Who Gets to Control the University Curriculum? What's Shaping Up at the University of Iowa and Ohio University, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Who Gets to Control the University Curriculum? What's Shaping Up at the University of Iowa and Ohio University

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 15, 2026

University of Iowa—Main Campus

There is a development at the University of Iowa that deserves far more national attention.

The issue is not simply that the university now has a Center for Intellectual Freedom. Universities create centers all the time, including centers devoted to particular schools of thought, political traditions, and areas of intellectual inquiry.

What makes this one different is where its authority comes from and where that authority resides.

The Iowa legislature created the Center for Intellectual Freedom by law as an independent academic center under the Iowa Board of Regents. Its director reports directly to the Board of Regents rather than through the university's ordinary channels of academic leadership and governance. The director also has exclusive authority over hiring and termination within the center (Iowa General Assembly, 2025; University of Iowa, 2026).

And the state's involvement does not stop there.

Beginning with students entering in academic years on or after July 1, 2028, Iowa law requires University of Iowa undergraduates, with specified exceptions, to complete at least six credit hours in designated coursework. At the University of Iowa, the Center for Intellectual Freedom is designated as the sole academic unit responsible for offering courses that satisfy that requirement (Iowa General Assembly, 2026). 

That is not merely another educational experiment.

It represents a significant relocation of curricular power.

Universities have always been places of intellectual disagreement. Indeed, that is part of their purpose. Faculty argue over theories, methods, canons, requirements, evidence, and what constitutes an educated person. Departments disagree. Disciplines change. Students encounter ideas that excite them, unsettle them, and sometimes anger them.

But historically, those arguments have occurred primarily within the academic institution—through faculty deliberation, curriculum committees, departments, colleges, disciplinary standards, and systems of shared governance.

Iowa is moving that boundary.

The state is not simply asking universities to expose students to a wider range of ideas. It has created an academic entity through legislation, placed it under unusual governance arrangements, and guaranteed that entity a privileged position in the undergraduate curriculum.

That distinction matters.

One can strongly support intellectual pluralism—and I certainly do—while still questioning whether legislatures should determine which academic units every undergraduate must encounter in order to receive a degree.

In fact, these positions are entirely compatible.

Genuine intellectual freedom requires argument, experimentation, disagreement, dissent, and intellectual risk. It also requires institutions with sufficient independence to prevent political authorities from determining which intellectual traditions deserve institutional preference.

And Iowa is not alone.

Look at What Is Happening in Ohio.

The mechanism in Ohio is different, but the underlying shift in authority is strikingly similar.

Ohio's 2025 higher education legislation requires public universities to incorporate a state-defined conception of “intellectual diversity” into areas that reach deeply into academic decision-making. At Ohio University, institutional policy implementing the law now applies intellectual-diversity considerations to course approval, approval of general-education courses, student course evaluations, common-reading programs, departmental strategic goals, annual reviews, and student learning outcomes (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217, 2025; Ohio University, 2026).

Consider the significance of that.

The state is no longer simply funding higher education, establishing broad degree requirements, or holding public institutions fiscally accountable. It has introduced a politically defined concept into the processes by which universities determine what courses should exist, what belongs in general education, how departments establish goals, and even how teaching and learning are evaluated.

Ohio law defines “intellectual diversity” in relation to differing perspectives on public-policy questions and separately identifies politically controversial matters such as climate policy, elections, foreign policy, DEI, immigration, marriage, and abortion (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217, 2025).

Ohio has gone further still.

State law requires public universities to develop a three-credit American civic literacy course for students seeking bachelor's degrees. The legislature specifies substantial elements of what students must study, including the Constitution, Declaration of Independence, Federalist Papers, Emancipation Proclamation, Gettysburg Address, Martin Luther King Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, writings of Adam Smith, and the American economic system and capitalism. Students must also pass a cumulative examination assessing proficiency in the prescribed materials. Institutional trustees must approve the course plan, and the state chancellor reviews the plan and may require revisions (Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.382, 2025; Ohio University, 2025).

Again, my concern is not with teaching these texts.

Students should read the Constitution. They should read the Federalist Papers and the Declaration of Independence. They should read Adam Smith and Martin Luther King Jr. They should encounter competing interpretations of democracy, capitalism, equality, freedom, citizenship, and government.

