When Texas Regulates Camps but Not Guns: A Comparative Policy Response to Two Child-Centered Tragedies, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. May 23, 2026

When Texas Regulates Camps but Not Guns: A Comparative Policy Response to Two Child-Centered Tragedies

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 23, 2026

July 24 is always a special day for me and my husband because it is our
anniversary. It is a day I want to reserve for gratitude, love, memory, and the life we have built together. But this date now also carries additional significant meaning. 

Every year, as July 24 approaches, my mind is pulled back to May 24, 2022, the date of the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, where 19 children and two teachers were killed and at least 17 others were physically injured (Office of Community Oriented Policing Services, n.d.). Lamentably, joy and grief now share space in the same part of our hearts and calendar.

Source: KXXV Facebook

That grief returned again as I and others observed how the State of Texas responded to another tragedy involving children: the catastrophic Guadalupe River floods and the deaths connected to Camp Mystic. In all, I should note, 134 people lost their lives in this horrific tragedy (Shalvey, 2025).

Nothing about this comparison should be read as minimizing the pain of the flood victims’ families. Those children, counselors, parents, and surviving loved ones deserve every protection, every answer, every dollar of relief, and every serious reform Texas can provide. As a consequence, Camp Mystic will remain closed this Summer (CBS Texas, 2026).

Source: Instagram

But the contrast between the two state responses is difficult to ignore.

After the July 4, 2025 flooding, Texas moved quickly and concretely to regulate youth camps. Governor Greg Abbott signed House Bill 1, known as the Youth CAMPER Act; Senate Bill 1, known as the Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act; and Senate Bill 3, which created financial support for early-warning sirens in flash-flood-prone areas (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c).

Source: Office of the Governor

These were not merely symbolic gestures. The laws require youth camps to adopt and annually update emergency plans, train staff, orient campers, notify parents of floodplain risks with signed acknowledgment, and share emergency plans with local emergency services (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c). The laws also authorize enforcement through inspections, complaint investigations, license suspension, or license denial (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c).

Most notably, Texas placed direct restrictions on where youth camps may house children. The Heaven’s 27 Camp Safety Act prohibits the Texas Department of State Health Services from licensing youth camps with cabins in FEMA-designated floodplains, with limited exceptions (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025c). In plain language, Texas said that some camp operations must change because the risk to children was too great.

That is a serious governmental response. It regulates an industry. It imposes burdens. It changes operations. It restricts what camps may do in the name of child safety.

And that is precisely why the Uvalde comparison hurts (e.g., Valenzuela, 2022).

After Uvalde, Texas did act in some ways. The Legislature passed school-safety measures, including House Bill 3, which required school districts to determine the appropriate number of armed security officers and generally ensure at least one armed security officer is present at each campus during regular school hours, subject to a good-cause exception when funding or qualified personnel are unavailable (Texas Legislature, 2023). Later, House Bill 33, the Uvalde Strong Act, addressed active-shooter preparedness, emergency-response coordination, reporting, training, public-information requirements, and school-safety equipment such as breaching tools and ballistic shields (Texas Legislature, 2025).

Source: Fox KDFW

Those measures matter. But they largely regulate the school environment and the emergency response after a threat exists. They do not meaningfully regulate access to the weapon pathway that Uvalde families repeatedly asked lawmakers to confront.

One of the clearest examples was the effort to raise the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. That proposal, championed by Uvalde families and advocates, stalled in the Texas Legislature (Serrano, 2023). So, while Texas was willing to restrict summer camps after children died in a flood, it was not willing to impose a comparable restriction on young adults’ access to certain firearms after children were murdered in a classroom.

That is the painful contradiction. After the Guadalupe River flood, Texas regulated the setting that contributed to the deaths. After Uvalde, Texas regulated doors, officers, training, response plans, and security tools—but not the firearm access issue that many grieving families identified as central to prevention.

The financial response across both tragedies also reveals a complicated picture. In Uvalde, the state announced a Family Assistance Center to help affected families and community members access crime-victim services, death benefits, counseling, funeral services, transportation, childcare, spiritual care, and other support (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022a). 

The state also announced an initial $5 million investment to establish a long-term Family Resiliency Center in Uvalde County for psychological first aid, crisis counseling, behavioral-health services, and related support (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022b). Separately, the Robb School Memorial Fund was established to support victims’ families, teachers, and the Uvalde community, including help with health care, travel, and funeral expenses (Office of the Texas Governor, 2022a).

Source: Fox KDFW

But those supports are not the same as full restitution. Nor are they the same as accountability. 

In April 2025, Uvalde city leaders approved a $2 million settlement for the families of the 21 people killed at Robb Elementary, described by the Associated Press as the first financial resolution from the many lawsuits following the attack (Vertuno, 2025). That settlement also included nonmonetary measures such as enhanced police training, expanded mental-health services, an annual May 24 day of remembrance, and a permanent memorial (Vertuno, 2025). Even so, other lawsuits remained pending, including actions against Texas state police officials and others (Vertuno, 2025).

For the Guadalupe River flood victims, financial relief has also appeared as a patchwork rather than a single, clear state restitution package. Governor Abbott joined the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country in announcing more than $40 million in long-term housing relief following the July 4 floods in Kerrville (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025b). 

