The Fight for Higher Education: A Minority Perspective on both the Liberal University and President Michael Roth, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Fight for Higher Education: A Minority Perspective on both the Liberal University and President Michael Roth

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
August 26, 2025

On June 1, 2025, Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, appeared on Face the Nation with a sober warning: America’s universities are under siege. His words echo what many of us already feel—that the right-wing assault on higher education is not about protecting students, but about silencing dissent and reshaping universities into tools of authoritarian control.

Michael Roth, Wesleyan University President

Roth pointed to a troubling trend: increased visa restrictions and scrutiny of international students. For decades, these students have enriched our universities, bringing new perspectives and strengthening democracy. Now, instead of welcoming them, the government is using fear as a weapon—meant not for safety, but to intimidate campus communities into silence.

“This heightened scrutiny is meant to instill fear on college campuses… and I’m afraid it is working. I’m afraid, too. But we have to defend our freedoms.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation (June 1, 2025)

That admission is telling. When university presidents themselves feel constrained from speaking out, this should be a bright, neon sign, signaling danger to our democracy. The silencing of higher education leadership threatens to normalize submission, paving the way for broader suppression across society. 

I spoke with a UT student activist this week who said that the students are afraid “because of what happened on campus in Spring 2023.” She referred to the violent arrests and the crushing of dissent when the students marched for DEI and pro-Palestine. I was saddened to learn of this scarring effect on our students. It's not supposed to be this way.

Where Roth Misses the Mark

In the July 26, 2025 episode of The Gray Area, Roth acknowledged that universities do need to change. He argued that campuses should broaden the range of political and cultural views they engage, but that this process must occur organically within the academy—not be imposed through authoritarian politics that seek to gut institutions altogether.

By his own admission, Roth has long argued that higher education reproduces intellectual homogeneity, with faculty often hiring in their own image reflecting matters of comfort and affinity rather than a commitment to genuine diversity of thought and background. He characterizes this as “prejudice”—or what pundits more commonly label as “bias.”

This is where I interject. Roth names "prejudice" but softens it, casting exclusion as faculty “comfort” rather than as systemic injustice rooted in Eurocentrism. In so doing, he risks sounding like an apologist for the very exclusions that marginalized scholars have struggled against for decades.

Higher education has only begrudgingly opened space, with many of us still struggling for a foothold. Were this not the case, we would never have had the in-depth analysis of such bias as laid out in the Independent Equity Committee (IEC) report (2019).

Yet Roth’s framing risks obscuring the structural inequities that the IEC report documents as entrenched features of the academy. For decades, higher education has reproduced sameness—faculty hiring in their own image, privileging comfort over difference, and narrowing the range of voices deemed legitimate.

Beyond “Both-sides-ism”

Both Roth’s critique and the demands of marginalized communities highlight this structural conservatism. The difference lies in what each sees as the remedy and the stakes.

Roth’s call for broader viewpoints risks collapsing into the narrow, colonial logics of ‘both-sides-ism,’ where structural inequities are obscured in the name of balance. By contrast, communities of color have long pressed for something deeper: not balance within the old frame, but transformation of the frame itself—a struggle for epistemic justice, meaning fairness, equity, and representation in the production of knowledge.

The overlap suggests a shared recognition of the dangers of insularity. Yet the divergence is revealing: Roth frames the challenge primarily as a matter of political balance, while scholars of color insist that the struggle is not merely about balance but about epistemic inclusion—expanding whose knowledge counts, whose voices are heard, and whose experiences are legitimized within the academy. 

That distinction matters, because one treats the problem as an internal “fix” for higher education’s legitimacy, while the other treats it as one of knowledge equity and who gets to shape the future of the academy and society.

Universities as Scapegoats

Roth correctly talks back to those who say that colleges and universities have brought today’s backlash on themselves through insularity, elitism, or intolerance of differing views. Roth sees this as unfair, arguing that the policies currently confronting higher education are not natural consequences of campus culture but deliberate political attacks.

Framing universities as somehow “deserving” this wave of legislation doesn’t just excuse it—it helps justify authoritarian overreach. Of course, critique is needed, but it should strengthen higher education, not be twisted into cover for dismantling academic freedom and democracy itself.

In one of his most forceful points on Face the Nation, Roth rejected the claim that current attacks on universities are really about fighting antisemitism:

“The idea that you are attacking antisemitism by attacking universities… I think is a complete charade. On the contrary, I think more Jews will be hurt by these attacks than helped.” – Michael Roth, Face the Nation(June 1, 2025)

In short, universities should be spaces for debate, not reduced to spectacles of scapegoating in the service of political or partisan battles.