The problem is not the presence of these ideas.

It is the changing answer to the question: Who decides?

At Iowa, the state has effectively constructed a new curricular lane and directed students into it.

In Ohio, the state has moved into the rules governing the curricular road itself.

Different mechanisms. Similar direction of travel.

Both developments blur an important boundary between legitimate public oversight of public universities and direct political involvement in academic judgment.

That boundary exists for a reason.

The longstanding principles of shared governance hold that faculty bear primary responsibility for curriculum, subject matter, methods of instruction, and degree requirements precisely because these are areas requiring academic expertise and disciplinary judgment. The AAUP has argued for decades that governing boards possess important institutional responsibilities but should overturn faculty academic judgment only under exceptional circumstances (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 1966). More recently, the AAUP has warned that the erosion of institutional autonomy and shared governance can enable governments and governing boards to exercise increasing control over academic decisions (AAUP, 2026).

This does not mean universities should be unaccountable.

Public universities are public institutions. Legislatures appropriate money. Governing boards have fiduciary responsibilities. The public has every right to demand educational quality, fiscal stewardship, transparency, and accessibility.

But public accountability and political control of knowledge are not the same thing.

And that distinction is becoming increasingly important.

The vocabulary surrounding these interventions can make the shift difficult to see.

“Intellectual freedom.”

“Viewpoint diversity.”

“Civic education.”

“Accountability.”

“Excellence.”

Each refers to something that can be genuinely valuable.

But words can also change political function.

We witness in this moment, for example, the appropriation of broadly appealing democratic language in ways that can obscure a transfer of power occurring underneath it.

Freedom begins to mean something different when the state determines where students must go to receive it.

Diversity means something different when government defines the categories through which intellectual diversity is to be measured.

And institutional autonomy begins to mean very little when outside political bodies increasingly determine which forms of knowledge receive special standing, which criteria govern course approval, and which content students must encounter.

This is not an argument against conservative scholarship, constitutional studies, Western thought, civic education, or any particular intellectual tradition.

Quite the opposite.

A university worthy of the name should be capable of accommodating—and encouraging—serious disagreements among liberal, conservative, radical, religious, secular, nationalist, internationalist, and other intellectual traditions.

But pluralism created through intellectual inquiry is different from pluralism engineered through political authority.

That difference is at the heart of what is unfolding.

And the story extends well beyond Iowa and Ohio.

For readers seeking a deeper understanding of how seemingly separate state-level interventions fit into a broader political strategy, I highly recommend Isaac Kamola’s (2024) Manufacturing Backlash: Right-Wing Think Tanks and Legislative Attacks on Higher Education, 2021–2023. Published by the AAUP, this important report traces the political infrastructure behind the wave of legislation targeting higher education and shows how think tanks, advocacy organizations, model legislation, and state lawmakers have worked across state lines to transform debates over DEI, academic freedom, tenure, governance, and curriculum into a coordinated legislative agenda. 

What can appear, when viewed state by state, as a series of isolated controversies looks quite different when the larger architecture is brought into view. Kamola’s analysis helps us see that Iowa, Ohio, Texas, Florida, and other states should not necessarily be understood as disconnected cases, but as sites where related ideas, legislative strategies, and political networks are being translated into policy (Kamola, 2024).

In Texas, Florida, and other states, political authorities have been altering governance structures, restricting or restructuring academic programs, regulating DEI, modifying tenure and faculty oversight, imposing curricular requirements, and redistributing authority among faculty, administrators, governing boards, and legislatures.

The particulars differ.

The larger question does not.

The struggle over American higher education is increasingly becoming a struggle over the machinery of knowledge itself: who controls academic institutions, who determines what counts as legitimate knowledge, which fields receive resources and protection, what students must learn, and who gets the final word when academics and political authorities disagree.

That is why Iowa and Ohio deserve our attention. Texas universities and other states, obviously, too—and about which I have blogged substantially.

The most important debate may ultimately not be whether our universities contain enough liberal ideas or conservative ideas.

It may be about something more fundamental:

Who gets to decide what a university is for—and who gets to control what happens inside its classrooms?

