Scholarship in Action: What Dr. Álvaro Huerta Teaches Us About Organizing for Justice

Scholarship in Action: What Dr. Álvaro Huerta Teaches Us About Organizing for Justice

by 

Angela Valenzuela

March 31, 2026

What does it mean to be both a scholar and an organizer in this moment of backlash? In his manifesto posted below together with helpful videos, Dr. Álvaro Huerta offers a powerful answer: theory without practice is hollow, and practice without theory is directionless. Drawing on the concept of praxis from Paulo Freire, Huerta insists that transformative change requires both reflection and action—grounded in lived struggle.

Across decades of activism—from student-led hunger strikes at University of California, Los Angeles to organizing Latino gardeners against criminalization in Los Angeles and leading environmental justice campaigns—Huerta distills key lessons for organizers. First, learn from history. Social movements are not spontaneous; they are built on knowledge, strategy, and study. Second, organize with communities, not for them. This means humility, deep listening, and rejecting top-down approaches that impose outside agendas.

Huerta is equally clear about what not to do: don’t romanticize poverty or confuse marginalization with virtue. Communities deserve material improvements—but without displacement. Effective organizing builds from existing social networks, honoring the dense webs of relationships that sustain working-class life. At the center of this work is confianza—trust—which cannot be rushed, manufactured, or substituted with flyers and speeches.

Perhaps most striking is Huerta’s insistence that organizing is relational. It happens in homes, at kitchen tables, in churches, and yes—even over tacos and beer. These everyday spaces are not peripheral; they are foundational to building the relationships that make collective action possible.

Finally, Huerta reminds us that organizing requires total commitment. Movements demand focus, sacrifice, and an unwavering belief in the possibility of a better world. In this sense, the scholar-activist is not simply an observer of injustice, but an active participant in its undoing.

At a time when higher education itself is under siege, Huerta’s lessons are instructive: real change does not emerge from policy texts alone, but from organized people, grounded in community, moving together with clarity, strategy, and purpose.

A Chicana/o Manifesto on Community Organizing: Reflections of a Scholar-Activist (OPINION)

As an urban planning and ethnic studies scholar with an extensive background in community activism—over the past three decades— I’ve become an expert in community organizing. While some individuals are experts in the theory of community organizing, they lack the practice. Similarly, while other individuals are experts in the practice of community organizing, they lack the theory. In what I call the “dialectic of community organizing,” I possess both the theory and practice. Throughout my lifelong efforts to transform the world for the better, among other influential thinkers throughout history, I’ve coined this concept from the brilliant educator and philosopher Paulo Freire. In his classic book, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, for instance, Freire advances the notion of praxis as “…reflection and action upon the world in order to transform it.”

Since 1985, starting as a freshman at UCLA, I’ve studied social movements and revolutions—both domestically and internationally. This includes the theoretical foundations and leaders behind major societal transformations. Complementing my university studies, during the mid-1980s, I also engaged in student activism (as a MEChista). This included lobbying for U.S. divestment in South Africa’s then-apartheid regime, advocating for racial/economic diversity in higher education and defending the rights of undocumented students (e.g., eight-day hunger strike). While not one of the five hunger strikers, I played a leadership role in a groundbreaking protest at UCLA (November 11-19, 1987), preserving/securing university funding sources (and other services) for undocumented students. Our successful efforts provided an organizing model for other Chicana/o student activists to stage similar hunger strikes at UCLA (May 24-June 7, 1993), UCSB (April 27-May 5, 1994) and other colleges/universities.


Alvaro Huerta. standing second to left in blue sarape, around 1986 (Photo provided by Alvaro Huerta)

At the community level, I—along with fellow activists—co-founded the Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles (ALAGLA) to successfully challenge the City of Los Angeles’ leaf blower ban (1996). This draconian ban included a misdemeanor charge, $1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for cited Latino gardeners. Learning from UCLA’s hunger strike, during the pivotal period of this movement, 11 ALAGLA organizers/members staged a six-day hunger strike in front of City Hall (January 3-9, 1998) to demand justice for honest, hard-working Latino gardeners. (To learn more about this social/economic justice campaign, click here for journal article and here for video.)

Following this dynamic grassroots campaign, as the lead organizer at Communities for Better Environment (CBE) —during the late 1990s and early 2000s— I successfully led an organizing campaign to defeat a proposed power plant in Southeast Los Angeles, specifically, the City of South Gate. If built, the proposed power plant (size of
Dodger Stadium) would have emitted over 150 tons of 
pollution per year, such as particulate matter (PM10). PM10 (or fine particles
of soot) has been linked to premature death, including heart failure and
respiratory ailments, such as asthma and bronchitis. (To learn more about this environmental justice (EJ) campaign, click here for journal article and here for video.)

For the record, all successful community-based campaigns represent collective efforts, where all participants (e.g., leadership, membership, volunteers, sympathizers) deserve credit.

That said, given my positionality as a scholar-activist and public policy advocate (e.g., immigration advocacy) on behalf of los de abajo (or those on the bottom), I offer my dos centavos (or two cents) in a non-ranked order for current and future community organizers to benefit from. (While I have more to say on this important question, I’ll do so in future essays.)
Learning from causes for social, racial and economic justice.

Since the turbulent 1960s to the present, college and university students have played a key role in protesting unjust wars (e.g., Vietnam, Iraq), eradicating racism, defending free speech and fighting for a more just society, among other noble causes. Given their privileged status, college/university students have the luxury of time and access to resources to study contemporary and historical social movements and revolutions. This allows this class or group to learn from influential thinkers and leaders responsible for creating transformative change throughout history. While not limited to college/university students, the idea here is for community organizers to study influential causes and their leaders to be better prepared—theoretically and strategically—for emerging causes or struggles.
Demonstrate humility and don’t impose moral values.

When organizing marginalized community members or vulnerable groups, like Kendrick Lamar—greatest rapper alive—says, “be humble.” Need I say more on this point?

In terms of moral values, it’s imperative that community organizers don’t impose their own values or belief systems on the community members they’re “trying to help.” Organizers should not judge or try to change the behavior of community members or presuppose that they know “what’s good for the community.” Be open, listen and engage in dialogue with community members or group members to better understand why individuals or (sub)groups adopt particular conduct, speech, attire, etc.

