This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, K-12 education, postsecondary educational attainment, dropouts, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, environmental issues, Ethnic Studies at state and national levels. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in the College of Education at the University of Texas at Austin.
Kudos to Dr. Lorraine Pangle Rather for delivering a cutting critique of Senate Bill 37—the “Death Star” bill, as many in my circles call it—that threatens to destroy public higher education in Texas if passed into law. Many of us have been advocating against this legislation for weeks, along with other deeply troubling proposals like Senate Bill 12.
Of them all, SB 37 is the most dangerous. It’s the sick “prize” because it does exactly what so many authoritarian models do: centralizes control, operates preemptively to suppress dissent, restructures power to silence opposition, and erases institutional autonomy across every college and university in the state.
Make no mistake: Texas is the testing ground. If this model succeeds here, it will be exported to other states—and your public universities will be next. This is why we must stop SB 37 now. It's far too close to Stage 1 cancer. And once it metastasizes, it will be much harder to contain.
Dr. Pangle’s appeal is powerful and principled. She doesn’t reject SB 37 on partisan grounds. Instead, she urges us to resist it in the name of shared democratic values. Freedom, she reminds us, demands preparation—and liberal education, not ideological control, is what sustains a functioning democracy. The university, in her view, is not a bastion of elitism but a training ground for civic courage, ethical reasoning, and critical thought—values that reach across political divides.
These are powerful words. But the real question remains: Do those in power have the ears to hear? We can only hope so—and we must continue raising our voices in case they do.
by Lorraine Pangle | May 19, 2025 | Austin American-Statesman
American universities aren’t as intellectually diverse or politically balanced as they should be. They fall short in teaching the knowledge and skills needed to sustain democracy. They aren’t defending free speech or promoting civil discourse as well as they should.
The Texas Legislature is debating a bill – Senate Bill 37 – aimed at solving these problems. It would actually do grave harm.
Our country is exceptional, and an exceptional country needs an exceptionally deep education. Liberty is an extraordinarily hard thing to use well, a hard thing to keep. Free societies need free minds, minds that are curious, skeptical, imaginative and deeply reflective about what a good life is.
Increasingly demanding pre-professional programs leave many undergraduates with little time for general education outside the 42-hour core. SB 37 insists that the core curriculum must teach only what is demonstrably useful for boosting future earnings or for citizenship.
At the University of Texas’ great books program, the Jefferson Center, we share Thomas Jefferson’s belief that the best civic education is in fact a liberal education. Students need workplace skills, and UT teaches these in abundance, but they also need to read Shakespeare to reflect on good and bad leaders, and Plato and the Bible to think about what the human soul is and what it needs to thrive. Our program won’t earn students more money, as SB 37 requires certificate programs to do. But it makes their souls richer.
SB 37 bans courses that 'require or attempt to require a student to adopt a belief that any race, sex, or ethnicity or social, political, or religious belief is inherently superior to any other.' Don’t our legislators want us to argue for our founding principles?
This law, I fear, isn’t intended to be uniformly enforced, but used only as a weapon against disfavored social and political beliefs. That’s a bad use of law. The rule of law and citizens’ trust that laws will be impartially applied are the most important glue holding a free society together. We should guard them carefully.
If we purged disfavored authors, we might train students to parrot officially approved ideas, but we wouldn’t educate them to understand ethics, economics or the problem of justice. For this, students need to read Adam Smith on economic liberty – but also Karl Marx; James Madison on religious liberty – but also Thomas Aquinas. As John Stuart Mill said, he who knows only his own side of an argument knows little of that, and is ill-equipped to defend it.
A proposed Texas House amendment would allow teaching political principles, banning only courses that 'promote the idea that any race, sex, ethnicity or ... religious belief is inherently superior to any other.' Surely we do not want indoctrination at all.
Yet teaching a book or idea well means making the case for it, pushing students to take it seriously, encouraging their questions and challenges, and then turning again to consider how an author might answer those challenges. To teach Augustine seriously means arguing for his claim that Christianity is superior to paganism. To teach American political thought seriously means reading Frederick Douglass but also the Dred Scott decision and trying to understand them both.
Good teaching is brave and provocative and probing in bringing well-chosen competing ideas into dialogue. But with the new 'ombudsman' SB 37 establishes to monitor compliance and recommend punishments, who will dare engage boldly with controversial ideas? Instead of this destructive effort to micromanage education with the blunt instrument of the law, the Legislature might instead require university presidents to report each year on what they’re doing to advance intellectual diversity, brave questioning, civil discourse and students’ understanding of liberty. That would be a good challenge, and we’d be better for the effort.
Lorraine Pangle is a government professor at the University of Texas, where she is co-director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Study of Core Texts and Ideas and chair of the Committee of Counsel on Academic Freedom and Responsibility.
I owe this post—and my refusal to stay silent—to my grandchildren. They are the reason I continue to show up, speak out, join in community, build community-based institutions and resist the authoritarian drift we are witnessing in Texas. Yes, grandma is busy, but she has a special purpose in life and she is living it.
