Academia Cuauhtli, the Eagle’s Vision, and the Architecture of Belonging: Education in the Shape of a Circle, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Academia Cuauhtli, the Eagle’s Vision, and the Architecture of Belonging: Education in the Shape of a Circle

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

February 23, 2026

In “Academia Cuauhtli and the Eagle: Danza Mexica and the Epistemology of the Circle,” co-authored with Emilio Zamora and Brenda Rubio, we examine what it means to build Academia Cuauhtli as more than a Saturday school program in Austin, Texas. We frame it as an effort to rethink education itself.

The eagle’s vision represents the ability to see in all directions at once—expansively and relationally. For those of us working in community, it reminds us that while no single person can carry all the knowledge required to sustain an ambitious initiative like Academia Cuauhtli—with its Summer School program, parent development component, and curricular writing work—together, we can. 

It also symbolizes the aspirations we collectively hold for the children, families, and community in our care, alongside the disciplined precision with which the eagle, from great heights, fixes its gaze and moves with intention. Analytical clarity. This is what we want for all children—especially in this moment of chaos and uncertainty—so that they may see their world clearly, act with purpose, and rise with confidence rather than confusion.

Access full article here.

At the heart of this work is the circle. It is best exemplified by Danza Mexica or Aztec "dance," connoting not performance, but ceremony and a way of knowing and being in the world, including in educational spaces like Academia Cuauhtli about which I have previously blogged over the years.

In Danza Mexica, individuals form into a circle or concentric circles depending on the size of the group. Movement unfolds collectively. No one stands in front. No one stands above or below. Everyone faces inward toward a shared center—toward memory, spirit, healing, ancestors, and community.

The form itself encodes reciprocity, relationality, and a shared, sacred purpose.

This stands in contrast to the dominant architecture of schooling.

Most classrooms operate through vertical authority structures. Knowledge flows from expert to novice. Students are ranked, sorted, and compared. Time is segmented into benchmarks and testing cycles. Culture is often treated as enrichment rather than foundation.

The circle disrupts this logic.

An epistemology of the circle understands knowledge as generative and co-constructed rather than extractive or subtractive. It recognizes the body as a site of learning. It treats memory as living presence. It invites families, community members, scholars, and children into shared intellectual space. It refuses the idea that culture is peripheral to academic rigor (Colin, 2014).

For us at Academia Cuauhtli, the circle is also a form of pedagogy. It is history enacted through rhythm and specific movements (dance steps) across various ceremonies preserved throughout time. It is language, philosophical concepts, and civic education carried in collective movement. It signals and affirms that children—especially those labeled as “English learners” and targeted by subtractive, deficit-driven discourses—stand within powerful knowledge systems that have survived conquest, colonization, and erasure.

The circle also carries political meaning.

In a moment when ethnic studies programs are dismantled, faculty governance is constrained, and curriculum is policed under the language of “neutrality,” the circle offers another organizing principle. Education can be structured around relational accountability (or "responsibility") rather than surveillance. It can center dignity rather than deficit.

The eagle—or "Cuauhtli," in Nahuatl—symbolizes vision and strength. Yet the eagle rises from within the circle. Aspiration without community becomes isolation. Achievement without memory becomes assimilation.

The circle is not nostalgia. It is infrastructure, a third space situated between the over-prescribed role of the school and the under-prescribed role of the home in the education of our youth.

If we take educational equity seriously, we must ask: What would it mean to organize our classrooms, research partnerships, and institutions around relational centers instead of competitive hierarchies?

The answer does not begin with new mandates.

It begins with remembering—and practicing—the circle as a way of knowing and being in the world.

References

Colín, E. (2014). Indigenous education through dance and ceremony: A Mexica palimpsest. Palgrave MacMillan.

Valenzuela, A., Zamora, E., & Rubio, B. (2015). Academia Cuauhtli and the Eagle:" Danza Mexica" and the Epistemology of the Circle. Voices in Urban Education, 41, 46-56.https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1074841.pdf

Congressman Joaquín Castro: Bearing Witness in the Dilley, Texas Detention Center, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Congressman Joaquín Castro: Bearing Witness in the Dilley, Texas Detention Center

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

February 23, 2026

When Joaquín Castro speaks about what he witnessed in Dilley, Texas, he is not speculating—he is bearing witness. He has reported that eight women are currently pregnant inside the South Texas Family Residential Center, a federal immigration detention facility funded by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and operated under contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Eight pregnancies unfolding behind barbed wire.

These women remain largely out of public view, their prenatal care subject to conditions we can only imagine. As Castro emphasized during his February 20 visit, detention centers are not designed to safeguard maternal health. They are designed to confine.

He has also raised serious concerns about CoreCivic, the private corporation operating the facility, citing failures to provide even basic dental and general medical care to those detained. BlackRock is its largest shareholder. The land and structures are owned by Target Hospitality. The City of Dilley neither owns nor manages the site.

Originally opened in 2014 for family detention, the center houses hundreds of migrants — primarily women and children — and has long faced scrutiny over health care, living conditions, and the well-being of children held there.

If routine medical care is already inadequate, what does that mean for women who require consistent prenatal monitoring, proper nutrition, rest, and emergency responsiveness? What happens if complications arise?