He also appeared with the Vaqueros del Mar Texas Flood Relief Fund as $25,000 checks were presented to families affected by the catastrophic Hill Country floods, particularly those who suffered severe storm damage or lost homes (Office of the Texas Governor, 2025a). Meanwhile, families of Camp Mystic victims filed lawsuits alleging negligence and failure to evacuate; later reporting noted multiple suits seeking more than $1 million each in damages (Runnels, 2025, 2026).

So, in both tragedies, affected families have faced a mixture of public aid, private donations, insurance-backed settlements, and ongoing litigation. But money after death is not justice by itself. Relief funds can help families survive the aftermath. Settlements can acknowledge harm. Lawsuits can pursue accountability. But no payment can replace a child, a teacher, a counselor, or the future that was stolen.

The deeper issue is prevention.

Texas has now shown that when children die, the state can move beyond condolences. It can pass laws. It can regulate an industry. It can restrict dangerous placements. It can require emergency planning, training, warning systems, inspections, and licensing consequences. The Guadalupe River flood response proves that Texas knows how to turn grief into regulation.

Source: KSAT.com

The question is why the same kind of regulatory courage has not been appliedto gun access after Uvalde.
Again, this is not an argument against the camp-safety laws. 

Those reforms were necessary. Children should not sleep in cabins where flood danger is ignored. Parents should know whether a camp sits in a floodplain. Staff should be trained. Emergency plans should be real, reviewed, and enforceable.

But children should also be safe in classrooms. Parents should not have to beg lawmakers to consider firearm-access restrictions after their children are murdered. Families should not have to watch the state regulate cabins more directly than guns.

Both tragedies demanded compassion. Both demanded financial support. Both demanded accountability. Both demanded prevention.

Texas responded to the Guadalupe River flood by saying: camps must change.

After Uvalde, Texas still has not been willing to say with equal force: gun access must change, too.

That is the contradiction I cannot stop thinking about. And every time the 24th comes around, I remember Uvalde's grief and how love and loss can live side by side. But public policy should not stop at mourning. It should protect the living.

References

CBS Texas. (2026, May 1). Camp Mystic will not reopen after withdrawing 2026 license following hearing over deadly floods [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QQi3voPG3m4

Office of Community Oriented Policing Services. (n.d.). Critical incident review: Active shooter at Robb Elementary School. U.S. Department of Justice. https://cops.usdoj.gov/uvalde

Office of the Texas Governor. (2022a, May 27). Governor Abbott provides details on state resources available to Uvalde community impacted by Robb Elementary School tragedy. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-provides-details-on-state-resources-available-to-uvalde-community-impacted-by-robb-elementary-school-tragedy

Office of the Texas Governor. (2022b, June 1). Governor Abbott announces $5 million investment to establish long-term Family Resiliency Center in Uvalde County. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-announces-5-million-investment-to-establish-long-term-family-resiliency-center-in-uvalde-county

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025a, August 9). Governor Abbott gives Strait to the Heart funds to Hill Country flood victims. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-gives-strait-to-the-heart-funds-to-hill-country-flood-victims

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025b, August 21). Governor Abbott, Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country announce over $40 million in long-term flood relief funding efforts. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-community-foundation-of-the-texas-hill-country-announce-over-40-million-in-long-term-flood-relief-funding-efforts

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025c, September 5). Governor Abbott signs Texas summer camp safety bills into law. https://gov.texas.gov/news/post/governor-abbott-signs-texas-summer-camp-safety-bills-into-law

Runnels, A. (2025, November 10). Parents of flood victims suing Camp Mystic for negligence. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/11/10/texas-floods-kerr-county-camp-mystic-lawsuit/

Runnels, A. (2026, February 6). Family of still-missing camper sues to shut down Camp Mystic. The Texas Tribune. https://www.texastribune.org/2026/02/06/texas-hill-country-camp-mystic-lawsuit-negligence/

Shalvey, K. (2025, July 15).Texas flooding updates: Death toll reaches 134, search continues for missing, ABC News. https://abcnews.com/US/live-updates/texas-flooding-live-updates/?id=123729682

Serrano, A. (2023, May 23). Gun safety advocates see signs of progress in first session after Uvalde shooting even though raise-the-age bill stalled. The Texas Tribune. https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2023/05/23/gun-safety-advocates-see-signs-of-progress-in-first-session-after-uvalde-shooting-even-though-raise-the-age-bill-stalled/

Texas Legislature. (2023). H.B. No. 3, 88th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version. https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB3/2023

Texas Legislature. (2025). H.B. No. 33, 89th Legislature, Regular Session: Enrolled version. https://legiscan.com/TX/text/HB33/2025

Valenzuela, A. (2022, May 30). Remembering Uziyah Sergio Garcia (August 13, 2011 ~ May 24, 2022) of San Angelo, Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2022/05/remembering-uziyah-sergio-garcia-august.html

Vertuno, J. (2025, April 23). Uvalde leaders approve $2M for Robb Elementary families in first settlement over 2022 attack. AP News. https://apnews.com/article/uvalde-texas-2022-school-shooting-million-settlement-06c2477186c48edcb4fe5f8ffe2a4f0b

A Funeral for Academic Freedom at UT: Five Videos from a Day of Grief, Witness, and Resistance, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

A Funeral for Academic Freedom at UT: Five Videos from a Day of Grief, Witness, and Resistance

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 22, 2026

There are moments when symbolic action captures the truth of a political moment more powerfully than any policy memo, hearing, or institutional statement ever could.