I just saw the movie, 2073, that features a grandmother that the viewer never sees because she was taken up, disappeared, for openly challenging the system. It was her work. It resonated.
You can watch the movie on Max, Fandango, or Prime. It's definitely a doomsday, dystopian vision of what could be if we do not seriously work together across difference—not just locally, but globally—to address the current climate crisis we're in and the extreme, undue influence of the "Tech Bros"—the billionaire class—on democracy.
This is what we see playing out right now in the Texas legislature. There was a voucher amendment that would have submitted the vote to all Texans and advocates were hoping that seven or so Republicans would vote against, but that what allegedly happened is that they all got a call from President Trump (I heard this from two sources), and except for two Republicans, Dade Phelan and Rep. VanDeaver, they voted this bill to passage.
After all, they, like the rest of us already knew that if vouchers were submitted to a vote by the public, Greg Abbott and pro-voucher Republicans would lose. Never mind democracy or what should be the democratic purposes of government. These rural Republican representatives, in particular, just sold their communities down the river.
Now, here we are fighting against censorship, legislative takeover, and the Texas House panel cut us out from testifying!
What the dystopian film 2073 imagines as speculative, futuristic fiction—a regime that silences dissent through surveillance, bureaucratic control, and ideological conformity—is no longer fiction for those of us in Texas fighting for academic freedom. Senate Bill 37 operates with the same chilling logic: it punishes educators for teaching uncomfortable truths, strips faculty of shared governance, and closes public testimony before most people even have a chance to speak.
In a press conference last Thursday afternoon, many students a faculty spoke up. Texas AFT’s Amanda Garcia, a recent graduate from UT Austin, lays out SB 37’s harm in stark, unequivocal terms:
“This is not a bill we can risk cleaning up in the next legislative session. It will impact our students and teachers for the worse forever.”
Like the state in 2073, this legislature justifies censorship in the name of order and efficiency, but we know better. These are not neutral decisions—they are calculated efforts to control knowledge, erase histories, and shut down the very conversations that make education meaningful and genuinely helpful to a racial/ethnic and gender-diverse society.
What is happening in Texas is not just an attack on faculty—it is an attack on democracy itself. And we cannot afford to meet this moment with silence. We must name it, challenge it, and refuse to comply with the slow drift into authoritarianism.
All of this is unfolding at a time when we face overlapping crises—none more urgent than the accelerating climate emergency. Instead of silencing educators and dismantling democratic institutions, our leaders should be confronting the existential threats that endanger all of us, especially our children and grandchildren.
The House's higher education committee closed registration to testify on Senate Bill 37 less than half an hour after the hearing started. About 20 people said they didn't get to address lawmakers.
University students and faculty gather at the Texas Capitol’s outdoor rotunda on May 15, 2025, to speak against Senate Bill 37, which would reshape how schools pick new courses and hire administrators.
Credit: Lorianne Willett/The Texas Tribune
Pauline Strong wanted to speak to lawmakers last week about how a bill they’re considering would make her think twice when discussing sensitive topics with her anthropology students at the University of Texas at Austin. But she had to drop off her grandchildren at school first.
Despite rushing to the Texas Capitol afterward, she missed the window to register to testify against Senate Bill 37 by a few minutes.
Strong, who testified last session in opposition to a bill banning diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in higher ed, didn’t expect registration to end so early this time.
“It was disappointing, it was surprising, it was disheartening,” Strong said. “And I’m someone who came from Austin. There were lots of people who were driving from Houston or other parts of the state who left very early in the morning and arrived too late to testify.”
Dozens of students and professors like Strong, who were unable to testify against a bill they fear could limit the free exchange of ideas on college campuses, voiced their frustration on Thursday over losing one of their few chances to address lawmakers directly.
“This is not a bill we can risk cleaning up in the next legislative session. It will impact our students and teachers for the worse forever,” said Amanda Garcia with the Texas American Federation of Teachers.
SB 37 would limit faculty’s influence on academic decisions and give university systems’ regents, who are political appointees, more power to decide what curricula are taught, as well as which administrators are hired at the state’s public colleges and universities.
It would also establish another way for universities to be investigated for breaking state law — and potentially lose funding at a time when they are already facing significant financial headwinds.
SB 37, which was passed by the Senate last month, was one of 10 bills scheduled for a public hearing in the House Higher Education Committee on May 6. During committee hearings, lawmakers debate the contents of a bill and invite witnesses to comment on the proposal. They also give the general public an opportunity to share their thoughts on the legislation.
Rep. Terry M. Wilson, the Georgetown Republican who chairs the committee, started the hearing just after 8 a.m. with an announcement — the committee would not accept any more people registering to testify for or against SB 37 after 8:30 a.m.
