This blog on Texas education contains posts on higher education, as well as preK-12 policy accountability, testing, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, race, class, and gender issues at both the state and national level. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
I want to call readers’ attention to this provocative and important two-part essay by UT-Austin Professor Joshua Gunn in The Higher Ed Advocate, both posted below. Densely documented with links to primary documents, investigative reporting, scholarship, and the institutions’ own materials, Gunn raises questions about the transformation of Texas higher education that deserve serious public scrutiny.
In Part One, he examines changes in the language and governance of Texas public universities, drawing particular attention to terms appearing in official UT and UT System documents—academic “integrity,” “stewardship,” “solemn covenant,” “sacred space,” “spirit of grace,” and related formulations—and argues that their cumulative significance looks different when situated within the broader political ascendancy of Christian nationalism. The language itself is not in dispute: UT Austin’s Texas Statement on Academic Integrity describes the classroom as a “sacred space” and invokes a “spirit of grace,” while the UT System’s 2026 teaching policy describes teaching as a “solemn covenant” between faculty and students.
In Part Two, Gunn moves from rhetoric to institutional development, examining the Civitas Institute and School of Civic Leadership and the political and financial forces surrounding their emergence. That history is significant: Civitas was initially established with $12 million in state and UT System funding following documented involvement by political leaders and conservative donors, the Regents created the School of Civic Leadership in 2023, and in 2025 committed another $100 million for its permanent home.
The public should be concerned not because conservative scholars, religious scholars, or people of faith have no place in public universities—they unquestionably do. Pluralism requires their presence, too.
The concern arises when governmental power, university governance, major private wealth, and particular ideological or religious projects begin converging in ways that can determine which fields flourish, which departments disappear, which subjects become “controversial,” which forms of knowledge receive extraordinary institutional investment, and which become administratively vulnerable. That is a fundamentally different question from whether conservative ideas deserve a hearing. They do.
The question is whether a public university remains a genuinely pluralistic institution when the state itself increasingly participates in deciding which ideas, histories, and intellectual traditions merit institutional protection and amplification.
Read together, Gunn’s essays therefore raise a larger and more consequential question of institutional capture: Who gets to determine what counts as legitimate knowledge, which histories universities teach, which questions professors may safely ask, and ultimately what kind of citizen public education is intended to produce? I encourage readers to read Part One and Part Two for themselves, follow Gunn’s many links, examine the underlying documents, and reach their own conclusions about what these developments mean for academic freedom, church-state boundaries, shared governance, and the democratic purposes of public education.
And there is one final connection we should not miss. The University of Texas System is governed by nine regents who are appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Texas Senate, serving staggered six-year terms. University governance can therefore seem distant from electoral politics, but it is not. Who Texans elect determines who appoints the people who govern our public universities—and who confirms those appointments.
Gubernatorial and state Senate elections are higher-education elections, too. Elections matter, my friends.
Whose Bible, Whose History, Whose Texas? When Curriculum Becomes a Civilizational Project
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
August 23, 2026
State Board of Education member Julie Pickren prays during the invocation before a meeting on social studies standards at the Barbara Jordan Building in Austin on Friday, June 26, 2026. The board is considering revisions that would place greater emphasis on Christian history and biblical content in public school classrooms.
Jay Janner/Austin American-Statesman
To bring Texans up-to-date, they must know that our state is not simply putting the Bible back into public schools. It is making a much larger decision about which cultural and religious tradition will occupy the privileged center of public education—and therefore which version of America Texas children will be taught to inherit.
That distinction matters.
On June 26, the Texas State Board of Education approved a first-of-its-kind required literary works list for public schools, along with sweeping revisions to the state’s social studies standards. The literary list, approved 9–5, includes direct biblical passages and stories across grade levels, from Jonah and the Whale and David and Goliath in the elementary grades to passages from Corinthians and the Book of Job in later grades. The requirements will begin taking effect in phases starting in the 2030–31 school year.
The Board simultaneously rewrote social studies standards for kindergarten through eighth grade, placing substantially greater emphasis on biblical figures, Christian history, ancient Israel, the Ten Commandments, and what supporters call “Judeo-Christian values (Yu, 2026)."
Let me begin with something that should not be controversial: The Bible is worthy of study.
It is one of the most consequential collections of texts in human history. Students cannot fully understand Western literature, art, music, political rhetoric, abolitionism, the civil rights movement, or large portions of American history without some knowledge of biblical language and traditions.
The Supreme Court itself recognized precisely this point in School District of Abington Township v. Schempp (1963). The Court prohibited state-sponsored devotional Bible reading but expressly distinguished it from the objective academic study of religion. The Bible, the Court observed, may legitimately be studied for its literary and historical significance when presented objectively within a secular educational program.
So the question is not whether children should encounter the Bible.
The question is what happens when the state decides that one religious tradition should function as the organizing, colonizing grammar of public education that resides in the assumptive world of knowledge and skills standards and accountability regimes. And that is where the Texas story becomes troubling.
What Looks Like Addition Is Also Subtraction
Curriculum is never simply a collection of things we add. Every addition consumes instructional time, assigns cultural importance, and necessarily reduces the space available for something else. That is why the most revealing part of the Texas curriculum controversy may not be what the State Board added but what it simultaneously diminished.
According to reporting by Isaac Yu, staff writer with the Houston Chronicle, the new standards reduce or eliminate material addressing racial segregation, slave revolts, the Ku Klux Klan, Black and Hispanic history, and aspects of world cultures. Board members even removed language stating that Africans were enslaved in the U.S. because of the color of their skin. Meanwhile, critics testified that Islam is disproportionately introduced through warfare, invasion, jihad, piracy, radicalism, and terrorism, while proposed references to Muslim contributions to algebra and astronomy were removed. That juxtaposition is enormously important.
The issue is therefore not:
Bible or no Bible?
It is:
What knowledge is being elevated, what knowledge is being burdened, and what knowledge is disappearing to make room for the new canon?
The Texas curriculum is not merely becoming more religious. It is becoming more civilizational.
The State Board itself says the new standards will give students a historical arc extending from the “rise of Western Civilization” through the creation of the United States and its experiment in self-government. Its official announcement promises students the “full story,” while simultaneously describing the curriculum in terms of America's—and Texas'—greatness.(State Board of Education, 2026).
But no curriculum tells the “full story.” That an impossible proposition. Every curriculum selects. Every curriculum elevates. Every curriculum leaves something behind. The political question is who gets to do the selecting.
