Fund the Future: Support Academia Cuauhtli’s Growth at the ESB-MACC

Friends,

We are gathering signatures to show broad community support for continued funding—and future expansion—of Academia Cuauhtli, our beloved Saturday school in Austin, Texas. The signed letter will go to Mayor Kirk Watson.

With Phase B of the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (our physical home) scheduled for completion this November, we’re thrilled to return—and to grow. 

Thanks to our successful advocacy several years ago, we secured four classrooms with the intention of expanding our program to serve even more students as we enter our 12th year as a community-based initiative. However, in order for us to realize that vision, we need your support.

Please add your name to this community letter affirming your support: https://forms.gle/zBNACL1TJw5sahHN9

Your voice helps uplift our students, families, and educators. The letter with signatures will go to Austin Mayor Kirk Watson.

Thanks to Dr. Maria del Carmen Unda for taking the lead on this support letter.

Mil gracias for standing with us.

In community,

Angela Valenzuela

A Community Letter of Support for Academia Cuauhtli
Link to view signatures on this public better: https://tinyurl.com/SupportAcademiaCuauhtli


webpage: https://academiacuauhtli.com/
research: https://academiacuauhtli.com/publications/


For reference: EMMA S. BARRIENTOS MEXICAN AMERICAN CULTURAL CENTER ADVISORY BOARD RECOMMENDATION 20250305-6 https://services.austintexas.gov/edims/document.cfm?id=447154


Dear Mayor Kirk Watson and Austin City Council Members:

We write to you as parents, teachers, alumni, and community members who have directly and indirectly benefited from and deeply believe in the mission of Academia Cuauhtli (pronounced KWOWT-lee, meaning Eagle Academy). For more than a decade, this community-rooted program has transformed the educational experiences of hundreds of emergent bilingual students across Austin. We thank you for your past support and endorsement of our work. Today, we respectfully urge you to fully fund Academia Cuauhtli’s FY 2025–2026 $106,000 request put forward by the ESB-MACC for operations, alongside additional funding support for the establishment of a full-time Culture and Arts Education Supervisor position.

Located at the Emma S. Barrientos Mexican American Cultural Center (ESB-MACC), Academia Cuauhtli is more than a Saturday school—it is a lifeline. It provides free, high-quality, culturally sustaining education to our children in Spanish, English, and Nahuatl. It connects us as families, uplifts our heritage, and helps our children develop pride in who they are. The program has shown us that culturally relevant teaching is not only possible but powerful. Our children come home speaking about Tejano history, environmental justice, and ancestral knowledge—and they are excited to learn.

The program has supported over 800 AISD students, trained over 250 teachers, and generated more than 18 original curricular units. It has also helped parents access resources during the pandemic and created leadership opportunities for our youth. It has also become a pathway to master’s and doctoral degrees in educational careers at the University of Texas at Austin with whom we also partnered. Though we are also partnered with the Austin Independent School District, we lament that not a single dollar will go toward Academia Cuauhtli this coming school year.

Our community-driven, volunteer-based model ensures that every dollar goes directly into instruction, mentorship, and support for our families. However, we cannot sustain neither this impact nor our anticipated growth as we move back into our home at the ESB-MACC this November without your support. A full-time coordinator is urgently needed to manage and grow the program. For years, this work has been carried on the shoulders of volunteers and part-time staff. As the needs of our community grow, so must our ability to meet them. The funding request—part of the overall ESB-MACC budget—is modest compared to the transformational impact that Academia Cuauhtli has in our lives.

We ask you to stand with our teachers, children, families, and our community per the undersigned individuals and organizations. Please vote to approve both the ESB-MACC operations request as part of their budget request to the City of Austin for the $106,000 alongside additional funding support for the establishment of a full-time supervisor position. Investing in Academia Cuauhtli is an investment in equity, education, and community thriving which is so needed in these difficult times.

Sincerely,

Dr. Maria del Carmen Unda


Please Share widely !
View signatures on public letter: https://tinyurl.com/SupportAcademiaCuauhtli
Link to sign: https://forms.gle/zBNACL1TJw5sahHN9

Trump just forfeited the Cold War: How a Russian Intelligence Operation Captured the White House

Friends:

In a February Substack piece that now feels like a lifetime ago, Austin-based Jason Stanford highlights a stunning allegation by former Kazakh intelligence official Alnur Mussayev: that in 1987, Donald Trump was recruited by the KGB under the code name Krasnov.

While U.S. media has largely ignored the claim, the pattern of Trump’s behavior—his flattery of Vladimir Putin, undermining of NATO, and repeated alignment with Russian geopolitical goals—has long raised red flags. Former military leaders like H.R. McMaster and James Mattis couldn’t explain Trump’s consistent deference to Russia. 

But what if this isn’t a mystery at all? What if this is the culmination of a decades-long intelligence operation? After all, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

Trump-Clinton Debate, Oct 19, 2016

The signs have been there. Trump publicly encouraged Russian cyberattacks on Hillary Clinton’s campaign. He later withheld aid from Ukraine to pressure them into smearing a political opponent. 

After firing FBI Director James Comey for investigating Russian interference, he handed classified intel to Russian diplomats inside the Oval Office.

Now, with Trump in office, the surrender is accelerating. He’s shut down USAID, compromised CIA security protocols, undermined support for Ukraine, and appointed Tulsi Gabbard—long favored by Russian state media—as Director of National Intelligence. The Cold War, long considered won, is being undone from within.

This is not mere dysfunction; it’s capitulation. 

The U.S. intelligence community warned us in no uncertain terms that Russia’s interference in the 2016 election was “sweeping and systemic.” The question is no longer whether Trump has sided with Russia—it’s how much further he’s willing to go.

Yes, America is far from perfect, as evidenced by today’s cruel and escalating attacks on immigrants of color. But our concerns in this moment are not about perfection or ideological purity. They’re about sovereignty—as Hillary Clinton tried to warn us.

And they’re about whether a once-principled political party will continue to enable a hostile foreign power at the expense of the nation it once claimed to serve.

I, too, am a patriot. And I agree with Stanford: this is nothing short of humiliating.