As chair, Wilson may limit testimony. He didn’t do so with another controversial proposal brought before his committee, House Bill 232, which would make it more difficult for undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition. When HB 232 was considered on April 30, Wilson allowed people to register to testify until just before the hearing concluded at 1:06 a.m. the following day.
Wilson did not comment Thursday on his decision to close early the witness registration window for SB 37.
To Garcia, limiting testimony on SB 37 was a clear attempt to silence overwhelming dissent. To others, it was typical for a part-time Legislature that hurries to pass new laws in a 140-day window every two years — work that must conclude by June 2.
“They have to hustle in a way that doesn’t always lend itself to having many voices heard,” said Brandon Rottinghaus, a political science professor at the University of Houston.
Texas allows anyone to register to give testimony during committee hearings to go over proposed legislation, but the process can be cumbersome. People must register at kiosks in the Capitol by a deadline that each committee’s chair or clerk has broad discretion to set. The hearings can last all day and have long interruptions whenever members must leave to debate and vote on legislation in their chambers.
This makes it harder to participate for Texans who have jobs they can’t step away from or who don’t live near Austin. This session, farmers from Johnson County waited 18 hours to testify for a bill to limit toxic chemicals in fertilizers, and public school advocates waited 20 hours to testify against a bill to display the Ten Commandments in classrooms.
Sometimes, public testimony can result in more measured legislation, Rottinghaus said. He pointed to Senate Bill 3 as an example. Originally written in the Senate as a ban on THC, the House proposed only tightening regulations after hearing testimony that was both technical and emotional.
“Whether that will ultimately change the bill, I don’t know, but I think just as a general kind of notion that this is really important, that having people make their voice heard and giving legislators more information about what is going on is a big part of the process,” he said.
One of the concerns the professors and students who didn’t get to testify on SB 37 brought up on Thursday was that the proposal could limit the teaching of race and inequality.
Jaime Cantú, an assistant professor of biology at Austin Community College, said the bill could keep future medical professionals from learning about health disparities. He worried that under SB 37, he could be fired for teaching his students about how Interstate 35 has historically served as a dividing line between those who have access to health care in Austin and those who do not. He said he often mentions this to his students, who are mostly low-income people of color making sacrifices to become nurses.
Aihanuwa Ale-opinion said she’s thankful to have learned about how public health structures have and can perpetuate inequality as a biology student at UH.
“Rather than instill feelings of guilt, this has empowered me with the knowledge necessary to create better structures that are more inclusive and has inspired me to be a better peer, a better professional and a better advocate,” she said.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, who authored SB 37, said faculty have too much control over schools’ curricula, which has led to liberal bias in the classroom and many students taking classes that ultimately don’t serve them in their careers.
State Rep. Matt Shaheen, a Plano Republican carrying the legislation in the House, has proposed a version of the bill that removes some of the most controversial parts, such as a requirement that regents approve the hiring of faculty in certain disciplines and a provision to eliminate degree programs with a low return in students’ investment.
But the bill still has its detractors.
Both versions of the bill limit the number of faculty who can be elected to serve on bodies that advise the university or college administration. Both also contain a provision that says faculty who engage in political advocacy can be immediately removed from these bodies.
On May 6, the House Higher Education committee heard public testimony for about two hours before it recessed at about 10 a.m. They reconvened 11 hours later at 9 p.m. and adjourned at about 1 a.m. the next day. In the end, more than 80 people testified about SB 37.
Although Strong was one of 20 people who missed the deadline to register, she stayed at the Capitol all day, helping her colleagues whittle down their remarks and practice so they could maximize the time allowed to speak: two minutes.
In her 32 years at UT-Austin, Strong has developed curriculum and been on search committees to hire deans. She said she wanted to tell lawmakers that the bill’s premise is faulty.
Faculty who take on these responsibilities don’t do so lightly, and their goal is not to indoctrinate students, she said. In fact, she added, those students serve as one of several checks on faculty. They fill out surveys after every course, and any complaints they make are investigated and addressed through mentoring and discipline, which can include termination, Strong said.
“Faculty are not getting away with teaching that is shoddy, out-of-date, or ideologically narrow,” she said. “Our colleagues, administrators and students make sure of that.”
The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on higher education coverage.
Note: I don’t usually blog about farmers or milk—this is, after all, an education blog. But I do often write about immigration, people, justice, and the structures that exploit them. This story—about labor, invisibility, and systemic abuse—falls squarely within that frame. Hence, this post.
As we reckon here in the U.S. with the escalating attacks on undocumented Mexican and Latina/o/x immigrants, we must confront the broader societal consequences. We all enjoy milk, don’t we? Maybe in our morning coffee, or as a staple in our children’s diets—“for strong, healthy bones,” we like to say. But who makes that possible?
Consider the following: in Michigan, as in much of the country, the labor that keeps the dairy industry alive is overwhelmingly Mexican. Check out this related piece for further evidence.
It’s demanding, relentless work—milking cows in the cold, hauling feed, maintaining machinery, day in and day out. And it’s work that most U.S.-born laborers won’t touch.