Overall, instead of operating from a hierarchal or top-down approach (like some non-profits and unions that I worked for), engage with community members on a horizontal or equal level. In other words, don’t organize “for” community members; organize “with” them.
Don’t romanticize poverty.

There’s nothing good about being poor or the objective conditions of the working poor. I should know since I grew up in abject poverty—both in Tijuana (Baja California, Mexico) and East Los Angeles, as I discussed in my TEDxCPP talk (April 27, 2017). Thus, community organizers shouldn’t shy away from improving the living conditions or neighborhoods of historically disenfranchised groups.



The balance, however, is to improve or invest in these communities without the perils of gentrification or displacement of the same people you’re “trying to help.” For instance, the federal urban renewal program of 20th Century—supposedly aimed at “improving” and “transforming cities”—caused havoc for racialized and working-class communities in America’s barrios and ghettos.
Access existing social networks and build from them.

While racialized and working-class communities may be “poor” in terms of financial capital, they are often “rich” in terms of social networks and other forms of social capital. Social networks constitute interpersonal connections among family members, friends, acquaintances, neighbors, co-workers and other relationships, like those via the church (e.g., padrinos/madrinas, compadres/comadres). For instance, in the case of many Chicana/o-Latina/o households, we can clearly see how they effectively organize themselves (and maintain their cultures/identities) around important family events and celebrations, like weddings, quinceañeras, funerals, baptisms and so on.

To effectively organize and mobilize these communities or members around particular campaigns or issues (e.g., legalize street vending, halt deportations, defeat gentrification), it’s key for community organizers to access these pre-existing networks. For instance, when we—Adrian Alvarez, Pedro Perez and myself—first ventured into the streets of Los Angeles to organize Latino gardeners (an informal labor niche which had never been organized before), we did so by accessing the social networks of a Jaime Aleman—a veteran gardener from Zacatecas, Mexico.

I will never forget that cold Saturday night in the summer of 1996, where we first met with some of Jaime’s paisanos and fellow gardeners behind an apartment building. By accessing and expanding upon Jaime’s social networks, a small group of Chicana/o organizers and gardeners successfully organized Latino gardeners—independent and dispersed workers/petty-entrepreneurs throughout the city—to fight City Hall. By chance, like qualitative researchers, we used this opportunity or insider access to initiate a snowball sampling strategy to obtain referrals or contacts with other gardeners throughout the city.
Building confianza or trust.

Without establishing or building confianza (or trust) between the community organizers and community members/impacted members, the organizers will fail miserably. Confianza isn’t something you can establish overnight. It takes time to establish and build. It also takes patience, honest, transparency, consistency and good deeds on behalf of the organizers. Too often, marginalized community members have been taken advantage of by opportunists, politicians, hustlers, hucksters, etc., in this country and, for some, their home countries. This is one reason why marginalized community members are suspicious of outsiders, despite their good intentions to help improve their plight.

Thus, before any organizer arrives into a community/neighborhood that they’re not embedded in and demand action or participation by the community members, they must first get to know the people, especially on a social or personal level. This includes attending events or places where community members congregate, like schools, churches, parks, etc. It helps to start with one person or a family and build confianza from there. It’s impossible to deliver a political speech at a local school or church, expecting community members to trust you or your good intentions. On a similar note, it’s a waste of money and energy to distribute flyers and expect for community members to join your cause without serious reservations.
Eat the tacos de carnitas.

Should an organizer (or organizers) be fortunate enough to be invited into the home of a Latina/o community member or to attend a special occasion, like a quinceañera, don’t offend the host(s) by rejecting their food. In many Mexican households —both in this country and abroad— the host(s) will often serve their guests food without asking. This applies to the poorest barrios of California to the poorest villages of Chiapas, Mexico. Thus, should the guest(s) refuse to eat the served food, the host(s) will be offended.

When organizing against the power plant proposal in South Gate, for example, I noticed some of my fellow organizers commit this crime or insult. I tried to compensate by ordering some extra tacos de carnitas to go, but the damage had already been done.
Organizing at cantinas and Mexican restaurants.

Community organizing shouldn’t be limited to distributing flyers, holding press conferences and organizing protests. Community organizing should also include gatherings informally or socializing at bars, restaurants, coffee shops and back-yard carne asada cookouts with community members. For instance, when organizing gardeners, we (as Chicana/o activists) established strong personal relationships with the Latino gardeners—mostly from rural Mexico—over some Pacifico and Dos Equis beers. (Actually, “some” is an understatement.) This is an insightful point that Adrian Alvarez, president of ALAGLA, discussed at a symposium (on May 13, 2015) at UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center (CSRC): “Organizing Latino Immigrants in the Informal Economy: The Successful Case of the Association of Latin American Gardeners of Los Angeles.”


Immerse yourself into organizing campaign.

When organizing a grassroots campaign, you must immerse yourself and focus on the campaign or larger movement. Too often, organizers spread themselves too thin by taking on too many campaigns at once. This is a recipe for failure. When I co-organized the gardeners or led the campaign against the power plant, I immersed or committed myself without external distractions. This allowed me to focus on my particular role within the given organizing campaign and collective objectives.

While there are psychological and physical costs to being fully immersed or committed to a challenging organizing campaign or cause, where you’re constantly thinking about the opponents (e.g., corporation, City Hall, federal government) and major obstacles, etc., this is the price one pays for fighting/dreaming for a better world!

To conclude, I end with the brilliant words of Ricardo Flores Magón (1921)—the precursor of the Mexican Revolution: “The dreamer is the designer of tomorrow… Suppress the dreamer, and the world will deteriorate towards barbarism.”

***

Alvaro Huerta, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Urban & Regional Planning and Ethnic & Women’s Studies (EWS) California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

A Thoughtful Introduction to my book, Subtractive Schooling—Through Becky Morales’ Lens, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

A Thoughtful Introduction to my book, Subtractive Schooling—Through Becky Morales’ Lens, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Every now and then, someone comes along who is able to take a body of work and make it newly accessible—clear, grounded, and meaningful in ways that reach beyond the academy. I want to share one such example with you. In this YouTube video, educator and global learning advocate Becky Morales offers a thoughtful and generous reading of my book, Subtractive Schooling: U.S.-Mexican Youth and the Politics of Caring. What I appreciate most about her interpretation is not simply that she engages the core ideas, but that she does so with care, clarity, and a deep respect for the lived experiences at the heart of the work.