We Have Seen This Before
There is a deeper history here that Americans would do well to remember.
Religion was once much more explicitly present in American public schooling. Nineteenth-century common schools frequently incorporated Protestant religious practices and Bible reading. But what many Protestants regarded as simply “Christian” or “nonsectarian,” Catholics often experienced as Protestant domination.
Conflicts over which Bible would be read—and whose Christianity would define the public school—became part of the great nineteenth-century “School Question.” Historian Steven K. Green (2012) has documented how disputes over Bible reading, Protestant cultural authority, Catholic immigration, and religious pluralism helped produce the modern American understanding of nonsectarian public education.
That history should caution us against confusing majoritarian religion with religious neutrality.
American schooling also developed partly within a larger civilizational project that joined Christianity, racial hierarchy, assimilation, citizenship, and nation-building. Its most brutal expression appeared in federal Indian boarding schools. Native children were removed from their families, deprived of languages and cultural practices, and subjected to an educational regime explicitly intended to assimilate them into Anglo-American society. The federal government itself now acknowledges that religious organizations were deeply implicated in that system and that assimilation included efforts to strip Native children of their religions and cultures.
Obviously, today's Texas curriculum is not the Indian boarding-school system. Historical comparisons require precision. But the older history raises a question that remains hauntingly contemporary:
Who is the school supposed to make us into? That question lies at the center of this debate.
This Is Where Christian Nationalism Enters the Picture
It would also be a mistake to say that including biblical literature automatically constitutes Christian nationalism.
It does not.
Christian nationalism is not Christianity, nor is it ordinary Christian religious belief. It is a political ideology that fuses a particular understanding of Christianity with national identity and governmental authority.
The concern arises from the cumulative pattern.
Texas has adopted Bible-infused Bluebonnet instructional materials. The Legislature passed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public-school classrooms. Now the State Board has mandated biblical texts within the statewide literary canon and expanded Christian and biblical content within social studies standards (Yu, 2026)
And proponents themselves are telling us what they believe they are accomplishing.
State Board member Brandon Hall celebrated the June action by declaring that Texas was “bringing the Bible back into schools.” Supporters described the overhaul as a restoration of Judeo-Christian values, moral formation, classical education, and American exceptionalism (Yu, 2026).
This is no longer simply an argument about whether students should recognize biblical allusions in Shakespeare.
It is an argument about national identity.
Who are “we”? Where did “we” come from? Which traditions made America Which traditions are peripheral? Whose stories constitute civilization And which children are expected to locate themselves inside somebody else's story?
There Is Also a Constitutional Question
The constitutional question deserves precision as well. The Supreme Court's Establishment Clause jurisprudence has changed considerably since Schempp. In Kennedy v. Bremerton School District (2022), the Court instructed courts to look closely to historical practices and understandings when evaluating Establishment Clause claims.
That makes predictions about future litigation less certain.
But Kennedy did not declare that states may convert public-school instruction into religious exercise, nor did it erase the longstanding distinction between teaching religion academically and using governmental authority to advance religion.
Indeed, Schempp's fundamental insight remains crucial: there is a difference between studying religion and practicing, promoting, or privileging it through the machinery of the state.
Whether particular provisions of the Texas standards ultimately cross the constitutional line will depend upon their language, implementation, context, and how courts apply today's Establishment Clause doctrine.
But there is another question that precedes the courtroom.
Is this wise public education?
Public Schools Belong to Everyone
Texas is one of the most religiously, racially, ethnically, linguistically, and culturally diverse states in the nation.
Our public schools therefore carry an especially demanding democratic responsibility.
They should absolutely teach Christianity.
They should also teach Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, Indigenous spiritual traditions, secular philosophical traditions, and other belief systems that have shaped human civilization.
They should teach students why the Bible matters. And the Qur'an. And the Torah and Talmud. And Indigenous knowledge traditions. And classical Greek thought. And the intellectual achievements of the Islamic world. And the African civilizations that long preceded European colonization. And Enlightenment skepticism. And the struggle between faith and reason that has itself helped shape modern democracy.
That would be religious literacy. That would be intellectual rigor. That would prepare children for citizenship in a pluralistic democracy.
However, what Texas appears increasingly interested in doing is different.
It is constructing a canon in which Christianity and a particular rendering of Western civilization function as the cultural center of gravity while difficult histories of race, conquest, segregation, colonialization, and minority experience become easier to trim, soften, or remove.
That is why the argument over this curriculum cannot be reduced to whether the Bible is a “good book.” Of course it is an important book.
The real question is who possesses the authority to turn a sacred text into a state-sanctioned civilizational narrative.
Public schools should help children understand the many traditions that made the world they inhabit. They should not be used to tell millions of extraordinarily diverse children that there is only one tradition through which they can become fully American.
That is not religious literacy.
That is something much closer to curricular authoritarianism premised on a state-constructed hierarchy of knowledge.
Yu, I. (2026, June 26). Texas becomes first state to require students read the Bible with required literary list. Houston Chronicle. (Houston Chronicle)
Let's not grow fearful here, my friends. The answer, ultimately, is democracy.
If Americans are concerned about the growing fusion of religious ideology and governmental power, the most consequential response available to them is to vote—and to vote en masse.
Christian nationalism did not acquire political influence overnight. It built organizations, cultivated candidates, developed legal strategies, created networks of donors and activists, and, crucially, turned people out to vote.
Those who believe in religious pluralism, public education, academic freedom, civil rights, constitutional government, and the separation of church and state must understand the importance of electoral participation with equal seriousness.
That does not mean everyone must vote the same way. It means citizens must pay attention to what candidates actually stand for, examine their records, and vote for those who genuinely represent their interests and their understanding of democracy.
And voting cannot be treated as something that happens only during presidential elections. Governors appoint officials. Legislatures write laws. State boards determine educational policy. Judges interpret constitutional rights. Members of Congress decide what becomes federal law. And all of this is happening while school boards, city councils, and county governments exercise enormous power over everyday life.
The lesson of Lane’s essay is therefore larger than Christian nationalism. Organized political minorities can exercise extraordinary political power even when the broader public disengages.
Democracy has always depended upon participation.
So, what are we going to do about it?
Register. Organize. Learn where candidates stand. Help others participate. Vote in primaries, local elections, midterms, and presidential elections.
And above all, vote in numbers large enough that government once again reflects the will and interests of the people it is supposed to serve.