Let’s be clear: without Mexican labor, Michigan’s dairy industry would collapse. The same is almost certainly true for Texas, a leading milk producer. These workers—skilled, dependable, and exploited—have become the invisible backbone of American dairy. These workers form the foundation of America’s milk supply, yet they do so with little protection, under the constant threat of deportation, and for wages that barely meet survival.
This is serious, my friends.
WE DEPEND ON MEXICAN LABOR, not just in dairy farming, but also in agriculture. This isn’t just a milk supply issue—it’s a humanitarian crisis hiding in plain sight. Moreover, if immigration policy doesn’t shift with the threat and actualization of mass deportations, it won’t just be the milk supply that falters—it will be our basic sense of justice and humanity.
While labor-saving technology has increased productivity, people are still an integral part of cow care. In this article we’ll provide context and highlight strategies to help address labor challenges.
In the heartland of Michigan’s agricultural economy, dairy farms are confronting a persistent and growing challenge: a labor shortage that threatens one of the state’s most critical industries. Increasingly, these farms are turning to a reliable workforce that has become the backbone of dairy production across the country—Mexican laborers.
Dairy farming is unlike seasonal agriculture. Cows don’t stop producing milk in the winter, and the work doesn’t pause for holidays or weekends. Milking, feeding, and equipment maintenance continue year-round, often under grueling conditions. “It’s cold, it’s wet, it’s dark—this is not the kind of work most Americans want to do,” says one Michigan dairy operator who requested anonymity due to the sensitive nature of immigration labor discussions.
That reluctance from the domestic workforce has left a vacuum—one that Mexican workers have stepped in to fill. Many arrive with agricultural experience, deep familiarity with animal husbandry, and a work ethic honed by necessity. For them, a job on a Michigan dairy farm—though demanding—offers a lifeline. Wages, while modest by U.S. standards, far exceed what’s available in many parts of rural Mexico.
But the labor these workers provide is not just about economics—it’s about continuity. Farmers describe Mexican workers as dependable and highly skilled, often learning to operate heavy machinery, manage herds, and take on supervisory roles over time. The relationships built through word-of-mouth recruitment have created informal labor pipelines between rural towns in Mexico and the milking parlors of the Midwest.
The federal H-2A visa program, designed to bring in temporary agricultural workers, doesn’t apply to the dairy sector because it’s classified as non-seasonal. As a result, many farmers find themselves navigating a legal gray area—employing undocumented workers or those whose visas have expired simply to keep their operations running.
For Michigan dairy producers, the question is not whether they prefer Mexican labor. It's that without it, the entire system might collapse.
“This isn’t just about convenience,” one farmer noted. “It’s about survival.”
As immigration policy debates continue in Washington, dairy producers across the country are watching closely. For many, the stability of the American milk supply depends on what happens next.
Oh, the labor pains! How often we hear from farm owners that they can’t find enough people willing to work on the farm. Dairy production is labor-intensive, with cows being milked, fed, moved and managed around the clock. Compounding these challenges, the labor market is increasingly tight for a number of reasons, including a declining interest in farming among younger generations, a declining pool of workers who are willing to do farm work, and few legal channels for immigrant labor. While labor-saving technology has increased productivity, people are still an integral part of cow care. In this article we’ll provide context and highlight strategies to help address labor challenges.
Background
Most hired farm employees in the United States were born in Mexico. Mexico’s close proximity to the US, and its relatively poor economic conditions, incentivized migration to the US during the 1900s and early 2000s. Many of these migrants entered the US without legal authorization and sought work on US farms. High levels of Mexico-US migration enabled US agricultural producers to maintain access to an abundant supply of relatively inexpensive labor and expand production to satisfy increased demand.
However, in recent years, US farm labor markets have undergone substantive structural changes that have increased the prevalence of labor shortages. Labor supply pressures drive farm wages up, stunt growth opportunities for American farmers, accelerate the adoption of labor-saving technologies, and force production to other countries that have lower production costs. These trends raise concerns about the economic viability of dairy farming in Michigan and the production capacity of Michigan’s dairy industry.
MSU Interim President Teresa Woodruff visits with Kyle Jandernoa during a visit with Dutch Meadows Dairy in recognition of Farmworker Appreciation Day on August 6. Photo by Brandon Gross.
Dairy labor costs are rising and employment is declining
The year 2015 marked an inflection point in Michigan’s dairy labor market, when the growth of real labor costs (i.e., adjusted for inflation into 2022 dollar values) started rising and employment growth started tapering off. Figure 1 shows that between 2000 and 2015, the real average hourly wage (in $2022) of animal-related farm employees in the Lake Region was relatively stable in the $13.00 to $14.00 range. In 2017, the average real wage (in $2022) reached an all-time high of $15.65 and has continued to rise. In 2022, the average real wage was $16.90.
Figure 1. Real hourly wage ($2022) for Lake Region animal employees, 2000 – 2022.