Read his piece. It’s sharp, detailed, even darkly humorous—and worth your time. You can find it on his Substack, The Experiment. Consider subscribing.

—Angela Valenzuela

P.S. This is not about education, but I know Jason and happy to share this.

Trump just forfeited the Cold War
Trump, a Russian asset since the '80s codenamed "Krasnov," has turned the US into a Russian satellite

Jason Stanford
Feb 22, 2025

Welcome to the weekend edition of The Experiment, your official hopepunk newsletter. If you’d like to support my work, become a paid subscriber or check out the options below. But even if you don’t, this bugga free. Thanks for reading!

Have I ever told you about the time I almost became a spy? I spent the summer after graduating high school at my late grandmother’s ranch in central Oregon. Two important things happened: The weekly newspaper ran an AP article about how the CIA needed people who spoke Russian, Arabic, and Mandarin, and I saw The Hunt for Red October on VHS. “Hey,” I said to myself as I watched the mess that Jack Ryan got himself into for writing a memo. “That’s a job!” I made up my mind to learn Russian and go into intelligence.

Keep in mind, this was the ‘80s, and the glide path was to become a stock broker or something to make money. Now, I had no money, and I grew up with so little money that I never even thought of ordering two scoops at Baskin Robbins, and restaurants with cloth napkins were a luxury reserved for special occasions. Even so, pursuing money held zero interest to me. Once my grandmother’s third husband asked me, “Don’t you want to get rich?” I snapped that I thought I’d just never get divorced so I could keep my money, but the truth was that I’d never considered the possibility not because it was unobtainable but because I couldn’t imagine anything duller than working just to make money.


“Hey, that’s a job!”

I wanted my life to matter and for my days to be spent doing something I enjoyed. And learning secrets and trying to stop the Russians from blowing up the world sounded like a lot of fun. Where do I sign? Learning the language was the easy part. A foreign exchange student in high school, I already knew German, and Russian is basically more complicated German in code. By the end of my first semester I was already telling jokes1 in Russian.2

Then it came time to apply for a job in military intelligence. My Russian professor at my liberal arts college and my classmates, safe to say, were not wild about my decision. I went to college when the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke up. Mikhail Gorbachev’s glasnost policy opened up the censored state secrets, and soon Russia was holding real elections. The conventional wisdom was that Russia was becoming an ally and a western-style democracy, and the idea that I would sign up to spy on our new friends did not align with where nearly everyone thought things were headed. I didn’t necessarily disagree with that, but again, spying seemed like a load of fun.

"Next time, Jack, write a goddamn memo." Oh, how I wanted to write memos.

At first, the Navy loved me. They filled my head with visions of Officer Training School and spy bunkers, but then they gave me a physical. “Have you ever done drugs?” a nurse asked. I confessed to smoking marijuana eight times, which for my college was closer to DARE3 than daring. I’d just said no a lot more times than I’d said yes, and I told them I’d happily commit to clean living if it meant I could cosplay as Jack Ryan and write memos for the rest of my life.

“I’m sorry,” said the nurse. “The limit is three.” I was devastated and ashamed. My dad thought it was perhaps the funniest thing he’d ever heard. “In the ‘60s, they would have made you admiral,” he said. I spent my last semester of college in Moscow and then dabbled in journalism for a couple of years before returning home convinced that Russia would never fully embrace democracy. Russians often conflated capitalism and democracy, but even liberal democratic activists confessed to yearning for a strongman like Stalin. If you were interested in making the world a better place, investing cab fare in Russia was a waste of money.

And it never once occurred to me not to take my country’s side against Russia.



I wasn’t the only one who went to Moscow. In 1987, Trump: The Art of the Deal topped the The New York Times best seller list for many weeks, and with Gorbachev slowly opening up the country to western investment, Donald Trump went to Moscow in hopes of building a hotel.4 He didn’t get the hotel, but he did get recruited by the 6th Directorate of the KGB in Moscow, the counter-intelligence unit responsible for “recruiting businessmen from capitalist countries.”5

That’s according to a recent Facebook post by Alnur Mussayev, a retired intelligence officer that’s made the news in Great Britain but is being ignored by American journalists, maybe for good reason. “In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov,” wrote Mussayev.

This could all be fantasy, but it would go a long way toward explaining what Anthony Scaramucci, who served as Trump’s White House communications director for 11 days in 2017, called Vladimir Putin’s “mysterious ‘hold’ on the president.” He wasn’t alone. H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, and John Kelly also couldn’t understand why Trump seemed to always take Russia’s side. “I don’t know why it’s like this,” he said on his podcast The Rest Is Politics: US. “McMaster couldn’t figure it out, Mattis couldn’t figure it out, Kelly couldn’t figure it out.”

It’s also backed up by what Yuri Shvets, a retired KGB major, told The Guardian four years ago. According to Shvets, it was the flattery of KBG offers that introduced the idea of running for office to Trump.


The ex-major recalled: “For the KGB, it was a charm offensive. They had collected a lot of information on his personality so they knew who he was personally. The feeling was that he was extremely vulnerable intellectually, and psychologically, and he was prone to flattery.

“This is what they exploited. They played the game as if they were immensely impressed by his personality and believed this is the guy who should be the president of the United States one day: it is people like him who could change the world. They fed him these so-called active measures soundbites and it happened. So it was a big achievement for the KGB active measures at the time.”


“In 1987, our directorate recruited Donald Trump under the pseudonym Krasnov.”

After returning home, Trump briefly explored a run for the Republican nomination for president, going so far as to speak at a Rotary Club luncheon in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. “If the right man doesn’t get into office,” he told the Rotarians, “you’re going to see a catastrophe in this country in the next four years like you’re never going to believe. And then you’ll be begging for the right man.”

“Krasnov,” by the way, is a last name in Russian that’s derived from krasota, a diminutive for krasa, the word for “beauty.” It’s the perfect choice to manipulate a vain, self-obsessed man, kind of like the time Putin called Trump yarkii, which means “brilliant” in the sense of “colorful” but which Trump interpreted as a compliment of his intelligence.

“I think when he calls me ‘brilliant,’ I'll take the compliment,” said Trump in 2016. “If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.”