The moral gravity deepens when we remember Liam Cornejo Ramos—and now two-month-old baby Juan Nicolas, reportedly suffering from bronchitis, who was recently deported to Mexico. An ill infant deported. Pregnant women detained. Children experiencing psychological, emotional, and physical harm in confinement.

A drawing shared with Congressman Castro by a child
during his visit who is currently held in detention.

These are not bureaucratic footnotes. They are human lives shaped by policy decisions and corporate contracts. When health care becomes secondary to detention quotas and profit margins, we move into dangerous territory.

Castro’s testimony pulls back the curtain. If these women are kept out of sight, they must not be kept out of conscience. Dilley is more than a point on a map. It is a test of our collective humanity. What we tolerate there, especially for pregnant women and sick children, will define us long after the headlines fade.

UT’s Gender and Ethnic Studies Shake-Up: Name the Pressures. Name the Politicians. Name the Agenda. by Angela Valenzuel, Ph.D.

UT’s Gender and Ethnic Studies Shake-Up: Name the Pressures. Name the Politicians. Name the Agenda.

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Feb. 22, 2026

Austin American-Statesman reporter Lily Kepner’s article on the University of Texas’s decision to consolidate its ethnic and gender studies departments repeatedly invokes “pressure,” “politically unpopular programs,” and unnamed “conservative politicians.” Yet it never identifies who is applying this pressure, what specific actions they have taken, or how these programs have been deemed unpopular. That omission is not incidental—it is the central issue.

The story claims UT’s decision follows “months of pressure from conservative politicians to eliminate ‘liberal’ education and ‘gender ideology.’” Which politicians? What letters, hearings, budget threats, regent directives, or formal communications substantiate this assertion? If such evidence exists, it should be documented. This is not a reference to Senate Bill 37 or its author, former Senator Brandon Creighton, now president of Texas Tech University. He is one actor. The question concerns the broader agenda the article implies but does not name.

The characterization of these departments as “politically unpopular programs” is equally unsupported. By what measure? The article reports 307 undergraduate majors across the affected departments, notes national rankings placing UT at the top in Latin American History, and references decades of student demand dating to the 1970s. Faculty describe strong interdisciplinary enrollment from engineering, pre-med, and other colleges. These are indicators of institutional vitality, not marginality.

Meanwhile, departments unrelated to race, ethnicity, or gender remain structurally intact. If this were a neutral effort to address administrative “fragmentation,” consolidation would be evenly distributed. It is not. The selective restructuring of African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, and Women and Gender Studies warrants scrutiny the article gestures toward but does not pursue.

The piece references Governor Greg Abbott’s intervention at Texas A&M, system-level restrictions on race or "gender ideology,” course audits on gender identity, and SB 37’s restructuring of faculty governance. Yet it stops short of connecting these developments to UT’s decision in a sustained way. The result is a narrative of diffuse cultural tension rather than a clear account of political and structural mechanisms.

Those mechanisms are concrete: SB 17’s dismantling of DEI infrastructure, SB 37’s weakening of faculty governance, and sustained public criticism of race and gender scholarship by state leadership. And now there is an additional layer. 

Last week, the UT System Board of Regents adopted new guidance regarding the teaching of so-called “controversial topics,” directing institutions to ensure such material is “germane” to course objectives and framed in ways that avoid perceived ideological advocacy. While presented as a reaffirmation of academic neutrality, the policy introduces new ambiguity: Who determines what is “germane”? How is ideological advocacy defined? And what mechanisms will be used to monitor compliance?

For faculty in fields already publicly targeted, this creates policy-induced precarity. When governance structures have been weakened, DEI offices dismantled, and course content subjected to heightened scrutiny, consolidation cannot be viewed in isolation. The cumulative effect is an environment in which academic decisions are made under the shadow of legislative intervention and board-level oversight.

University administrators invoke “balance,” “efficiency,” and “fractured fields”—whatever the heck this means. If anything, the administration is actively doing the fracturing in which case this must reflect a level of psychological projection at work. Go figure.

If consolidation is driven by enrollment metrics or financial concerns, comparable data across all departments should be released. Transparency would clarify whether this is pedagogical recalibration or politically shaped reorganization.

Instead, “pressure” functions as an unnamed force—shaping outcomes without accountability. Universities evolve. Units merge. Priorities shift. But when programs centered on race, ethnicity, and gender are restructured amid weakened faculty governance, legislative hostility, and new board directives on “controversial topics,” skepticism is analytical, not ideological.

The public deserves clarity. If elected officials, regents, or donors are influencing curricular structures, that influence should be reported. If this is an internal decision grounded in measurable criteria, the data should be made public.

When actors remain unnamed and evidence unstated, “pressure” becomes a placeholder for power no one is required to own. In moments like this, clarity is not optional. It is the responsibility of both institutions—and those who report on them.

After anti-liberal pressure, University of Texas to consolidate gender and ethnic studies

Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies.

By Lily Kepner, Staff WriterFeb 12, 2026 | Austin American-Statesman

A demonstrator holds up a sign at the base of the UT Tower during a protest at the University of
Texas at Austin on Monday, October. 13, 2025. About 150 people gathered to protest Trump's
compact and potential cuts to ethnic and gender studies programs in UT's College of Liberal Arts.
Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

The University of Texas’s College of Liberal Arts will consolidate its long-standing ethnic and gender studies programs into one new department.