The UT Funeral for Academic Freedom, held on this week on May 20, 2026 of the UT System Board of Regents meeting, was one such moment.

I recorded five videos on my iPhone that day, each documenting a different part of this powerful public action. Together, they offer record of grief, protest, analysis, and collective witness in response to the ongoing attacks on faculty governance, academic freedom, Ethnic Studies, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and the broader intellectual life of the public university.

There is, indeed, a great deal to grieve in the current moment.

Hats off to Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) for organizing and carrying out these horse-drawn carriage funerals in three Texas cities: first at Texas Tech University, second at The University of Texas at Austin, and third at the University of North Texas in Denton. These are striking, disciplined, and morally clear actions—ones that make visible the stakes of what is being lost when political power seeks to discipline knowledge, silence dissent, and restructure universities from above.

Below are the five videos I recorded from the UT event.

Video 1: A Short Walk from the UT Tower to the Horse Drawn Carriage on Inner-Campus Drive

The first video captures the solemnity and symbolism of the funeral procession itself. The horse-drawn carriage made visible what too many institutional actors continue to obscure: academic freedom is not an abstract principle. It is foundational—together with faculty governance and tenure rights and protections. It is a living condition of democratic education. When it is weakened, faculty lose the ability to teach and research honestly, students lose access to critical knowledge, and the public loses one of its most important democratic institutions.

Video 2: Mourning What Is Being Taken

The second video documents the atmosphere of collective mourning. This was not performative grief, but a solemn recognition that the current assault on higher education is already producing real consequences: self-censorship, faculty departures, weakened shared governance, attacks on DEI, threats to curriculum, and the chilling of intellectual inquiry.

Do listen to SEAT co-founder and leader Cameron Samuels’ eloquent eulogy, delivered before the horse-drawn carriage, as faculty and students place banned books into the hearse alongside the urn of ashes symbolizing the death of academic freedom. It is a haunting and powerful moment—one that captures both the sorrow and moral clarity of this public action. The ritual makes visible what too many official statements obscure: when books are banned, expertise is discredited, and faculty are politically constrained, the university’s democratic purpose itself is placed in jeopardy.

Video 3: Students, Faculty, and Community in Public Witness

The third video shows the horse-drawn carriage and mourners passing in front of the UT Tower and proceeding along Guadalupe Street—a powerful public procession meant to raise awareness about the crisis now facing higher education. As I note in the video, universities are increasingly being pushed toward censorship, surveillance, and political control. The broader public, including Texas taxpayers, needs to know that this is happening in their name and with their public dollars.

Students, faculty, staff, and community members gathered to insist that the university belongs to the people—not to political appointees, donors, ideologues, or governing boards that disregard the expertise and labor of those who make the university what it is.

I also underscored an important point: we do not indoctrinate. Indoctrination presupposes a closed system—an echo chamber in which one only hears, repeats, and promotes what already exists within it. That is the opposite of what teaching requires. Indoctrination is anathema to the work that we do in the classroom. 

I elaborate here that education demands questioning, growth, evidence, dialogue, and the willingness to revise one’s assumptions. Faculty members are themselves always learning, reading, rethinking, and “re-tooling”—engaging new literatures, theoretical frameworks, histories, and areas of study so that we can better understand the world and help students do the same. That is not indoctrination. That is education. And we do it well! 

Thank you very much! Time to stand up and take a bow? 😃

Let's move on.

Video 4: Dr. Nic Ramos on the Attack on Expertise

This fourth video is one of my favorites—second only to the press conference itself, captured in video five—because it features a wonderful conversation with UT American Studies professor Dr. Nic Ramos, who names something crucial: the attack on UT faculty is also an attack on expertise.

This point cannot be overstated. What is unfolding in Texas higher education is not merely a disagreement over administrative structure or campus policy. It is part of a broader campaign to delegitimize the knowledge, judgment, and professional authority of faculty—particularly those whose research and teaching address race, gender, colonialism, inequality, public memory, and democratic accountability.

Dr. Ramos makes the insightful point that Copernicus, who claimed that the Earth revolved around the Sun, would not be able to teach at UT Austin under such conditions because of how radical that perspective was in its own time, pushing real academic boundaries of thought that our university system rejects. 

He tells his students that “research expertise, by its very definition, means that we push boundaries,” and that scholarly arguments are designed to “innovate change,” to foster debate and discussion. This, he says, is why he “serves steak, not soup” in his classroom. 

Love it. Steak, not soup.💗

It is a vivid and memorable metaphor. “Soup” suggests something pre-digested, blended together, and easy to consume. “Steak,” by contrast, requires students to chew, wrestle, question, and develop their own intellectual strength. 

Moreover, for the record, I interject here that Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies are often misrepresented as an attack on the traditional canon or a curriculum centered on “great white men.” It is not about erasing canonical thinkers or dismissing their contributions. We're not anti-civics or anti-cannon. Instead, we seek a fuller, more complete civics where democracy has been made by all—women, civil rights leaders, immigrants, students, communities of color and so on.

Rather, these areas of study expand the frame by bringing more histories, voices, and perspectives into view. Doing so gives students a fuller and more honest understanding of civic life in a democracy.