Dairy employment has dropped every year since the 2017 peak, and there were 500 fewer year-round-equivalent jobs on the books of Michigan dairy farmers in 2022 relative to 2017 (Figure 2). Economic theory suggests that when a labor market is experiencing a decline in the supply of labor, wages will rise, and employment will drop. These recent trends are consistent with a declining supply of dairy farm labor in Michigan.
Since 2015, the growth in total milk production declined to an average 2 percent per year. While there are many factors that can slow milk production growth (including increased building costs and processing capacity limits), a decrease in labor availability, as indicated by the reduction in farm employees, may also be a factor limiting growth.
Value for investment
Rising income for dairy employees is not the problem, as long as productivity increases faster than wages. Therefore, it is important to look at efficiency and consistency in work. Unfortunately, many farms report problems with their employees, including failure to show up for work, a lack of concern about the success of the farm, and employee turnover. These problems decrease efficiency and consistency and exacerbate the farm labor availability problem. Figure 2 shows that dairy production growth started declining in the wake of rising labor costs and reduced employee availability. In fact, in 2018 and 2022, Michigan experienced declines in milk production relative to the previous year.
Employee disengagement and turnover are costly, not only in terms of wages wasted, but also in terms of employee morale, quality of work and product, and safety for all. Many farmers recognize the importance of developing positive relationships with the people who work for them. Open and honest communication regarding expectations, farm goals, how the employee’s work contributes to those goals, and employee performance are key factors that can help employees develop a personal commitment to the success of the farm.
A study published by Moore et. al. (2019) concluded that “the importance of an employee’s relationship with their supervisor and other employees cannot be overstated. The relationship can have a positive or negative effect on (employee) satisfaction, longevity and recruitment.” Employees serve a critical role in job recruitment efforts because they are often the ones that refer other workers to the farm. Satisfied employees are more likely to recommend the farm as a place to work to individuals who share their commitment to work. As such, when farm owners and managers develop good relationships with their employees, they will improve the quality of the work environment and expand the pool of quality employees seeking to work on their farm. In a tight labor market, this factor can make the difference between a farm that is able to grow and one that cannot because it cannot attract or retain a high-quality workforce that is committed to the farm.
While the availability of immigrant farm employees is declining, foreign-born workers will continue to serve a critical role in the farm workforce. If farmers want to expand the pool of employees that are able and willing to work on their farms, they may want to consider participating in agricultural labor policy reform discussions that are being held at the local, regional, and national levels. Moreover, developing business management strategies that improve the work environment and help employees feel connected to the business can help retain and expand the pool of high-quality employees.
Employee leadership tips
Consistently build team mentality; teach and model an attitude of helping one another and being responsible to others.
Communicate regularly about business performance; provide individual feedback soon for both good and lacking performance.
Respect employees as people; listen to them and ask them to respect your decisions. Teach them why you set your methods and standards the way you do.
Provide regular opportunity for employee development; teach cattle evaluation practices, have visiting consultants talk with employees, and don’t underestimate their desire to learn.
Involve employees in making decisions; whether hiring or purchasing decisions, employees can provide valuable input that makes them vested in the results.
Conclusion
Labor is a critical component of any farming operation. Labor supply constraints can reduce the economic viability of farming and reduce production capacity. In some cases, automation may replace labor inputs and reduce labor costs, but these types of investments can be expensive. For many farming operations, investing in costly technology solutions is not economically feasible, and having access to employees who are qualified and willing to perform farm work is the only viable option. Based on the current trajectory of employment and production in Michigan’s dairy sector, the dairy industry in the state may be constrained by labor availability. If employment continues to decline and solutions are not found, milk production capacity could decline within the next few years. Farmers can take steps in their own businesses to foster positive relationships with their employees and enhance the work environment, which can help improve efficiency and reduce employee turnover.
Michigan State University is committed to understanding the labor challenges our state is facing, exploring potential solutions to the problem, and helping farmers improve their employee leadership skills.
Upcoming dairy labor availability survey
Michigan State University also understands that there is a lack of research documenting dairy producers’ preferences for labor and workforce development policies. This type of information is important to the current debate surrounding farm labor availability, and we are working to bring producers’ voices into that discussion. To address this information gap, we are developing a survey to give Michigan dairy farmers an opportunity to have their voices heard on this important issue. All survey participants will remain anonymous, and the findings will be disseminated to the public via outreach reports intended for Michigan dairy stakeholders and other interested parties, presentations at industry group meetings, extension workshops, research conferences, and a policy roundtable event that will be open to the public. Please keep an eye out for the survey from Michigan State University in the upcoming months.
Besides its clever title, this piece by Austin Chronicle's Brant Bingamon is important because it makes explicit the absurd rationale today to eliminate DEI and Ethnic Studies. Sen. Brandon Creighton, who is leading the charge, recklessly appropriates the language of civil rights and diversity to justify policies that dismantle diversity programs. He redefines “diverse voices” and “unity” to mean the removal of explicitly racial, ethnic, or gender-related curriculum, reversing the meanings of these terms without acknowledging their historical or contextual specificity. This rhetorical ploy is used to distort the truth and mislead the public.