Becky brings into focus what “subtractive schooling” really means—not as an abstract concept, but as something that shapes students’ identities, language, and sense of belonging. As she notes, the book examines how schooling processes can strip away students’ cultural and linguistic resources even as they claim to educate them . At the same time, she highlights the importance of what I have called “authentic caring”—a form of relational, humanizing practice that stands in contrast to these subtractive forces.

What is especially meaningful to me is how Becky translates these ideas for educators, parents, and community members. She reminds us that this work is not only about critique, but about possibility—about how we might do schooling differently, in ways that affirm rather than erase who students are.

I share this not to revisit my own work, but to lift up hers. In a moment when conversations about education are often flattened into soundbites or politicized narratives, Becky Morales offers something else: a careful, accessible, and deeply humane engagement with what is at stake for young people in our schools.

I hope you’ll take a few minutes to watch. It’s a beautiful example of what it means to read with care—and to teach with purpose. You may follow her YouTube @BeckyMorales

 

Becky Morales, creator of KidWorldCitizen.org and author of GlobalEdToolkit.com, shares activities to enhance global learning. Topics include: geography, world culture, empathy, service learning, cultural exchange, family travel, world recipes/music/films for kids, multicultural crafts, multicultural children's literature, educational technology, adoption, and multicultural families.

Civil Rights, Reversed: When “Equality” Masks Inequality, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

 Civil Rights, Reversed: When “Equality” Masks Inequality

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 28, 2026

There is a through line connecting two arguments that, at first glance, may appear distinct but are in fact deeply aligned. One, advanced by Christopher Rufo, calls for a “colorblind” reinterpretation of civil rights law—one that would prohibit any consideration of race, even for remedial purposes. The other, emerging from more radical libertarian circles, goes further: it claims that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 itself is an illegitimate infringement on freedom of association and suggests it should be dismantled altogether. 

What links these positions is not merely their skepticism of race-conscious policy, but a shared project of narrowing—if not undoing—the legal architecture of civil rights itself. For a revealing articulation of this trajectory, see Ross Douthat’s interview with Rufo in The New York Times (Douthat, 2025).

Taken together, these positions mark not a debate over policy nuance, but a coordinated redefinition of civil rights. One narrows its meaning to the point of inversion. The other seeks its outright elimination. Both rest on the same premise: that efforts to address inequality are themselves the problem.

Let us begin with the “colorblind” argument. Its appeal lies in its simplicity: no advantages or disadvantages based on ancestry; no consideration of race in admissions, hiring, or public policy. Equality, in this view, is achieved by ignoring history and the politics of difference altogether.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

But this formulation depends on a false premise—that we are operating on a level playing field. We are not. 

What this argument ultimately masks is not neutrality, but grievance politics reframed as principle. Under the banner of “colorblind equality,” what is being advanced is a narrative of injury—that white Americans, and particularly those aligned with dominant institutional power, are now the true victims of discrimination. This is not a legal argument so much as a political one. It converts historically grounded efforts at remedy into perceived acts of injustice, recasting inclusion as exclusion and equity as unfairness. 

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

In doing so, it mobilizes resentment while disavowing it, presenting grievance as constitutional fidelity. But grievance politics, however carefully dressed in the language of rights, does not resolve inequality—it obscures it. And in the current Texas context, it provides the affective fuel for policies like anti-DEI Senate Bill 17 and Senate Bill 37 where the rhetoric of neutrality legitimates the restructuring of institutions in ways that ultimately consolidate, rather than challenge, existing hierarchies.

The United States did not arrive at inequality by accident. It was produced through centuries of law and policy: enslavement, segregation, exclusion from housing and employment, and systematic disinvestment. The Jim Crow laws were not merely social customs; they were legal regimes that structured access to opportunity. The Civil Rights Act was enacted precisely to dismantle those regimes and, crucially, to enable remedies where their effects persisted.

To collapse race-conscious remedies into “racial favoritism,” as Rufo does, is to erase this history. It is to treat corrective measures as equivalent to the harms they were designed to address. This is not legal reasoning; it is what I would call policy theater—a reframing of institutional retrenchment as moral clarity.

We see the consequences of this reframing most clearly in Texas.

With SB 17, the state has effectively banned DEI initiatives across public universities, invoking the language of neutrality while triggering widespread anticipatory compliance. Programs have been dismantled, trainings canceled, and academic units reorganized in ways that extend well beyond the statute’s text. At the University of Texas at Austin, the consolidation of departments focused on race, ethnicity, and gender signals not simply administrative efficiency, but a reorientation of institutional priorities.

SB 37 builds on this foundation by weakening faculty governance and centralizing authority, reducing the capacity of academic communities to respond collectively to these changes. The result is not a neutral landscape, but a managed one—where the boundaries of permissible knowledge are increasingly shaped by political directives.

This is the paradox of the “colorblind” project: in the name of limiting the role of the state, it invites a different kind of state intervention—one that withdraws protections while actively restructuring institutions.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

The libertarian argument takes this logic to its endpoint. If any government mandate for nondiscrimination is an infringement on liberty, then civil rights law itself must be dismantled. Businesses, employers, and institutions should be free to associate—or refuse to associate—on any basis, including race.

At first glance, this may appear as a principled defense of freedom. In reality, it rests on a deeply flawed understanding of both freedom and history.

Freedom of association has never been absolute, particularly in the public sphere. Once an entity opens itself to the public—whether a restaurant, a university, or an employer—it becomes part of a broader civic infrastructure. The rules that govern that space are not arbitrary constraints; they are conditions that make participation possible.

Without such protections, “freedom” becomes asymmetrical. Those with power retain the freedom to exclude, while those without it bear the consequences.

This is not a hypothetical concern. It is a historical fact.