References

American Association of University Professors. (1966). Statement on government of colleges and universities. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

American Association of University Professors. (2026, July). Extorted compliance: A threat to institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and shared governance. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/extorted-compliance-threat-institutional

Iowa General Assembly. (2025). House File 437: Center for Intellectual Freedom Act. https://www.legis.iowa.gov/docs/publications/LGE/91/HF437.pdf

Kamola, I. (2024). Manufacturing backlash: Right-wing think tanks and legislative attacks on higher education, 2021–2023. American Association of University Professors. https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Manufacturing_Backlash_final_0.pdf

Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.0217 (2025). https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3345.0217

Ohio Rev. Code § 3345.382 (2025). https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-3345.382

Ohio University. (2025). Report—American Civic Literacy Course Work Group.
https://www.ohio.edu/provost/projects-initiatives/advance-ohio-higher-education-work-groups/american-civics-literacy-0

Ohio University. (2026). Advance Ohio Higher Education Act compliance (Policy 18.010). https://www.ohio.edu/policy/18-010

University of Iowa. (2026, June 22). Director, Center for Intellectual Freedom (Requisition No. 75977) [Job posting]. https://jobs.uiowa.edu/faculty/view/75977

From the Forty Acres to the Capitol: Reclaiming Higher Education as a Public Good, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D. April 15, 2026

From the Forty Acres to the Capitol: Reclaiming Higher Education as a Public Good

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

April 15, 2026

Last Monday, under the unforgiving Texas sun, I walked alongside students,faculty, and community members from the University of Texas at Austin to the Texas State Capitol. I took the video myself—one small act of documentation in what felt like a much larger moment of collective purpose. Despite the heat, there was an unmistakable energy among participants: determined, hopeful, and unyielding.

We marched not just in protest, but in affirmation—of what higher education should be.

That same day, the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) jointly launched a sweeping new policy framework: A Blueprint for Strengthening and Transforming Higher Education. Timed ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, the platform directly confronts the escalating, far-right attacks on colleges and universities across the country—attacks that many of us in Texas know all too well.

At its core, the blueprint insists on something both simple and profound: higher education is a public good, not a corporate enterprise.

The platform centers four urgent pillars: restored public funding so that college is a democratic right rather than a debt sentence; freedom to learn, with protections against ideological policing and political interference; shared governance that restores faculty and staff authority over curriculum and institutional priorities; and labor reform that ends the exploitation of contingent faculty while securing fair wages and collective bargaining rights.

These are not abstract principles. They are urgent interventions in a moment defined by what can only be described as the attempted political capture of our institutions.

It was especially powerful to have Randi Weingarten, national president of the AFT, with us on the ground. In the video I captured, you can also see Todd Wolfson—who also serves as AFT Vice President—alongside UT Austin’s own Christopher Bryan, speaking to the stakes of this moment with clarity and conviction.

What we are witnessing is not just policy debate—it is a struggle over the very purpose of the university.

Will our institutions serve democracy, or will they be hollowed out and repurposed for ideological control?

The AAUP–AFT blueprint answers this question with clarity and resolve. It calls on all of us—educators, students, policymakers, and community members—to actively defend academic freedom, freedom of expression, and the right to protest, while restoring meaningful shared governance and the full protections of tenure. These are not abstract ideals; they are the conditions that make it possible for us to carry out our core missions of teaching, research, and service—and to sustain universities as institutions accountable to the public good rather than to political or corporate control.

As we made our way to the Capitol, step by step, chant by chant, I was reminded that these rights are never simply granted—they are claimed, defended, and renewed through collective struggle.

It was a proud day. And a necessary one.

Manufacturing “Cancel Culture” at UT: Crisis Discourse, Governance, and the Politics of Academic Freedom in Texas Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Manufacturing “Cancel Culture” at UT: Crisis Discourse, Governance, and the Politics of Academic Freedom 

in Texas Higher Education

You may listen to a recording of this here.

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

March 1, 2026

Something remarkable has happened at the University of Texas at Austin—and
throughout Texas higher education. In a state with a long history of suppressing Mexican American Studies, resisting desegregation, and policing the boundaries of public knowledge, we are now told that Women and Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies are the true threat to free speech.

Accordingly, the American Association of University Professors (2024) warns that increasing legislative interference in curriculum and governance poses a direct threat to academic freedom by subordinating professional judgment to political authority.