The university will immediately begin the process of creating the new Department for Social and Cultural Analysis Studies after months of pressure from conservative politicians to eliminate “liberal” education and “gender ideology” from the state’s flagship. There is no target date for the change to go fully into effect.

UT’s decision follows Texas A&M University move to close its Women and Gender Studies Department earlier this year. In a 9 a.m. meeting with department chairs Thursday, Interim Dean David Sosa said curriculum and degree programs in the departments are being reviewed.


The future of the centers and programs within the existing departments is not yet clear, two faculty in the meeting confirmed. It is also unclear if layoffs will eventually accompany the consolidations, but Sosa did not announce any immediate firings, two faculty said.

The college launched a committee last fall to explore the consolidation of overly “fractured” departments, prompting student protests to protect the programs.

Affected departments include those that focus on African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, Women and Gender Studies and American Studies, which have a combined 307 undergraduate majors, according to UT data.

The Asian Studies department, which was not included in Thursday’s meeting, has 185 majors. Middle Eastern Studies, also not included in the call, has 80. Department chairs from Germanic Studies, Slavic and Eurasian Studies, French and Italian will be combined into a new department of European and Eurasian Studies. The departments teach foreign languages — a course requirement for COLA graduates.

Having an official designation as a UT department matters — it allows programs to receive funding for events, faculty and a greater voice in tenure and promotion decisions. Consolidating the programs effectively eliminates any institutional support for the politically unpopular programs, and further curtails faculty input in university decisions.

“There can be no reason for this decision other than an authoritarian takeover of Texas’ flagship university,” Lauren Gutterman, associate professor of American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, said. “If this was about too much fragmentation or small majors, then why are departments like Religious Studies, Middle Eastern Studies, and Classics unaffected?”

UT Spokesperson Mike Rosen declined to comment by press time. Two hours after the meeting, UT President Jim Davis announced the changes in an email to campus. He confirmed that as the university reviews what majors, minors and certificates the new departments will offer, all students currently in the programs will be allowed to continue.

Davis said he asked the College of Liberal Arts to analyze what fields make sense to stand alone or come together based on student-to-faculty ratio, program size, student demand and resources. The consolidation doesn’t mean the subjects aren’t “worthy” of research and teaching, but allows them to be “researched and taught in the broader context of other fields, classes, disciplines, and departments,” he wrote.

“These two new departments reflect our ongoing commitment to academic excellence and our responsibility to ensure that every student at UT Austin has access to a balanced and challenging educational experience,” Davis said.

Sydney Jael Wilson, a women and gender studies graduate student, speaks at a protest at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday, October. 13, 2025. About 150 people gathered to protest Trump's compact and potential cuts to ethnic and gender studies programs in UT's College of Liberal Arts. Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

Women and Gender Studies officially became a department at UT in 2023, but gender and ethnic studies classes have been taught at the university for decades. The centers that house the faculty and classes started in the 1970s and 1980s after students pushed for courses that better reflected their personal backgrounds.

Faculty say the decision is misguided and will gut departments that have brought UT prestige for decades. U.S. News and World Reports listed UT as the top program in the country for graduate studies in Latin American History. College Factual, an online data-driven college ranking site, listed UT as the top school in Texas to get an undergraduate degree in ethnic studies.

“We no longer seem to be a place where we value knowledge for the sake of knowledge,” Alison Kafer, director of LGBTQ studies in the women’s and gender studies department, said in an interview earlier this month. “If we close this department, we are closing it for political reasons, because our numbers are great.”

What does consolidation mean?

The university will begin preparing for the new departments immediately, though they will not officially consolidate until September, faculty said. Curriculum and degree programs are still being reviewed.

A new UT policy revised this September requires the school’s president to direct an “efficient in-depth and judicious review process” before deciding to abandon or reduce academic programs and positions. The president is not bound by the recommendation of the provost or a committee, according to the policy. The policy strongly recommends the preservation of existing degree programs until all current students can complete them.

A previous policy required UT’s president to consult with Faculty Council leadership before eliminating any academic program or position. UT System ended faculty senates and councils to comply with Senate Bill 37 this September.

Why is this happening?

While no law restricts what can be taught at public universities, conservative politicians have put pressure on universities to eliminate programs deemed too liberal.

Political pressure intensified last fall when Gov. Greg Abbott demanded that Texas A&M University fire a children’s literature professor who taught about gender identity in one of her courses. Since then, university systems across the state have scrutinized programs deemed overly political.

In January, Texas A&M University closed its Women and Gender Studies department. Regents also approved a new policy that bans courses that “advocate” for race or gender ideology without prior approval. Texas Tech University System also banned such courses and issued a directive to only teach that there are two genders.

Both policies have been criticized by civil rights groups who equate the measures to censorship, stifling academic freedom. Others insist academic freedom has limits, and the fields have gone too far.

The UT System confirmed last fall that it would audit classes for mentions of gender identity. Officials have since remained quiet on how the system will handle increasing pressure to police instruction related to gender and sexuality. UT Regents will meet next week at a planned quarterly meeting.

At the flagship, Provost William Inboden has openly critiqued education related to race and gender as fields of study “often accompanied by partisan activism.” He has said the fields “must be studied,” but suggested the studying leaves students with an “imbalanced view of the United States.”

UT President Jim Davis, who is not an academic, said in a university address last year that UT would look to broaden overly “fractured” fields and bring “balance” to curriculum.