Prior to the Civil Rights Act, discrimination in public accommodations, employment, and education was not episodic—it was systemic. Entire populations were excluded from the basic institutions of public life. To suggest that market forces alone would have corrected these injustices is to ignore the depth and durability of structural inequality.

Here, the libertarian argument converges with the “colorblind” one. Both assume that inequality is either no longer significant or irrelevant to the question of justice. Both prioritize formal neutrality over substantive fairness. And both, in doing so, risk entrenching the very inequalities they claim to transcend.

As Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has argued, colorblind ideology functions by masking structural inequality, allowing it to persist under the guise of neutrality (Bonilla-Silva, 2018). And as Kimberlé Crenshaw reminds us, civil rights law has always been contested terrain—expanded through struggle, and vulnerable to retrenchment (Crenshaw, 1988).

What we are witnessing now is a moment of such retrenchment.

The language of civil rights is being repurposed to constrain remedy. The concept of freedom is being narrowed to exclude considerations of equity. And the institutions tasked with fostering knowledge and opportunity are being reshaped accordingly.

The stakes are not abstract.

They are visible in classrooms where faculty hesitate to engage certain topics. In departments that are merged or dissolved. In students who find fewer spaces where their histories and experiences are taken seriously as objects of study. In a broader climate where the line between policy and politics grows increasingly difficult to discern.

The question before us is not whether we believe in equality. It is what kind of equality we are willing to defend.

Digital graphic by Angela Valenzuela

Is it an equality that ignores history, overlooks power, and quietly reproduces existing hierarchies? It is an equality that recognizes the unfinished work of democracy—one that understands that justice requires more than neutrality—one that requires attending to the conditions that make inequality endure?

In Texas, this question is no longer theoretical. It is legislative. It is institutional. And it is unfolding in real time.

The answer we choose will determine not only the future of civil rights law, but the meaning of freedom itself.

References

Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists: Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (5th ed.). Rowman & Littlefield.

Crenshaw, K. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1331–1387.

Douthat, R. (2025, March 7). The anti-D.E.I. crusader who wants to dismantle the Department of Education. The New York Times.

From Deficit to Doctrine: The Hidden Logic Behind the University of North Texas Denton's Drastic Program Cuts, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

From Deficit to Doctrine: The Hidden Logic Behind the University of North Texas Denton's Drastic Program Cuts

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 28, 2026

The headline in the Texas Tribune is is nothing short of staggering: "University of North Texas to cut more than 70 programs and minors to trim $45 million deficit." At first glance, the decision by the University of North Texas to eliminate more than 70 academic programs, minors, and certificates appears to be a straightforward case of institutional belt-tightening. A $45 million deficit, declining international enrollment, and reduced state funding are presented as the primary drivers. President Harrison Keller has been explicit: no state official directed these cuts. On its surface, then, this reads as a story of fiscal responsibility.

But to read it that way alone is to miss two critical dynamics. First, the revenue shortfall is tied to the steep decline in international students—who have long subsidized public universities by paying full tuition. Second, it obscures how power operates in the current context. In Texas today, policy does not always arrive as an explicit mandate; it often works through what might be called anticipatory compliance—a form of governance in which institutions reorganize themselves in response to political signals rather than direct edicts.

Hence, the pattern of what is being eliminated matters. The phase-out of programs in Women and Gender Studies, LGBTQ Studies, Latino and Latin American studies, Mexican American Studies, Africana Studies, and Asian studies is not incidental. It reflects a broader alignment between institutional decision-making and an increasingly restrictive political climate around race, gender, and knowledge itself.

The university’s stated rationale rests on metrics—low enrollment, high instructional costs, and a concept that has gained traction in higher education: “time to value.” Programs are evaluated according to how quickly graduates can recoup the cost of their degrees through post-graduation earnings. Framed this way, the cuts appear pragmatic. Yet this metric quietly narrows the meaning of education. 

Fields that interrogate power, history, language, and inequality rarely produce immediate financial returns. Their contributions are less easily quantified but no less essential. They cultivate the habits of mind necessary for democratic life: critical analysis, historical awareness, and the capacity to engage across difference. To judge them primarily through wage outcomes is not simply to measure their value differently; it is to redefine what counts as valuable knowledge in the first place.

Although President Keller has emphasized that the program cuts are separate from political pressures, the broader context cannot be ignored. In recent years, Texas has witnessed the dismantling of DEI infrastructures through legislation such as Senate Bill 17, alongside executive and administrative directives that narrow acceptable discourse on race, gender, and sexuality. Universities have been asked to review curricula under compliance frameworks that, while not explicitly banning certain fields, clearly signal heightened scrutiny. 

At the same time, faculty governance has been weakened through measures such as Senate Bill 37 , shifting decision-making authority away from traditional shared governance structures. In such an environment, institutions do not need to be told what to cut. They understand the terrain well enough to adjust on their own.

This is what policy looks like when it operates without formal declaration. No directive is issued, yet outcomes begin to mirror political priorities. The language remains managerial—efficiency, sustainability, return on investment—but the effects are unmistakably political. The adoption of “time to value” as a guiding principle further embeds this shift, privileging disciplines aligned with immediate labor market demands while marginalizing those that offer critical perspectives on society. 

Linguistics, for instance, may not produce the highest salaries, but its applications span law, education, and technology. Ethnic studies fields are indispensable for understanding demographic change and inequality in a state as diverse as Texas. Their elimination signals not just a budgetary decision, but a reordering of intellectual priorities—raising questions about coherence as the university simultaneously advances a new undergraduate degree in artificial intelligence, a field deeply rooted in linguistics (Breeding-Gonzales, 2026).

Equally telling is the reported lack of meaningful faculty consultation. This reflects a broader transformation in governance across Texas higher education, where decisions once shaped through deliberation are increasingly centralized. As shared governance erodes, so too does the ability of institutions to resist external pressures—whether economic, political, or ideological. What emerges is a system in which major academic decisions can be made quickly, efficiently, and with limited internal dissent.

The consequences are already visible. Students are forced to reconsider their academic trajectories. Departments lose the capacity to sustain intellectual communities. Campuses become thinner spaces, offering fewer opportunities to engage deeply with questions of race, gender, and inequality. Over time, the public itself is affected, as the range of knowledge produced and circulated through these institutions narrows.