It’s hard to remember how obvious all this stuff was back then. Trump openly encouraged Russia to engage in cyberattacks against Hillary Clinton’s campaign. When that proved fruitful, American political journalists were all-too-happy to treat the stolen materials like regular opposition research and not the illegally obtained evidence of a criminal attack by a hostile foreign power. And everyone acknowledged—except Trump—that this was all going on. He wasn’t exactly a sleeper agent.


“If he says great things about me, I'm going to say great things about him.”

But by that time, the Republican Party had been taken over like zombie ants by a Russian intelligence operation that began in 2015 with the Jade Helm6 embarrassment. “At that point, I’m figuring the Russians are saying, ‘We can go big time,’” said Michael Hayden, the former director of the CIA and NSA. “At that point, I think they made the decision, ‘We’re going to play in the electoral process.’”

It, uh, worked.

A bipartisan U.S. Senate committee concluded that the Russian government “engaged in an aggressive, multifaceted effort to influence, or attempt to influence, the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.” And the Mueller Report called Russia’s interference in the 2016 election “sweeping and systemic” and “identified numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump Campaign,” but Trump fired FBI Director James Comey for investigating his campaign in the first place, and the next day he handed over classified intelligence to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, in the Oval Office like a goddamn puppet.

“No puppet. No puppet. You’re the puppet. No, you’re the puppet.”

Trump tried to withhold foreign aid to Ukraine to force them to dig up imagined incriminating evidence against Hunter Biden, and Republicans in Congress, like the good little zombie ants they are, did nothing. Actually, that’s not true. They fell in line and repeated Trump’s bellowing honk that this was all just the “Russia hoax.” The Party told them to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. It was the final, most essential command, and so the Republican Party took sides against the United States of America when it came to Russia. If this weren’t so heartbreaking, I’d be more impressed with Russia’s feat.

Somehow, we—the west, NATO and all that—survived. When Putin threatened to invade Ukraine, Joe Biden learned from Barack Obama’s failure to appease Putin over Crimea in 2014. Biden didn’t just rally our European and Canadian7 allies, thus reasserting American leadership in the west that Trump had abdicated, but he innovated a new way of dealing with an international crisis by communicating intelligence about Russian movements in real time. This brilliantly pre-empted Putin’s disinformation attempts. Remember what it was like to have a President who took our side?


Trump has forfeited the Cold War.

Then 77,237,942 Americans made one very bad decision and re-elected Trump to the presidency, where he has, in one month, effectively surrendered to Russia.

Repeating Putin’s talking points and lying even more obviously than usual, Trump has begun negotiating away Ukraine’s territory to Russia and turned on Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whom he called an unelected dictator.


The White House ordered the CIA to send a list of new hires via an unclassified email server, making it possible for Russia and other hostile countries to identify our covert agents as well as their own citizens who are helping us.


He, through Elon Musk, shut down USAID, which doesn’t just pull back American soft power in the world but creates a vacuum to be filled by amoral state actors such as Russia, which celebrated Trump’s closure of USAID by issuing sneering insults. “The Trump administration has just put America last, while handing a gift to our biggest adversaries,” said a former USAID official.


And he installed Tulsi Gabbard, who very probably was compromised by a Kremlin agent and who has been described as “sympathetic … toward Russia” and “a favorite of Russia’s state media,” as the Director of National Intelligence, which is suboptimal to everyone but Putin.

Trump has forfeited the Cold War. A decades-long Russian intelligence operation has captured the White House and flipped our foreign policy to its advantage. Maybe this will all result in better poetry and comedy, but God help them if they reboot Hunt for Red October again.

I know America isn’t perfect. We’ve made some massive messes over the centuries. But we were founded on an aspiration to become a more perfect union, never reaching perfection but always getting closer. I don’t need my country to be perfect to take it’s side anymore than S needs to be perfect8 for me to love her forever. I am a patriot, and right now it feels humiliating to see our President hand his keys and his wallet over to Putin—and to see Republican elected officials and voters go right the hell along with him.

Anger and humiliation are not a way to survive the Trump Era. Next week I want to talk about something we might want to consider as a way to rebel against this unholy fuckery that is visiting this country. I think I might have an idea. See you next weekend. Until then, get outside and take a walk. Summer will be cooking us alive before you know it. Enjoy the chill.

Trump’s Monstrous Disaster Bill is a War on the People of this Great Nation

Friends,

Just a quick note—

Please check out yesterday’s (June 29) Reuters article, which reports that Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” would add an estimated $3.3 trillion to the national debt over the next decade. That’s $800 billion more than the version passed by the House just last month.

According to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, the real price tag could balloon to $5 trillion over ten years.

A majority of Americans do not support this monstrous legislation. Among its worst elements are deep cuts to Medicaid and the potential to trigger automatic $500 billion Medicare cuts—thanks to PAYGO (pay-as-you-go) rules—anytime between 2027 and 2034. Social Security isn’t safe either.

Excuse me, but this is happening just as the Baby Boomer generation enters retirement en masse? How reckless and irresponsible. 

Gen X-ers aren't far behind either.

And for what? So the ultra-wealthy billionaire class can pocket even more of our hard-earned tax dollars—while the rest of us are told to tighten our belts?

Even Senator Josh Hawley has raised alarms about the bill’s catastrophic consequences. If he’s worried, that should tell you something.

This is a moment to act. Contact your representatives—let them know this bill is not what America needs. Let's also please call it what it is: A war on the people of this great nation.

The only thing that will make a difference at this point is pushback. If you don't know who represents you, this link will get you there.

Sí se puede! Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

"The Long Fight for Meaningful Assessment in Texas: From TAAS to HB 4 and Beyond" by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Long Fight for Meaningful Assessment in Texas: From TAAS 

to House Bill 4 and Beyond

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

House Bill 4 represents a promising and long-overdue step toward meaningful reform of Texas’ public school accountability system, which currently relies too heavily on the STAAR exam. The late Rice University professor, Dr. Linda McNeil, and I published on this very topic 25 years ago (McNeil & Valenzuela, 2000). 

I authored an anthology on this in 2004, published by the State University of New York Press (Valenzuela, 2004). We worked with former Texas State Rep. Dora Olivo, filing a bill on holistic assessment in the 2001 legislature. It actually passed out of the Texas House. This, despite personal phone calls from President George W. Bush to House members in real time. 

