Conversations about democracy, truth, and historical memory are not abstract academic exercises—they are part of the living work of citizenship.

And tomorrow evening, that conversation will unfold right here on the Forty Acres.

Próspera, Honduras, Inc. and the Startup-Nation Dream: Silicon Valley’s New Colonial Experiment, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. March 8, 2026

Próspera, Honduras, Inc. and the Startup-Nation Dream: Silicon Valley’s New Colonial Experiment

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 8, 2026

One of the lessons of the past decade is that we ignore strange ideas at our peril. When something first sounds too bizarre to be taken seriously, our instinct is often to dismiss it as fringe—an internet curiosity, a Silicon Valley fantasy, or a thought experiment that will never leave the realm of TED Talks and venture capital conferences.

But we have learned, especially by this point in Donald Trump’s second presidency, that ideas once considered outlandish can quickly migrate from the margins to the center of political life. Policies that once sounded implausible—mass deportations, open attacks on democratic institutions, the normalization of authoritarian rhetoric—have repeatedly shown how quickly the unthinkable can become ordinary.

So when powerful actors begin talking about replacing nation-states with startup-style jurisdictions run by investors and technologists, it would be wise to pay attention.

A growing movement among Silicon Valley investors and libertarian technologists imagines a radically different political future—one in which governance operates like software and cities function like startups. Advocates call this “startup freedom.” The idea is that new jurisdictions could bypass slow democratic institutions and instead experiment with governance models designed by entrepreneurs, technologists, and investors.

A revealing example is unfolding in Honduras. On the Caribbean island of Roatán, the enclave Próspera was established under the country’s controversial ZEDE (Zones for Employment and Economic Development) framework, which allows investors to create semi-autonomous jurisdictions with their own legal and regulatory systems. 

As a recent investigation by Leaños & Hinojosa (2026) with Latino USA explains, Honduras has effectively become a testing ground for experimental governance, where the rules of political authority are being redesigned in the name of innovation.

Próspera, Honduras

Próspera, Honduras

As someone who is Spanish-speaking, I cannot help but notice something else about the acronym, ZEDE, pronounced aloud, it sounds strikingly similar to the Spanish verb, "ceder," which means to yield, to relinquish, or to give up control. I may be mistaken, of course, but the resonance is uncanny.

After all, the ZEDE qua "cede" framework effectively allows the Honduran state to cede governing authority—over law, regulation, and taxation—to private investors operating within these zones. Whether intentional or coincidental, the linguistic echo feels oddly fitting. 

If it is not coincidental, one is tempted to wonder whether the name itself functions almost like a linguistic stink bomb—a small, ironic signal of what the framework actually accomplishes: the quiet ceding of public authority to private power. One almost wants to ask: Was the clue there all along?

These experiments are not accidental. They are linked to a broader ideological 

Link

project promoted within segments of Silicon Valley. One of the clearest articulations comes from entrepreneur and investor Balaji Srinivasan, whose book, The Network State, proposes that digital communities should eventually organize themselves into new sovereign entities. In this model, online networks form first, align around shared values, pool capital, and eventually acquire territory—creating new political jurisdictions that operate like decentralized startups (Srinivasan, 2022).

Within this worldview, governance becomes modular and voluntary. Instead of citizenship rooted in place and democratic participation, people join jurisdictions the way they join platforms. If they dislike the rules, they simply exit.

The philosophical backdrop to this vision often overlaps with transhumanist thinking, which views technological innovation as capable of transcending biological, social, and even political constraints. Nation-states appear antiquated within this frame—too slow for the speed of technological progress.

Yet the real-world implications of these ideas are far from abstract.

As Jean Guerrero in the New York Times recently noted in its analysis of Próspera and the political networks surrounding it, the project sits at the intersection of libertarian ideology, global investment, and U.S. politics, particularly following the controversial pardon of former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, whose administration helped create the legal architecture enabling ZEDEs (Guerrero, 2026).