None of this occurs through dramatic decree. It unfolds incrementally, through decisions that, taken individually, appear reasonable—even necessary. But collectively, they amount to something far more significant: a restructuring of knowledge itself.

The question, then, is not whether universities should be fiscally responsible. It is what values guide those decisions. If higher education is reduced to workforce preparation alone, programs that challenge power and expand democratic understanding will always be at risk. If, however, universities are understood as public goods—institutions responsible for cultivating not only workers but informed and engaged citizens—then a different calculus is required.

What is happening at the University of North Texas is not an isolated development. It is part of a broader reconfiguration of higher education in Texas and across the nation. The language used to justify it may be technocratic, but the underlying logic is unmistakably political. And its consequences will shape not only what universities teach, but what society is able to know about itself.

Reference

Breeding-Gonzales, L. (2026, February 24). UNT to launch undergraduate AI degree this fall, Denton Record-Chronicle.

University of North Texas to cut more than 70 programs and minors to trim $45 million deficit

Offering new details, President Harrison Keller said no state official pushed for the changes, which include phasing out degrees in linguistics and Latin American and women’s and gender studies.

by Jessica Priest March 20, 2026, 2:15 p.m. Central Updated March 25, 2026, 1:40 p.m. Central


Students walk the University of North Texas campus in Denton on Feb. 24, 2022. Shelby Tauber for The Texas Tribune

University of North Texas President Harrison Keller offered new details this week after announcing plans to cut or consolidate more than 70 academic programs, minors and certificates as it works to close a projected $45 million budget shortfall driven by a sharp decline in international enrollment and reduced state funding.

“We weren’t directed to eliminate programs by any state official,” Keller said in a March 24 interview with The Texas Tribune about a plan that includes phasing out its linguistics degrees, eliminating a women’s and gender studies master’s program and cutting a bachelor’s degree in Latino and Latin American Studies, along with 25 undergraduate minors and more than 40 certificate programs.

The minors being eliminated include women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, Mexican American studies, Africana studies, Asian studies as well as dance, geology and special education.

The cuts come amid a broader political climate in which Texas public universities have faced pressure from state Republican leaders and conservative activists to limit teaching about gender, race and sexuality.

Last fall, the UNT System, like other public university systems in the state, ordered a review of its courses. Some university systems said the reviews were meant to ensure compliance with an executive order from President Donald Trump, a directive from Gov. Greg Abbott and House Bill 229, all of which recognize only two sexes, male and female, though none explicitly bans teaching gender-related topics.

The UNT System did not cite a specific law when it ordered its review.

Keller said that review is separate from the decision to cut areas of study and expected to be complete by April 1.

Earlier this year, Texas A&M eliminated its women’s and gender studies program, while the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Texas at San Antonio moved to consolidate programs focused on race, gender and ethnicity.

Keller and Provost Michael McPherson said in a March 19 message to the campus community that the decisions followed a “careful review.” They said the linguistics department has seen declining enrollment since 2021, along with higher instructional costs and lower “time to value,” and that the merger with the Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures will take effect Sept. 1.

They said the master’s programs being cut enrolled an average of 15 or fewer students over the past five years, while the undergraduate minors had 20 or fewer students since 2021 and certificate programs had fewer than two students per year.

Students enrolled in affected programs will be able to complete their degrees, but new students will no longer be admitted.

“We must adapt to meet the changing needs of our students, employers and communities across Texas and beyond, especially by providing degree and credential pathways that translate into opportunities beyond graduation,” they wrote.

William Salmon, chair of the linguistics department, told the Tribune that faculty learned of the decision shortly before every else did.

“And we weren’t consulted on the matter at all,” he said.

Salmon declined to elaborate further, saying he was focused on supporting students and faculty and “answering the many questions coming in.”

University officials did not immediately respond to detailed questions last week, but Keller said this week that the changes are expected to save the university “a few million dollars” over the next several years, though the exact amount remains unclear. He said the university uses “time to value” to measure how long it takes graduates to recoup the cost of their degrees, factoring in tuition, lost wages while enrolled and typical earnings after graduation, and that officials aim for programs to reach that point in less than 10 years.

Last month, UNT offered buyouts to faculty with at least 15 years of service. Tenured faculty could receive a payout equal to one year of salary, while some non-tenure-track faculty on multiyear contracts could receive half a year’s salary to leave early. About 30 faculty members have applied ahead of the the April 10 deadline, Keller said, and no faculty have been laid off, though some adjunct instructors may not be rehired if their courses were eliminated.

UNT is also planning to move more lectures online in response to the budget shortfall. Beginning this fall, more than 40 courses will shift to a model where lectures are delivered online and students attend weekly in-person sessions in smaller groups focused on discussion and problem-solving. Keller said the hybrid courses will include an additional $35 per credit hour fee, capped at $315 per semester, to cover technology costs, and described the model as a way to serve more students without making more hires.

It’s not yet clear the total number of students enrolled in the affected programs or how long required courses will continue to be offered.

Grace Youngberg, a third-year linguistics major, said she was shocked and felt “disrespected” by the decision and lack of prior notice.

She had planned to attend graduate school at UNT and pursue a career in forensic linguistics, applying language analysis in legal settings to help people better understand and communicate in court proceedings.

Now, she said, she may have to look elsewhere to continue her studies.

Youngberg also questioned the university’s emphasis on “time to value.”

“Putting a monetary value on education to begin with is closed-minded,” she said, adding that there is a need for linguists even if the field is not the highest paying.

Nearly 47,000 students attend the Denton university.

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

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

National scholars of Latino studies protest elimination of the department at UT Austin, K-UT News

Friends:

Glad this rally took place yesterday at the National Latina/x/o Studies Association (LSA) meeting that is taking place currently. News of consolidation is shocking to folks coming from other campuses, a number of whom wouldn't be where they are professionally had it not been for UT Austin's Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies.

David Vazquez framed the site as a cornerstone of the profession, stressing the collective duty to preserve it. As conference participant, Professor Suhey Vega underscores, forcing these communities together creates a system in which they must compete—often with one another—for limited funding, a dynamic that is both unjust and counterproductive. 