But all the cut programs are known for being interdisciplinary and skills-based, attracting students across the university from engineering to pre-medicine, faculty said. Faculty in the departments each have different specialties, allowing for innovative and collaborative research.

UT’s African and African Diaspora Studies became a department in 2010. It offers a major, minor, certificate, graduate and PhD programs. American Studies, which became a department in 1998, focuses on cultural, intellectual and social life in the United States. Mexican American and Latina/o Studies became a department in 2014.

“Gender and ethnic studies have transformed the study of the humanities and social sciences, and now they are what they are,” said Lisa Moore, UT’s Chair of Women and Gender Studies, in an interview before the consolidation announcement. “We can’t unknow what we know… It’s just not the case that we can believe that only a small slice of human beings are responsible for everything that’s good about the world.”

The cuts come as UT expands its academic offerings in other humanities fields.

UT offers more than 170 fields of undergraduate study and 230 graduate programs. The university has added about a dozen more in the past five years. The School of Civic Leadership just announced a new donor-funded program in Western Civilization and Jewish Studies. The school plans to open two more majors focused on increasing civic education.

Meanwhile, UT is also exploring consolidation in the School of Information and College of Natural Sciences. UT System regents will vote next week on UT's plans to establish a new School of Computing within the College of Natural Sciences. The organizational change would turn the School of Information into a Department of Information. The new school would also hold the Department of Computer Science and Department of Statistics and Data Sciences, and offer the same degrees, according to the agenda released Thursday afternoon.

Faculty insist the consolidated fields at UT are being targeted and defunded for political reasons, not because of waning student interest, funding restrictions or the value of the scholarship. They fear it will hurt the future reputation of the university and students' freedom to learn.

“The changes that are happening are going to, and already have created damage that will last for, I don’t know, decades,” Moore said. “I’ve never seen the forces that want to break down higher education (be) so successful as now.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Conference Videos from "40 Years of Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas: An Anniversary Symposium, February 20-21, 2026

Conference Videos from "40 Years of Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas: An Anniversary Symposium," February 20-21, 2026

Conference videos are now available from “40 Years of Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas: An Anniversary Symposium,” held February 20–21, 2026, commemorating four decades since the 1987 publication of Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 by David Montejano. Montejano’s pathbreaking work fundamentally reshaped how we understand Texas history—demonstrating that the state was forged not through a singular Anglo narrative, but through deeply contested political, economic, and racial formations involving Mexicans and Anglos alike. 

The symposium gathered scholars, undergraduate students, graduate students, and community members to reflect on the book’s enduring influence, its methodological interventions, and its continued relevance amid contemporary struggles over knowledge, curriculum, and power in Texas.

The conversations captured in these videos are both historically grounded and urgently present. At a moment when Mexican American history and ethnic studies face renewed scrutiny, the symposium reminds us why Montejano’s scholarship mattered—and still does. His analysis of racial formation, state violence, labor control, and political exclusion provides an indispensable framework for understanding not only the Texas of the 19th and 20th centuries, but the policy battles unfolding today. 

These recordings are a gift to the broader community: an opportunity to revisit a foundational text and to consider how rigorous, community-rooted scholarship continues to shape the intellectual and political life of Texas. 

On a personal level, David is an old friend of mine who most certainly deserves this loving, heartfelt recognition. It was very moving learning about his struggles in bringing this book to fruition (see Plenary session below). By al means, buy and read the book!

The seminal book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 by David Montejano is celebrating 40 years in print by the University of Texas Press, and it remains one of the most insightful analyses of Texas history to date. Hailed as “the most important race-class analysis of the Chicano experience,” a generation of scholars continue to cite Montejano’s work as an influence on their careers and a model for revisionist historical sociology. The two-day symposium Anglos and Mexicans: Still Making Texas is organized by graduate students in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) under the guidance of Associate Professor C. J. Alvarez, providing an opportunity for inter-generational dialogue that reflects on the book’s legacy and future contributions to Latino Studies and Texas history.

"Long before the explosion of scholarly interest in the borderlands in the 2000s, Montejano asked penetrating questions about how Mexican-descent people make Texas society during the 150 years after the Texas Revolution. Decades after its publication, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 remains a landmark for the study of Mexican Americans, Texas and North America." - Benjamin H. Johnson, Professor in History at Loyola University of Chicago.

Join Latino Studies and MALS at UT Austin for two full days of panel presentations and keynotes, including a keynote plenary by author David Montejano on February 20, along with Texas historians Emilio Zamora and Neil Foley, and moderated by MALS Department Chair Karma Chavez. The symposium will include panel discussions with prominent scholars from across Texas and the United States, as well as a Saturday plenary on the future of Texas history and a graduate student-focused panel of emerging scholarship. Email stillmakingtexas@gmail.com with questions or for more information.

