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

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

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.  

April 29, 2026

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

Thousands of Texans protest border wall at state Capitol

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

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

Santa Elena Canyon was an alternate rally for river enthusiasts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 28, 2026

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

Author: Derek J. de Solla Price

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 28,2026

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

But it is also incomplete.

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

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

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

And it is precisely this function that is under threat.

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

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

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

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

Because the terrain has already shifted.

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

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

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

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

This is the problem.

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

But repair assumes stability.

In Texas, there is no stable baseline to repair.

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

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

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

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

History offers a warning.

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

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

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

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

But that is not enough.

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

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

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

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

It is that it is being remade.

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

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

References

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 25, 2026

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

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

This is not episodic policymaking. It is coordinated governance.

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

This is precisely the miscalculation.

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

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

To treat this as peripheral is to concede the terrain.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It may be whether there is anything left to defend.

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

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

By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterApril 22, 2026

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

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

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

Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Now we can finally start’

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

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

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

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

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

Texas Tech University Chancellor Brandon Creighton is one of those newly

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

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

Ricardo B. Brazziell/American-Statesman

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

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

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

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

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

‘An assault on public education’

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

UT did not respond to requests for comment.

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

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

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


April 22, 2026

Lily Kepner
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER

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

Winning the Case, Losing the Ground: How Policy Threats Still Govern—Especially Through Proposed Funding Cuts, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Winning the Case, Losing the Ground: How Policy Threats Still Govern—Especially Through Proposed Funding Cuts

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 24, 2026

A court victory can halt a policy. It cannot, on its own, undo the conditions that policy created. The recent injunction against the NIH’s proposed cap on indirect costs is a clear legal win—one that reaffirms procedural integrity and the limits of executive overreach. But the terrain on which universities operate has already shifted, and it has shifted most decisively through the politics of funding cuts.

The Trump administration’s proposed 15 percent cap on indirect research costs—long a source of uncertainty across higher education—ultimately met a significant legal barrier. In a January 5, 2026 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling blocking the National Institutes of Health (NIH) from implementing the cap. The court held that the policy violated federal law, bypassed required procedures, and unlawfully imposed a blanket limit across all NIH grants. The nationwide injunction remains in place. Universities, for now, can continue to rely on their negotiated indirect cost rates (American Council on Education, 2026).

This is, by any reasonable measure, good news.

And yet, without reckoning with the politics that animate it, this is far from the whole story.

Even before the courts intervened, the proposed cap had already begun to do its work. As Zahneis (2025) reports, internal communications at the University of Iowa reveal a striking institutional response: confusion, financial alarm, and a palpable sense of political constraint. Faced with the prospect of losing tens of millions in research support, university leaders acknowledged their “limited ability to publicly fight” the policy. Faculty were advised to speak only as private citizens. Public messaging was deliberately softened—“we will need to tone it down a bit.” Meanwhile, the institution began pausing grant submissions, slowing hiring, and preparing for contraction.

In other words, the chilling effect preceded the legal outcome.

This is what governing through funding looks like. It is also what I have called shadow censorship: a form of constraint that operates not through formal prohibition, but through anticipatory compliance. The policy itself may be blocked, but its signal—its warning—circulates widely. Institutions read that signal and adjust accordingly. Speech narrows. Risk tolerance declines. Strategic silence emerges, not by mandate, but by design.

The First Circuit’s ruling is therefore both a victory and a revelation. It affirms that agencies like the NIH cannot unilaterally rewrite the terms of federal research funding in ways that violate congressional intent or established regulatory frameworks. It also reinforces the role of the courts as a critical check on executive overreach. Importantly, the court’s reasoning is likely to shape parallel cases involving the Department of Energy and Department of Defense, suggesting broader implications for the governance of federal research.

But the decision does not—and cannot—undo the anticipatory effects already set in motion.