In this light, consolidation is not merely administrative efficiency; it becomes a mechanism that redistributes scarcity downward, compelling historically marginalized fields to struggle against each other for survival rather than enabling them to collectively advance knowledge and equity.

We have no other option than to continue protesting this vigorously.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.


National scholars of Latino studies protest elimination of the department at UT Austin

KUT 90.5 | By Greta Díaz González Vázquez
Published March 27, 2026 at 12:01 PM CDT

UT professor Karma Chávez said faculty members were asked to review their curriculum and what majors will be offered in the future. Patricia Lim-K-UT News

As the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) department at UT Austin is set to disappear, scholars from all over the country attended the national Latina/x/o Studies Association (LSA) meeting on campus this week. Researchers held a rally on Thursday outside the conference to protest changes at the College of Liberal Arts.

“This place is one of the places that is the origin points of our profession,” said David Vazquez, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and the president of LSA. “We need to be here to protect this place.”

In February, UT President Jim Davis announced seven departments, including ethnic and gender studies departments, would be consolidated into two newly created departments and said academic courses would be reviewed.

Since the announcement, UT officials have not shared any further details with the community about the consolidation. But Karma Chávez, a professor in the MALS department, says faculty have been tasked with reviewing the current majors and proposing what majors will be offered in the future.

Suhey Vega, a professor at Arizona State University, where a similar consolidation happened in 2008, says eliminating the autonomy of areas of study comes with long-lasting consequences.

“It's important to realize that in joining these communities together, especially by force, you're creating a system in which they have to fight, sometimes with each other, for funding, and that is ridiculous and unfair,” Vega said.

Vega, who grew up in Texas, said it was important for her to attend the conference to demand that Tejano history is known in the state.

Vazquez, the LSA president, said the conference was held at UT Austin to honor the history and significance its programs have had for Latino studies, and to express solidarity with faculty and students. He said over 600 academics registered for the conference, and over 700 research proposals were submitted, making it one of the biggest Latino studies conferences in the country.

Latino studies at UT began in the 1970s with the creation of the Center for Mexican American Studies. It was born out of community pressure to have a program that reflected Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x experiences.

Since then it’s been the academic home of internationally renowned scholars, like one of the first border researchers, Américo Paredes, and Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa. MALS was created in 2014 and is now the only department in Texas and one of a few in the country to offer a Ph.D. in Latino studies.

When the consolidation was announced, Davis said UT is committed to ensuring every student has access to a balanced educational experience.

Julie Minich, a professor in UT's English department, said faculty have tried engaging with university officials to show that the work at MALS comes from a diverse point of view, but have not received a positive response.

“Efforts to justify this have been minimal because there are no justifications,” Minich said. “Eliminating our departments and telling their students that their presence at this university is not wanted tells the 40% of Latino population of the state of Texas that the public flagship [university] is not for them.”

KUT News reached out to UT Austin for comment and has not heard back.

Featuring Katherine Stewart: Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

Featuring Katherine Stewart: Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy

If you are trying to understand this political moment—not just its surface conflicts, but the deeper architecture of power shaping it—then Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy by Katherine Stewart is essential reading. With careful reporting and years of embedded research, Stewart maps a coordinated movement where concentrated wealth, strategic disinformation, and Christian nationalism converge to reshape American democracy itself. 

Adam Gabbatt in The Guardian proves more detail; however, I urge you to read the book. It's a good audiobook, too. 

What makes this book especially powerful is not only its diagnosis of what she calls “reactionary nihilism,” but its clarity about how such forces organize, message, and endure. This is not simply a warning—it is a call to think more urgently, strategically, historically, and collectively about the defense of democratic life.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Katherine Stewart and her book, Money, Lies and God. Composite: The Guardian/Katherine Stewart/Bloomsbury


‘Reactionary nihilism’: how a rightwing movement strives to end US democracy


Adam Gabbatt | January 2025 | The Guardian
article is more than 1 year old

Money, Lies, and God exposes a Christian nationalist movement funded by the super-rich seeking to secure their wealth at the expense of othersThere is a “real and very, very present” threat to the US from a shadowy collection of rightwing leaders, a new book on the movement behind Donald Trump warns, with the aim being “an end to pluralistic democracy”.

Katherine Stewart, a journalist who specializes in the religious right, spent years researching the money and influence that has aided and encouraged tens of millions of Americans in their worship at the throne of Trump.


The result is Money, Lies and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy, which sees Stewart explore the “antidemocratic movement” – an unholy mix of Christian nationalists, billionaire oligarchs and conservative ideologues who have seized control of the Republican party, and aim to fundamentally change the US.

“Money is a huge part of the story, meaning that huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system. Second, lies, or conscious disinformation, is a huge feature of this movement. And third God, because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism,” Stewart said.

In the book, Stewart details how Republicans have been held hostage by the antidemocratic movement, something that “came together long before Donald Trump descended on a golden escalator in 2015 to announce his candidacy for president”.

Stewart – whose previous two books, The Good News Club and The Power Worshippers, focused on the impact of the Christian right and religious nationalism in the US – spent years traveling to an array of rightwing conferences, from Christian nationalist events to ”Make America great again” fests and sober think tank talks, and found many similarities. The eclectic groups may not seem to have much in common, but their aim is the same: bringing an end to democracy in the US as we know it. Their method of achieving that is the same too.

“The overwhelming message, from speaker after speaker, was that ‘Trump needs to be allowed to enact his agenda, and you need to get behind him,’” Stewart said.

Though there is an intriguing collection of individuals and organizations in the movement, Stewart categorizes its members as Christian nationalists – who believe, wrongly, that America was founded as a Christian nation and must be governed as such – and the super-rich, who are seeking to secure their own wealth at the expense of others.

“Much of the energy of the movement, too, comes from below, from the anger and resentment that characterizes life among those who perceive, more or less accurately, that they are falling behind,” Stewart writes.

