Dear Fellow Texans,
I urge you to give Lily Kepner’s piece your close attention, as the attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts in the 89th Texas Legislative Session (2025) begins anew. Granting politicians greater control over university curricula poses a significant threat to the reputation and integrity of Texas universities. We must not let this happen.
Let’s stand together to oppose these bills at the state level while also keeping a vigilant eye on the federal “Dismantle DEI Act.” It is astonishing to witness U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy's proposed legislation, which seeks to eliminate the study of race-based disparities in health care. Such understanding is vital for addressing systemic health inequities and providing fair, unbiased treatment. Consider the disproportionate impact of diabetes on Mexicans and Mexican Americans, sickle cell disease on African Americans, and cardiovascular disease on both groups compared to white counterparts. These disparities are not fully reducible to social class alone, though poverty remains an undeniable contributing factor.
If politicians succeed in further eroding faculty governance and accreditation standards, our higher education institutions risk devolving into little more than glorified high schools, losing their status as centers of higher learning and critical inquiry. My colleague, Dr. Keffrelyn Brown, captures this concern succinctly:
“When the topics get politicized,” Brown said, “the expertise faculty members have in curriculum and in their fields can be lost, as well as the importance of ethnic studies in preparing students for a diverse workforce and world.
The most important thing to acknowledge is that these issues are not simply opinion-based ideas; these are real fields of study. If we don’t expose our young people to opportunities to interact with knowledge, as well as people across those communities, we risk creating an educated class unable to communicate and work across a variety of differences.”
Exactly. What we teach in the college classroom is not opinion-based and how offensive for anyone to think that in the first place. We are serious scholars who conduct serious, ethical research and who have dedicated our lives to this endeavor. Most of us aren't activists but you're turning us into them with every measure that extremist politicians propose.
Please, let's stop this anti-DEI madness, my friends and fellow Texans.
What can you do in the meantime? Reach out to your representatives and support Texas State Representative Christina Morales’ Ethnic Studies Bill, HB 178. If you’re unsure who represents you, visit https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home to find out.
Together, we can protect the integrity of our educational institutions and ensure our students are prepared to thrive in a diverse and interconnected world. And there ain't nothing wrong with that.
Yours truly,
Angela Valenzuela
With DEI on Texas Legislature's agenda, here's what's proposed for higher education
Lily Kepner
Austin American-Statesman | January 13, 2025
As diversity, equity and inclusion and university faculty topics come into focus for Texas' upcoming legislative session, experts say the continued onslaught against social issues in public universities could be bolder this year – and do more damage as trust in higher education plummets.
More than 200 higher education-related bills alone have been introduced during the pre-filing period ahead of the 89th legislative session's start Tuesday.
In addition to the legislative interim charges set by Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick – which include looking at DEI issues in curriculum and faculty senates – multiple bills are in line with President-elect Donald Trump's goals in higher education by also targeting accreditors and undocumented students, who could be threatened under the incoming administration's immigration proposals.
What higher education laws did Texas pass last session and what could be next?
One of the legislative wins for Texas conservatives last year was the passing of Senate Bill 17, the nation's second anti-DEI law that banned DEI programs, staff, offices and hiring at Texas public universities but had exceptions for academic courses, research and student groups.
In the two years since Texas' last session, 11 other states have passed legislation limiting DEI in higher education, and changes have been made in at least 215 colleges in 32 states, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education's DEI tracker.
Kim Conway, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said DEI programs have been “under attack” nationally for the past two years.
“And we expect it to get worse,” Conway said.
Federally, Congress is weighing the “Dismantle DEI Act," by U.S. Rep. Michael Cloud, R-Victoria, and Republican Vice President-elect J.D. Vance, who until recently served as a senator from Ohio. Conway said this was the most drastic of all federally proposed DEI legislation and would prohibit any entity that takes federal grants from any DEI activities and prohibit accreditors from having diversity standards.
Additionally, a bill by U.S. Rep. Greg Murphy, R-North Carolina, would rid medical schools who accept federal funding of DEI, including barring them from teaching about specific races or ethnicities, or race-based disparities, in health care.
Texas' SB 17 banned diversity statements in hiring and DEI-related training, but the law didn't restrict it in courses or for accreditors as the federal bills propose. But with a new session starting, state lawmakers could propose such legislation.
Sherry Sylvester, a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank in Austin that is on the advisory board for Project 2025, said DEI programs have not created the boost in diversity they promised and must be rooted out of Texas entirely.
“I don't think anybody ever believed that we would pass Senate Bill 17, and that would expunge DEI from our universities, that we would never hear about it again,” Sylvester said. “It is calcified in our universities, and we're remaking our universities so that everybody can go and thrive and prosper.”
Sylvester said she feels “really optimistic” about the upcoming state legislative session and efforts to further limit DEI in Texas, such as by examining the process by which academic courses and curriculum are made and approved.
Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who chairs the Texas Senate Subcommittee on Higher Education, previously told the American-Statesman that he wants to focus on leading students to a "degree of value" for in-demand work over courses tied to what he calls liberal ideology, but he had not filed any bills related to higher education courses as of Friday afternoon.
Multiple state senators have authored bills that would let Texas choose an accrediting agency other than the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges, which is currently the only accrediting agency for Texas universities. Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, vice chair of the Senate Higher Education subcommittee, filed SB 452, which would require the board of higher education institutions to approve or disapprove the hiring of each department head, giving governor-appointed leaders more control over higher education leaders in the state.
Todd Wolfson, the current president of the American Association of University Professors and a professor at Rutgers University, said the political intrusion into higher education is happening in other Southern states as well. Former politicians in Nevada and Florida have been appointed to lead public universities instead of academics – in the Sunshine State, five of the seven public universities are led by former lawmakers, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
“There is an attempt in certain states to politicize higher ed and to take control of what faculty teach, what faculty research, what students learn and what students say,” Wolfson said. “It's not merely about a DEI initiative or a teaching of critical race theory or gender studies, though it is about those things, it's also about controlling this sector.”
On the curriculum front, an interim charge by Patrick, the state's lieutenant governor who presides over the Senate, seeks to “Stop DEI” in workforce education in Texas. Attempts by other states to do the same, such as Florida's 2022 “Stop Woke Act" to stop curriculum that teaches white privilege or about oppression, have been embroiled in legal battles over free-speech concerns.
Sylvester said anything should be allowed to be studied, but requirements or “indirect” pushes to take “DEI-infused” coursework shouldn’t be allowed. She said university regents – or the governor-appointed boards that rule the public university systems – should be empowered to exercise greater authority, particularly in the face of faculty dissent, and control over curriculum.
Keffrelyn Brown, a UT professor in the department of curriculum and instruction who also teaches in the Center for African American Studies and Women and Gender Studies Center, said that legislation attempting to control curriculum is not new, but it had predominantly targeted K-12 public schools.
When the topics get politicized, Brown said, the expertise faculty members have in curriculum and in their fields can be lost, as well as the importance of ethnic studies in preparing students for a diverse workforce and world.
“The most important thing to acknowledge is that these issues are not simply opinion-based ideas, that these are real fields of study,” Brown said. “If we don't expose our young people to opportunities to interact with knowledge, as well as people across those communities, we stand the chance of creating an educated class that is unable to communicate and work across a variety of different kinds of differences.”
What do these bills mean for Texas?
Even without a legal restriction, Conway, the ACLU policy counsel, said that bills and rhetoric around DEI can chill and censor classroom discussions or topics in the states where they're proposed due to the risk-adverse nature of universities. In Texas, top-down changes to ethnic and diverse studies curriculum at the University of North Texas over the fall were praised by conservative state lawmakers who say such changes are needed to comply with the “spirit” of SB 17 but faced huge opposition from faculty members and free speech advocates.
Similarly, when Texas A&M announced plans to eliminate its LGBTQ minor and 51 other low-producing minors and certificates, that school's Faculty Senate Executive Committee and program faculty members opposed it, but Texas A&M Regents approved the removals anyway.
“What (faculty senates) don't understand, and what I think we'll see reflected in legislation, is no, they are not the final say. The state of Texas empowers the boards of regents to run the universities, faculty is not in the (Texas Education) Code,” Sylvester said. “I think looking at empowering the regents to exercise their authority in every aspect of campus life is what we're going to see.”
Michael Harris, a Southern Methodist University professor who served as Faculty Senate president, said the functions of a faculty senate are largely bureaucratic and uneventful, such as approving the university calendar, and are not as political or defiant as they are painted to be.
The continued focus on DEI and faculty is a continuation of the ideological goals of the last legislative session and a "broader attack" on the industry, Harris said. What is different now, Harris said, is the public’s distrust of higher education, and it could give the political attacks more impact, though he doesn't think higher education itself has changed.
“At the end of the day, higher education used to be given a deference to do what it considered best,” Harris said. “They were institutions that were trusted, and that trust is gone now.”
And the loss of faculty governance would come at a cost, he said, because reducing it could allow partisan politicians to have greater control over topics like civic education, instead of allowing experts to craft curriculum based on "the best knowledge and the best research."
Politics can also create a climate where faculty members don't want to be. According to a 2024 Texas AAUP survey of 950 faculty members, more than half of those surveyed would not recommend working in Texas and more than a quarter plan to take or are actively looking for other jobs.
“In some states, that's the push: let’s stop the ideology attacks, we’ve done that, we’ve won our political points, now can we focus on building high-quality higher education, which we know the long-term economic success of the state is inextricably tied to,” Harris said. “I understand the short-term political benefits, and I don’t, sadly, think the rewards of the political system have changed from last session to this session" in Texas.