Let all of this sink in.

Fields devoted to studying power, inequality, race, gender, and colonialism are being framed as authoritarian. And yet it is this very scholarship—probing injustice, exposing exploitation, imagining alternatives—that equips us to confront democratic backsliding and planetary crisis.

And the state is intervening—ostensibly to protect liberty.

This narrative did not arise from faculty misconduct findings, accreditation failures, or scholarly scandal. It was constructed. It was amplified. And under SB 17 (2023) and SB 37 (2025), it has now been operationalized into law.

To understand what is happening in Texas higher education, we must call this what it is: a governance transformation justified through crisis discourse.

Wilson and Kamola (2023) show how selective campus incidents are magnified through coordinated media ecosystems and donor networks into "evidence" of systemic institutional failure. What might otherwise remain a local disagreement becomes proof of a national emergency. 

The cycle is predictable: identify controversy, amplify outrage, declare ideological capture, legislate reform.

In Texas, crisis preceded cure.

Before SB 17 dismantled DEI infrastructures, DEI was framed as coercive orthodoxy. Before SB 37 weakened shared governance, faculty senates were portrayed as partisan strongholds. The ground was prepared rhetorically long before it was altered legislatively.

Nancy MacLean (2017) reminds us that institutional transformation rarely occurs through dramatic abolition. It happens through procedural redesign. Authority shifts quietly. Governance structures are recalibrated. The institution remains standing—but its operating logic changes.

That is what SB 37 represents.

I have been at UT Austin for decades. I have seen intense disagreements over public positions faculty have taken. I have watched colleagues disagree sharply about theory, about politics, about pedagogy. That was not dysfunction. That was shared governance in action. 

What I had never seen—until now—was the systematic restructuring of governance itself through state mandate.

The American Association of University Professors has been clear for over eighty years: academic freedom is not merely an individual right. It is a structural condition sustained by shared governance (AAUP, 1940/2015; AAUP, 1966/2015). Faculty bear primary responsibility for curriculum and instruction precisely because disciplinary expertise—not political expediency—should determine academic content.

When faculty senates are weakened or replaced with advisory bodies responsive to political oversight, the architecture changes. Authority moves upward and outward.

And here is the inversion: this restructuring is justified in the name of protecting free speech.

Let us pause.

The disciplines most frequently labeled “propaganda”—Women and Gender Studies, Black Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Indigenous Studies—operate through peer review, accreditation standards, and national scholarly associations. They assign canonical texts. They demand evidence-based argumentation. They expose students to intellectual traditions spanning centuries.

Critique is not cancellation. 

The irony is staggering. It's the powers that be that are doing all the canceling.

In fact, what these disciplines do—systematically—is analyze power. They interrogate racial hierarchy, gender stratification, settler colonialism, capitalism, and state formation. They ask who benefits, who is excluded, and how institutions reproduce inequality.

That analytic posture is not authoritarian.

It is foundational to the liberal arts.

The deeper issue is authority. Who decides what counts as legitimate knowledge?

The AAUP has repeatedly warned that legislative interference in curricular matters displaces professional judgment and produces chilling effects even in the absence of explicit speech bans (AAUP, 1940/2015; AAUP, 1966/2015). When lawmakers define entire areas of inquiry as suspect, scholars internalize risk. Research agendas narrow. Hiring patterns shift. Students receive the message.

The language of neutrality becomes the mechanism of control.

Organizations such as the Heritage Foundation have advanced national reform blueprints targeting DEI, curriculum, and governance structures. These agendas do not typically call for closing universities. They call for recalibrating them—redefining academic freedom as compliance with politically supervised neutrality.

When these reform agendas converge with state legislation like SB 17 and SB 37, the result is not isolated policy disagreement. It is structural realignment.

And here is where Texas history matters.

This state has long wrestled with who controls knowledge production—from textbook battles to bilingual education fights to Mexican American Studies bans in K–12. The current moment is not an anomaly. It is a continuation of a longer struggle over narrative authority.

What is new is the scale of governance redesign.

If shared governance erodes, if faculty expertise is subordinated to political oversight, if entire domains of inquiry are stigmatized through law, the university does not collapse. It shifts.