“The best label I can find for the phenomenon – and I do not pretend it is a fully satisfactory label – is ‘reactionary nihilism’. It is reactionary in the sense that it expresses itself as mortal opposition to a perceived catastrophic change in the political order; it is nihilistic because its deepest premise is that the actual world is devoid of value, impervious to reason, and governable only through brutal acts of will. It stands for a kind of unraveling of the American political mind – a madness that now afflicts one side of nearly every political debate.”

Stewart tells the story of how American Christians rallied in response to a plan by Catholic bishops in 1986 to call on their flock to support “economic justice for all”. The bishops’ sentiment was “a challenge to President Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economic ideology”, Stewart writes – and sent Christian capitalists scrambling.

Over the next few decades, ultra-wealthy Christian donors spent millions promoting a different vision of the gospel, one which Stewart writes “promote[s] the capitalist institutions of property, markets, and free enterprise”.

Among the leaders of that movement were Thomas Monaghan, the founder of Domino’s Pizza who in 2002 attempted to build a 250ft-tall crucifix in Michigan, banker Frank Hanna, hedge fund manager Sean Fieler and Timothy Busch, who in donating to the Catholic University of America in 2015 announced that he was “proud to donate to CUA’s vision for an educational program that shows how capitalism and Catholicism can work hand in hand”. Together, they and others have pledged fortunes toward Republican candidates and causes, and established thinktanks and organizations designed to push pro-capitalist, antidemocratic causes – in a way Stewart said Democrats have yet to counter.

“I’m always impressed by how well-organized and strategic this movement is,” Stewart said, noting that it offers “young people and newcomers” a “sustainable career path and incentive to create their futures, secure their futures within the movement”.

Stewart continued, pointing out that “there are pro-democracy thinktanks and institutions and the like, but they tend to center on policy and issues: pro-democracy forces don’t seem to identify and mentor young talent in the same way, they don’t organize and collaborate in the same way.

“They don’t operate with the same coordination of the right, they don’t think strategically about messaging, and about voter engagement and winning over the rank and file.”

Stewart documents some of the troubling ways that organizations, supported by those wealthy backers, have spent their energy – including how they have pushed people to vote. She reports on Chad Connelly, the founder of Faith Wins, an initiative which seeks to turn pastors and churchgoers into political activists.

“The Faith Wins website encourages event attendees to help lead voter registration in their churches with the help of a ‘pastors tool kit’, become poll watchers, and assist ‘with voter integrity efforts’ and other actions,” Stewart writes.

“Pastors are given a QR code, along with an online form, which leads to a suite of tools and messaging materials, including voter guides, voter registration resources, and videos they can use to activate their congregations.”

A central issue for Connelly and Faith Wins is election integrity, which he expounds upon repeatedly in his TV appearances. This is one of the central themes that unites the diverse groups in the antidemocratic movement: Stewart writes that the State Policy Network of libertarian thinktanks and the Virginia Project – a pugnacious get-out-the-vote Republican organization which aims to “eliminate the Democrat party” – may not share the Christian nationalist theology of Faith Wins, but they have the same focus.

“The point, of course, is to convey the frightening but entirely unsubstantiated belief that vast plots are afoot to steal Republican votes,” Stewart writes.

It might seem like a gloomy situation, and a grim future for the US. But Stewart insists the situation is not hopeless.

“We don’t have to crawl into bed and take it. They organized and strategized their way into power, and we need to organize and strategize back,” she said.

Indeed, Stewart ends the book on an optimistic note, listing “six principal findings reported in this book … which should be of interest to a pro-democracy movement”.

“There’s no magic bullet. It’ll take time and effort. But if there is a will for it to be done, I think it can be done,” she said.

“There’s no feature as of yet in the American political system that would ensure that the Maga movement is going to rule indefinitely. And frankly, I take heart from the fact that those of us who believe in democracy and its core principles probably represent a majority and not a minority of the population. I continue to believe more Americans support a democratic political system over some sort of cronyistic, kleptocratic and theocratic system that has authoritarian features.”

Individuated Into Silence: Why the Heterodox Academy Gets Higher Education Wrong, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Individuated Into Silence: Why the Heterodox Academy Gets Higher Education Wrong

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 26, 2026

I saw this video this evening on the Heterodox Academy and decided to write this blog that you can understand best if you view this video on the organization's website.

A growing chorus of voices associated with the Heterodox Academy insists that the central task of higher education is to treat students as individuals—to “individuate” them, to strip away group identities, and to return the university to a supposedly neutral space of ideas. On its surface, this sounds reasonable, even principled. But beneath this framing lies a profound misunderstanding of both education and democracy.

The problem is not individuality. The problem is individualism detached from history, power, and community.

To “individuate” students in the abstract is to ignore the conditions that shape their lives: race, class, language, gender, citizenship status, urbanity, and the institutional arrangements that structure opportunity. It is to pretend that students arrive on campus as free-floating agents rather than as members of communities with histories of exclusion, resilience, and struggle. This is not neutrality. It is erasure.

In fact, the call to individuate often functions as a quiet form of depoliticization. It relocates structural inequality into the realm of personal responsibility and reframes collective concerns as distractions from intellectual life. In doing so, it mirrors what Apple (2018) identified as the ideological work of schooling: to naturalize inequality by presenting it as the outcome of individual differences rather than systemic conditions.

But students—especially in this century—do not need to be stripped of their connections. They need to be anchored in them.

The challenges they face are not individual problems. Climate change, racial injustice, democratic erosion, and economic precarity are collective crises that demand collective capacities. Preparing students to navigate such a world requires more than critical thinking in isolation; it requires relational thinking, coalitional practice, and community accountability (Giroux, 2020).

This is why the most powerful educational spaces today are not those that isolate students into individualized intellectual actors, but those that cultivate shared inquiry and collective agency. Ethnic Studies, community-based learning, and culturally sustaining pedagogies do precisely this. They do not deny individuality; they situate it—within histories, within communities, within movements for justice (Paris & Alim, 2017; Solórzano & Delgado Bernal, 2001).

Indeed, as Paulo Freire (1970) reminds us, education is never a solitary act. It is a dialogical process rooted in relationships, in naming the world together, and in transforming it. To educate is not to extract individuals from community, but to deepen their capacity to act within it.

