The Fight for Higher Education: A Minority Perspective on both the Liberal University and President Michael Roth
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
August 26, 2025
On June 1, 2025, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, appeared on Face the Nation with a sober warning: America’s universities are under siege. His words echo what many of us already feel—that the right-wing assault on higher education is not about protecting students, but about silencing dissent and reshaping universities into tools of authoritarian control.
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| Michael Roth, Wesleyan University President |
Roth pointed to a troubling trend: increased visa restrictions and scrutiny of international students. For decades, these students have enriched our universities, bringing new perspectives and strengthening democracy. Now, instead of welcoming them, the government is using fear as a weapon—meant not for safety, but to intimidate campus communities into silence.
“This heightened scrutiny is meant to instill fear on college campuses… and I’m afraid it is working. I’m afraid, too. But we have to defend our freedoms.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation (June 1, 2025)
That admission is telling. When university presidents themselves feel constrained from speaking out, this should be a bright, neon sign, signaling danger to our democracy. The silencing of higher education leadership threatens to normalize submission, paving the way for broader suppression across society.
I spoke with a UT student activist this week who said that the students are afraid “because of what happened on campus in Spring 2023.” She referred to the violent arrests and the crushing of dissent when the students marched for DEI and pro-Palestine. I was saddened to learn of this scarring effect on our students. It's not supposed to be this way.
Where Roth Misses the Mark
In the July 26, 2025 episode of The Gray Area, Roth acknowledged that universities do need to change. He argued that campuses should broaden the range of political and cultural views they engage, but that this process must occur organically within the academy—not be imposed through authoritarian politics that seek to gut institutions altogether.
By his own admission, Roth has long argued that higher education reproduces intellectual homogeneity, with faculty often hiring in their own image reflecting matters of comfort and affinity rather than a commitment to genuine diversity of thought and background. He characterizes this as “prejudice”—or what pundits more commonly label as “bias.”
This is where I interject. Roth names "prejudice" but softens it, casting exclusion as faculty “comfort” rather than as systemic injustice rooted in Eurocentrism. In so doing, he risks sounding like an apologist for the very exclusions that marginalized scholars have struggled against for decades.
Higher education has only begrudgingly opened space, with many of us still struggling for a foothold. Were this not the case, we would never have had the in-depth analysis of such bias as laid out in the Independent Equity Committee (IEC) report (2019).
Yet Roth’s framing risks obscuring the structural inequities that the IEC report documents as entrenched features of the academy. For decades, higher education has reproduced sameness—faculty hiring in their own image, privileging comfort over difference, and narrowing the range of voices deemed legitimate.
Beyond “Both-sides-ism”
Both Roth’s critique and the demands of marginalized communities highlight this structural conservatism. The difference lies in what each sees as the remedy and the stakes.
Roth’s call for broader viewpoints risks collapsing into the narrow, colonial logics of ‘both-sides-ism,’ where structural inequities are obscured in the name of balance. By contrast, communities of color have long pressed for something deeper: not balance within the old frame, but transformation of the frame itself—a struggle for epistemic justice, meaning fairness, equity, and representation in the production of knowledge.
The overlap suggests a shared recognition of the dangers of insularity. Yet the divergence is revealing: Roth frames the challenge primarily as a matter of political balance, while scholars of color insist that the struggle is not merely about balance but about epistemic inclusion—expanding whose knowledge counts, whose voices are heard, and whose experiences are legitimized within the academy.
That distinction matters, because one treats the problem as an internal “fix” for higher education’s legitimacy, while the other treats it as one of knowledge equity and who gets to shape the future of the academy and society.
Universities as Scapegoats
Roth correctly talks back to those who say that colleges and universities have brought today’s backlash on themselves through insularity, elitism, or intolerance of differing views. Roth sees this as unfair, arguing that the policies currently confronting higher education are not natural consequences of campus culture but deliberate political attacks.
Framing universities as somehow “deserving” this wave of legislation doesn’t just excuse it—it helps justify authoritarian overreach. Of course, critique is needed, but it should strengthen higher education, not be twisted into cover for dismantling academic freedom and democracy itself.
In one of his most forceful points on Face the Nation, Roth rejected the claim that current attacks on universities are really about fighting antisemitism:
“The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities… I think is a complete charade. On the contrary, I think more Jews will be hurt by these attacks than helped.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation(June 1, 2025)
In short, universities should be spaces for debate, not reduced to spectacles of scapegoating in the service of political or partisan battles.
The Texas Frontline
In reality, these measures erode inclusion, silence marginalized voices, and weaken the democratic mission of public education. Roth’s warning reminds us that what happens in Texas is not isolated—it’s part of a national campaign to undermine academic freedom and reshape universities into compliant institutions.
This is a fight we cannot afford to sit out. Roth is correct in saying that this is an attack on civil society itself. Faculty, students, and community allies must organize, resist, and insist on universities that foster truth, inclusion, and democracy.
Even if the battle is far from over, I am happy to report that we at UT Austin continue to be on the frontlines of this struggle in Texas (Valenzuela, Unda, & Mena Bernal, 2025). The attacks we are seeing are not the endgame; they are part of a decades-long project to silence difference and control knowledge itself. Our response must be just as sustained, just as creative, and just as determined.
Why It Matters for Democracy
When universities lose their independent standing and edge closer to the ideology of those in power, we face a slippery slope. Higher education ceases to function as a space of critical inquiry and instead becomes an instrument of state control. This is precisely what authoritarian regimes do. What begins as subtle pressure to align with dominant political currents can quickly evolve into direct censorship of ideas, restriction of research agendas, and silencing of protest and dissenting voices.
This erosion not only undermines the integrity of academic institutions but also weakens civil society itself, since universities have historically provided one of the few protected arenas for cultivating democratic habits of questioning, debate, and discovery. In short, when higher education becomes an echo chamber for those in power, it fails in its public mission and accelerates the very authoritarian tendencies it ought to resist.
References
Bingamon, B. (2024, November 22). The right-wingification of UT: Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools. Austin Chronicle.Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Analysis of representation and compensation for Hispanic faculty at UT Austin. University of Texas at Austin.
Roth, M. (2025, June 1). Michael Roth discusses threats to higher education [Interview]. Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. CBS News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlCnVgd-jkc
Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. & Mena Bernal, J. (2025). Disrupting Colonial Logics: Resistance to SB 17 in Texas Higher Education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies, 3(1).
Valenzuela, A. (2024). Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin, Texas Observer
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