With his confirmation as attorney general, Todd Blanche—a man who wants to put “God front and center again” and make Christianity “actually a benefit”—now commands the Department of Justice and the vast machinery of federal law enforcement.
He is not alone. Pete Hegseth, openly aligned with Christian nationalism and its patriarchal vision of biblical authority, runs the Department of War. Russell Vought, a chief architect of Project 2025, is turning the Christian right’s blueprint into the daily machinery of government.
Christian nationalists no longer stand outside the gates demanding power. They are inside, pulling the levers.
Blanche’s confirmation gives them something indispensable to every authoritarian movement: the power to decide whom government protects, whom it prosecutes, and whose rights count.
And Blanche has already told us what he believes government should do. During a July 30 call organized by the White House Faith Office, he said his goal was to ensure that “God is front and center again” and that being a Christian in America is “actually a benefit.”
A benefit. That word gives the game away. Under the Constitution, Christianity is not supposed to be a benefit. Neither is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, atheism, or any other religious identity. Government may neither punish nor reward you because of your beliefs. That is religious liberty. What Blanche described is religious privilege. There is a name for that: Christian nationalism. And when government enforces that privilege, there is another name for it: tyranny.
Agency by Agency
Blanche chairs Trump’s Task Force to Eradicate Anti-Christian Bias. Notice what Trump did not call it. It is not a task force against religious discrimination generally. The administration singled out Christians, constructed a persecution narrative around them, then handed the man who runs federal law enforcement the job of acting on it.
Blanche also served as an ex officio member of Trump’s Religious Liberty Commission, chaired by Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and populated with Franklin Graham, Ben Carson, Paula White-Cain, Eric Metaxas, and Kelly Shackelford. The seat belongs to the attorney general, making the point sharper: whoever runs Justice receives a place on a commission whose report compared church-state separation to a “Berlin wall” and whose chairman declared there is “no such thing as ‘separation of church and state’ in the Constitution.”
The campaign extends far beyond Justice.
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has repeatedly used official communications to preach Christianity to more than 100,000 employees. Her Easter message told the entire workforce that “we celebrate” the Resurrection, invoked “our faith,” and proclaimed Jesus “our risen Lord.” Seven USDA employees and a federal workers’ union have sued, arguing that Rollins used the authority of her office to proselytize a captive workforce. She has continued sending the messages since the lawsuit began.
At Veterans Affairs, Secretary Doug Collins, a Baptist minister and Air Force Reserve chaplain, created his own anti-Christian-bias task force. He instructed employees to report colleagues for “informal policies, procedures, or unofficial understandings hostile to Christian views,” and asked for names, dates, and locations. Imagine the atmosphere that creates: federal employees wondering whether a colleague will report them for an opinion deemed insufficiently friendly to Christianity.
At Housing and Urban Development, Secretary Scott Turner has erased any remaining ambiguity. Turner, an associate pastor at Prestonwood Baptist Church, has said Washington is “a mission field” and that “HUD is a great vehicle, but the Kingdom is the mission.” At the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority Conference, he told the crowd, “The Biden administration worshiped the government as their God, but we in the Trump administration, we will worship God Almighty.”
At the Department of Education, Linda McMahon has partnered the federal government with Turning Point USA, Hillsdale College, Alliance Defending Freedom, the Heritage Foundation, and dozens of other conservative organizations through the America 250 Civics Education Coalition. The department calls it civics programming. The Freedom From Religion Foundation calls it an attempt to rewrite history through a Christian nationalist lens. Look at the partners and decide which description fits.
This is not a series of officials occasionally mentioning God. Agency by agency, Christian nationalists are replacing religious neutrality with Christian preference, turning public offices into pulpits and federal power into an instrument of religious restoration.
The Capture of the Other Branches
The project does not stop with the executive branch.
House Speaker Mike Johnson worked as an attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, one of the most powerful legal organizations in the Christian right. He has called the Bible his worldview and the “ultimate source of all truth.” He has dismissed church-state separation as a “misnomer” and argued that the Founders intended America to be a Christian nation. He now occupies the highest position in the House of Representatives.
The same movement built the Supreme Court’s religious-right supermajority. Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society spent decades constructing the judicial pipeline. Leo advised Trump and helped shepherd Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh through confirmation. Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment completed the six-member conservative majority. That Court overturned Roe v. Wade. It has redirected public money toward religious education, expanded religious exemptions, protected public prayer by government employees, and steadily dismantled the wall separating church and state.
These justices did not emerge from a constitutional mist. They came through an ideological assembly line built by Leo, financed by secretive conservative money, and designed to remake American law. The operation worked.
The President Chosen by God
None of this could happen without the millions of white evangelical Protestants who supply the movement with votes, money, and divine permission. A PRRI survey conducted after the 2024 election found that 60 percent of white evangelical Protestants agreed that “God ordained Donald Trump to be the winner.”
Think about what that belief does to democracy. If voters elect a president, they may criticize him, restrain him, remove him. If God chooses the president, political opposition starts to look like rebellion against divine authority. Investigations become persecution. Court decisions become attacks on God’s servant. Elections matter only when they ratify what believers have already declared to be God’s will.
Trump’s personal conduct poses no obstacle to this theology. His evangelical defenders compare him to Cyrus, the pagan king God supposedly used for a purpose Cyrus never understood. It is a useful miracle. Every moral failure becomes evidence of a mysterious plan. Trump need not be honest, faithful, or particularly religious. He is the imperfect vessel chosen to destroy their enemies.
Trump understands the transaction. He gives the Christian right judges, abortion restrictions, public money for religious schools, and federal power. In return, its leaders place a halo over his head and tell their followers his authority comes from somewhere higher than the ballot box.
Leonard Leo supplied the judges. Russell Vought supplied the blueprint. Project 2025 supplied the personnel and policies. White evangelical Protestant supremacy supplied the army, and its religious leaders assured that army that God had chosen its commander.
Todd Blanche now holds the prosecutorial sword. The question is no longer whether Christian nationalists seek control of the United States government. Todd Blanche now holds the prosecutorial sword. Christian nationalists have captured enormous power across all three branches of the United States government. The question is no longer what they intend to do with it. They have already told us.
The question is: What are we going to do about it?
This is staggering. University of Houston Professor Richard Armstrong is exactly right: the proposed removal of nearly 40 percent of UH’s core courses amounts to “DOGE-ing the core curriculum over the summer while nobody’s looking” (Ketterer, 2026).