Rep. Olivo’s bill stood little chance. After all, "W" was on a mission to pass what would become the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001, a sweeping federal mandate that ushered high-stakes testing into every classroom and codified accountability as the cornerstone of public education policy.

Believe me when I say—I’ve given over two decades of my life to this struggle. My older daughter, then just an elementary school student, testified before the Texas Legislature about the harms of high-stakes testing. On the day she courageously refused to take the exam, she wrote a heartfelt letter to President George W. Bush, pleading for change. This fight is not just professional for me—it’s deeply personal. In fact, the very origins of this blog are rooted in that resistance.

By the 2013 legislative session, Dr. Linda McNeil and I had joined forces with Texans Advocating for Meaningful Student Assessment (TAMSA), standing alongside a growing coalition of scholars, parents, and advocates committed to transforming our state’s accountability system. Over time, that chorus of resistance only grew louder. I’ve been especially heartened to see Raise Your Hand Texas (RYHT) take a leadership role in this movement, and I’ve had the privilege of attending several of their events and press conferences that continue to shape the public conversation.

Several aspects of Raise Your Hand Texas’s 2025 report, “Assessment and Accountability: HB 4 Back in the Spotlight,” are especially noteworthy and speak to the significance of this moment (Raise Your Hand Texas, 2025).

First, with all the multi-year, RYHT efforts and data on public opinion on the Texas STAAR System of testing and accountability, House Bill 4, a bipartisan bill, died this legislative session, failing to arrive on the Governor's desk. It was a bipartisan bad idea to begin with.

Second, meaningful assessment was a priority of the entire Texas House of Representatives, as evidenced by the lower bill number, and it still didn't make it.

Last, and relatedly, the show of support by so many authors and co-authors is more than I have ever seen on testing legislation in the history of the legislature, and for that, we should be very encouraged.

Educators, parents, and students have long argued that a single high-stakes test cannot capture the full picture of student learning, school quality, or teacher impact. It's also costly and has filled the pockets of Education Testing Services and Pearson, Inc. to the tune of literally hundreds of millions, probably billions by now, over the past decades (e.g., see McGaughey, 2015).

As Dr. McNeil would often say, "Every testing dollar for the testing companies is one less dollar for public education in Texas."

In a political climate where entire diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and centers are being dismantled and faculty governance stripped away, one has to wonder: if the testing regime is so untouchable, then whose interests beyond the testing companies does it serve?

The truth is, the testing infrastructure is far from neutral. It operates as a powerful mechanism of control—determining what counts as legitimate knowledge, who is deemed successful or deficient, and which schools are rewarded or punished. It elevates compliance over curiosity, standardization over critical thinking, and reinforces a relentless hierarchy that ranks students, educators, schools, and, by association, entire communities as winners or failures.

So yes, we must ask—why not dismantle the testing regime too? In a moment when so much is being undone in the name of “reform,” let's turn the mirror on the system and ask who benefits from the tests, and who is harmed when they have an undue influence on our children’s future?

Enough is enough. For over two decades, we have fought against a testing system that punishes children for the conditions they were born into—a system rooted in racism and classism that reduces vibrant, complex human beings to numbers on a piece of paper (Valenzuela, 2004). 

How many more children must carry the weight of a single test? How many more will internalize failure as casualties in a testing system that is, at its core, both racist and classist (Valenzuela, 2004)? We must begin organizing now for the 90th Texas Legislative Session in 2027. The path to justice in education demands persistence, preparation, and the collective will to dismantle what never served our children in the first place. 

All told, a revised version of HB 4, passed unanimously out of the House Public Education Committee this session. It addressed concerns about limiting the weight of STAAR in A-F campus ratings and introduced more formative assessments that provide timely and actionable data. It also included innovative changes, such as updating postsecondary success indicators and launching local accountability pilot programs, allowing districts to design systems that reflect community values and student engagement beyond the classroom.

The bill’s pivot toward a student-centered accountability system—one that, in addition to academic performance, values growth, character, and civic engagement —is not just a policy shift. It’s a moral course correction. I commend Raise Your Hand Texas for its tireless advocacy in helping us reach this turning point. We now have every reason to be hopeful—and even more reason to keep pushing for a future where every child is seen, heard, and valued far beyond a test score.

References

McGaughey, L. (2015, May 19) Texas set to switch testing vendor, reducing role of British education giant: Pearson had held contract for 15 years, Houston Chronicle, https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Texas-set-to-switch-testing-vendor-drops-6271843.php

McNeil, L., & Valenzuela, A. (2000). The harmful impact of the TAAS system of testing in Texas: Beneath the accountability rhetoric. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED443872.pdf

Raise Your Hand Texas. (2025, May 5). Assessment and accountability: HB 4 Back in the Spotlight. https://www.raiseyourhandtexas.org/assessment-and-accountability-hb-4/

Valenzuela, A. (2004). Leaving Children Behind: How "Texas-style" accountability harms Latino Youth. New York: State University of New York Press.

When the Ice Cream Man Disappears, So Does Our Humanity

Friends:

I ask you, what kind of country tears a paletero from his community mid-route, leaving only a silent cart as testimony? What kind of nation viciously unleashes federal agents not on traffickers or violent criminals, but on elders, street vendors, and day laborers—on the very people who have made this nation work?

As reported by Alicia Victoria Lozano in today's NBC News, Ambrocio “Enrique” Lozano’s story is not a singular tragedy. It is a microcosm of state-sanctioned violence in the form of ICE raids, carried out with cold precision under the guise of legality. It is terror with a badge.  

More than 1,600 people have been detained in Los Angeles this month alone. Hundreds of homes shattered, lives disrupted, and communities thrown into chaos. And still, our institutions remain shamefully silent.

But the people are not.

From the viral image of an abandoned paleta cart to spontaneous hospital vigils, grassroots groups like Siempre Unidos LA, Centro CSO, and Union del Barrio are writing a new story—one of defiance and deep community love. In this story, ordinary residents become rapid responders. Churches become sanctuaries of resistance. Cell phones become tools of documentation, truth-telling, and justice.