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE

Friday February 20-21, 2026
Gordon-White Building 2.206 | 210 W. 24th Street | The University of Texas at Austin

Friday, February 20th, 2026

9:30 - 11:00am
Session I
Sonia Hernandez, Texas A&M University
Benjamin Johnson, Loyola University
moderated by Paul Del Bosque, The University of Texas at Austin

11:15 - 12:45pm
Session II: Grad Student Lightning Round
ethen peña, The University of Texas at Austin
Jackeline Guajardo, The University of Texas at Austin
Kara Alexandra Culp, The University of Texas at Austin
Leslie Torres, Texas A&M University
Alex Navarrete, Texas State University
moderated by Alfonso Ayala, The University of Texas at Austin

1:45 - 3:15pm
Session III
Phillip (Felipe) Gonzales, The University of New Mexico
Carlos Blanton, The University of Texas at Austin
Aaron Sanchez, Texas Tech University
moderated by Annaliese Martinez, The University of Texas at Austin

4:00 - 6:00pm
Plenary I: Looking Back with Anglos and Mexicans
David Montejano, University of California, Berkeley
Emilio Zamora, The University of Texas at Austin
Neil Foley, Southern Methodist University
moderated by Karma Chavez, The University of Texas at Austin
Saturday, February 21, 2026

Saturday, February 21, 2026

9:30 - 11:00am
Session I
John Weber, Old Dominion University
Elliott Young, Lewis & Clark College
moderated by Paulina Serrano, The University of Texas at Austin

11:15 - 12:45pm
Session II: Grad Student Lightning Round
Jose Roberto Campos Cordero, The University of Texas at Austin
Paul Del Bosque, The University of Texas at Austin
Danielle Sanchez, The University of Texas at Austin
Laura Lamb, The University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley
moderated by C. J. Alvarez, The University of Texas at Austin

1:45 - 3:15pm
Session III
John Moran Gonzalez, The University of Texas at Austin
Annette Rodriguez, The University of Texas at Austin

4:00 - 6:00pm
Plenary II: Looking Ahead in Texas History
Jonathan Cortez, The University of Texas at Austin
Alana de Hinojosa, Texas State University
Monica Muñoz Martinez, The University of Texas at Austin
moderated by ethen peña, The University of Texas at Austin

Note: Please forgive the disruption in the recording; the video begins anew here.

This event is organized by graduate students in the Department of Mexican American & Latina/o Studies under the guidance of Associate Professor C. J. Alvarez and co-sponsored by Latino Studies, the Humanities Institute, the Center for the Study of the Southwest at Texas State University and the Alliance for Texas History.

The UT System’s New ‘Controversial Topics’ Policy Is About Policing Knowledge, by Dr. María Del Carmen Unda, Texas Observer Feb. 20, 2026

In a powerful essay published yesterday by the Texas Observer, Dr. María Del Carmen Unda examines the University of Texas System’s new “controversial topics” policy and asks a question that should unsettle anyone who believes in academic freedom: Who now gets to decide what counts as legitimate knowledge? 

Framed by administrators as a safeguard against advocacy, the policy instead signals a deeper shift—away from disciplinary expertise and toward politically appointed oversight by non-experts. 

When regents and administrators determine what is “germane” in Texas classrooms, the line between academic freedom and political compliance grows dangerously thin. Unda’s piece makes clear that this is not simply about syllabus language; it is about whose histories, communities, and lived realities are deemed too “controversial” to name—and what happens to a university when truth itself must first pass a political test.

-Angela Valenzuela

The UT System’s New ‘Controversial Topics’ Policy Is About Policing Knowledge

When politically appointed regents and administrators determine which topics are “germane,” academic freedom quietly shifts into political compliance.

María Del Carmen Unda | Texas Observer| February 20, 2026, 2:23 PM, CST

n a recent classroom conversation, a student asked whether it was still “allowed” to talk about immigration policy in relation to Texas history. He did not ask because the topic was abstract. He asked because his family lives at the center of it.

That question should concern all of us.

The University of Texas System’s new policy limiting the discussion of “controversial topics” is being framed as a safeguard—an effort to restore “trust,” ensure “balance,” and prevent faculty from engaging in advocacy. But beneath that language lies something far more troubling: a restructuring of who gets to decide what counts as legitimate knowledge.

And in Texas, that decision  is not neutral.

Calls for “both sides” and “non-advocacy” may sound reasonable on the surface. For generations, women of color have shown that “neutrality” is often a way to police whose stories matter and whose expertise counts. Knowledge rooted in lived experience is repeatedly framed as political, while dominant perspectives are treated as universal.

When faculty are told to avoid “controversial” material not explicitly listed in a syllabus, who decides what qualifies? When politically appointed regents and administrators—not disciplinary experts—determine which topics are “germane,” academic freedom quietly shifts into political compliance.

We have seen this pattern before.

Scholarship that challenges white supremacy, colonialism, or state violence is labeled as divisive. Programs rooted in Indigenous, Latinx, and Black knowledge are consolidated, put under review, or dismantled. The result is not balance—it is containment. And nowhere is this containment more stark than in the erasure of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies.

In the UT system nearly 46 percent of the population is Latino. And where Latino students are the majority in public schools, calling the histories, literatures, and political realities of these communities “controversial” is not about neutrality. It is about deciding whose knowledge is expendable.

You cannot teach Texas history honestly without confronting conquest, segregation, labor exploitation, border regimes, and racialized policymaking. You cannot “balance” away genocide or dispossession. To pretend otherwise is not rigor—it is refusal.

But perhaps the most troubling defense of this policy is the claim that it protects students.

On the other hand, feminism teaches us something different: Silence is the tool of the oppressor. 

Our students are not encountering these issues for the first time in a classroom. They are living them. Immigration raids do not pause because a syllabus avoids the topic. Gender violence does not disappear because a professor is told to “remain neutral.” Racism, economic precarity, and state surveillance shape students’ daily lives long before they ever raise a hand in class.