Among the courses recommended for removal are Black Liberation Theology, Introduction to Women’s Studies, Introduction to LGBT Studies, Intro to Global Climate Change, Mexican American Urban Communities, Latino Leadership Activism and Organizing, Sexuality and Society, and Voices from Exile and Diaspora (Ketterer, 2026).
This is not routine curricular housekeeping. It is a politically driven narrowing of what Texas students will be encouraged—and, practically speaking, able—to learn.
The intention behind Senate Bill 37 authored by former Senator Andrew Creighton—who is now the president of Texas Tech University—could hardly be clearer. In the official statement of intent accompanying Sen. Brandon Creighton’s bill, SB 37 was described as an effort to address the “unchecked authority of faculty senates” (Texas Senate Research Center, 2025, para. 1). A subsequent House committee analysis reported that the bill’s sponsor was concerned about the “ideological direction of core curricula” and a perceived lack of accountability in faculty governance (Texas House Committee on Higher Education, 2025).
Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick was even more direct. He described SB 37 as unfinished business following what he called the largest “pushback against wokeness in higher education” in the nation’s history (Patrick, 2025b). This language leaves little doubt that SB 37 was not simply about efficiency, affordability, or workforce preparation. It was designed to shift control over knowledge away from faculty and toward politically appointed regents, administrators, and state officials.
This is where the relationship to Christian nationalism becomes important.
Christian nationalism is not synonymous with Christianity, Christian faith, Jesus, or religious devotion. It is a political movement that uses a particular interpretation of Christianity to claim authority over American identity, government, education, and public life. As Katherine Stewart (2020, 2025) has documented, this movement is sustained not by religious conviction alone, but by coordinated political organizations, wealthy donors, policy networks, and activists seeking the power to impose their vision on a pluralistic society.
Stewart’s (2012) earlier investigation of the Christian Right’s efforts to gain influence in public schools also reminds us that education has long been a central battleground in this movement’s struggle over whose values, histories, and forms of knowledge will receive public legitimacy.
I am not claiming that every legislator or administrator involved in SB 37 personally identifies as a Christian nationalist. I am arguing that the law’s purposes and consequences align closely with that broader political project.
The contrast is revealing. Texas political leaders have promoted the placement of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms as a “foundational moral compass” (Patrick, 2025a), while a public university considers removing Black Liberation Theology from its core curriculum. One expression of Christianity—aligned with state authority and a traditional national narrative—is elevated. Another—grounded in the experiences of oppressed communities and demanding racial justice—is marginalized.
That is not religious neutrality. It is the political selection of which religious ideas are considered legitimate.
The other vulnerable courses follow the same pattern. Women’s and LGBTQ Studies challenge prescribed gender and sexual hierarchies. Mexican American, Black, immigrant, and diaspora studies complicate the myth of an innocent and uniformly virtuous nation. Climate-change courses confront powerful economic interests and require students to reckon with collective responsibility. Courses on activism teach students that democracy involves participation, dissent, and organized struggle.
These subjects are not being questioned because they lack intellectual rigor. They are vulnerable because they challenge the racial, gendered, religious, economic, and national orthodoxies that this political movement seeks to protect.
SB 37 created the machinery for this purge by weakening faculty governance, elevating regental control, and redefining education through politically malleable concepts such as “foundational” knowledge, workforce preparation, and return on investment. UH may also be overcomplying with the law by demanding that every individual core course satisfy all of its criteria rather than evaluating the core curriculum as a whole (Ketterer, 2026).
The result will not be a stronger education. Students may face fewer choices, registration bottlenecks, delayed graduation, and diminished opportunities to encounter fields that awaken their intellectual interests and help them understand the diverse society in which they live.
What we are witnessing is most certainly a "DOGEing" of the curriculum, but the objective is not merely to reduce its size. It is to discipline knowledge—to make politically inconvenient courses less visible, less accessible, and eventually less viable.
The University of Houston—or should I say, the stakeholder community around it—should protest and halt this process, this rationing of education. Curriculum must be shaped through transparent, faculty-led deliberation grounded in disciplinary knowledge and educational evidence—not through fear of political retaliation from Austin.
This is not academic accountability.
It is political control over what students are permitted to know.
The Ezekiel W. Cullen Building on the campus of University of Houston on Thursday, Nov. 10,
2022. Elizabeth Conley/Staff photographer
University of Houston administrators could slash almost 40% of the courses offered in the school’s core curriculum to comply with a new state law — including “Intro to Global Climate Change,” “Black Liberation Theology,” “Introduction to Women’s Studies” and “Introduction to LGBT Studies,” according to a list obtained by the Houston Chronicle.
If implemented, the changes would drastically reduce the general education options that undergraduates choose from as they work toward their degrees. The cuts would affect liberal arts departments the most, including professors who teach topics that high-ranking conservative lawmakers view as biased or “woke.”
Any courses that are removed from the core can still be taught, but they’re likely to be taken by a smaller number of students — meanwhile, some faculty fear that the remaining classes won’t have enough seats. Professors have criticized the process and say they were not meaningfully involved in these decisions until now as administrators seek their feedback for a final proposal that will go to the UH System Board of Regents in August.
“This is basically DOGE-ing the core curriculum over the summer while nobody's looking,” said Richard Armstrong, an associate professor of classical studies. “When you think about something that's been that carefully managed and curated, you wonder, why are we being reckless in cutting the offerings?”
UH is among the dozens of institutions across the state assessing their core classes against the backdrop of a broader GOP push for more oversight on Texas’ public college campuses.
While every institution’s “core” looks different, they each include subject requirements and learning objectives set by the state, making up 42 credit hours, or 14 classes. The core has become hotly contested in recent years, as it indicates what every college graduate should know.
Lawmakers wrote Senate Bill 37 in 2025 to unravel what they view as left-leaning indoctrination in college classrooms. The new law didn’t explicitly ban topics but instead enacted four broad guidelines for core classes — such as being “foundational” for a sound education and “necessary” to prepare students for the workforce and civic life.
"The legislation demands real accountability from our institutions," the bill’s author, former state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, said in a statement as lawmakers sent it to Gov. Greg Abbott to sign. "Texas isn't just leading the conversation — we're setting the national standard for restoring academic integrity and accountability on college campuses."
So far, the responses of universities and colleges to the law have been varied. While UH has not issued any policies restricting topics — as the Texas A&M and Texas Tech university systems have done — some UH faculty have been wary.