Let’s be clear: these ICE raids are not simply about immigration enforcement. They are about instilling fear. They are about reminding people of color, particularly Latina/o and immigrant communities, that they are disposable. That their labor is welcome, but their lives are not. And in this state of exception, even U.S. citizens—like Andrea Velez—are swept up, reminding us that authoritarian regimes do not stop to check your papers when fear is the real policy.

To those who still believe this is about “law and order,” I ask: what law? Whose order? The law that lets crops rot in the field while farmworkers cower in hiding? The order that lets an Iranian woman collapse in the street while her husband is taken in handcuffs?

Specifically, an Iranian husband and wife were apprehended by ICE outside their multilingual church with the woman collapsing during the encounter. Her arrest, filmed by her pastor and circulated widely, underscores that this crackdown targets not just Latina/o immigrants, but anyone perceived as deportable. 

We must understand this moment not as isolated cruelty, but as part of a broader political project—one that criminalizes care, punishes presence, and seeks to erase the very people who keep our communities alive.

But we refuse to disappear.

We teach. We witness. We organize. We blog.  And like the paleta cart left behind, we remind the world of what was stolen—and what must be reclaimed. Because caring is resistance. Because community is power. Because no one—not anyone—should have to live in fear for selling ice cream on a summer afternoon.

-Angela Valenzuela

Protesters in Los Angeles are shifting their tactics as ICE detentions spread fear 

Activists have shifted to rapid responses instead of mass demonstrations, and social media is filled with videos of arrests on city streets and outside Home Depots.

By Alicia Victoria Lozano | Los Angeles Times | June 29, 2025

LOS ANGELES — An abandoned ice cream cart has become a symbol of resistance to residents of a west Los Angeles neighborhood who oppose President Donald Trump’s aggressive immigration policies.

The cart belonged to a beloved ice cream vendor who was arrested by federal agents Monday afternoon while walking his usual route through Culver City.

The sudden disappearance of Ambrocio “Enrique” Lozano stunned residents who said the vendor was a welcome fixture in their neighborhood for more than 20 years.

“There was always a bright light around him,” said Patricia Pande, a Culver City resident who spent countless days enjoying Lozano’s ice cream with her granddaughter. “The happiest times I know with her are from the ice cream man.”

A photo of Lozano’s lone ice cream cart spread quickly across social media, triggering a tidal wave of responses from immigration advocates, residents and lawmakers.

Hyperlocal grassroots organizations like Siempre Unidos LA began sharing the image, and soon a crowdfunding campaign for Lozano and his family hit its goal of $6,000 to cover their legal fees and living expenses. The campaign topped $57,000 after the photo drew national attention.

The response to Lozano’s arrest highlights a new strategy emerging after large-scale protests overtook downtown Los Angeles earlier this month. Instead of focusing on marches outside federal buildings, residents of sprawling L.A. County are zeroing in on their own blocks and neighborhoods to show their opposition to Trump’s mass deportation efforts.

A loose coalition of dozens of grassroots organizations whose cellphone-toting members are broadcasting immigration arrests in real time over social media to millions of followers has taken shape across the region.

These groups post and repost the locations of arrests, organize spontaneous protests, help families find information about relatives who have been detained and set up donation drives when needed.

It’s difficult to measure the direct effect these actions have had since Trump’s immigration crackdown, but affected families say the outpouring of support is immeasurable.

“I’m in disbelief,” said Kimberly Noriega, Lozano’s niece. “We felt so hopeless, and then suddenly there was this whole community of Culver City and now an even bigger community behind him.”

His relatives will host an event in support of Lozano on Sunday in Culver City, where they hope to sell his remaining ice cream and popsicles before they turn stale.

Lozano is among more than 1,618 people in Los Angeles who have been arrested by the federal government since it began clamping down on residents without citizenship earlier this month, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

The detentions have spread fear across Southern California, where some 1.4 million people are estimated to live without full legal authorization, according to the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

Many Home Depot parking lots, where day laborers congregate to find work, now sit empty. Familiar taco trucks have vanished from street corners. Fresh produce is left to rot in fields because employees are too afraid to report to work.

At one multilingual church whose members hail from Iran and Spanish-speaking countries, parishioners with tenuous legal status have been advised to stay home rather than attend service.

A pastor from the Los Angeles church posted a video last week of an Iranian husband and wife being arrested by federal agents on a west L.A. street. The woman suffered a medical emergency during the encounter, which was filmed by the pastor and shared widely on social media.

Activists who saw the video rushed to the hospital where the woman was being treated and recorded interactions with federal officials inside and outside the medical facility.

The woman was released from the hospital into federal custody, and the viral video has helped to warn the Iranian community that immigration officials are working in the area, the pastor told NBC News.

Liz Ramirez, founder of Siempre Unidos LA, which first reposted the image of Lozano’s ice cream truck, said the proliferation of videos developed organically and the trend shows no signs of slowing down.

“Everyone has a vision for what message you’re trying to get across and to whom,” she said of activists. “For Siempre Unidos, our main focus is to mobilize folks from the comfort of their own home.”

Another group, Union del Barrio, posted a video to Instagram that appears to show four federal officers detaining a U.S. citizen. The family of Andrea Velez said she was wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and falsely accused of “forcefully obstructing” them during an immigration raid in downtown Los Angeles on Tuesday morning.

She was charged Thursday with assaulting a federal officer while he was attempting to arrest a suspect and was released on $5,000 bail. She did not enter a plea and is due back in court on July 17.

The group also posted a video this week appearing to show Los Angeles police officers working with immigration officials, which drew widespread criticism from activists.

The Los Angeles Police Department said in a statement that officers had responded to reports of a kidnapping and encountered an aggressive crowd when they arrived to the scene. The department has a longstanding policy dating back to 1979 of not voluntarily participating in immigration enforcement.

Ron Gochez, a member of Union del Barrio, said dozens of volunteers patrol the streets every day and sift through hundreds of videos submitted each week. Not all content is posted — only what the group can verify through lawyers or firsthand accounts.

“We’re here and we’re here to stay,” he said Wednesday at a rally in downtown Los Angeles.