The liberal arts tradition conservatives claim to defend depends on contestation—from Plato’s dialogues to Du Bois’s sociological interventions to contemporary critical theory. A university that cannot sustain rigorous analysis of race and gender is not defending liberal education. It is curating it.

The question before Texas is not whether one agrees with every argument advanced in Women and Gender Studies or Ethnic Studies.

The question is whether academic legitimacy will continue to be determined by scholarly communities within shared governance structures—or by political actors invoking crisis.

Free speech does not erode because students argue.

It erodes when governance systems are redesigned to align inquiry with state-defined boundaries.

SB 17 and SB 37 are not cultural skirmishes. They are governance interventions. And governance is the backbone of academic freedom.

If we allow that backbone to weaken while congratulating ourselves for defending free speech, we should be honest about what is happening.

We are not rescuing the liberal arts. We are redefining them in the image of political oversight.

History teaches us that when authority over knowledge production shifts from scholarly communities to political power, the effects rarely remain confined to a single department. Such shifts tend to expand, normalizing intervention and narrowing the boundaries of acceptable inquiry across the institution. Once the precedent is set—that legislatures may define which fields are suspect, which governance structures are dispensable, and which scholarly frameworks are legitimate—the logic does not easily contain itself.

The question, then, is not whether one program is next. It is whether the university itself—its autonomy, its governing norms, its capacity for independent judgment—can withstand sustained political encroachment.

At moments like this, institutional repair requires more than rhetorical defense. It requires civic action. If governance structures have been weakened through legislation, they must be restored through legislation. If academic freedom has been narrowed by those in power, then the democratic remedy is clear: voters must hold those officials accountable and elect leaders committed to institutional autonomy and the public mission of higher education.

If we are to truly live in a free society, the defense of the university must be understood as inseparable from the defense of democracy itself.

References

American Association of University Professors. (1940/2015). 1940 statement of principles on academic freedom and tenure. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

American Association of University Professors. (1966/2015). Statement on government of colleges and universities. https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/aaup-policies-reports/topical-reports/statement-government-colleges-and

MacLean, N. (2017). Democracy in chains: The deep history of the radical right’s stealth plan for America. Penguin Press.

Wilson, J. K., & Kamola, I. (2023). Free speech and Koch money: Manufacturing a campus culture war. Pluto Press.

Plato and Socrates would have quite a few questions for Texas lawmakers, by Deborah Beck, For the Express-News Jan 25, 2026

Friends:

This piece should alarm anyone who cares about freedom, truth, or higher education. When Plato is treated as a political threat and factual texts are recast as “ideology,” something has gone profoundly awry. This is not policy oversight—it is the raw politicization of knowledge itself. 

This is not just embarrassing, but shameful. Moreover, it is a cancer that threatens to impact institutions nationwide. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) has a petition that I just signed for the freedom to teach and learn.

Professor Beck is not just right. She's righteous. A university that must ask permission to teach the truth has already forfeited its democratic purpose.

Personally, I was pleased to learn from Dr. Beck in this opinion-editorial published yesterday in the San Antonio Express-News about Aristophanes' human origin story where the "gods created three types of people that eventually gave rise to male homosexuals, female homosexuals and heterosexuals."

Geez, why on earth wouldn’t this be taught? Let’s stop infantilizing our students—they’re already grappling with these questions in their own lives. And anyway, aren’t Plato and Socrates supposed to be foundational to our so-called Western heritage? Such hypocrisy.

Our students, donors, community, and the nation at large are watching, and it is difficult to imagine who truly benefits from this—apart from a small minority intent on anesthetizing knowledge itself, weakening critical thought, eroding moral discernment, and depriving current and future generations of the civic consciousness—that is, the knowledge, skills and dispositions—essential to a democratic society.

-Angela Valenzuela

Plato and Socrates would have quite a few questions for Texas lawmakers

When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge. We're seeing that in Texas.

By Deborah Beck,For the Express-NewsJan 25, 2026

In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities. Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman

In recent months, political pressure has been reshaping Texas’ public universities.Teaching and research, the drivers of university excellence, increasingly answer to politicians rather than the knowledge of experts. Anyone who cares about freedom should be concerned about these developments. When leaders want to control what people think, they first strive to control knowledge: what is discovered, what is learned, what is taught. Such control is antithetical to what America stands for. We must reject attempts by politicians to constrain what we think.