In a move that some UH professors viewed as a threat to academic freedom and a precursor to further changes, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences Dean Dan O’Connor asked faculty early this spring to sign a memo affirming that they don’t “indoctrinate” while teaching.
The official SB37 review began later, when a working group of nine professors across UH’s academic colleges drafted the recommendations over five “extended” meetings, according to university documents. This month, Provost Diane Z. Chase shared the findings with faculty and opened a feedback form, which closes Tuesday.
Otherwise, the university has disclosed little about the group’s process, beyond sharing the results and giving faculty copies of the guiding questions used to judge courses against the state’s criteria.
UH’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a group that advocates for academic freedom, said that the committee was sworn to secrecy, and that UH general counsel Dona Cornell attended all of the meetings.
When reached by the Houston Chronicle for comment, UH officials said the SB37 review is ongoing and declined to answer a series of questions about the process.
"As part of this process, the UH Core Curriculum Working Group evaluated all core courses using a consistent evaluation framework,” said a statement released by the university. “Based on that framework, the working group prepared draft recommendations, which have been provided to faculty for feedback. These recommendations are just one step in a broader review process and do not represent final decisions. The university leadership will evaluate the recommendations, which must ultimately be approved by UH System Board of Regents."
What could go
The working group suggested taking about 100 courses out of the core and keeping almost 160 others, according to a document summarizing the proposed changes.
While some courses involving politically divisive issues were on the list — like LGBT Studies and climate change — the cuts don’t appear to target race studies as a whole, as “African American Studies” and “Introduction to Latino Cultural Studies” would remain in the core while “Black Liberation Studies” and “Mexican American Urban Communities” were recommended to be removed.
Some courses on the chopping block involve topics exploring political differences, like “Left, Right and Center.” Others concern movements and social change, like “Latino Leadership Activism and Organizing,” “Sexuality and Society,” “Social Class and Mobility in America” and “Voices from Exile and Diaspora.”
But no history or government classes were flagged, sparing courses that focus on histories for specific demographics, including Chicanos, women, Latinos and African Americans.
UH’s members of the AAUP, the faculty union, said the university violated “basic principles of transparency, faculty participation, and fairness” in the review, according to a letter sent to UH President Renu Khator and other administrators on Monday.
They have urged the university to halt the review process.
“This lack of transparency and the exclusion of the vast majority of faculty from the process, should these cuts to the curriculum be upheld, undermines the education UH students will receive,” according to the group’s letter. “A wider range of foundational courses opens up more opportunities for our students to pursue a meaningful and effective college education, setting them up for greater success in graduate work, professional schools, and the workforce.”
They also say that UH overcomplied in following SB37. The group interprets the law as requiring the university’s core in its entirety to meet the state’s four criteria, while UH tasked the working group with ensuring that each individual course meets all four criteria.
The courses on the list also include several that don't touch on political, cultural or social topics.
Rebecca Forrest, an instructional professor in the department of physics, said she was shocked to open the recommendations and see her “Advanced Laboratory 1” course on the list. She has offered it since she created the class 20 years ago, helping physics students learn to convey complicated material and satisfy a core requirement called “Writing in the Disciplines.”
She deems the course essential for the workforce, and believes it meets the criteria of SB 37. To reach more physics students in the future, her department will need to alter its degree plan to require it outside of the core, she said.
“This is doing a disservice to students,” Forrest said. “They won't be well prepared to enter the workplace or graduate school.”
Largely, faculty members critical of the process argue that they have the pedagogical expertise and knowledge of learning objectives to back up their curricular decisions, and they say they’ve previously gone through rigorous processes to ensure that their core courses met state standards. Those processes were upended after SB37 disbanded faculty senates – which led prior curricular reviews – and allowed colleges to replace them with smaller advisory councils that are more limited in function.
“We are the closest to the students,” Armstrong said. “We are interacting with them all the time, far more than the administration, and we have to create material that really works, that does achieve the goals that we're setting out – pedagogically but also connects to their interests, energizes them.”
Effects on students
People walk across the University of Houston campus near the UH Student Center in Houston, Monday, Oct. 27, 2025.Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
By forcing students at a growing university to compete for a more limited number of courses, Forrest, Armstrong and others worry that students will experience a bottleneck at registration and face delayed graduation times.
Other ripple effects are possible. The core is known to draw students to departments – even helping them minor in areas that are known to have smaller numbers of majors.
If their courses are available to fewer students, some professors fear class enrollments will drop further.
Five of the six core courses offered by the classical studies department were recommended for removal, according to the working group’s list. The creative writing department’s only offering in the core was “Creation and the Performance of Literature,” which could now be cut.
“Students find core courses that interest them, that broaden their experience and their education in society,” Forrest said. “All of that makes for more well-rounded students that are better prepared for whatever profession they choose to go into.”
The Texas SBOE’s Bible mandate is Not Religious Literacy. It is State-Sponsored, Taxpayer Funded, Religious Favoritism
by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
June 28, 2026
Last Friday’s decision by the Texas State Board of Education (SBOE) to require Bible stories and Christian instruction in Texas K–12 public schools should alarm every Texan who cares about public education, religious freedom, democracy, and the constitutional separation of church and state (Yu, 2026)
This is not religious literacy. It is not a neutral study of religion. It is not a good-faith effort to help children understand the Bible’s influence on literature, history, or culture. A serious academic curriculum would introduce students to multiple religious traditions, secular traditions, Indigenous knowledge systems, and the diverse intellectual inheritance of a state where children come from every corner of the world. Instead, the SBOE has approved a state-mandated reading list and social studies framework that privileges Christianity, narrows the story of humanity, and forces teachers and students into a curriculum shaped less by scholarship than by ideology.
Let us be clear: the issue is not whether the Bible may be studied in public schools. It can be—and, in the appropriate context, should be—studied as literature, as history, and as a text with enormous cultural influence. But it should be studied alongside other sacred, philosophical, ethical, and cultural traditions.
As a product of Texas public schools, I would have welcomed the opportunity to learn about the world’s religions in school—not in a reductive way, but in an expansive one. Indeed, if this curriculum is anything other than expansive, pluralistic, and intellectually honest, it is dead on arrival.
The real issue is whether the state should use public schools—and exorbitant taxpayer dollars—to elevate one religious tradition above others and present that tradition as the moral foundation of civic life. That is not education. That is state-sponsored religious favoritism. It is constitutionally suspect, pedagogically flawed, and morally dangerous in a state as religiously, culturally, racially, and linguistically diverse as Texas.