For critics, Próspera represents something more troubling: a privatization of sovereignty.

Techno-Colonialism

Seen through a decolonial lens, these experiments resemble a new form of techno-colonialism—the extension of colonial patterns through technological and financial infrastructures rather than military conquest.

Decolonial theorist Walter Mignolo argues that modern systems of power are structured through what he calls the “colonial matrix of power,” in which economic, political, and epistemic control are intertwined with global hierarchies established during colonial expansion (Mignolo, 2011). From this perspective, projects like Próspera do not represent a radical break from history but rather a continuation of older patterns: external actors acquiring extraordinary authority over territory in the Global South.

Similarly, Tuck & Yang (2012) warn that many contemporary reform movements invoke the language of transformation while leaving underlying colonial relations intact. In their influential essay "Decolonization Is Not a Metaphor," they argue that decolonization requires the restoration of land and sovereignty to Indigenous and local communities—not simply new governance experiments layered on top of existing inequalities.

Viewed in this light, the rhetoric of startup freedom begins to look familiar. It echoes earlier colonial narratives that framed foreign control as modernization, progress, or development.

The difference today is that the architects of these projects are not imperial administrators but venture capitalists, blockchain engineers, and techno-libertarian thinkers.

Platform States

The idea of states operating like digital platforms has roots in Silicon Valley thinking about “government as a platform” (O’Reilly, 2010), and more recently in Balaji Srinivasan’s vision of the “network state,” where digitally organized communities eventually acquire territory and sovereignty (Srinivasan, 2022).

The Honduran case suggests that the future imagined by advocates of the Network State may not simply be a world of innovative jurisdictions. It may also be a world of platform states—political systems designed by investors and technologists rather than by citizens.

In such a world, governance risks becoming a service provided to users rather than a collective project shaped through democratic struggle.

This is why the debate surrounding Próspera matters far beyond Honduras. The question at stake is not merely whether startup cities will succeed economically. It is whether the logic of venture capital and technological disruption will come to shape the very foundations of political authority.

Why This Matters Now

It may be tempting to treat projects like Próspera or ideas like the Network State as exotic experiments unfolding far from home. But the deeper logic behind them—the belief that markets, investors, and technologists should design institutions once governed through democratic processes—is already reshaping public life across the United States. 

We see it in the privatization of public education, the weakening of shared governance in universities, the growing influence of billionaire philanthropy in policy, and the steady redefinition of citizenship as consumer choice. What Honduras reveals is simply the most explicit version of a larger project: the transformation of governance itself into a platform managed by elites. If that trajectory continues, the question will not only be who governs—but whether democracy remains the framework through which governance is decided at all.

If the architects of the Network State succeed, democracy will not disappear overnight—it will simply be redesigned until citizens become users and sovereignty becomes a subscription service.

References

Guerrero, J. (2026, January 29). Trump is not a nationalist. He’s something worse, The New York Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/29/opinion/prospera-honduras-trump-pardon.html

Leaños Jr., R., & Hinojosa, M. (2026, February 27). Testing grounds: Startup cities and experimental governance in Honduras, Latino USA.  https://www.latinousa.org/2026/02/27/testinggrounds/

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

O'Reilly, T. (2011). Government as a platform. https://tinyurl.com/5y9xu4u8

Próspera, Honduras. https://www.prospera.co/en

Srinivasan, B. (2022). The network state: How to start a new country.
https://thenetworkstate.com/

Tuck, E., & Yang, K. W. (2012). Decolonization is not a metaphor. Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society, 1(1), 1–40. https://ikdll.nau.edu/id/eprint/84/1/titusland,+18630-43262-1-CE.pdf

A New Space for Ethnic Studies Pedagogy—And a Call to Contribute

A New Space for Ethnic Studies Pedagogy—And a Call to Contribute

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

At a moment when Ethnic Studies faces growing political scrutiny and legislative attack in many states—including here in Texas—it is encouraging to see new intellectual spaces emerging to support the field and the educators who sustain it. One such space is Ethnic Studies Pedagogies, a new open-access online journal devoted to critical race, decolonial, and Ethnic Studies teaching and scholarship, particularly in K–12 classrooms and community educational spaces.

The journal brings together scholars, teachers, organizers, and students who are working to understand and transform the ecologies of power and resistance shaping education today. You can view the members of the Editorial board here, of which I am one. Dr. Miguel Zavala from the School of Education at the University of California Riverside makes it sing.

Rather than limiting itself to traditional academic articles, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies welcomes a wide range of contributions, including scholarly research, action research pedagogies, archival histories, testimonios, photo essays, and artistic work. In doing so, it reflects the movement roots of Ethnic Studies itself—born from community struggle, student activism, and demands for more truthful and inclusive knowledge.

Since its launch in 2023, the journal has produced several themed issues exploring topics such as Ethnic Studies as living archives, creative justice pedagogies through art and digital media, and the role of organizing and resistance within Ethnic Studies movements. The most recent issue, Re-Rooting Intersectional Ethnic Studies: Racial Capitalism, Coloniality, and Resistance, continues this tradition by examining how structural power shapes education and community life.

Importantly, the journal’s editorial philosophy is collaborative and community-centered. Submissions are reviewed by scholars alongside educators and community members, and contributors outside traditional academic spaces are supported through a guided editorial process designed to strengthen and nurture emerging voices.

A Call to Contribute

If you are a teacher, graduate student, scholar-activist, organizer, or community educator, this journal is for you.

Ethnic Studies Pedagogies is currently inviting submissions of 2,000–5,000 words (APA 7th edition) as well as creative and arts-based contributions. The editorial board is especially interested in work that explores how Ethnic Studies pedagogy confronts racism, colonialism, and systemic injustice while illuminating the knowledge, resilience, and creativity of communities of color.

At a time when Ethnic Studies is being challenged politically, it is more important than ever that educators and scholars document their work, share their pedagogies, and contribute to the intellectual future of the field.

If you are doing this work—in classrooms, schools, communities, or movements—consider sharing it. The field grows when we write, document, and build together. A listing of special issues appears below and here are the submission guidelines. Enjoy!

Volume 1, Issue 1 (June 2023)

Lead Editor: Ezekiel Joubert III

Theme: Ethnic Studies Pedagogies as Living Archives

[Download Entire Issue]

Volume 1, Issue 2 (December 2023)

Lead Editor: Lani Cupchoy

Theme:Pedagogies for Creative Justice: Artivism, Digital Media, and Filmmaking

[Download Entire Issue]

Volume 2, Issue 1 (July 2024)

Lead Editor: Lani Cupchoy

Theme:Pedagogies for Creative Justice: Artivism, Digital Media, 

and Filmmaking

[Download Entire Issue]

Volume 2, Issue 2 (December 2024)

Lead Editors: Marisol O. Ruiz & Nancy Perez

Theme:"Struggle Builds on Struggle": Resistance and Organizing Through Ethnic Studies

[Download Entire Issue]

Volume 3, Issue 1 (June 2025)

Lead Editors: Marisol O. Ruiz & Nancy Perez

Theme:"Struggle Builds on Struggle": Resistance and Organizing Through Ethnic Studies II

[ Download Entire Issue]

Volume 3, Issue 2 (December 2025)

Lead Editors: Enrique C. Ochoa and Gilda L. Ochoa

Theme: "Re-Rooting Intersectional Ethnic Studies: Racial Capitalism, Coloniality, and Resistance"

[Download Entire Issue]

SPECIAL ISSUES

 

RE-ROOTING INTERSECTIONAL ETHNIC STUDIES: RACIAL CAPITALISM, COLONIALITY, AND RESISTANCE

VOLUME 3, ISSUE 2 

Publication: December 2025

Lead Editors: Enrique Ochoa and Gilda Ochoa

 