Centro CSO, a grassroots organization based in the Boyle Heights neighborhood in east Los Angeles, said its social media audience has more than doubled since the raids started this spring.

Like Siempre Unidos, Centro CSO shares videos submitted by residents who witness immigration arrests, and it organizes protests to draw attention to specific cases.

Organizer Gabriel Quiroz Jr. said the group depends on community members to text with information about immigration actions, which it can use to alert vulnerable residents.

“People trust us, rightfully, because we’re out there doing the work,” he said.

Immigrants' Rights: Know your rights, compliments of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Friends, 

Tragically, we are hearing of a lot of people getting picked up by ICE in our communities. It's important theat people know their rights. 

Here is great information on what your rights are from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that has been carefully developed to help you navigate encounters with law enforcement and immigration officials safely and confidently.

If you’re ever questioned about your immigration status, it’s critical to know your rights—you do not have to answer questions about your citizenship or status, and you absolutely have the right to remain silent. Never lie or present false documents. Remember that you can refuse a search unless there’s probable cause. 

Please take a moment to review this important guidance so you can protect yourself and your loved ones. 

My best suggestion is to go directly to the ACLU website for detailed explanations and various scenarios. 

May our Creator—who sees no borders and draws no distinctions among us—bless and protect you always. These are the hard times.

-Angela Valenzuela


Know your rights

Immigrants' Rights

Regardless of your immigration status, you have guaranteed rights under the Constitution. Learn more here about your rights as an immigrant, and how to express them.

Law enforcement asks about my immigration status

Paola Ramos explores her book 'Defectors' about right-wing Latino voters | Horizonte

Friends:

Paola Ramos—journalist, MSNBC correspondent, and daughter of Univision anchor Jorge Ramos—offers a timely and provocative reflection on Latino political identity in her book Defectors. Featured recently on Horizonte, Ramos explores why some Latinos are shifting rightward, challenging the tired notion that Latino voters are a unified, progressive bloc.

Through deeply personal storytelling, Ramos listens to voices often overlooked—Latinos who feel disillusioned, religiously driven, or culturally alienated from both parties. Her work doesn’t frame these shifts as betrayals but as expressions of agency shaped by history, geography, and belonging.

For educators, activists, and policy advocates, Defectors is a wake-up call for all to confront the ideological complexity within our communities—and most certainly, to not assume alignment.

Ramos reminds us that understanding doesn’t mean agreement. It means making space for hard truths and contradictions. In a moment of growing polarization, her call to listen—to really listen—couldn’t be more urgent.

Check out the great interview on Horizonte.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Ramos, P. (2024). Defectors: The rise of the Latino far right and what it means for America. Pantheon.

"Are We Heading Toward War? A Growing Fear We Must Name," by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Are We Heading Toward War? A Growing Fear We Must Name

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

I write today with a heavy heart and a growing sense of dread. It’s a feeling I have not been able to shake for weeks now. With each news headline, each cryptic statement, and each political maneuver, I fear that our country is inching closer to war.

I am fully aware that the decision to go to war lies, constitutionally, with Congress. This is what our founding documents stipulate. This is what checks and balances are supposed to ensure. But I also fear we are in a moment where these democratic norms are being deliberately eroded—where precedent, law, and even public sentiment are too easily cast aside.

And yes, I fear that Donald Trump will not honor the constitutional process. He has made clear through both word and action that he does not feel beholden to the same limits and deliberations that define a functioning democracy. He has already said he would be a "dictator on day one." And when it comes to war—where the stakes are human lives, international order, and the future of our children—such authoritarian impulses should terrify us all.

A recent segment from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart was most definitely cathartic. I encourage you to watch it. He captures, with precision, the absurdity and danger of this political moment. His satire is a sharp political commentary that exposes the contradictions and rhetorical manipulations surrounding the current escalation. I love how he captures my feelings. 

I do not, as yet, see any legitimate provocation or evidence to justify war. And that is precisely what makes this moment so dangerous. History has shown us how easily wars can be waged under false pretenses. 

The 2003 invasion of Iraq, for instance, was premised on the existence of weapons of mass destruction that were never found. Despite repeated claims by President George W. Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that Iraq posed an imminent threat—claims later proven to be misleading or outright false—Congress voted to authorize military force.

Most memorable was Rice's infamous warning in 2002, with words designed to instill fear and justify an unnecessary war:

“We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” (Rice, 2002).

Independent investigations, including the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (2004), later concluded that key claims about Iraq’s weapons programs were unsupported by the available intelligence (also see Jackson, 2005). The report states:

“The intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq were serious and pervasive. So were the failures prior to the September 11 attacks. While the investigations will continue, reform must begin. There can be no delay when the safety and security of America and Americans are at stake” (U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 2004, p. 510).

The results were hundreds of thousands dead, a destabilized Middle East, and a deep wound to America’s credibility in the world.

This isn’t just about politics. It’s about our very humanity. War is not an abstract concept. It is not a campaign strategy, a spectacle, or a “theater.” War devastates. It destroys homes, families, futures. And it leaves wounds, seen and unseen, that last for generations.

Some may say I’m being alarmist. But history has shown us what happens when we normalize lawlessness and look the other way. We cannot afford that complacency now. We must speak up, we must organize, and we must hold accountable anyone who threatens to drag our country—and the world—into another reckless and unnecessary war. 

demandpeace.org

The future is not written. But silence, indifference, and disillusionment help write the worst chapters. Let us choose instead to continue raising our voices, to demand peace, and to protect the fragile promise of democracy—while we still can.

One good thing we can all do today is reach out to whoever represents us in Congress and let them know how we feel, while there is still time. We must also demand that our media institutions not function as megaphones for power and instead rigorously press our elected officials for verifiable evidence of an imminent threat. Anything less is complicity in the manufacture of war.