Ironically, this approach may also fail on its own terms. A shallow, politicized, and coercive treatment of the Bible may not deepen students’ understanding of scripture. It may turn them away from it. When sacred texts are reduced to political instruments, they lose the very depth, mystery, and moral seriousness that make them meaningful to believers and worthy of study by nonbelievers. A curriculum built on such a flawed foundation does not honor the Bible. It weaponizes it.
This is where Katherine Stewart’s work is so helpful (Stewart, 2012, 2020, 2025). Stewart reminds us that Christian nationalism is not simply a matter of private faith or religious devotion. It is a political project. It operates through donor networks, legal organizations, advocacy groups, media platforms, think tanks, and elected officials who seek to capture public institutions and bend them toward an authoritarian vision of society.
In this sense, the SBOE’s decision is not an isolated curriculum dispute. It is part of a broader movement to remake public education in the image of Christian nationalist power.
That movement is also visible in Project 2025 and in the larger effort to weaken public institutions, centralize executive authority, privatize public goods, and subordinate democratic deliberation to ideological control (Dans & Groves, 2023). In Texas, this matters enormously because governors appoint key officials, including the Commissioner of Education, who oversees the Texas Education Agency. These appointments help shape the direction of public schooling for millions of children. Curriculum, therefore, is not merely a classroom matter. It is a governance matter. It is a democracy matter.
A democratic public school system should not be argumentative in the narrow sense of imposing one worldview on everyone else. It should be deliberative. It should teach students how to think across difference, how to ask hard questions, how to understand history in its complexity, and how to live ethically in a pluralistic society.
The SBOE’s decision moves us in the opposite direction. It turns curriculum into a vehicle for religious and political domination.
Texas children deserve better than this. They deserve schools that respect their families, their faiths, their questions, and their futures. They deserve a curriculum capacious enough to include the Bible without turning public school into Sunday school; rigorous enough to study Christianity without privileging Christian nationalism; and democratic enough to honor the full humanity of every child in the classroom.
Recent testimony before the SBOE made this danger plain. Parents, educators, religious freedom advocates, historians, and community members warned that the proposed standards and required reading list distort education by subordinating academic integrity to a sectarian political agenda. Texas Freedom Network President Felicia Martin captured the problem forcefully:
“The Bible isn’t a history book, public school isn’t Sunday school, and ignorance is not a Texas value.”
That line deserves to be remembered because it names the issue exactly. Public schools belong to all children—not only Christian children, not only conservative Christian children, not only children whose families accept the state’s preferred theological worldview.
This decision also comes in the shadow of a broader restructuring of public education in Texas. We have seen attacks on books, on Ethnic and Gender Studies, on LGBTQIA+ students, on honest teaching about racism, on teachers’ professional autonomy, and on local democratic governance.
We have seen vouchers pushed as “choice” while public schools remain underfunded. We have seen the Ten Commandments elevated in classrooms, chaplains invited into schools, and now Bible stories mandated as required reading. These are not isolated developments. They are pieces of a larger project.
That project is legible through the Seven Mountains Mandate (Boedy, 2025), a Christian dominionist framework that calls on believers to exercise influence—or dominion—over seven spheres of society: family, religion, education, media, arts and entertainment, business, and government.
Education is one of the mountains.
Government is another.
Business is another.
Texas is now witnessing the convergence of all three: billionaire money, state power, and public school curriculum being aligned to serve a Christian nationalist vision.
Katherine Stewart’s work helps us understand what is happening. In The Power Worshippers 2020) and Money, Lies, and God (2025), Stewart shows that Christian nationalism is not primarily about private faith, prayer, or religious devotion.
It is about power.
It is about networks. It is about donor money, legal infrastructure, media ecosystems, political candidates, think tanks, and policy shops working together to transform democratic institutions from within. The movement does not merely want a seat at the table. It wants to own the table, write the rules, choose the curriculum, discipline dissent, and call the result “freedom.”
As you can view and see for yourselves, CNN’s reporting made plain that former associates and critics view Dunn and Wilks as especially focused on education, with the long-term goal of replacing much of public education with private Christian schooling. Former Republican state senator Bob Deuell put it bluntly: they “want to destroy the public school system as we know it and, in its place, see more home-schooling and more private Christian schools.”
That is the context for today’s vote. This is not simply about whether a first grader hears “David and Goliath” or a high school student reads Job. It is about who controls the moral and intellectual formation of more than five million Texas public school students. It is about whether the state will honor the religious diversity of Texas families or treat non-Christian children as guests in someone else’s public school system. It is about whether teachers will be trusted as professionals or reduced to instruments of ideological compliance.
As I recently blogged (Valenzuela, 2026), supporters will say this is about “Judeo-Christian values.” That phrase, however, often functions as a political shield. It collapses Jewish traditions into a Christian nationalist story, erases the profound diversity within Christianity itself, and excludes Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs, Indigenous spiritual traditions, atheists, agnostics, and many others, including Jews themselves—who are also part of Texas. It also misrepresents Christianity.
That is not what Texas has chosen.
Many of us grew up in Christian traditions rooted in social justice, humility, hospitality, care for the poor, and love of neighbor. The Christianity being smuggled into public policy today is not that faith. It is a politicized, exclusionary Christianity aligned with hierarchy, conquest, privatization, and punishment.
This is why the phrase “religious freedom” is being turned upside down. True religious freedom protects families from state-imposed religion. It protects Christian families, Jewish families, Muslim families, Hindu families, Buddhist families, Indigenous families, nonreligious families, and interfaith families alike. It means the government does not get to decide whose sacred stories become mandatory and whose traditions disappear. It means public schools do not become Sunday schools by legislative design.
The irony is painful. Texas leaders claim to be defending parents while overruling millions of parents whose religious and moral commitments do not align with the state’s preferred theology. Many, if not most, among them believe in the separation of church and state.
Let’s unmask this nefarious, anti-democratic agenda for what it is: a coordinated effort to capture public education, weaponize faith, and shrink the democratic imagination of Texas children.
They claim to support local control while imposing sweeping curriculum mandates from Austin.
They claim to respect teachers while stripping them of professional judgment.
They claim to strengthen history while narrowing it.
They claim to teach freedom while modeling domination.