The lesson here extends beyond Iowa, beyond NIH, and even beyond this particular administration. We see similar dynamics in Texas under SB 17, in Florida’s higher education restructuring, and in federal policy proposals that signal ideological priorities through funding mechanisms. Across these contexts, the pattern is consistent: policy operates not only through what is enacted, but through what is threatened, implied, and anticipated.

Institutions do not wait for final rulings. They adapt early.

This is why the notion that “the courts will fix it” is, while comforting, insufficient. Legal victories matter—they create space, restore rights, and set precedent. But they do not automatically restore the conditions of open inquiry or institutional courage that may have already been compromised. By the time a policy is blocked, its disciplining effects may already be embedded in organizational behavior.

So yes, this ruling deserves recognition. It is a meaningful check on unlawful governance and a reminder that procedural integrity still matters.

But if we stop there—if we treat this as a resolution rather than a moment of reflection—we risk missing the deeper transformation underway.

The more difficult question is this: What would it take for institutions not only to survive such policy threats, but to resist their anticipatory force? What would it mean to refuse the quieting of institutional voice before the law has even spoken?

Because the central lesson remains unchanged.

Policy does not need to be fully enacted to be effective. It need only create enough risk to reshape behavior.

And in that sense, even a policy that fails in court can still succeed in governing. 

And then we wonder why there is public distrust of higher education.

References 

American Council on Education. (2026, April 13). Higher education associations fight federal cuts to indirect cost rates. https://www.acenet.edu/Policy-Advocacy/Pages/Law-Courts/Association-Lawsuit-NIH-FA.aspx#:~:text=The%20lawsuits%20include:%20*%2022%20state%20attorneys,halting%20the%20implementation%20of%20the%20DOE%20cap

Zahneis, M. (2025, June 16). Facing research cuts, officials at U. of Iowa spoke of a “limited ability to publicly fight this.” The Chronicle of Higher Education. https://www.chronicle.com/article/facing-research-cuts-officials-at-u-of-iowa-spoke-of-a-limited-ability-to-publicly-fight-this

Facing Research Cuts, Officials at U. of Iowa Spoke of a ‘Limited Ability to Publicly Fight This’
By Megan Zahneis

June 16, 2025 | Chronicle of Higher Education

Illustration by The Chronicle; Getty Images

The National Institutes of Health’s announcement in late February that it would cap indirect research funding at 15 percent sent universities across the nation into a panic. Emails obtained by The Chronicle via a public-records request offer a glimpse into how one research-intensive institution reacted in the immediate aftermath of the unexpected news — with confusion, concern, and at times, a sense of powerlessness.

Asked by a faculty member what he and his peers could do to help, the University of Iowa’s interim vice president for research suggested only “acting as a private citizen to call our legislators and tell them what a bad idea this is (from your own phone or using your own email).” The campus’s location in a solidly red state hindered it from fighting the policy change, Lois J. Geist seemed to imply in her reply. “Being located where we are we have limited ability to publicly fight this as faculty or as an institution.”

While the funding cap is frozen pending a federal judge’s ruling, the messages exchanged between Geist and other top officials at the University of Iowa provide a rare and revealing glimpse into internal conversations on a campus facing millions in cuts — and clear incentives to stay quiet. (Geist and one of those officials, through a university spokesperson, declined an interview. Four others did not respond to requests for comment.)

‘Tone It Down’

Within hours of the NIH’s announcement, which came late on the afternoon of Friday, February 7, a flurry of emails among Iowa administrators had commenced. The cap, an Iowa associate vice president for research predicted Friday night, “is going to have a significant effect on us (and everyone else).” By early the following morning, efforts were underway to gauge just how significant it would be. A manager in the division of sponsored programs shared a “back-of-the-envelope calculation” that estimated an average annual budget gap of $45 million, based on Iowa’s current reimbursement rate of 55.5 percent for indirect costs.(Often referred to as “facilities and administrative” costs, indirect costs account for money that institutions spend on research but that isn’t tied to a specific grant or project, such as facilities, equipment, and staff expenses.)