Courses on gender at public institutions in Texas are being audited. Texas recently made national news after Martin Peterson, professor of philosophy at Texas A&M University, was told that he could not teach Plato because it would violate a policy that imposes restrictions on courses that “advocate race or gender ideology, or topics related to sexual orientation or gender identity.”

One way to think for ourselves is to know the facts. In “Symposium,”  the text Peterson was told he could not include in his syllabus, what does Plato say?

The “Symposium” describes a dinner party of ancient Athenians, including Socrates, the teacher of Plato, and Aristophanes, a prize-winning writer of comic plays. Each guest gives a speech about love.

In the passage at issue in Peterson’s syllabus, Aristophanes tells a human origin story in which the gods created three types of people that eventually gave rise to male homosexuals, female homosexuals and heterosexuals. The upshot of Aristophanes’ story is that human beings and human love come in different varieties, and that all derive from the gods.

This is what Plato said. It is not “ideology” or “advocacy.” It is a fact.

In libel suits, truth is an absolute defense. Apparently, this is not so when writing a college syllabus in Texas.

For millenia, Plato has been part of an education that equips people for the freedom to govern themselves. The “liberal arts” got its name not from a left-leaning political stance but from the Latin word “liber,” or “free.” The subjects taught in the liberal arts befit us to exercise the responsibilities and to enjoy the privileges of freedom.

We need Plato more than he needs us. Long after this political moment has come and gone, Plato and Socrates will be thriving.

Socrates would have some questions for the University of Texas at Austin as well. News recently broke that departments facilitating community engagement, teaching effectiveness, student advising and undergraduate research will soon be closed. These programs have fostered the central missions of the university for decades. Yet the university has not explained why they were canceled or what will take their place.

For Socrates, a good and just life entails asking thoughtful questions, talking them over with lots of different people, and listening to the answers. If we don’t even know what questions led to the cancellation of these programs, let alone what the answers to those questions were, how do we know that the closure of these departments will foster the educational excellence of which Texans are justly proud?

Shuttering effective university services with no plan for what comes next does not lead to innovation or to excellence. It leads to chaos.

Socrates would have recognized this moment all too well. In 399 B.C., he was charged, convicted and put to death on charges of impiety and corrupting the youth of Athens. He kept asking questions his entire life, even as the fatal hemlock with which he was executed gradually took effect. He refused to go into exile to avoid punishment, because that would disrespect the laws of Athens and his own principles.

Needless to say, university employees today are not being executed by the state. But faculty and staff are losing their livelihoods. Many educators are trying to leave Texas rather than submit their subject area expertise to the oversight of politicians.

Socrates lives on as one of the founding voices of European philosophy. His refusal to forswear what he believed makes him a beacon to anyone who is targeted because of their ideas.

Universities governed by political considerations are antithetical to freedom. Free people accept facts as true. They choose what to learn and they choose what to think.

Just ask Socrates.

Deborah Beck

Deborah Beck is the Christie and Stanley E. Adams, Jr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts in the Department of Classics at the University of Texas at Austin. She is expressing her views as a private citizen.

‘Fear and hopelessness’: one in four professors in the US south are leaving Survey by AAUP shows nearly quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics

Friends,

I recently posted on this topic of faculty departure covered by Olivia Empson in The Guardian. Both address the same finding that roughly a quarter of respondents have already applied for jobs elsewhere since the start of 2023, with another quarter intending to begin a search (Evans & Heinzelman, 2024; also note a similar trend in the "2025 Faculty in the South" survey for faculty in Texas (AAUP, 2025).

This is not just a statistic—it is the lived reality of colleagues, friends, and students across our campuses.

Take the example of Heather Houser, who taught American literature and environmental humanities at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. Alarmed by the escalating political interference in higher education, she accepted a position at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. In her words:

“I still feel so much for my students and colleagues back in Texas. It’s hard to know what they’re enduring.”

And indeed, it gets harder with every departure.

