Friends:
I am proud of my UT-Austin College of Education fellow colleagues, Dr. Deb Kelt and Dr. Noah De Lissovoy, for this powerful and timely The Higher Ed Substack Advocate post. Writing as educators, scholars, and members of our university community, they remind us that the struggle over academic freedom is not only a struggle over content, curriculum, or political ideology. It is also a struggle over pedagogy itself—over the conditions that allow teaching and learning to be intellectually honest, socially meaningful, and grounded in care, rigor, and relationships.
What Deb and Noah make especially clear is that these attacks do not remain confined to a single college, building, department, or program. In the College of Education, restrictions on teaching ripple outward into Texas classrooms through the teachers, counselors, principals, superintendents, and education leaders we prepare. In Liberal Arts, the consolidation of fields rooted in Ethnic Studies, gender and sexuality studies, and critical interdisciplinary inquiry similarly affects the future of knowledge production, civic understanding, and democratic engagement. In both cases, what is at stake is not simply institutional rearrangement. It is the university’s public mission.
Their post invites us to recognize the courage, solidarity, and clarity already emerging across campus. I am grateful to Deb and Noah for naming what so many of us know to be true: when we defend open and critical inquiry, affirming classroom relationships, and the knowledge traditions that speak to the lives of diverse students and communities, we are defending teaching itself.
May such reports from the front lines of our university continue to illuminate the stakes, strengthen our resolve, and remind us that defending education is a collective calling.
-Angela Valenzuela
A Report from UT’s College of Education
by Noah De Lissovoy and Deb Kelt, Members, AAUP@UT Chapter
In the field of education, we know something about what works in teaching. From this vantage point, the current attack on critical inquiry in higher education in Texas is not just ideological—it is also pedagogical.
Restrictions on academic freedom and on teaching about “controversial” topics (including race, gender, and sexuality) are not just a matter of moving the ideological center of gravity in the classroom; they fundamentally undermine teaching that starts from any perspective, since they make it difficult for teachers to explore with students the full scope of a subject and its social context and implications. But the current conservative attack is not just limited to these aspects of teaching. This attack also makes it hard to make connections between students’ lived experiences and class content, and to create a robust learning community that is grounded on care and solidarity. These pedagogical principles are supported by decades of research on K-12 and higher education teaching.
It should be no surprise then that even as legislators and university administrators in Texas seek to reorganize curriculum and teaching across the university, they have also turned their attention to colleges of education. Like our colleagues in other fields, faculty in education have felt pressure to self-censor and to limit the scope of classroom discussions. (Interestingly, in teacher education spaces, this pressure is felt doubly, since faculty are teaching about the pedagogy that they seek at the same time to embody.) And alongside our UT colleagues, we await the results of a shadowy curriculum audit connected to the passage of Senate Bill 37.
In addition, our College of Education dean, who has been dedicated to supporting faculty and reimagining education to better serve the state and its many communities, was not renewed in his contract despite broad faculty support and remarkable success. The search for his replacement, by a committee with limited faculty representation, has been shrouded in secrecy. At the same time, right-wing news outlets have vilified the college and called out specific courses and staff. A recent successful tenure-track faculty search was blocked at the last minute by the university for reasons that remain obscure to faculty. In the context of these developments, faculty are anxious for themselves and their students.
It is important to recognize that any move to compromise our freedom to teach -- and our students’ freedom to learn -- will not stay contained in the Sánchez Building on UT’s campus. Our students leave to teach in Texas and across the United States, mentoring children with care and rigor in numerous content areas. In this way, our graduates prepare young people for all professions. As teachers of teachers, we know that censoring our work ripples like a rock tossed in a pond: If our UT students receive a compromised education, so will their future students. When one considers the various departments in our college, we can see how the damage compounds further. Stellar superintendents and principals graduate from our programs, as do special education experts, health science specialists, and school counselors. Any move to stymie the work done in these departments will, undoubtedly, cause broad harm.
It is important to recognize that any move to compromise our freedom to teach -- and our students’ freedom to learn -- will not stay contained in the Sánchez Building on UT’s campus.
As educators and scholars dedicated to creating a better world for all people, we have organized to push back against the current challenges. Sixty tenured and professional track faculty in the college signed a letter of concern regarding the non-renewal of Dean Charles Martinez. (Neither the President nor the Provost responded.) We have grown our membership in AAUP in recent months, and we have met as a new college-based group to strategize against interference regarding our right to teach and research. We attend rallies, speak at state school board meetings, and network with like-minded colleagues across UT. We are also working to strengthen relationships with the community, as many of us have long histories with public school teachers here in Austin.
Our group knows the stakes are high for students, staff, and faculty. Though this work of resistance sometimes keeps us up at night, we don’t see any alternative. We have always advocated for our students, for their future students, and for schools in Texas and beyond. The times are certainly different – with aggressive forces working harder than ever to muzzle us -- but we are steadfast in our calling to serve.
Both the recent pressure applied to colleges of education and the resistance to it show that how we understand and organize the process of pedagogy is deeply consequential. This struggle is a reminder to faculty across the university that as we fight for content and courses that are critical and relevant to diverse students we are also fighting for enlivening and affirming classroom relationships, community, and collaboration– that is, for teaching itself.
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