The damage will not fall evenly. Black, Latino, Indigenous, Asian American, Muslim, Jewish, immigrant, LGBTQIA+, and nonreligious students will feel most sharply what it means to be written to the margins of the curriculum. So will Christian students whose faith teaches them that coercion is not discipleship and that the Gospel should never be reduced to a state lesson plan.
Public schools should be places where children learn to think critically, encounter complexity, and develop civic respect across difference.
They should not be laboratories for Christian nationalist social engineering.
Texas is a pluralistic state. It is young, multilingual, multiracial, multi-faith, and globally connected. Our curriculum should prepare children for that reality. Instead, the SBOE has chosen retreat: less world history, less diversity, less intellectual honesty, and more state-sponsored religious favoritism. This is not educational excellence. It is ideological containment.
We should refuse the false choice between faith and public education. Many people of faith support strong public schools precisely because public education is one of the few institutions where children from different backgrounds can learn together. A democracy—at least in theory—public school does not require children to abandon their faith. It protects their right to have one. It also protects their right not to have one. That is the genius of public education at its best.
The SBOE's decision moves Texas in the opposite direction. It brings us closer to the world envisioned by the Seven Mountains Mandate, where education is not a public good but a terrain to be conquered. It advances the agenda Katherine Stewart has warned about: a donor-funded, anti-democratic movement that uses the language of faith to seize institutions and the language of freedom to justify domination.
Texans should see this for what it is. The SBOE has not merely approved a reading list. It has opened the door wider to the religious capture of public education. It has placed the state’s power behind a narrow theological and political worldview. And it has done so in a state whose children deserve so much better.
This orchestrated, well-heeled “culture war” reveals what has been true all along: the struggle is not only over curriculum. It is over democracy itself. Public schools are among the last remaining civic spaces where we can still imagine and build a common good. That is precisely why they are under attack. They hold the promise of an animated, well-informed, and educated citizenry—one capable of questioning power, resisting domination, and participating fully in democratic life.
And that is why we must defend them—with clarity, courage, and an unwavering commitment to religious freedom, educational justice, teachers’ freedom to teach, and students’ freedom to learn.
Reference
Boedy, M. (2025). The seven mountains mandate: Exposing the dangerous plan to Christianize America and destroy democracy. Westminster John Knox Press.
Dans, P., & Groves, S.(Eds.). (2023). Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise. The Heritage Foundation [pdf].
Stewart, K. (2012). The good news club: The Christian Right’s stealth assault on America’s children. PublicAffairs.
Stewart, K. (2020). The power worshippers: Inside the dangerous rise of religious nationalism. Bloomsbury.
Stewart, K. (2025). Money, lies, and God: Inside the movement to destroy American democracy. Bloomsbury.
Tackett, C. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B3PTuADIHQ
I want to call attention to this important Brookings Press article by Darrell M. West on academic freedom and democracy. West’s central point is one we urgently need to take seriously in Texas: attacks on academic freedom are not only attacks on faculty or universities. They are attacks on democracy itself.
West argues that democracies require more than elections, rules, and courts. They also require a vibrant civil society and an independent knowledge sector where educators, researchers, journalists, nonprofit leaders, and students can ask hard questions, challenge authority, and engage evidence without fear of political punishment.
When public officials begin dictating what can and cannot be taught, when scholars fear retaliation for their expertise, and when censorship becomes normalized, democratic life itself begins to erode.
That is precisely why the crisis at The University of Texas at Austin matters far beyond campus. SB 17, SB 18, the dismantling of DEI infrastructure, threats to tenure, weakened shared governance, and the consolidation of fields like Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, American Studies, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies are not isolated policy choices.
Together, they reflect a broader attempt—animated in part by Christian nationalism and its hostility to pluralism—to narrow the boundaries of knowledge, discipline faculty, and make certain histories, identities, and critiques less visible.
West reminds us that authoritarianism often begins by discrediting independent experts and weakening institutions that hold power accountable. That should give us pause. A public university that cannot protect the freedom to teach and the freedom to learn cannot fully serve students, democracy, or the public good.
Texas is one of the most diverse states in the nation. Its future depends on whether our institutions can educate students honestly about the world they are inheriting. To censor or suppress scholarship on race, gender, inequality, immigration, Indigenous histories, or democracy is not neutrality. It is political interference masquerading as reform.
At UT Austin, we should be expanding intellectual inquiry, not shrinking it. We should be strengthening shared governance, not bypassing it. We should be protecting faculty expertise, not intimidating it. And we should be investing in the fields of study that help students understand Texas in all its complexity, beauty, and contradiction.
West’s warning is clear: when academic freedom is weakened, democracy is weakened with it. Texas leaders should heed that warning before more damage is done.
Students walk past Wilson Library on the campus of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, North Carolina, U.S., September 20, 2018. Picture taken on September 20, 2018. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake
Legislation recently signed into law by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis challenges academic freedom in fundamental respects. His “Stop WOKE Act” restricts public higher education institutions, and others, from teaching about racial injustice, therefore impinging on traditional faculty prerogatives to teach courses based on their substantive expertise. In addition, provisions in the bill that allow administrators to fire professors who fail to comply with newly enacted pedagogic restrictions threaten the job security of those working in public universities.
Less understood, though, is how these threats to academic freedom also endanger democracy itself. Many analysts worrying about democracy today focus on procedural protections, such as voting rights, institutional rules, due process, and the rule of law, among other things. These features are basic requirements of functioning democracies and are the bedrock of our political system.
Yet one of the overlooked ingredients of democracy is a vibrant civil society with a knowledge sector that is free of political interference and the ability to train students in independent analysis and critical thinking. As argued in my new Brookings Institution Press book, “Power Politics: Trump and the Assault on American Democracy,” I cite a number of current threats to civil society in general and the knowledge sector in particular that are very dangerous for the United States. Democratic systems require the free flow of information, mechanisms to hold leaders accountable, and healthy civic discourse. Many of these features are under attack right now in the knowledge sector, with ominous consequences for universities, nonprofits, and think tanks.
The Value of Academic Freedom
Academic freedom is one of the reasons the United States’ higher education system has long been the envy of the world. Providing teachers and professors with the freedom to teach important ideas and encourage critical thinking among students is key to freedom, economic prosperity, and innovation. People need independence and liberty to challenge authorities, question leadership, and develop new ideas.