Dr. Ramos helps us see that the struggle before us is not only about protecting individual faculty members or specific departments. It is about defending the very conditions under which knowledge can be produced, debated, revised, and shared in the public interest—and in the ongoing development of knowledge itself.

Video 5: The Press Conference

The fifth and final video is the 45-minute press conference, where I and others offered public statements about the significance of this moment. The press conference brought together multiple voices, each speaking to the harms already underway and the urgent need for organized resistance.

We spoke in defense of academic freedom, shared governance, Mexican American and Latino Studies, African American and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and the democratic purpose of public higher education. We also spoke against the normalization of political interference in curriculum, faculty governance, and the intellectual life of the university.

This is a time for clarity. We must refuse the language of “efficiency,” “restructuring,” "balancing," "consolidation," and “compliance” when these terms mask deeper efforts to narrow the scope of knowledge and weaken democratic participation inside Texas public institutions.

The funeral was symbolic, yes—but it was also diagnostic. It named the bankrupt logic of policies that seek to silence, erase, intimidate, and control. At the same time, the gathering itself was evidence that academic freedom is not dead so long as students, faculty, staff, and communities continue to organize in its defense.

I am grateful to SEAT, AAUP-UT Austin, Austin SDS, the Latino Coalition for Excellence in Higher Education, Texas AFT, the Texas Association for Mexican American Chambers of Commerce, and all allied organizations and individuals who continue to show up in this struggle. The work ahead is immense, but this action reminded us that grief can become testimony, testimony can become organizing, and organizing can become power.

Academic freedom is worth defending—not as a privilege of educators, but as a public good.

And in Texas, the struggle continues.

What the Proposed Texas Middle School TEKS Leave Out About Indigenous Peoples, by The Social Studies Advocate

Friends,

I invite you to read this deeply concerning analysis published in The Social Studies Advocate on what the proposed Texas middle school social studies TEKS leave out about Indigenous peoples.

The piece documents serious omissions, biases, and erasures in the proposed grades 6–8 standards, including the absence of sustained attention to tribal sovereignty, the Doctrine of Discovery, boarding schools, allotment, the Indian Citizenship Act, the Indian Reorganization Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, and the contemporary presence of Indigenous nations and communities in Texas. These are not minor gaps. They shape how generations of Texas students will understand land, history, law, citizenship, and the peoples who were here long before Texas existed.

The Texas State Board of Education is scheduled to meet June 22–26, 2026, and I understand that Texas Freedom Network and other organizations may be organizing public opposition to these omissions, biases, and erasures. I will keep you posted as the date draws nearer.

In the meantime, please read and share widely. Also consider following The Social Studies Advocate on Instagram. These proposed standards deserve careful public scrutiny before they become the law of Texas classrooms.

In solidarity,

Angela Valenzuela

What the Proposed Texas Middle School TEKS Leave Out About Indigenous Peoples

A review of the proposed grades 6–8 social studies standards reveals systematic gaps in the treatment of American Indian history

The Social Studies Advocate

Apr 20, 2026

When Texas school districts begin implementing the proposed 2026 social studies TEKS in the 2030–2031 school year, students across the state will receive their foundational understanding of Texas and American history in grades 6 through 8. What they learn in those three years, and what they don’t, will shape how they understand the land they live on, the government that serves them, and the people who were here long before the state existed.

The analysis below is based on critiques offered by Dr. Scott Langston, Ph.D., a religion scholar and Native American studies researcher who retired from Texas Christian University, where he served as the inaugural Native American Nations and Communities Liaison, reviewed a draft of the proposed middle school TEKS and produced a detailed written analysis. Langston is the author of Exodus through the Centuries (Wiley/Blackwell, 2006) and co-author of Being in Relation: Indigenous Peoples, the Land, and Texas Christian University, 1873–2023 (TCU Press, 2025). He has been quoted in the Dallas Morning News on the history of Indigenous peoples in North Texas, including on Mirabeau Lamar’s policy of “exterminating war” against Native nations. His analysis of the TEKS draft is thorough, specific, and grounded in Texas-specific historical scholarship.

After much debate at the SBOE meeting from April 7 to 10, and numerous amendments until early in the morning, the version that emerged from the most recent round of Work Group B revisions and SBOE amendments addresses essentially none of the concerns Langston raised. This piece summarizes his critique and compares it against what the current draft actually contains.

Moving Moccasins group brings Native American artists into schools and classrooms, https://austinpowwow.net/great-promise-dancers/

The Structural Problem: American Indians as Historical Rather Than Contemporary

The most fundamental concern is not about any individual omission. It is about the cumulative effect of how American Indian peoples appear, and disappear, across the grades 6–8 curriculum. We are specifically looking at grades 6-8 because this is when students will learn the bulk of U.S. and Texas history, from 1800 to modern day.

In the proposed standards, Indigenous peoples are present in the early grades as part of the westward expansion narrative, appear briefly during the Texas frontier period, and then largely vanish. There is no sustained treatment of American Indians through the 20th century and into the present. This is not a minor gap but a structural failure: it leaves students with the impression that Indigenous peoples belong to the past, frozen somewhere in the 19th century, rather than existing as contemporary peoples with ongoing legal relationships with the state and federal government.