He also misrepresents Ethnic Studies to make it easier to attack, referring to them as “discriminatory” or “divisive” without engaging their actual content or pedagogical goals. Sherry Sylvester with the Texas Public Policy Foundation provides no evidence that DEI or Ethnic Studiescause unproductive outcomes. Both Sylvester and Creighton suggest that keeping such programs leads to educational or societal collapse. Geez, where is the evidence, and why such animus?
As someone who testified in a Arizona District Court case on the dismantling of Mexican American Studies in the Tucson Unified School District—and who, in preparation, reviewed more than four decades of rigorous scholarship—I categorically reject Sylvester's claim.
Nothing could be further from the truth. The research is clear: Ethnic Studies programs foster academic achievement, critical thinking, and civic engagement. To suggest otherwise is not only misleading, but a profound disservice to the educational integrity we should be upholding.
I urge readers to read this piece published by the National Education Association and authored by Dr. Christine Sleeter titled, What the Research Says About Ethnic Studies so that readers can learn for themselves what I am saying.
The research is further in line with Izabella de la Garza's testimony quoted herein, who offers a direct rebuttal, expressing how “Inclusivity is the antithesis of discrimination.” She then speaks powerfully about how there is nothing to fear and how Ethnic Studies was one of the most enriching experiences of her life. Great job, Izabella. We need many more voices like yours with ringing clarity in our legislative battles.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe (photo by Jana Birchum)
In the last legislative session in 2023, Texas Republicans outlawed Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs at public universities across the state. Now, they’re getting ready to kill what they call “DEI-related curriculum” – the courses taught under the umbrella of Black studies, Latina/o studies, LGBTQ studies, and other fields.
The new crusade was unveiled at a Senate subcommittee hearing on higher education held on Nov. 11 and dedicated to “stopping DEI to strengthen the Texas workforce.” Such hearings are usually the first step in the creation of future laws.
State Sen. Brandon Creighton, the author of 2023’s anti-DEI law, opened the hearing by appropriating the language of the civil rights struggle, referring to ethnic studies courses as “discriminatory.” He also appropriated the principles that underpin DEI programs and turned them upside down to support ending DEI. “Our public institutions of higher education have a duty to uphold campus culture that encourages diverse voices, viewpoints, and to build trust among administration, faculty, staff, and students, not to divide them,” Creighton said.
With that, Creighton introduced President Jay Hartzell from UT-Austin, professor Holley Love from the University of Houston, and President Mark Welsh from Texas A&M. Texas A&M recently provided a model for how to eliminate diversity-focused programs on a university campus. On Nov. 7, the university’s board of regents voted to end 52 minors and certificates – including the LGBTQ studies minor – which administrators decided had low levels of enrollment. Changes to curriculum are traditionally proposed by faculty but, in this case, A&M’s provost developed the process which identified the programs to cut. The changes are proceeding despite sustained faculty protest.
Hartzell, Love, and Welsh took turns trying to placate Creighton. Welsh assured the senator that his university has instituted a revolving schedule to examine which courses to abolish. Creighton asked whether degree tracks at A&M have any “political leaning.” Welsh denied it. “I’m hoping what our students are getting out of this is the idea of nonpartisanship,” he said. “It’s having your own political views but to keep them to yourself and learn about everybody else’s.”
“They won’t be able to do that with these misguided and frankly pathetic worldviews.”– Anti-DEI advocate Sherry Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation
Next up, Creighton brought on an anti-DEI warrior, Sherry Sylvester of the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a far-right think tank that has been aggressively working to alter Texas education policy for three decades. Sylvester congratulated the committee for passing what she called the strongest and most effective anti-DEI legislation in the country, but said that campuses “continue to revolve around identity politics, gender, and race theory.” She said Texas taxpayers fruitlessly spend billions trying to help students lead productive lives.
“They won’t be able to do that with these misguided and frankly pathetic worldviews,” Sylvester said. “That’s why it’s critical that this committee look deeply into what is being taught in university classrooms.”
Eventually, the actual teachers and students who sit in those classrooms had a chance to speak. Not a single one supported the subcommittee’s mission. Many were Hispanic students, or recent graduates, of UT. Their overwhelming message was that the studies programs they have taken teach critical thinking, communication skills, and a deeper understanding of history and politics.
Izabella de la Garza, a recent UT grad with degrees in government and Mexican American studies, told Creighton that the courses are not discriminatory. “Inclusivity is literally the antithesis of discrimination,” de la Garza said, describing the courses she took as one of the most enriching experiences of her life. “If anything is going to strengthen our workforce, it is cultural awareness,” she continued, “and the curriculum you’re concerned about provides that cultural awareness. There is nothing to fear in diversity and interdisciplinary studies, and it is concerning that you’re framing it as an issue.”