I can’t help but wonder if Dr. Houser was a member of the AAUP, which in Texas is affiliated with the Texas American Federation of Teachers. Membership provides access to legal counsel and a platform to fight back. According to President Brian Evans of the Texas Conference of Texas AAUP-AFT, since summer 2024 faculty have secured nearly $1.25 million in settlements, with more than a dozen lawsuits still in the works.

Consider also Wendy Watson, who left the University of North Texas after 15 years to teach at Ball State. In Denton, courses like Gay Rights and the Constitution became impossible to sustain under the chilling shadow of Senate Bill 17 and related measures. Watson described the mood among faculty as one of “fear, frustration, and hopelessness.” Yet even she chose to leave—accepting a 25 percent pay cut and a demotion in rank—just to continue teaching elsewhere.

These stories highlight what is at stake. SB 17 and its legislative kin are not only dismantling DEI infrastructure; they are driving out the very educators most dedicated to preparing students for a pluralistic democracy. The result is a profound brain drain that threatens to weaken our universities, impoverish intellectual life, and diminish opportunities for generations of students.

As a Texas educator who has chosen to stay, I grieve these losses deeply. I grieve for my students, who deserve classrooms where inquiry is not policed and where their full humanity is affirmed. At the same time, I understand the agonizing decisions my colleagues have made. For many, leaving is not abandonment—it is an act of survival, a way to continue teaching and researching in environments where their work is not criminalized.

The sacrifices are immense: pay cuts, uprooted families, new languages and cultures, and the heartbreak of leaving behind beloved students and communities. Yet these departures also carry a stark warning: if lawmakers continue down this path, Texas and its sister states will lose the very people who make higher education strong.

For the record, SB 17 does not prohibit faculty from teaching about race, class, gender, or sexuality when these are part of one’s expertise. Academic freedom, the First Amendment, and due process still apply, though policies and enforcement vary by institution.

This is why it is critical for those of us who remain to know the policies that govern our work. When pressured to change a syllabus or avoid certain material, a simple response—“I need to review the policy before I can make any changes”—can buy time and signal resistance. Document everything: keep written notes, record disciplinary meetings when possible, and bring a colleague or AAUP member as a witness. Always follow up with a brief email summarizing your understanding of the meeting. And remember, you have the right to file a grievance.

What gives me hope is the growing strength of Texas AAUP-AFT, which, according to Dr. Evans, is adding 30–40 new members every day. This is a testament to faculty’s hunger for solidarity, advocacy, and protection.

Here is the link explaining why one should consider joining Texas AAUP-AFT: https://aaup-texas.org/blog/f/join-aaup-to-strengthen-faculty-voices-and-rights. Membership is available to all faculty members, adjunct professors, graduate instructors, researchers, and higher education professionals. Trust me, it's empowering.

We must continue to resist policies that silence scholarship and erase identities, while finding ways to sustain one another and nurture spaces of care, justice, and truth. The exodus of faculty is a tragedy. But those of us who remain—and those who fight from afar—can transform this grief into collective action.

We are not without power. In fact, our collective strength is both well organized and growing rapidly (Valenzuela, Unda, & Bernal, 2025). Together, we have the capacity to defend higher education as a space where knowledge is pursued freely, where students are affirmed in their full humanity, and where truth proves stronger than fear.

—Angela Valenzuela

References

American Association of University Professors. (2025, September 8). 2025 faculty in the South survey. Academe Blog. https://www.texastribune.org/2025/09/05/texas-faculty-university-political-climate-survey/

Evans, B. L., & Heintzelman, P. (2024, September 5). Large majority of Texas faculty express concern about higher education; More than a quarter consider leaving next year, survey finds [Press release]. Texas Conference of the American Association of University Professors & Texas Faculty Association. https://aaup-utaustin.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/texas-faculty-survey-press-release-sept-2024.pdf

Strong, P. T. (2025, September 18). Manufactured outrage and the assault on academic freedom in Texas [Blog post]. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/09/manufactured-outrage-and-assault-on.html

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. D. C., & Bernal, J. M. (2025). Disrupting Colonial Logics: Transformational Resistance Against SB 17 and the Dismantling of DEI in Texas Higher Education. https://www.ethnicstudiespedagogies.org/gallery/Vol3-Issue1-03_DisruptingColonial.pdf

‘Fear and hopelessness’: one in four professors in the US south are leaving

Survey by American Association of Professors shows nearly 

quarter of respondents are switching due to states’s politics


University of Texas students walk through campus on the first day of classes in August 2025.Photograph: The Austin American-Statesman/Hearst Newspapers/Getty Images

Many professors in the US south, particularly in Florida, South Carolina and Texas, are considering leaving their state because of the impact the political climate is having on education, according to a new survey by the American Association of Professors.