To label the conditions of students’ lives as “controversial” is to tell them their realities are inconvenient. That their truths are risky. That power—not integrity—decides what can be named.

That is not care. That is control.

And it raises a deeper, more difficult question—one we can no longer avoid: Do we continue to fight for our stories to be included in the curriculum at UT System institutions that repeatedly prove themselves hostile toward Indigenous, Latinx, and Black communities? Or do we take this moment to reimagine higher education outside of white supremacy?

What if, instead of fighting to be included in an exclusionary system, we shifted our emphasis from institutional approval to the power of collective consciousness shared among us? What if the work before us is not simply reform, but refusal?

Chicana feminism has always understood that liberation does not come from proximity to power, but from transforming how knowledge is produced, shared, and lived. It asks us not only how institutions exclude us, but how we might begin to unlink—physically and spiritually—from colonial logics altogether.

Audre Lorde reminded us that the master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house. Texas higher education is showing us, once again, the limits of trying to dismantle white supremacy from within institutions built to preserve it.

So perhaps the question is not only how we defend academic freedom inside universities like UT—but how we build spaces of critical consciousness beyond them.

We already have blueprints. Martha Cotera, a Chicana/o civil rights activist, showed us what it looks like to create our own intellectual homes when institutions refuse to hold us. In Austin, that legacy lives in projects like Jacinto Treviño College—a reminder that higher education does not have to be tethered to colonial governance, political surveillance, or white validation to be rigorous, transformative, and rooted in community.

Public universities may continue to hollow themselves out—incrementally, bureaucratically, and quietly. But our knowledge does not disappear when institutions turn away from it.

It migrates. It reorganizes. It builds elsewhere.

What is being labeled “controversial” today is the very knowledge Texas will need to survive tomorrow. Whether universities choose to honor that responsibility—or abandon it—communities will continue doing what they have always done: creating spaces where truth is not feared, but cultivated.

The question is no longer whether higher education can be saved as it is.

The question is whether we are ready to imagine—and build—what comes next.

María Del Carmen Unda is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas. Her research examines education policymaking and access in K–12 schools through higher education, with a focus on the experiences of students of color.

The Heritage Foundation Drove Trump’s 2025 Higher-Ed Agenda. What’s Its Plan for 2026? By Rick Seltzer | The Chronicle of Higher Education | Feb. 13, 2026

Friends,

In a revealing interview in The Chronicle of Higher Education, reporter Rick Seltzer probes the next phase of the Heritage Foundation’s higher-education agenda following the rollout of Project 2025. What emerges is not merely a technocratic debate over accreditation but a sweeping ideological project. Heritage fellow Adam Kissel calls for severing the link between accreditors and federal student aid, effectively removing a long-standing buffer between federal funds and institutional quality review. 

In its place: state-level control, market discipline, and—ultimately—the privatization of federal student aid. 

The proposal frames accreditors as politicized enforcers of DEI and positions states as more trustworthy arbiters of “intellectual” and even “moral” development. 

Geez, how pathetic if not deeply cynical to cloak a project of political consolidation in the language of quality, virtue, and reform. The shift would dismantle a national accountability infrastructure and replace it with a fragmented 50-state experiment, where access, standards, and protections vary dramatically by geography and political climate.

Most alarming is the open embrace of reduced college access as a policy goal. Kissel states plainly, “I want college access to drop,” arguing that expanded access in the 20th century “overachieved” and left too many students with debt and no degree. The tradeoff, he suggests, is how many lives we are willing to “ruin” in order to help those deemed deserving. 

This stark calculus reframes higher education not as a public good but as a selective privilege governed by market sorting and state ideology. Combined with calls to privatize student loans, weaken federal oversight, and reshape curricula around contested visions of Western intellectual and moral formation, the agenda signals a profound reordering of higher education’s civic mission. 

If enacted, these reforms would not simply adjust policy levers; they would narrow pathways to opportunity, intensify political control over knowledge, and destabilize the fragile architecture that has long mediated between public investment and institutional autonomy. 

Forewarned is forearmed.

-Angela Valenzuela

The Heritage Foundation Drove Trump’s 2025 Higher-Ed Agenda. What’s Its Plan for 2026?

By Rick Seltzer | The Chronicle of Higher Education | Feb. 13, 2026

Project 2025, the influential policy blueprint published by the Heritage Foundation, set a clear agenda for the Trump administration’s sweeping efforts to reform higher education in its first year in office. What comes next?

Heritage’s “Themes for Higher Education Reform,” published in January, give an indication. One item high on its list: stripping accreditors of their role as gatekeepers of federal funding. The Trump administration has already sought to shake up accreditation by bringing new agencies into the mix, but the Heritage proposal goes much further.

I dug into that proposal with Adam Kissel, a visiting fellow for higher-education reform at the Heritage Foundation and an author of the report. We started out wonky, but I was surprised to find us veer into deeper questions of moral development and college access. Our conversation shows that higher education and its critics have come to hold far fewer shared assumptions than those on campus might think. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

Why do you want to remove accreditors as gatekeepers of federal funding?

The decoupling of Federal Student Aid from accreditation would help accreditors focus on quality improvement, rather than quality assurance — meaning that quality assurance can continue to be done to some degree by the Department of Education, so long as it exists, but also by the states.