This matters because those relationships did not end in the 1850s. Three federally recognized tribes and several non-recognized tribes reside in Texas today. The period from the late 19th to the early 21st century saw significant developments and shifts in U.S. American Indian policy, including, boarding schools, allotment of reservations (especially the Dawes Act of 1887), Indian Reorganization Act (1934), termination of federal relationships with tribes, federal Relocation program, Indian Adoption project, Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act (1975), Indian Child Welfare Act (1978) and the challenge to it in Haaland v. Brackeen (2023), American Indian Religious Freedom Act (1978), and McGirt v. Oklahoma (2020). This curriculum removes and excludes American Indians from U.S. history. It is a major gap in the curriculum.

These are not distant historical footnotes. They are active legal and political realities with direct Texas connections, and they appear nowhere in the proposed standards.

The Doctrine of Discovery: The Missing Foundation

The most significant omission is the Doctrine of Discovery, and particularly the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1823 opinion in Johnson v. M’Intosh. The Doctrine of Discovery was set out in a series of declarations by popes in the 15th century. Papal bulls provided religious authority for Christian empires to invade and subjugate non‐Christian lands, and impose Christianity on these populations. These papal bulls provided justification to European empires embarking on widescale colonial expansion.

The proposed standards explicitly emphasize the importance of strong property rights and the free enterprise system as core values. What Johnson v. M’Intosh establishes, however, is the legal foundation upon which American property rights rest, a foundation that, as the Court itself acknowledged, derived from European claims of discovery and explicitly did not recognize Indigenous peoples as owners of the land they had occupied for millennia.

In other words, students are being taught that strong property rights are a cornerstone of the American system, without being taught the legal history that defines whose property rights were recognized and whose were not. Students cannot fully understand American property law, westward expansion, or the free enterprise system without knowing it.

The Doctrine of Discovery does not appear in the current draft. Neither does Johnson v. M’Intosh.

Tribal Sovereignty: A Constitutional Relationship, Unnamed

Closely related is another structural omission: the proposed TEKS never establish that American Indian tribes hold the status of sovereign nations in a government-to-government relationship with the United States, a status grounded in Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution and affirmed repeatedly by the Supreme Court.

Throughout the grades 6–8 standards, Indigenous peoples are referred to as “communities” or “tribes,” but never as “nations” with the legal standing that word implies. This has practical consequences for how students understand Texas history. When settlers moved into Mexican Texas, they were entering the territory of American Indian nations. When the Republic of Texas claimed land, it was asserting ownership over territory those nations had occupied for centuries. When Mirabeau Lamar pursued his policy of expulsion and extermination, he was conducting a war against sovereign peoples. None of this context is available to students if they have not been taught that tribes hold recognized national status under U.S. law.

The proposed TEKS do require students to compare the presidencies of Lamar and Sam Houston, “including views on annexation, American Indians, and Mexico.” But Lamar’s own words, “total extinction” and “total expulsion,” are not named. The standard as written does not require students to understand what Lamar’s policy actually entailed.
Major Omissions by Grade

Grade 6 (1800-1900)

The massive disruptions to Indigenous peoples caused by the Louisiana Purchase, the War of 1812, and Andrew Jackson’s Indian Removal Act are not connected to their consequences for American Indian nations who were displaced into Texas, which then created the conditions for later conflicts during the Republic period. Students cannot understand why various non-indigenous tribes were present in Texas without this context.

Several experts raised flags over the wording of this SE: “explain how the Trail of Tears impacted tribal relations along the Northern border of Texas.” Despite the numerous amendments raised during the week of April 7, it remains unchanged. This language shifts the impact of Jackson’s policies from the impact of U.S. policies on indigenous nations, to tribal relations. Additionally, it omits the decision in Worcester v. Georgia (1832), which recognized Cherokee sovereignty and the unconstitutionality of state encroachment on tribal territory under federal treaties, a ruling that both Georgia and the Jackson administration refused to enforce, proceeding with removal regardless.

In the Civil War and Reconstruction unit, there is no mention of the participation of Indigenous peoples in the war, or of slavery’s distinct application to Indigenous peoples.

Most significantly, the standards covering the late 19th century, the closing of the frontier, the Gilded Age, contain no mention of boarding schools or forced allotment of reservation lands. This is inconceivable for any credible curriculum. The boarding school system, which operated from the 1870s through the mid-20th century, was one of the most deliberately destructive policies in American history toward Indigenous cultural survival. The Dawes Act of 1887 and the Supreme Court’s 1903 decision in Lone Wolf v. Hitchcock, which enabled the forced allotment of reservation lands over tribal objection, shaped the lives of Indigenous peoples for generations. The Dawes Act and boarding schools are taught in current U.S. history standards in 11th grade. Neither appears in the proposed standards, and it begs the question, why are these being removed?

Grade 7 (1900-2000)

Grade 7 covers the Progressive Era through the early 21st century. Among the many topics covered across more than a century of American history, there is not a single mention of American Indian peoples in the course introduction. The standards move from the 1890s to the present as though Indigenous peoples ceased to exist at the close of the frontier.

The specific omissions are extensive. The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 is absent. The Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which restructured the relationship between the federal government and tribal governments and remains foundational to understanding tribal governance today, is absent. The Termination policy of the 1950s, which ended the federal relationship with some tribes and proved devastating, is absent.