Of those interviewed in the survey, roughly a quarter of respondents said they applied for a job in higher education in another state since the start of 2023.

Heather Houser worked as a professor in the English department, teaching American literature and environmental humanities, at the University of Texas at Austin for 14 years. Like the growing number of professors in the stronghold Republican state, she found the increasing government oversight on higher education alarming. Houser left Texas earlier this year for a new teaching position at The University of Antwerp in Belgium.

“I know a lot of people who’ve been on the job market for several years and they’d be gone by now if not for the factors that make it hard to leave,” Houser said. “It comes with sacrifices, and I still feel so much for my students and colleagues back in Texas. It’s hard to know what they’re enduring.”

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The survey received responses from approximately 4,000 faculty members across the south and included other states, such as Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, and Kentucky, in its findings. About 25% of the professors in Texas who responded said they have applied for teaching roles in other states in the last two years, with another 25% saying they intend to start a search.

Last year, salary was the top reason as to why educators across the south were seeking employment elsewhere. In this year’s findings, however, “broad political climate” was the top motivator.

“I had been looking to leave UT Austin and Texas for many years,” Houser said, “part was just a desire for personal change, but much bigger was my concern about higher education and the direction it was going. I was worried that the ability to teach things I cared about like environmental or social justice would become increasingly hard or even discouraged.”

The Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, signed a bill in 2023 that banned diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and initiatives in higher education institutions across the state.

Under the law, called SB17, these offices had to start closing from January 2024, and any initiatives that promoted groups of individuals based on race, ethnicity and gender were prohibited in universities. At the University of Texas at Austin, where Houser taught, this led to resource cancellations, office closures and staff firings.

Earlier this month, at Texas A&M, a children’s literature professor was fired after a video of a student objecting to course material about gender identity and sexuality went viral. The dean of the school’s college of arts and sciences and the head of the department were also removed from their roles, the university president, Mark Welsh III, confirmed in a statement.

The university passed an audit earlier in the year to ensure that the school was complying with a new state law banning DEI in public universities, according to Battalion, the student newspaper. The video put significant pressure on the school, primarily from external Republican politicians and officials.

“A lot of people want to leave, but a lot of people might not be able to look,” Houser said, speaking to how difficult it is to get a tenured professor job, especially in the humanities.

Houser received her job offer in Belgium back in summer 2024, before Trump was elected, but couldn’t see anything changing in the state or institution, so she decided to push forward with the move. And it didn’t come without sacrifice. Learning Dutch, taking a pay cut and understanding an entirely new system were just some of the challenges she is having to navigate.

Such is also the case for Wendy Watson, who left a role as a pre-law adviser and professor at the University of North Texas and moved to Ball State University in August this year, after 15 years of teaching there.

“The classes I taught that were most likely to eventually feel the sting of SB17 and the legislation sure to follow were Gay Rights and the Constitution and Jurisprudence,” Watson said. “You cannot teach a robust class on jurisprudence without addressing critical legal studies, critical race theory and critical gender theory. You just can’t.”

In private conversations with other faculty, Watson recounted describing what they all knew: that SB 17 was just the beginning.

“We would likely see specific classes taken out of the catalog. We had already seen our School of Education rewrite course descriptions for both undergrad and grad classes (without input from the faculty who taught those classes) to remove any reference to race, gender and queer identity,” said Watson. “Everyone I spoke with felt fear, frustration, and hopelessness.”

While Watson expressed positive feelings about leaving, the departure again came with immense sacrifice. A 25% pay cut was involved, as was moving from a role as a principal lecturer to an assistant and losing the ability to teach political science.

“If things feel bad for you now, they are likely to get much worse,” was Watson’s advice to other professors considering a similar out-of-state move. “I know it feels like giving up and abandoning your students, but it’s like the guidance on an aeroplane: put your own mask on first and then help those around you.”