References

Jackson, B. (2005, September 26). Anti-war ad says Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Rice “lied” about Iraq: We find some subtle word-twisting, and place the claims in context. FactCheck.org. https://www.factcheck.org/2005/09/anti-war-ad-says-bush-cheney-rumsfeld/

New York Times. (2025, June 19). Trump Will Decide on Iran Attack ‘in the Next Two Weeks,’ White House Says, New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/06/19/world/iran-israel-trump-news

Rice, C. (2002, September 8). Interview on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer. https://transcripts.cnn.com/show/le/date/2002-09-08/segment/00

The Daily Show. (2024, June 16). Jon Stewart on Israel’s "urgent" Iran strike, Minnesota murders & MAGA’s blame game [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Q08a7BI9XI&t=118s

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. (2004). Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/publications/108301.pdf

A "Rare Bird" in the Academy: Why We Need Better Data on Faculty Diversity

Friends: 

I’ve always told my students that I am a “rare bird” in the academy. By this I mean that there are still so few Latina or Latino professors teaching in universities as tenure-track or tenured faculty.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics’ Digest of Education Statistics (Table 324.20), Hispanic students earned approximately 9.65 percent of all doctoral degrees awarded to U.S. citizens in the most recent year reported for the 2020-21 academic year (NCES, 2021).

While this may appear to signal progress, the figure remains starkly disproportionate given the size and growth of the Latino population in the United States. It underscores the persistent structural barriers that Latino scholars face in accessing and completing the highest levels of academic training—a reality that demands both attention and action.

I recently revisited a 2013 piece by Laura Perna that powerfully argues for better data on faculty. In today’s political climate, marked by anti-DEI sentiment and legislative backlash, one might ask: Why should anyone care about better data on faculty diversity?

The answer lies in a fundamental contradiction: those who claim to champion merit, excellence, and freedom in higher education often simultaneously erase the very conditions that allow those ideals to thrive—namely, the honoring of merit across difference and diversity.

This perverse agenda does not diminish the urgent need for comprehensive, disaggregated, identity-specific data. Without it, institutions can conveniently claim that faculty hiring is already “colorblind” and “merit-based”—concepts that, in practice, often serve as smokescreens for enduring disparities in rank, pay, workload, and access to opportunity.

According to Hispanic Outlook (Mellander, 2022), the proportion of doctoral degrees awarded nationally to “Hispanics” grew from 5.1 percent in 2005 to 7.0 percent in 2015. However, the term “Hispanic” in these datasets is overly broad and not disaggregated by socioeconomic status, national origin, or immigration background.

This means the category may conflate a wide range of recipients—from elite graduates of Latin American universities to U.S.-born, first-generation college students who have overcome formidable barriers to earn their Ph.D.s. I have known many of the latter, and their stories are often ones of extraordinary resilience and persistence.

It also includes degrees awarded in Spanish language or Latin American Studies programs, which further complicates the picture. For instance, at UT-Austin, it took over 80 years for the Teresa Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies—endowed by a Latina alumna from South Texas with $15 million—to appoint its first-ever Latina director (Editorial Board, 2020). Dr. Teresa Lozano Long did not live long enough to meet the new director, the esteemed Dr. Adela Pineda-Franco.

Astonishingly, it was not until the Independent Equity Task Force filed an official complaint—despite having already published the damning Hispanic Equity Report (Valenzuela, 2021)—that any action was finally taken (Valenzuela, 2021). 

And now UT-Austin and Texas have decided that there is "too much" diversity? Yes, my friends, this is what we are up against. My good friend and colleague Dr. Michael Apple would see this as a broader political formation that aims to delegitimize social justice efforts by framing Latinas and Latinos—and other minoritized faculty—as threats to traditional values or academic rigor (Apple, 2004, 2006)

In short, without more nuanced, disaggregated data, we cannot fully assess how many of these doctoral degrees are earned by historically underserved subgroups within the U.S. Latino population—those who face the greatest structural disadvantages and remain severely underrepresented in academia.

-Angela Valenzuela

References

Apple, M. W. (2004). Ideology and curriculum (3rd ed.). Routledge.

Apple, M. W. (2006). Educating the “right” way: Markets, standards, God, and inequality (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Editorial Board. (2020, January 22). Why can’t UT-Austin hire, keep Latino faculty? Houston Chronicle. https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-Why-can-t-UT-Austin-hire-keep-Latino-14991723.php

Mellander, G. A. (2022, Dec.). Hispanics and PhDs. Hispanic Outlook. https://www.hispanicoutlook.com/articles/hispanics-and-phds?utm_source=chatgpt.com

National Center for Education Statistics. (2023, November). Table 324.20. Doctor’s degrees conferred by postsecondary institutions, by race/ethnicity and sex of student: Selected academic years, 1976–77 through 2021–22. In Digest of Education Statistics. U.S. Department of Education.

Valenzuela, A. (2021, April 16). Independent Equity Task Force that generated the Hispanic Equity Report [Blog post]. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2021/04/support-senate-bill-1709-faculty-equity.html

Why We Need Better Data on Faculty Diversity

Institutions need better data on faculty backgrounds,b
their experiences and working conditions, and (in)equities
in measures of success, Laura W. Perna writes.



by Laura W. Perna

January 10, 2023

An excellent and diverse faculty is vital to individual colleges and universities and to our communities, states, nation and globe. A diverse faculty brings diverse perspectives, and these diverse perspectives enhance teaching and advising, research and scholarship, clinical practice, and engagement with the community and world.

Yet, at most U.S. colleges and universities, the faculty is less diverse than the students. And the diversity of faculty declines as academic rank increases. In fall 2020, women represented 58 percent of undergraduates at degree-granting institutions nationwide, but 53 percent of assistant professors, 47 percent of associate professors and 35 percent of full professors. Black academics represented 13 percent of undergraduates but 7 percent of full-time assistant professors, 6 percent of associate professors and 4 percent of full professors. Hispanics represented 21 percent of undergraduates but 5 percent of assistant professors, 5 percent of associate professors and 4 percent of full professors.

To improve faculty diversity, college and university leaders need data. Qualitative data are useful for probing the experiences of faculty with different identities in particular contexts. Quantitative data are also essential, especially for documenting patterns of inequity and raising questions about how bias and other forces lead to observed differences.

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What Data Do We Need?

To improve faculty diversity, we need data that address three questions: What is the diversity of faculty? Is there equity in measures of faculty success? And what are the experiences and working conditions of diverse faculty?