The Indian Relocation Act of 1956 is absent, despite the fact that Dallas was designated as a federal relocation center, bringing thousands of American Indians to North Texas over several decades. The Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act of 1975, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act of 1978, and the Indian Child Welfare Act of 1978 are all absent.

The Grade 7 standards do include the American Indian Movement and the Wounded Knee Occupation in the Civil Rights era section. However, the inclusion is decontextualized without the broader Red Power movement, the Indian Civil Rights Act of 1968, or the legislative achievements of the 1970s that were the movement’s most significant outcomes.

Grade 8 (Capstone Texas History Course)

In Grade 8 the omissions carry particular weight because this is where students are expected to develop a comprehensive understanding of the state’s past.

The course introduction refers to “the earliest human presence” in Texas without naming American Indians specifically, a terminological choice that obscures the millennia-long Indigenous presence in the region. Similarly, the use of “prehistoric” to describe ancient Indigenous cultures carries connotations of primitiveness that “ancient” would not.

The Gault Site, one of the most significant archaeological sites in North America for understanding early human presence on the continent, is not mentioned. Caddo Mounds State Historical Site, a Texas State Historical Commission site that documents the sophisticated culture of the Caddo people, is not mentioned.

The Grade 8 standards do include coverage of conflicts between the Republic of Texas and American Indian groups, including Fort Parker, the Council House Fight, and the Battle of Neches. But the framing does not require students to understand these events as Indigenous peoples defending their homelands and legal standing as nations.

The standards covering the Civil Rights era in Texas contain no mention of American Indians. The Indian Relocation Act’s connection to Dallas is absent. The contemporary Texas section, which closes the course, does not address the three federally recognized tribes currently residing

in Texas, the ongoing legal and cultural work of non-federally recognized tribes, or the existence of American Indians as contemporary peoples with active civic and economic lives.

Why This Matters Beyond Representation

The proposed TEKS emphasize the free enterprise system, strong property rights, and the foundational importance of constitutional law. Students cannot fully understand any of these things without understanding the Doctrine of Discovery, Johnson v. M’Intosh, the federal Indian trust responsibility, and tribal sovereignty. These are not alternative or oppositional values. They are part of the same legal and constitutional framework the TEKS claim to be teaching.

A curriculum that teaches strong property rights without teaching the legal history of whose property rights were recognized, and whose were not, by design, is an incomplete curriculum. A curriculum that teaches the U.S. Constitution without teaching the government-to-government relationships it established with tribal nations is an incomplete curriculum. These are not ideological claims. They are observations about what the documents say.

What You Can Do

The proposed TEKS are still subject to revision before final adoption. We remain concerned about the undisclosed financial relationship between Content Advisor Don Frazier’s Texas Center at Schreiner University and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, including the $70,000 in TPPF funding to that center, and what it means for the independence of this revision process. The standards as proposed reflect a consistent ideological perspective that raises legitimate questions about whether Texan students are receiving history education or something closer to political formation.

If you want to weigh in on these standards, you can:

Contact the legislature and demand oversight into the process as a whole. It has been rushed and the input of stakeholders, including experts and educators, has been significantly curtailed while politically motivated interest groups have had an outsized influence. Specifically reach out to members of the Senate Education Committee and House Public Education Committee, James Talarico and Gina Hinojosa. Ask them to pause this process and conduct a review of the connection between TPPF and Don Frazier.

Contact all the SBOE representative directly. Write or call with specific concerns about the treatment of American Indian history in the proposed grades 6–8 standards.

The most up-to-date drafts from the April Board meeting will be posted at least 30 days before the next SBOE meeting June 22 (so by mid-May). Submit written public comment to the SBOE ahead of upcoming hearings. Specific, evidence-based comments citing the standards by section number carry the most weight.

Share this analysis with educators, school board members, and community members who may not be following the TEKS revision process closely.

The Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills are not just a list of topics. They are a set of decisions about what Texas students are expected to know and be able to do. The decisions embedded in the current draft, including what has been left out, deserve careful public scrutiny before they become the law of Texas classrooms.

Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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This analysis draws on Dr. Scott Langston’s written review of the proposed middle school TEKS and on the post-April 2026 draft of the proposed standards (Attachment II, Chapter 113, Subchapter B).

UT President Homer Rainey and the Long Memory of Academic Freedom at UT, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

UT President Homer Rainey and the Long Memory of Academic Freedom at UT

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

May 19, 2026

There are moments in a university’s history when the question becomes larger than any single president, professor, book, department, or policy. The question becomes whether a university will remain a university at all.

The firing of Homer Price Rainey, the twelfth president of The University of Texas at Austin, was one such moment.

Rainey served as UT president from 1939 to 1944. By many measures, his presidency strengthened the institution. He helped open the Latin American Institute, expanded the graduate school, increased the faculty, supported the College of Fine Arts, organized the management of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, and grew the university’s library holdings. In other words, he was building UT into a serious public research university with intellectual breadth, scholarly ambition, and public purpose (University of Texas at Austin Office of the President, n.d.).

But Rainey also believed that a university could not fulfill its mission if political appointees dictated what faculty could teach, which ideas students could encounter, or which scholars should be punished for their views. That conviction brought him into direct conflict with the UT Board of Regents.