The Heterodox Academy’s framework ultimately rests on a thin vision of democracy—one that imagines a marketplace of ideas populated by disembodied individuals. But democracy is not sustained by isolated thinkers. It is sustained by communities capable of deliberation, solidarity, and action (Dewey, 2004).

If we are serious about preparing students for the world they are inheriting, we must reject the false choice between individuality and community. The task is not to individuate students away from one another, but to cultivate individuals in and through community—capable of thinking critically, acting collectively, and building a more just society.

Anything less leaves them alone in a world that demands we face it together.

References

Apple, M. W. (2018). Ideology and curriculum (4th ed.). Routledge.

Dewey, J. (2004). Democracy and education. Dover. (Original work published 1916)

Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum.

Giroux, H. A. (2020). On critical pedagogy (2nd ed.). Bloomsbury.

Paris, D., & Alim, H. S. (2017). Culturally sustaining pedagogies: Teaching and learning for justice in a changing world. Teachers College Press.

Solórzano, D. G., & Delgado Bernal, D. (2001). Examining transformational resistance through a critical race and LatCrit theory framework: Chicana and Chicano students in an urban context. Urban Education, 36(3), 308–342.

Silence Has a Sound: Texas' SB 37, the End of Shared Governance, and the Structured Diminishment of Voice, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Silence Has a Sound: Texas' SB 37, the End of Shared Governance, and the Structured Diminishment of Voice

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 23, 2026

What if the 1963 song, “The Sounds of Silence” authored by Paul Simon and that he & Art Garfunkel sang is not only existential loneliness, but the quiet cultural condition that makes authoritarianism possible? Or might it not reflect dystopian futurity under American fascism about which Katharine Stewart writes in her New York Times best-selling book, Money, Lies, and God: Inside the Movement to Destroy American Democracy (2025)?

I encourage you to listen to the song here. 

Listen here. 

While Paul Simon did not explicitly write the song as a critique of fascism, critical theorists—from Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt to Herbert Marcuse—have long warned that domination often advances not only through coercion, but through conformity, passivity, and the erosion of meaningful dialogue about which Simon indeed wrote.

In this vein, Horkheimer and Adorno (1944/2002) theorize how mass culture can dull critical consciousness, producing compliance rather than critique. Arendt (1951) reminds us that authoritarianism thrives where public discourse collapses and individuals retreat into isolation. 

Read in this light, the song’s haunting refrain—“people talking without speaking, people hearing without listening”—evokes not just alienation, but a hollowing out of democratic life itself. 

It has a sound. It surfaces in whispers and half-spoken cautions, in the careful recalibration of what can be said and where, in meetings where voices once carried authority but now trail off into procedural quiet. It lingers in the pauses before someone decides whether it is safe to speak, in the substitution of clarity with ambiguity, critique with compliance. It hums beneath the surface of institutional life—not loud enough to name, but present enough to shape behavior.

It's not like scholars and people, in general, have nothing to say. It's that the conditions for saying it have been quietly rearranged. It is the sound of knowledge narrowed, of questions deferred, of dissent rerouted into safer channels. It is not the spectacle of repression that defines it, but its subtlety. 

And once you learn to hear it, it is everywhere.

Contemporary scholars extend this diagnosis into our present moment. Brown (2019) argues that neoliberalism hollows out democratic institutions from within, converting them into instruments of market and political control. Henry Giroux (2022) describes the rise of “authoritarian neoliberalism,” where higher education becomes a key site for disciplining thought and narrowing dissent. He argues for critical analyses of the current, politicized context of education and the need for a collective pedagogy of resistance with social justice, freedom, and democracy as its goals.

Fraser (2019) similarly points to the entanglement of economic, political, and cultural crises that destabilize democratic publics, making them more vulnerable to reactionary capture. Building on Fraser, Stewart, outlines the history and processes of the current moment, naming it "reactionary nihilism." Together, these scholars help us see that silence is not merely absence—it is produced, structured, and weaponized.

In Texas, this “silence” is no longer metaphorical—it is being institutionalized. Under SB 37, faculty senates—the historic vehicles of shared governance—have been stripped of meaningful authority or eliminated altogether, consolidating decision-making power in governing boards and political appointees. This restructuring represents more than administrative change; it marks a profound shift in the governance of knowledge, where faculty expertise is subordinated to political oversight. 

At the same time, the law expands top-down control over curriculum, enabling the rejection, restructuring, or defunding of programs deemed ideologically suspect—developments that dovetail with ongoing efforts to marginalize or eliminate Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and related fields.

As Marcuse (1964) warned in One-Dimensional Man, advanced systems of control do not always silence through overt repression; they produce conditions in which dissent becomes increasingly difficult to articulate, let alone sustain. 

From this vantage point, the “sounds of silence” becomes newly legible as a political condition: not simply the absence of speech, but the structured diminishment of voice. It is the quieting of faculty governance, the narrowing of permissible knowledge, and the normalization of a system in which critique is not dramatically crushed, but procedurally sidelined.

This interpretation may exceed the original intent of the song’s authors. But as with much enduring art, its meaning expands in relation to historical context. In our present moment, the “sounds of silence” is not just something we hear—it is something being built.

We are not without power, however, beginning with the vote. Lest we all get turned into their not-so-grand vision of "one dimensional man"—as Iowa, per yesterday's blog, wants to do—let's run all these power players, these anti-democratic incumbents, out of office. And let's not vote new ones in.

Sí, se puede! Yes, we can!

References

Arendt, H. (1951). The origins of totalitarianism. Harcourt, Brace & Company.

Brown, W. (2019). In the ruins of neoliberalism: The rise of antidemocratic politics in the West. Columbia University Press. https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7312/brow19384

Fraser, N. (2019). The old is dying and the new cannot be born: From progressive neoliberalism to Trump and beyond. Verso.

Giroux, H. A. (2022). Pedagogy of resistance: Against manufactured ignorance. Bloomsbury Academic.

Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment: Philosophical fragments (G. S. Noerr, Ed.; E. Jephcott, Trans.). Stanford University Press. (Original work published 1944)

Marcuse, H. (1964). One-dimensional man: Studies in the ideology of advanced industrial society. Beacon Press.

Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury.