Resources and Information on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Legislative Battle for this week of May 1, 2023 in Austin, TX

 Friends:

The session is moving quickly and folks need to weigh in on the current attack on Diversity in Texas. Educate yourselves on what's at stake and please consider signing the following 3 petitions: 

1) Stop Elimination of Tenure, 
2) Defend Tenure, DEI, and Academic Freedom
 3) Protesting the Anti-Diversity Assault Bills from Black Brown Dialogues on Policy.

I delivered a talk that you can listen to below on the current battle over Diversity, Equity and Inclusion [DEI] two Saturdays ago in El Paso at the LULAC District IV meeting.

My purpose was to share what DEI is—since probably most people haven't heard of it until recently—and what these anti-diversity bills mean for Texas higher education (see What is DEI?)

Compliments of American Association of University Professors (AAUP) member and Texas AAUP Conference Vice President Dr. Brian Evans, here is a quick analysis of SB 16, 17, and 18 and their implications for Texas higher education. Also take a look at the related House Appropriations Rider 186. It already passed out of the House Higher Education Committee. Our only option is that it gets pulled down in the conference committee that consists of house and senate members that convene to iron out differences on the bill.

Other actions (from Dr. Evans):

Actions to Take if You Can Be in Austin

• Testify at House Higher Education Committee hearings on Mondays at 10am starting May 1.  Having 200 people to testify would be a commanding way to show opposition!  Testimonies are limited to 3 minutes.  Here’s a guide for testifying.  This is our biggest need.
• Visit Legislative Offices at the Capitol.  Among our four cooperating statewide advocacy organizations, we can arrange for someone to be at the State Capitol to guide you.

 

In-Person and Virtual Rally on Wednesday, May 3.  Please RSVP for Freedom to Learn Texas Day of Action.  You can either join in person at the State Capitol to rally at 2pm and then visit Legislative Offices, or participate remotely by calling Legislative Offices using pages 1-2 of the Freedom to Learn Texas Day of Action.

 

Actions People Can Take Wherever They Are

• Follow our Bill Tracker, and @TexasAaup and @aaup_utAustin on Twitter, for updates.
• Send information to others from non-State accounts including amplifying tweets and posts – you can send this message as is or as a PDF file.
• Call the staff who are handling Higher Ed issues for House reps during business hours
• Visit the local district offices for your House and Senate Reps – see who represents me
• Sign the following 3 petitions: 1) Stop Elimination of Tenure, 2) Defend Tenure, DEI, and Academic Freedom, and 3) Protesting the Anti-Diversity Assault Bills from Black Brown Dialogues on Policy.

The video presentation is viewable below. Thanks to Ignacita Valdez-Ramirez and Oscar Ramirez for the invitation for me to deliver this address.

And congrats to Ignacita for getting voted in as this year's LULAC District IV Director in El Paso. Much deserved!

-Angela Valenzuela

*Correction and clarification. In my talk, I said that only 2 percent of doctorates go to Hispanics. I meant to say this in reference to minoritized Hispanic women instead of to both Hispanic women and men. 

Here are the figures. My estimate parses out Hispanic women and men that fall into the category of minoritized, historically under-represented Hispanics accessed from this October 18, 2022 piece by Audrey Williams June that cites the NCES survey of earned doctoral degrees titled, America’s Ph.D. Production Experienced Its Steepest Drop on Record. Taken together, the actual percent for both U.S.-born Latinas and Latinos is around 5 percent. For ease, here is the table below to which the Williams June piece links. 

Whether 2 or 5 percent, our representation as Latinas and Latinos in the number of earned doctorates annually is egregiously low.