TEACHING ETHNIC STUDIES IN THE HEART OF COLONIAL RESISTANCE: PRACTICAL AND THEORETICAL REFLECTIONS ON PEDAGOGIES OF ETHNIC STUDIES FOR WHITE-DOMINANT CLASSROOMS, COMMUNITIES, AND SCHOOLS 

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 1 [call for submissions]

Publication: June 2026

Lead Editors: Michael Dominguez and Suneal Kolluri

 

REMATRIATING BILINGUAL EDUCATION THROUGH ANCESTRAL EPISTEMOLOGIES AND ETHNIC STUDIES PEDAGOGIES

VOLUME 4, ISSUE 2 [call for submissions]

Publication: December 2026

Lead Editors: Michelle Soto-Peña, Patricia D. López, and Cueponcaxochitl Moreno Sandoval

 

REVOLUTIONARY LOVE: ANTI-COLONIAL APPROACHES IN ETHNIC STUDIES

VOLUME 5, ISSUE 1 [call for submissions]

Publication: June 2027

Lead Editors: Enrique G. Murillo Jr., Gabriel A. Orosco, and Véronica X. Valadez

Manufacturing “Cancel Culture” at UT: Crisis Discourse, Governance, and the Politics of Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Manufacturing “Cancel Culture” at UT: Crisis Discourse, Governance, and the Politics of Academic Freedom 

in Texas Higher Education

You may listen to a recording of this here.

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 1, 2026

Something remarkable has happened at the University of Texas at Austin—and
throughout Texas higher education. In a state with a long history of suppressing Mexican American Studies, resisting desegregation, and policing the boundaries of public knowledge, we are now told that Women and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies are the true threat to free speech.

Accordingly, the American Association of University Professors (2024) warns that increasing legislative interference in curriculum and governance poses a direct threat to academic freedom by subordinating professional judgment to political authority.

Let all of this sink in.

Fields devoted to studying power, inequality, race, gender, and colonialism are being framed as authoritarian. And yet it is this very scholarship—probing injustice, exposing exploitation, imagining alternatives—that equips us to confront democratic backsliding and planetary crisis.

And the state is intervening—ostensibly to protect liberty.

This narrative did not arise from faculty misconduct findings, accreditation failures, or scholarly scandal. It was constructed. It was amplified. And under SB 17 (2023) and SB 37 (2025), it has now been operationalized into law.

To understand what is happening in Texas higher education, we must call this what it is: a governance transformation justified through crisis discourse.

Wilson and Kamola (2023) show how selective campus incidents are magnified through coordinated media ecosystems and donor networks into "evidence" of systemic institutional failure. What might otherwise remain a local disagreement becomes proof of a national emergency. 

The cycle is predictable: identify controversy, amplify outrage, declare ideological capture, legislate reform.

In Texas, crisis preceded cure.

Before SB 17 dismantled DEI infrastructures, DEI was framed as coercive orthodoxy. Before SB 37 weakened shared governance, faculty senates were portrayed as partisan strongholds. The ground was prepared rhetorically long before it was altered legislatively.

Nancy MacLean (2017) reminds us that institutional transformation rarely occurs through dramatic abolition. It happens through procedural redesign. Authority shifts quietly. Governance structures are recalibrated. The institution remains standing—but its operating logic changes.

That is what SB 37 represents.

I have been at UT Austin for decades. I have seen intense disagreements over public positions faculty have taken. I have watched colleagues disagree sharply about theory, about politics, about pedagogy. That was not dysfunction. That was shared governance in action. 

What I had never seen—until now—was the systematic restructuring of governance itself through state mandate.

The American Association of University Professors has been clear for over eighty years: academic freedom is not merely an individual right. It is a structural condition sustained by shared governance (AAUP, 1940/2015; AAUP, 1966/2015). Faculty bear primary responsibility for curriculum and instruction precisely because disciplinary expertise—not political expediency—should determine academic content.

When faculty senates are weakened or replaced with advisory bodies responsive to political oversight, the architecture changes. Authority moves upward and outward.