In other words, accreditors wouldn’t cease to exist.

Once they are decoupled from Federal Student Aid, there is no reason for them to be registered by the Education Department. They can continue to do whatever they like. I point to low graduation rates and low-ROI programs as evidence that institutional accreditors have dramatically failed to be reliable authorities as to the quality of institutions of higher education.

Without accreditors as gatekeepers, how would you ensure Federal Student Aid goes to institutions providing quality education?

The quality assurance will be certified by the state, either by their own assurance bodies or by third parties that they choose, which might still include accreditors, if that’s their plan.

Why are the states going to be better at this?

Returning education to the states means that we trust the state, and people of different political persuasions may trust certain states more than others, but that’s the 50-state-experiment idea that is integral to federalism.

We trust the states with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars already on a large variety of issues. It’s only Chicken Little scaremongers who would say that we can only trust these institutional accreditors who have demonstrated that they are already not good at it.

Accreditors aren’t just about quality assurance. They’re seen as insulation from politicization of higher education.

Did you read my paper from a year ago, called “The Politicization of Higher Education Accreditation”? [The paper argues that accreditors have used their gatekeeping role to impose diversity, equity, and inclusion on colleges while thwarting conservative reforms.]

I’m familiar with those criticisms. But whether accreditors are upholding the ideal of political insulation is a different question from whether we want direct state control in colleges that include private enterprises. 

Why would a state be better to dictate whether Ave Maria University or the University of Notre Dame can draw federal funding?

States already have a key role. The secretary of state, traditionally, in a state, decides which corporations are allowed to operate and the standards under which they are audited. It’s nothing new for states to decide who can operate in their state.

I’m not asking whether this is a new discussion. I’m trying to get at the inherent tradeoffs.

Ideally organizations would police themselves. They don’t, and that’s why accreditors or other outside parties are needed. And when accreditors also fail to do their jobs, different outsiders will come in, such as state and federal regulators and legislators, and then you’re kind of out of ideas, except to go to the consumer, and then the consumer votes with his or her feet, right?

So ultimately you want the market to police itself, and usually it does a pretty good job over time.

Government feels like it has an important say in the use of those dollars, at least not to discriminate against your own students or your own job applicants, and that’s what colleges do. Have the accreditors ever said “You can stop discriminating” as a matter of being allowed to operate? Has any accreditor ever told a college that its policies violate the First Amendment?

You’re referring to race-conscious admissions, DEI, and that kind of thing?

That was the first part of my comment. But to turn to the second part of the comment: Has any accreditor ever told a college that its policy violates the First Amendment and that matters for accreditation? Maybe never.

Eliminating accreditors from this role is very different than the solution Republicans have been pitching, which is to start new accreditors.

A lot of higher-education reforms have a Plan B. Plan A is politically unfeasible — to privatize student loans, return all money to the states, greatly diminish the amount of money coming from the federal government into education. All that is very challenging today, so instead, use the powers that are available for reform, and that’s Plan B.

I’m surprised we went down this road, because I expected you might talk about protecting the federal investment through accountability measures. The feds are arguably taking on more quality assurance by looking at outcomes measures, which is still a departure from the process review accreditors do. I expected you might talk about states doing the same.

Oh, I think states such as Florida, which have turned dramatically to performance-based funding, have demonstrated success in institutional improvement.

The point is not to have a federal standard for how colleges are assessed, but to have each state have its own assessment plan. I’m not against ROI for most programs, most of the time, but there are other things to do with your college time, such as develop intellectually, morally, and spiritually. Teachers, they barely even understand that there’s such a thing as intellectual development or moral development that they could focus on in college. It would be wonderful if colleges would measure intellectual and moral development, and if some states would figure out how to assess colleges by those standards.

Is it a state’s role to assess the intellectual and moral development of private actors?

Intellectual development, for sure. Moral development can be done in a viewpoint-neutral way, similar to how current accreditors focus on process rather than outcomes.

How much do you trust the state to protect whatever the minority in that state is?

Some will do better at that than others, and that’s part of the 50-state competition that you get.

The 50-state competition is certainly one of the checks that’s built into the country. Another is checks and balances between branches and levels of government. You may disagree with interpretations of the Commerce Clause, but the feds do have some role in governing interstate commerce. And if you’re talking about interstate competition and students crossing state lines, can it get muddy?

The federal government already has a role, separate from the accreditors and states, in assessing financial viability and administrative capacity.

Which it arguably has not done a particularly good job of.

No doubt we can agree on that.

What else would you like to discuss?

Making it much easier for a new accreditor to take its place among existing accreditors has been a priority in the current administration.

Why won’t that become a race to the bottom — to accreditors that offer rubber stamps?

As we get more and more transparency in ROI and syllabi and other areas, it will become more and more valuable for a college to show that it is accredited by an accreditor with standing in terms of high-quality outcomes for graduates. So why wouldn’t it be a race to the top?

Would any reform really change the dynamics that make it difficult to ensure quality instruction?

It wasn’t until a huge amount of money was in the federal system that we had to start working on this problem, and then put Band-Aids on it. The tough love is to rip all the Band-Aids off, privatize student loans and the federal-aid system, and then we wouldn’t have to worry as much about accreditation and accountability for the federal dollars, because there wouldn’t be any.

And then, arguably, college access drops.