Beginning in the early 1940s, regents pressed Rainey to remove faculty whose views they disliked, including economics professors associated with New Deal ideas and faculty who defended federal labor laws. The conflict deepened when regents objected to the teaching of John Dos Passos’ U.S.A. trilogy, a work they viewed as politically suspect. Rainey publicly protested this interference. On November 1, 1944, the regents fired him (Green, 1995; The Daily Texan, n.d.).

The response was extraordinary. Some 8,000 students went on strike and marched from the UT campus to the Capitol and Governor’s Mansion. According to historical accounts, mourners carried a casket labeled “academic freedom,” while the Longhorn Band played Chopin’s “Funeral March.” (The Daily Texan, n.d.; Wilder, 2012).

The message was unmistakable: when political power suppresses teaching and scholarship, something vital in public education dies.

Source: UT History: The President Rainey Controversy

That warning matters today.

Rainey was not reinstated. But history vindicated him. He became a national symbol of academic freedom, and the episode remains one of the clearest warnings in UT’s history about what happens when governing boards confuse stewardship with ideological control (Green, 1995; Wilder, 2012).

That warning matters today.

Universities are not fragile because faculty disagree, students protest, or controversial books are taught. They are fragile when fear replaces inquiry; when political pressure determines curriculum; when administrators anticipate punishment; when faculty governance is weakened; when entire fields of study are treated as suspect because they examine race, gender, labor, colonialism, inequality, or power.

The Rainey story reminds us that academic freedom is not an abstraction. It is the condition that allows a public university to serve the public honestly. Without it, universities become instruments of power rather than spaces of knowledge.

In 1944, students understood this clearly enough to march behind a coffin marked “academic freedom.” Eighty years later, the question is whether we understand it clearly enough to prevent history from happening again.

***

If you are able, consider marching with our funeral procession from the UT Tower to the UT System Board of Regents tomorrow. We'll be at the UT Tower at 11:00 AM and are expected to reach the BOR office at 12:30 PM located at 210 West 7th Street, Austin, Texas 78701.

Reference

Green, G. N. (1995). Homer Price Rainey: Life and legacy of a university president. Texas State Historical Association Online. https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rainey-homer-price

The Daily Texan. (n.d.). UT History: The President Rainey controversy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUTGmWD8clo

University of Texas at Austin Office of the President. (n.d.). Homer Price Rainey. https://president.utexas.edu/past-presidents/homer-price-rainey/

Wilder, F. (2012, June 13). The war on public universities, Texas Observer. https://www.texasobserver.org/the-war-on-public-universities/

Protect Mexican American and Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Gender Studies at UT Austin, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. May 19, 2026

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Friends:

Below is the letter I just sent to the UT System Board of Regents that is scheduled to meet tomorrow and Thursday with a few concerning items. You have until 1 PM today to submit your own letter to bor@utsystem.edu. Also consider attending tomorrow's "Rest in Peace UT" funeral procession/demonstration happening tomorrow per yesterday's blog post.

Here is the link to tomorrow's BOR meeting if you're unable to make it: https://www.utsystem.edu/board-of-regents/meetings/board-meeting-2026-05-20

Best,

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Subject: Protect Mexican American and Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Gender Studies at UT Austin

Dear Members of the University of Texas System Board of Regents:

I write to express my profound concern regarding the reported plans to consolidate Mexican American and Latino Studies (MALS) and related Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies programs into a broader Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at The University of Texas at Austin.

Let me be direct: these units should not be consolidated. They should be restored, protected, and strengthened.

I respectfully urge the Board of Regents to:

1. Reinstate the Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies units immediately;
2. Preserve the majors and minors in these fields; and
3. Preserve the graduate programs in these fields.

This proposal should not be understood as a simple administrative restructuring. It represents the dismantling of intellectual, historical, and community-based projects that generations of students, scholars, organizers, and families fought to establish at this university. Programs like Mexican American and Latino Studies did not emerge by administrative convenience. 

They were built through decades of struggle to ensure that the histories, cultures, intellectual traditions, and lived realities of Mexican-origin, Black, Indigenous, Asian American, and other historically marginalized communities—as well as Gender and Sexuality Studies perspectives—would finally be recognized as legitimate and necessary fields of inquiry within public higher education. To learn more about this history, visit this timely and authoritative blog by Dr. Christopher Carmona titled, “We Bled for This: The Ongoing Assault on Mexican American and Ethnic Studies.”

At a flagship public university in a state where a very diverse Latino community constitutes nearly 40 percent of the population—and where Mexican-origin communities are foundational to Texas history, culture, labor, economy, and civic life—the weakening of Mexican American and Latino Studies sends a troubling message. It suggests that these histories and perspectives are peripheral rather than central to the mission of the university.

Absorbing these programs into a generalized framework of “Social and Cultural Analysis” risks stripping them of the institutional autonomy necessary to sustain intellectual coherence, curricular direction, faculty development, student mentorship, and long-term viability. Once fields lose departmental status, they inevitably lose decision-making authority, hiring capacity, budgetary leverage, and symbolic recognition. History shows that such consolidations are rarely neutral. They often function as forms of institutional neutralization that gradually erode the visibility and sustainability of historically marginalized fields.