The scope and benefits of academic freedom, naturally, have been challenged and debated over the years. For example, conservatives have long argued that the academic freedom on college campuses is a veneer that creates a hostile environment against conservative scholars and values. In response to these arguments, some universities have created free speech zones in order to encourage an open flow of ideas. Other places have developed courses, lecture series, conferences, workshops, and academic enterprises designed to promote out-of-the-box thinking or a diversity of viewpoints. Yet, current efforts to outright silence scholars and teaching marks an important, and dangerous, escalation of this issue.
Recognizing the moral authority of independent experts, when despots come to power, one of the first things they do is discredit authoritative institutions who hold leaders accountable and encourage an informed citizenry. In Hungary, for example, government authorities attacked the Central European University that operated in Budapest and forced its relocation to Vienna, Austria. Having independent educators was deemed incompatible with an illiberal political regime. It is easy to slide into authoritarianism when fact-checkers and independent analysts are discredited and civil society organizations are weak in their capacity to question political leaders. If academic experts are discredited and lack legitimacy with the general public, it is hard for them to be effective in civic discussions. And if they worry about prosecution or selective law enforcement, it will limit their ability to challenge government authorities.
The Risk of Intimidation
In recent years, we have seen a number of cases where political leaders upset about criticism have challenged professors and sought to intimidate them into silence. One example took place in Virginia when GOP party chair Rich Anderson asked the University of Virginia to investigate Professor Larry Sabato after he tweeted “Trump, who governed on the edge of insanity for four long years, has gone over the edge. Yet millions of people and 90%+ of GOP members of Congress, still genuflect before this false god.”
According to a news account, the prominent commentator wrote this after Trump claimed in 2021 he soon would be reinstated as president. Anderson made the investigation request on the grounds that the educator’s statements “appear to violate the university’s mission statement and faculty code of ethics” and that they represented “bitter partisanship.” Fortunately, university officials defended academic freedom by putting out a statement reminding people “there is nothing in the university’s code of conduct that limits faculty from engaging in expression that is protected under the First Amendment.” That ended the matter in terms of this particular intimidation, except for whatever distraction the GOP critique caused the well-known commentator.
Other examples can be found in the area of teaching critical race theory. In a number of states, Republican legislators have introduced bills that banned or restricted the teaching of America’s racial injustices in public educational institutions. Some of these bills enacted in Idaho, Iowa, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and elsewhere explicitly banned instruction of the New York Times’ “1619 Project” that took a critical stance on the way America dealt with slavery.
A survey analysis undertaken by UCLA researchers found that 894 K-12 school districts across the country (one-third of the study’s sample) have seen efforts to restrict teaching about America’s racial history or racial equity in general. Many educators reported a “newly hostile environment for discussing issues of race, racism, and racial inequality and more broadly diversity, equity, and inclusion” and felt high levels of threats and intimidation.
These and other reactions demonstrate what a dangerous time it is for university and K-12 educators. Rather than have pedagogic autonomy and be free of political interference, legislators are directly placing restrictions on what can be said and taught within the classroom. In the same way other American institutions are being undermined and delegitimized, K-12 schools and universities are being weakened through restrictions on course content and teaching approach.
Silencing Expertise
Experts are vital to democracy because they bring in-depth knowledge to civic discourse. Yet some public officials don’t like it when expertise is used against their own policy decisions. For example, several University of Florida election experts discovered this when they were asked to testify concerning the impact of new election laws on minority voters. Worried about possible voter suppression, these scholars agreed to share their views about the harmful effects of new restrictions, only to be informed by their dean they would not be able to testify. It took lengthy negotiations and negative news stories about the university before educational administrators reversed their stance and allowed the experts to testify.
Endangering Independence
Having independent authorities who can operate freely is important, but a recent episode illustrates how scholar independence has been challenged in new ways. At Yale University, Beverly Gage, the director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy, came under fire from top donors to her program. After one of her program’s professors wrote an opinion piece entitled “How to Protect America From the Next Donald Trump,” founding donor Nicholas Brady complained to university officials about the article and is quoted as saying “this is not what Charles Johnson and I signed up for.”
In response, Yale set up a new advisory board composed mainly of conservative Republicans, including former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and Brady indicated he wanted someone to observe program courses and report back on what was being taught. At that point, Gage asked the university to protect her academic freedom and argued, “It’s very difficult to teach effectively or creatively in a situation where you are being second-guessed and undermined and not protected.”. Yet, unlike the University of Virginia case where a professor under attack was supported by high-level administrators, Gage did not feel she received adequate support from her deans. So she resigned “saying the university failed to stand up for academic freedom amid inappropriate efforts by its donors to influence its curriculum and faculty hiring.”
Weaponizing Libel and Defamation Laws
With academic freedom and scholar independence being challenged, libel laws and defamation lawsuits are getting weaponized and personal investigations are becoming more common. People from several different organizations have faced political or legal risks from expressing their viewpoints as time-worn protections based on freedom of speech and freedom of expression have started to unravel.
For example, Donald Trump has made a practice of weaponizing libel laws by suing opinion writers who penned commentary critical of him. In 2020, for example, his campaign lawyers filed lawsuits against writers for the New York Times, Washington Post, and CNN, claiming op-ed articles had impugned Trump’s character by arguing there was a “quid pro quo” between Russia and the billionaire to aid his 2016 election.
Months later, many of these suits were dismissed by judges on grounds that they lacked merit, but their mere filing ran up legal fees and contributed to an atmosphere of fear and intimidation in various quarters. Writers have to worry if they author pieces critical of politicians that their personal texts and emails will be subpoenaed, their phone calls investigated, or they will get sued and be forced to spend a lot of money and endure considerable stress defending themselves.
There also has been an increase in defamation lawsuits on college campuses from aggrieved people. Graduate students who have complained about faculty members have been sued for defamation and professors have sued one another as well as outside agents for what they saw as false and defamatory statements.
Taken together, these lawsuits illustrate the threats to personal freedom that attack the very basis of civil society and the knowledge sector that is crucial to the functioning of American democracy. These activities challenge the ability of experts and nonprofit advocates to be independent, undermine their capacity to hold leaders accountable, and discourage experts from writing critical pieces about leaders and/or donors.
Without the means to question authority and work free of fear, it becomes easy for countries to slide into illiberalism or outright authoritarianism. There needs to be system-wide protections, otherwise faculty members are forced to depend on the vagaries of particular deans and high-level administrators. In today’s world, the risks are readily apparent and everyone should fear the possibility that the U.S. may follow the path of other nations that have limited academic autonomy, weakened freedom of expression, and harmed democracy itself.