Great, if saddening, piece on deep cuts to higher education projects in Colorado. This is getting experienced nationwide, of course. I appreciate the foregrounding of faculty voices.
Faculty in this piece express deep alarm and frustration over the Trump administration’s defunding of federally supported research focused on diversity, equity, inclusion (DEI), and community-based justice.
Scholars like Marie Berry and Tom Romero argue that these cuts are not just bureaucratic decisions but ideologically driven attacks that undermine the role of higher education in promoting democratic values and producing critical knowledge. Projects exploring women- and queer-led movements, Chicanx history, and social justice were abruptly halted, despite having been previously awarded prestigious grants by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Despite these challenges, faculty remain resolute. They reaffirm the value of community-engaged scholarship and insist that such work will continue, even if it must now rely more heavily on local institutions and private philanthropy. As Romero notes, community knowledge has long preceded federal funding, and faculty are determined to preserve and amplify it. For many, this moment has only strengthened their commitment to using research, teaching, and public engagement as tools for advancing human rights and social justice.
All I can say is that I am pleased to see the faculty sound so resilient. Their students and communities need for them to be so. The struggle continues.
DPFF staff and students visit a mural by Emanuel Martinez at La Alma Lincoln Park Recreation Center, the birthplace of the Chicano Mural Movement in Denver. courtesy Tom. Romero
When Marie Berry heard that she'd received the National Science Foundation’s CAREER grant in 2021, she says she was “stunned and thrilled.” Berry, who directs the Sié Chéou-Kang Center for International Security & Diplomacy at the University of Denver, had applied for the grant in 2020 amid the nationwide racial justice protests. The fraught political landscape made her proposal to research women- and queer-led social movements feel particularly timely.
“The fact that the NSF invested in it, to me, was a sign that our field recognized the urgency of understanding all of the ways people are working to protect human lives, democracy and our planet,” Berry says.
Awarded by then-President Joe Biden, the prestigious $486,000 grant was intended to fund a five-year program with the Inclusive Global Leadership Initiative to research anti-authoritarian movements led by women and LGBTQ+ activists from around the world. It would also establish a certificate in Global Justice for graduate students at DU’s Korbel School of International Studies, facilitate student participation in an international research conference, and fund a post-doctorate program and salary for emerging scholar Alice Taylor.
That all ground to a halt in late April, when Berry received word that her award had been purged, along with more than a thousand other NSF-funded research projects. Totaling $739 million, the cuts targeted study in what Trump administration officials called “woke social, behavioral and economic sciences” with “dubious public value.”
Taylor calls the decision “devastating”; for Berry, it was infuriating.
“The part of this that is so astoundingly stupid is that the Trump administration has confused our attention to marginalized communities as a political agenda when it is actually a core part of building a robust and prosperous and secure future for the United States,” the professor says. “Conducting research on DEI or women or LGBTQ communities is not some woke political agenda. It is essential information that policymakers at all levels and in all fields require to make policy decisions that protect the well-being and life of all people in this country and around the world.”
The administration’s actions targeting the values of diversity, equity and inclusion were similarly frustrating for Tom Romero, who notes that “DEI” is not a legal term. Romero directs DU’s Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality (IRISE) and its Documenting the Past, Fostering the Future (DPFF) project, which was also defunded.
“The civic nationalism of what it means to be an American and what makes the United States exceptional is its ability to accommodate and welcome so many different people from so many different backgrounds and with so many different perspectives,” Romero says. “I think that that's one of the big losses here, to the extent that, nationally, DEI has been made to be something that is anti-American.”
The NSF cuts are the latest in a string of attacks by the Trump administration on scholarship in the U.S. In January, Executive Order 14151 barred schools from using federal dollars to promote DEI on campus and ended funding for “DEI”-associated research programs like Romero’s. The administration has since tried to strong-arm universities into adopting oppressive restrictions on free speech, particularly around Palestinian rights, and revoked the visas of nearly 2,000 international students accused of threatening American foreign policy interests, some of which have since been reinstated.
Other Projects at DU DPFF, which received a $150,000 award from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2022, was one of three research grants at DU eliminated by Trump's January order. The program aims to teach students about the history of the Chicano movement and the roles of young Chicanx activists in Denver by partnering with local community members to collect oral histories.
“The whole idea was to think of ways in which we could engage our students with the larger questions of social and political activism and political identity,” Romero says. “Oftentimes, these stories, their histories, don't appear in the documentary record, so flushing out and building that history is a central component of how we as Denverites or Coloradoans or residents get to engage with it in all of its complex ways.”
The project, which had already used about two-thirds of its funding, was slated to run from 2023 to 2026. The loss of the remaining third will mostly affect student engagement with community members through panels, interviews and advising, Romero says. Equipment and instruction for recording interviews will also be reduced; three student positions supporting the project’s media production and a docu-series planned for next year will be eliminated.