And here is the inversion: this restructuring is justified in the name of protecting free speech.

Let us pause.

The disciplines most frequently labeled “propaganda”—Women and Gender Studies, Black Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Indigenous Studies—operate through peer review, accreditation standards, and national scholarly associations. They assign canonical texts. They demand evidence-based argumentation. They expose students to intellectual traditions spanning centuries.

Critique is not cancellation. 

The irony is staggering. It's the powers that be that are doing all the canceling.

In fact, what these disciplines do—systematically—is analyze power. They interrogate racial hierarchy, gender stratification, settler colonialism, capitalism, and state formation. They ask who benefits, who is excluded, and how institutions reproduce inequality.

That analytic posture is not authoritarian.

It is foundational to the liberal arts.

The deeper issue is authority. Who decides what counts as legitimate knowledge?

The AAUP has repeatedly warned that legislative interference in curricular matters displaces professional judgment and produces chilling effects even in the absence of explicit speech bans (AAUP, 1940/2015; AAUP, 1966/2015). When lawmakers define entire areas of inquiry as suspect, scholars internalize risk. Research agendas narrow. Hiring patterns shift. Students receive the message.

The language of neutrality becomes the mechanism of control.

Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation have advanced national reform blueprints targeting DEI, curriculum, and governance structures. These agendas do not typically call for closing universities. They call for recalibrating them—redefining academic freedom as compliance with politically supervised neutrality.

When these reform agendas converge with state legislation like SB 17 and SB 37, the result is not isolated policy disagreement. It is structural realignment.

And here is where Texas history matters.

This state has long wrestled with who controls knowledge production—from textbook battles to bilingual education fights to Mexican American Studies bans in K–12. The current moment is not an anomaly. It is a continuation of a longer struggle over narrative authority.

What is new is the scale of governance redesign.

If shared governance erodes, if faculty expertise is subordinated to political oversight, if entire domains of inquiry are stigmatized through law, the university does not collapse. It shifts.

The liberal arts tradition conservatives claim to defend depends on contestation—from Plato’s dialogues to Du Bois’s sociological interventions to contemporary critical theory. A university that cannot sustain rigorous analysis of race and gender is not defending liberal education. It is curating it.

The question before Texas is not whether one agrees with every argument advanced in Women and Gender Studies or Ethnic Studies.

The question is whether academic legitimacy will continue to be determined by scholarly communities within shared governance structures—or by political actors invoking crisis.

Free speech does not erode because students argue.

It erodes when governance systems are redesigned to align inquiry with state-defined boundaries.

SB 17 and SB 37 are not cultural skirmishes. They are governance interventions. And governance is the backbone of academic freedom.

If we allow that backbone to weaken while congratulating ourselves for defending free speech, we should be honest about what is happening.

We are not rescuing the liberal arts. We are redefining them in the image of political oversight.

History teaches us that when authority over knowledge production shifts from scholarly communities to political power, the effects rarely remain confined to a single department. Such shifts tend to expand, normalizing intervention and narrowing the boundaries of acceptable inquiry across the institution. Once the precedent is set—that legislatures may define which fields are suspect, which governance structures are dispensable, and which scholarly frameworks are legitimate—the logic does not easily contain itself.

The question, then, is not whether one program is next. It is whether the university itself—its autonomy, its governing norms, its capacity for independent judgment—can withstand sustained political encroachment.

At moments like this, institutional repair requires more than rhetorical defense. It requires civic action. If governance structures have been weakened through legislation, they must be restored through legislation. If academic freedom has been narrowed by those in power, then the democratic remedy is clear: voters must hold those officials accountable and elect leaders committed to institutional autonomy and the public mission of higher education.

If we are to truly live in a free society, the defense of the university must be understood as inseparable from the defense of democracy itself.

References

American Association of University Professors. (1940/2015). 1940 statement of principles on academic freedom and tenure. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

American Association of University Professors. (1966/2015). Statement on government of colleges and universities. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

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