While the director of Iowa’s grant-accounting office worked through the weekend on producing more precise figures, others discussed the university’s public response. Peter S. Matthes, vice president for external relations and senior adviser to the president, proposed wording for an update on the webpage where the university posts federal-policy news.

“Overall, the federal transition continues to be a rapidly changing environment,” read the update, which was soon posted under Geist’s name. It said the university was working with organizations like the Association of American Universities and Association of Public and Land-Grant Universities to “monitor and interpret” the Trump administration’s policy changes. Iowa, it promised, was “actively engaging with our federal delegation as well to ensure they understand the profound impact this change would have.”

Administrators also kept tabs on how their colleagues at other institutions were responding, both through email chains (the listserv of provosts in the Big Ten Academic Alliance, Iowa Provost Kevin C. Kregel noted, “is very active!”) and by tracking their public statements. Jennifer Lassner, an associate vice president for research, forwarded a link to a message from the University of Michigan as a “communication example"; in that memo, Arthur Lupia, Michigan’s interim vice president for research and innovation, stressed that the at-risk funding was used to conduct “vital research that saves lives, creates jobs, enhances national security, and improves quality of life for people in every part of our state and across the nation.”

The then-director of strategic communications in Geist’s office responded approvingly — “nice message!” she said of the Lupia memo — and suggested using it as a model for one Geist could send to the campus. The federal-update post, she noted, “is sort of passive — folks will have to go looking for it.” Geist said she was “fine” with issuing a statement, but added: “We will need to tone it down a bit.”

While Michigan and Iowa list one another as peer institutions and share membership in the Big Ten and an R1 designation, their home states operate under opposite political circumstances: Michigan is run by a Democratic trifecta, but Republicans control both houses of the Hawkeye State’s government as well as its governor’s office. Michigan also stands to lose about three and a half times as much as Iowa does under the 15-percent indirect-cost cap, according to a Chronicle analysis.

Indeed, the message Geist sent the afternoon of Monday, February 10 — approximately 72 hours after the NIH announced its policy — was more circumspect than Lupia’s, referring to “high-impact research” that “has tangible benefits for the lives of Iowans” and promising that “we recognize the urgency of the situation and are working to assess potential impacts at the college, department, lab, and investigator level.”
‘We Need the Foundations’

In her message, Geist said that “until we have more clarity,” Iowa would not submit new NIH grant applications and advised researchers “exert extra caution and defer starting new activities.” The university, she wrote, would also avoid hiring graduate research assistants whose salaries hadn’t already been budgeted as a direct cost on a funded project. Within a half hour, at least five faculty members had replied, expressing concern and asking questions. Among them was the faculty member whom Geist told that the university would have “limited ability to publicly fight this.” In response to another email, Geist said that the university would not be joining the lawsuit that 22 states — all led by Democratic attorneys general — brought against the NIH to stop the cap.

A third faculty member asked Geist to share concrete numbers to “make these impacts quantifiable.” Turning to an analysis prepared by Maria H. Soliman, the director of Iowa’s grant-accounting office, Geist told him the university would be on the hook for about $50 million. Beyond that, she said, Iowa would “lose grants and the ability to hire people on those grants because the amount of available money will be inadequate.” She also indicated the university would likely rely on outside support: “We need the foundations to weigh in to stop this as it will also impact our ability to do their research.” (The private sector has since faced its own troubles trying to offer patchwork funding.)

A federal judge in April issued a permanent injunction against the 15-percent cap, which the NIH is appealing. Meanwhile, a cohort of organizations that represent research universities has sketched out two alternatives, STAT reported last week; one would vary indirect-cost rates by institution and grant type, and the other would require each grant proposal to list its indirect costs as line items.

Andy Thomason, assistant managing editor at The Chronicle, contributed reporting.
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