According to Esteban Gomez, who teaches DU courses on digital anthropology and El Movimiento’s Denver history as a part of the project, the cuts will pose a challenge to community engagement. On the education side, though, he's confident that students will continue to learn.
“There's feeling upset, but at the same time, there's a tremendous amount of resolve and resilience that a lot of the faculty has exhibited,” Gomez says. “Students love the material and they see the relevance in doing this work today. I think it's more important now to teach the material given the political environment in which we find ourselves.”
Looking to the Future Also in its final year, most of Berry's award has been applied and her research completed. The human cost of the $88,000 cut, however, was significant. Taylor’s postdoctoral contract was terminated immediately; the salaries she and Berry earned from the grant are gone. The fourteen students currently taking Taylor’s Social Movements, Global Justice course for the Global Justice certificate risked not being able to graduate in June, while students in the first year of the program faced an uncertain future. Berry had received the NSF’s PECASE award from Biden in January, which promised federal funding for the project for another five years. That, too, was eliminated.
“It completely wreaks havoc on the entire program that we've spent four years developing and building at the University of Denver,” Berry says. “The cutting of research grants is abhorrent enough. The cutting of research grants that also were designed to catalyze the leadership of emerging researchers in their fields by building corresponding infrastructure and programs to ensure the broader reach of that research is just disastrous.”
Berry has been able to pull together enough funding from DU, private donors and other programs at Korbel to keep the certificate and Taylor’s course going through the end of this semester and ensure that the current students can graduate, a fix that she calls “a bandaid on a massive, gaping wound.” The future is even more bleak, she says.
“This is about an undermining of the very apparatus of knowledge production that is responsible for helping the United States of America understand facts and science and history,” Berry notes. “What is essentially happening is a gutting of that infrastructure, and there's not going to be a substitute.”
Today, the federal government funds 40 percent of all basic research in the U.S., its smallest share in history. Since peaking at 72 percent in 1967, the portion of research funded by the federal government has steadily declined over the past several decades as businesses and, to a lesser extent, nonprofits and higher education have increased their research investments. In 2022, 27 percent of the federal government’s $43 million in basic research funding was supplied by the NSF, which currently supports more than 30,000 research projects with approximately $9 billion. The Trump administration is looking to slash that budget by more than half next year.
While Romero notes that the availability of federal funding had enabled him and his colleagues to “amplify” their research, he emphasizes that community-based knowledge has been around much longer than the federal dollars.
“Particularly when you're talking about research being done in ways that are designed to collaborate and connect with the community, they're done in ways that that knowledge is still going to continue to be produced,” Romero says. “I think what this moment has revealed is, in some cases, the challenge of relying too heavily on certain sources of funding.
“But I think the other piece here (is) that the research that is being done, the data that is being produced, the stories that are being told, they're that much better when you have the ability to tap into so many different resources,” he adds.
So far, DU has offered to backfill 10 percent of its faculty’s federal losses. The Mellon Foundation, a private philanthropy body, pledged $15 million in “emergency funding” to humanities councils across the U.S. But even with these short-term fixes, the vacuum left by federal withdrawal is undeniable. So is the resolve of the DU academics who've lost funding.
“We are all very much on the side of using knowledge as power and using training and networks as ways of demanding the human rights of all people,” Berry says. “We feel a very strong sense of purpose right now.”
The Māori, who comprise about 20% of New Zealand’s population, recently staged a powerful protest in Parliament using the haka—a sacred traditional dance—to oppose a bill that seeks to reinterpret the Treaty of Waitangi. Signed in 1840 between Māori leaders and the British Crown, the Treaty is widely regarded as New Zealand’s founding document and a cornerstone of Māori rights. Supporters of the bill claim it grants Indigenous people unfair advantages—echoing familiar rhetoric in the United States, where DEI efforts are often miscast as "divisive" or as “reverse discrimination" against white people—who also happen to be settlers.
This protest exemplifies what scholars describe as a politics of refusal—a culturally grounded act of resistance to state-sanctioned erasure.
Yet it is a painful reminder that the Māori should never have been placed in the position of their defending hard-won rights in the first place. That such an expressive act was necessary signals just how much is at stake: land, language, identity, and the very foundation of coexistence.
The haka is not a performance to be summoned in crisis, but a sacred expression of sovereignty and dignity.
That Māori leaders were compelled to use it in Parliament reveals the depth of the injustice they confront.
In a truly democratic society, Indigenous peoples should not have to repeatedly defend foundational agreements. The same holds true in the U.S., where communities of color are continually forced to reassert their worth and belonging as members of racial or cultural groups in the face of legislative erasure.
We must imagine—and fight for—a democracy where the rights, histories, and futures of all communities are upheld, not endangered. One where refusal is not our only option, but where justice is built into the very structure of public life.
-Angela Valenzuela
New Zealand Parliament Suspended as Maori Lawmakers Perform Haka
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