This proposal must also be understood within the broader political climate currently shaping higher education in Texas and nationally. In recent years, we have witnessed escalating attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; increased regulation of curriculum related to race, gender, and systemic inequality; and growing political intervention into university governance. Against this backdrop, the consolidation of Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies raises serious concerns about academic freedom, institutional integrity, and the future of critical inquiry within public higher education.

The irony is difficult to ignore. At precisely the moment when Texas faces profound demographic, cultural, educational, and political transformations, the state’s flagship university appears poised to weaken some of the very academic fields best equipped to help society understand and navigate these realities. These programs have made extraordinary contributions to scholarship, teacher preparation, public policy, educational equity, immigration studies, history, literature, public health, and community-engaged research. They have also provided intellectual affirmation and opportunity to generations of students, many of whom are first-generation college students seeking to see their communities reflected within the university curriculum.

Interdisciplinarity has never been absent from these fields. Ethnic Studies and Gender Studies are already deeply interdisciplinary. The issue before the Board is not whether collaboration across disciplines should occur. The issue is whether these programs retain the institutional capacity to define their own scholarly agendas, hire faculty grounded in their traditions, mentor students effectively, and sustain vibrant intellectual communities with autonomy and integrity.

Public universities should not retreat from difficult histories or politically contested knowledge. They should cultivate rigorous inquiry, democratic engagement, and historical understanding. Universities strengthen themselves not by dissolving critical fields of study, but by supporting them.

I respectfully urge the Board of Regents to reject any effort that would diminish the institutional standing, autonomy, visibility, majors, minors, or graduate programs of Mexican American and Latino Studies, Ethnic Studies, and Women and Gender Studies at UT Austin.

The future of the university should not be built through the weakening of the very fields that have helped democratize it.

Respectfully,

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., Professor
Educational Leadership and Policy
The University of Texas at Austin

PRESS RELEASE: RIP UT: Donors Strike, Students to Stage Funeral for Academic Freedom at Regents Meeting—Wednesday, May 20, 2026

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 15, 2026

Contact: Cameron Samuels

press@studentsengaged.org

RIP UT: Donors Strike, Students to Stage Funeral

for Academic Freedom at Regents Meeting

AUSTIN, TX — On Wednesday, May 20 at the University of Texas System Board of Regents meeting, Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT) and partners will stage a funeral, marking what organizers describe as the "death by a thousand cuts" to academic freedom and higher education in Texas.

Simultaneously, major donors have begun pledging to withdraw individual giving and decline future monetary contributions until the university takes significant steps to protect academic freedom and the rights of all students, faculty, and staff. Initial pledge-takers include alumni in business, real estate, film, education, and elected office.

Next week’s funeral follows a similar demonstration by SEAT at Texas Tech University in Lubbock earlier this month, which featured a memorial wake, eulogy remarks, and a procession across campus. Visual elements included funeral attire and a horse-drawn carriage carrying an urn and books, photographs, and other markers of academic life.

Academic freedom, long considered a cornerstone of higher education, has succumbed after what can only be described as a slow and deliberate erosion. Its decline was not sudden. There was no single moment of collapse, no dramatic final breath. Instead, it endured a death by increments — policy by policy, decision by decision — until the thing itself became unrecognizable.

"Proclaiming the death of UT and its spirit of academic freedom is serious and not taken lightly. But 150 years after our university was chartered, the time has come. For the world’s second wealthiest university, the decisions made by regents and administrators have grave consequences that echo far beyond Texas. They have brought this upon us recklessly and without regard for our dignity and humanity," said Cameron Samuels (they/them), SEAT executive director and student at UT’s School of Law and LBJ School of Public Affairs. "Students are mourning the loss of a university once considered a beacon of truth, opportunity, and a guardian genius of democracy. What’s gone is not forgotten."

The University of Texas fell to a death by a thousand cuts:

• anti-DEI layoffs and grant abandonment (2024)

• state-sanctioned violence against students (2024) 

• ban on campus drag performances (2025)

• the elimination of ethnic and gender studies (2026)

• suspensions against student expression (2026)

• prohibition of controversial topics (2026)

• unprecedented administrative turnover (2026)

• and that's just to name a few...

WHEN & WHERE:

• Wednesday, May 20, 2026

• 11 AM - Memorial Wake (110 Inner Campus Dr, Austin)

• 11:30 AM - Funeral Procession (via Guadalupe, 11th, and Congress)

• 12:30 PM - Eulogy Remarks (210 W 7th St, Austin)

• 1 PM - Testimony at the Regents Meeting (210 W 7th St, Austin)

• 4:45 PM - Regents Meeting Recesses

WHO:

• Cameron Samuels (they/them), SEAT executive director and UT graduate student

• Adrian Lara (he/him), UTSA freshman in the REGSS department

• Daniel Ramirez, UT sophomore wrongfully suspended for free expression

• Karma Chavez (she/her), president of AAUP at UT Austin

• And more

The university and its spirit of academic freedom is survived by those who still insist on asking difficult questions — and by those who believe universities should remain places where such questions are not only allowed, but exalted. May she rest in peace.

###

About Students Engaged in Advancing Texas

SEAT is a movement of young people developing transferable skills and demonstrating youth visibility in policymaking. Advocating for a seat at the table, SEAT is normalizing the presence of students in educational policymaking – nothing about us, without us.