I want college access to drop. Why do I want college access to drop? Do you want there to be colleges with a 12-percent graduation rate, 15 percent, after six years? You want federal dollars to go to that school?

We overachieved in terms of access in the 20th century. We took kids who would have had a great career as an electrician or in the military or as an entrepreneur, and we said, “No, go to college.”

They took six years not to graduate. Now they’re in debt, no good degree. They’ve been moved away from their home community for six years. Their life has been ruined because we told them they should go to college and we gave them enough money to do it.

That may apply to some students, but I might hesitate to say it to those who were able to earn a degree of value only because of federal financial aid.

Yep, totally agree with that critique. The tradeoff is how many students’ lives you want to ruin in exchange for helping students who deserve to be helped.

If a state wants to make its public universities merit-based in such a way that the kids who are smart but poor get a full ride, the states could easily do that. A number of state-scholarship programs probably do that.

Then you get into questions about which tier of institution those students should be able to access, which can be a problem in public-heavy states like California.

If you look at the Ivy League core curriculum and then you look at what a student can choose to take to graduate outside of STEM, these are not top-tier institutions. You take Beyoncé, you take Bad Bunny, as your course. I would rather have my niece stay at Florida State than go to Columbia.

Without having taken the classes, I can’t say for sure, but there may be some value to cultural critique.

I don’t think they’re doing cultural critique so much as cultural appreciation. I would rather have them reading the Iliad than listening to a Bad Bunny song.

An interesting thing to me is the idea that there is no space for both.

My critique is about the core curriculum. What are the things that you should expose an 18-year-old to, so by the time they’re 22 they can take their place among educated men and women of America in the West? They already know the Bad Bunny. They don’t need that in college.

A wonderful product of the market, right?

If you’re spending $80,000 a year and you’re saying, “I want to be educated. You all are pretty smart over there. You faculty, can you articulate what I should know and be able to do intellectually and morally?” And they say, “Here’s 400 courses, just choose any of them,” that’s not a very good use of my $80,000.

A shorter version of this interview appeared in Friday’s Daily Briefing newsletter.


We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

Rick Seltzer
Rick is a senior writer at The Chronicle and author of the Daily Briefing newsletter. He has been an editor at Higher Ed Dive and a reporter and projects editor at Inside Higher Ed. Before focusing on higher-education journalism, he covered business beats for local and regional publications.

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INVITATION: Anniversary Symposium at UT-Austin to Honor Dr. David Montejano's Landmark Book, 'Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas'

INVITATION: Anniversary Symposium at UT-Austin to Honor Dr. David Montejano's Landmark Book, 'Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas'

We gather soon to honor our dear friend and colleague, David Montejano, whose landmark book, Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836–1986, celebrates forty years in print with the University of Texas Press. Hailed as “the most important race-class analysis of the Chicano experience,” Montejano’s work transformed the writing of Texas history. Generations of scholars continue to cite it not only as an influence, but as a model—rigorous, humane, and unflinching in its examination of power, race, and belonging.

At a moment when eliminating the Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies would be nothing short of ill-advised and mean-spirited—as conveyed by Alfonso Ayala III in a guest blog on Latinopia.com posted yesterday to this blog. UT-Austin seeks to diminish, if not erase for current and future generations the very histories and communities that make Texas, "Texas," if you will. 

Montejano’s scholarship stands as a reminder of what is at stake. His work teaches us that Texas has always been shaped through struggle and dialogue, through contestation and collaboration. To diminish the spaces where that history is studied and debated is to narrow our collective understanding of who we are.

In celebration of this enduring legacy, graduate students in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS), under the guidance of Associate Professor C. J. Alvarez, invite you to a two-day symposium: Anglos and Mexicans: Still Making Texas.

-Angela Valenzuela

ANNOUNCEMENT

The seminal book Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 by David Montejano is celebrating 40 years in print by the University of Texas Press, and it remains one of the most insightful analyses of Texas history to date. Hailed as “the most important race-class analysis of the Chicano experience,” a generation of scholars continue to cite Montejano’s work as an influence on their careers and a model for revisionist historical sociology.

Please join us for a two-day symposium Anglos and Mexicans: Still Making Texas, organized by graduate students in the Department of Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) under the guidance of Associate Professor C. J. Alvarez. The symposium provides an opportunity for inter-generational dialogue that reflects on the book’s legacy and future contributions to Latino Studies and Texas history.


Friday & Saturday February 20-21 • UT Austin, Gordon-White Building, 2.102 • 9:30am - 6pm

The symposium includes two full days of panel presentations and keynotes, including a keynote plenary by author David Montejano on February 20th, along with Texas historians Emilio Zamora and Neil Foley, and moderated by MALS Department Chair Karma Chavez. Additional sessions include a Saturday plenary on the future of Texas history, a graduate student panel highlighting emerging scholarship, and discussions with prominent scholars from across Texas and the United States. Visit our website for a full schedule of speakers.

Email stillmakingtexas@gmail.com with questions or for more information.
Please feel free to share the attached flyer with your networks. This event is open to all and no rsvp is required. Anglos and Mexicans: Still Making Texas is co-sponsored by Latino Studies at UT Austin, Texas State University and the Humanities Institute.

Latino Studies, The University of Texas at Austin | GWB 2.102 | 512-471-4557 | liberalarts.utexas.edu/latinostudies