At the foundation of any effort to improve faculty diversity must be data that document the social identities and background characteristics of faculty. Without these data, we do not know if we are making progress in diversifying the faculty and where greater progress is needed. Measures of faculty diversity should include variables that have been collected in national faculty surveys, such as age, race/ethnicity, disability status, marital status, number of dependent children and whether they were born in the United States. We also need data to describe aspects of diversity that are still less commonly measured, including sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation and political affiliation.

Identifying response options for survey questions about sexual orientation and gender identity is not without challenge. Respondents may not identify with proffered categories or resist using labels; self-reported sexual orientation and gender identity may be fluid; and preferred terms may vary by age, place and other characteristics. Terminology has also changed over time and will likely continue to evolve into the future. Yet without data on sexual orientation and gender identity, researchers and leaders are unable to consider the inequities that LGBTQ+ faculty experience and the institutional supports they need.

Collecting data on other background characteristics can further inform understanding of advantages that accrue to some groups. Available data suggest that the nation’s faculty are less diverse than relevant comparison groups in terms of socioeconomic status. Drawing on data collected from a survey of tenure-track faculty in eight disciplines (anthropology, biology, business, computer science, history, physics/astronomy, psychology and sociology) and other sources, one study concluded that faculty members are 12 to 25 times more likely than members of the general population to have at least one parent with a Ph.D.

Data describing the institutions from which faculty members receive doctoral degrees can also inform understanding of (the lack of) diversity of perspectives and the potential advantages and disadvantages that different faculty members have. A study of employment records of nearly 300,000 tenured and tenure-track faculty members employed between 2011 and 2020 at 368 Ph.D.-granting universities found that 80 percent of those with doctorates from U.S. institutions received those degrees from only 20 percent of U.S. universities. About 14 percent of domestically trained tenure-line faculty members in the analyses received their doctorates from one of five universities: from Harvard or Stanford Universities, or from the Universities of California, Berkeley; Michigan; or Wisconsin at Madison.

These data have implications for the viewpoints that are and are not represented among faculty, as well as the extent to which all faculty have needed supports. Faculty whose parents have Ph.D.s—and faculty educated at the most common feeder institutions—may have more information about what is required to gain access to tenure-line positions and receive tenure, as well as networks that provide access to other resources and assistance with navigating adversity.

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A second critical question is whether faculty members of different social identities and background characteristics are equally likely to achieve success. In order to enable all faculty to thrive, we need data that tell us whether faculty members of different groups vary systematically in the types of positions that they hold (e.g., tenured/contingent; full-time/part-time), or in academic rank, tenure, productivity and salary.

The many recent articles related to faculty burnout illustrate the need to also include other aspects of faculty life as measures of success, including mental health and well-being. Work-related stress and anxiety may be especially high for faculty members from marginalized groups and, left unaddressed, may lead them to leave their faculty positions.

A third category of questions pertains to the experiences and working conditions that contribute to inequity among faculty. Women faculty members and faculty members of color spend more time than white male faculty members advising students and serving on committees, activities that take away from time on research and are typically given less weight in salary, tenure and promotion decisions. We need data to document how time demands vary across groups and consider how to better align time allocations with what is rewarded in tenure, promotion and salary determinations.

Also essential are perceptions of the culture and climate for different groups of faculty in different institutions, departments and academic disciplines. Indicators may include whether all faculty members perceive that they belong and are treated fairly; that diverse perspectives are valued in faculty hiring, tenure and promotion, as well as in the curriculum; and that diverse faculty members have access to opportunities for career advancement and leadership development. In this highly polarized political environment, we should also consider whether faculty members perceive that their institution values diverse perspectives and protects faculty members who may be attacked for their views.

Data describing how different faculty members perceive the availability and utility of institutional supports should also be collected. Institutional supports of interest include: resources for caregiving, mental health and wellness; extensions of the tenure clock; dual-career hiring; and attention to diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in hiring, tenure and promotion processes.
What Data Do We Have?

Despite the clear need to improve faculty diversity, we lack a source of recent, nationally representative, individual-level data to address these questions. National data are needed as, at many institutions, the numbers of faculty in a given group are small, especially when multiple and intersecting identities are considered. Small cell sizes limit the ability of an institution to draw conclusions about faculty in a group, and information about these groups may not be reported given the importance of protecting individual identities. Nationally representative data can address these issues and provide benchmarks that university administrators can use to understand how faculty work and life at their institution may compare in relation to peer institutions.

The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, provides national institution-level data on some faculty characteristics (e.g., distribution of faculty of different racial/ethnic groups by academic rank). While useful for monitoring institutional trends over time, data that are aggregated at the institution level cannot tell us how the characteristics, experiences and working conditions of different groups of faculty vary within institutions or across academic disciplines.

The National Study of Postsecondary Faculty (NSOPF), also sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education, provided nationally representative, individual-level data about the employment status, workload, productivity, working conditions, satisfaction and demographic characteristics of faculty members at two- and four-year, public and private not-for-profit colleges and universities in the United States. The survey was last administered in fall 2003, with earlier administrations in 1987, 1992 and 1998. Data from the NSOPF were used to generate many useful insights about the diversity of the nation’s faculty and how faculty work and life vary across groups. But these data now describe faculty members working at colleges and universities nearly 20 years ago.

What Do We Do?

In spring 2022, the National Science Foundation awarded $1.5 million to the Pullias Center for Higher Education at the University of Southern California “to develop and pilot a national survey that will provide a contemporary understanding of postsecondary faculty in the United States.” This effort may signal increased interest by the federal government in ensuring that college and university leaders have the data they need to improve faculty diversity, equity and inclusion.

In the meantime, colleges and universities, scholarly associations, scholars, and others need to proactively advocate for and work to advance the collection and use of needed data. These data should document the progress—and lack thereof—in creating a more diverse faculty. They should show how characteristics, experiences and measures of success vary among faculty and how this variation differs based on characteristics of institutions, departments and academic disciplines in which faculty members work, as well as across academic ranks, appointment types and other characteristics of employment. These data should be examined critically, with the goal of identifying how racism, sexism and other biases contribute to observed differences and how institutions can act to ensure that all faculty members have the supports and resources they need to thrive. With a foundation in this kind of comprehensive data, we can all continue to advance toward our shared goals of greater diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging in our faculties of the future.