The Texas Frontline

For those of us in Texas, Roth’s concerns are painfully familiar. With Senate Bill 17 dismantling DEI offices in higher education and chilling the climate for students, faculty, and staff of color, we’ve seen firsthand how authoritarian overreach cloaks itself in the language of “fairness” or “protecting students.”

In reality, these measures erode inclusion, silence marginalized voices, and weaken the democratic mission of public education. Roth’s warning reminds us that what happens in Texas is not isolated—it’s part of a national campaign to undermine academic freedom and reshape universities into compliant institutions.

This is a fight we cannot afford to sit out. Roth is correct in saying that this is an attack on civil society itself. Faculty, students, and community allies must organize, resist, and insist on universities that foster truth, inclusion, and democracy.

Even if the battle is far from over, I am happy to report that we at UT Austin continue to be on the frontlines of this struggle in Texas (Valenzuela, Unda, & Mena Bernal, 2025). The attacks we are seeing are not the endgame; they are part of a decades-long project to silence difference and control knowledge itself. Our response must be just as sustained, just as creative, and just as determined.

Why It Matters for Democracy

When universities lose their independent standing and edge closer to the ideology of those in power, we face a slippery slope. Higher education ceases to function as a space of critical inquiry and instead becomes an instrument of state control. This is precisely what authoritarian regimes do. What begins as subtle pressure to align with dominant political currents can quickly evolve into direct censorship of ideas, restriction of research agendas, and silencing of protest and dissenting voices.

This erosion not only undermines the integrity of academic institutions but also weakens civil society itself, since universities have historically provided one of the few protected arenas for cultivating democratic habits of questioning, debate, and discovery. In short, when higher education becomes an echo chamber for those in power, it fails in its public mission and accelerates the very authoritarian tendencies it ought to resist.

References

Bingamon, B. (2024, November 22). The right-wingification of UT: Texas targets liberal enemies within one of the top U.S. schools. Austin Chronicle.

Illing, S. (Host). (2025, July 26). What the right’s war on college is really about [Audio podcast episode]. In The Gray Area. Vox. https://www.vox.com/the-gray-area/421054/college-ai-attack-roth-wesleyan-trump (vox.com)

Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Independent Equity Committee. (2019, October 8). Analysis of representation and compensation for Hispanic faculty at UT Austin. University of Texas at Austin.

Roth, M. (2025, June 1). Michael Roth discusses threats to higher education [Interview]. Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan. CBS News. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlCnVgd-jkc

Valenzuela, A., Unda, M. & Mena Bernal, J. (2025). Disrupting Colonial Logics: Resistance to SB 17 in Texas Higher Education, Ethnic Studies Pedagogies, 3(1).

Valenzuela, A. (2024). Monopoly Tycoons in a Game of Jenga: The Censorship of Bodies, Protest, and Speech at UT-Austin, Texas Observer

“If George Washington’s, my father, why wasn’t he Chicano?" by Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

 Friends:

In memory of Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca (1926–2018), pioneering scholar, writer, and founding voice of Chicano Studies. I first came to know and admire him in the late 1970s as a college student at Angelo State University in San Angelo, Texas. He moved with a quiet dignity, an air that seemed to carry history itself, and the respect he commanded flowed from his defining contributions to the birth of Chicana and Chicano Studies.

When Dr. Ortego first penned this essay in 2012, the attacks on Raza Studies (Mexican American/Chicana/o Studies) in Arizona were already alarming. Consider that this was pre-Trump America, before MAGA nationalism became a governing ideology. What we are reading here is the continuity of a conservative mindset that traffics in fear and promotes willful ignorance—one that has long sought to erase Mexican American history and silence Ethnic Studies. Do note the list of books he lists below of those that were banned by the Arizona Department of Education.

I testified in the precedent-setting Arizona court case, Arce v. Douglas (2017), which struck at the heart of Mexican American Studies. Though my book,Subtractive Schooling, was not formally on the list of banned titles, documents obtained through discovery made clear that it had been used as the very pretext to justify banning them all (scroll to the bottom to see the list).

The title of this piece comes from the last lines of a poem by Richard Olivas, who once asked in a history class: “If George Washington’s my father, why wasn’t he Chicano?” That question embodies the very reason for the emergence of Mexican American/Chicano Studies.

Until the Chicano Movement, Mexican Americans—treated as an internal colony of the United States—were taught little about their own history, contributions, and struggles. U.S. schools perpetuated a Eurocentric curriculum, indoctrinating students into myths of Manifest Destiny while erasing the histories of Indigenous, Black, Asian American, and Mexican American peoples.

As Ortego recounts, Mexican Americans have fought in every U.S. war, demonstrated their loyalty, and demanded their rightful place in the American mosaic. The Chicano Renaissance gave rise to a literature and scholarship that insisted: Mexican Americans are not who mainstream America says they are; only we can tell our own story.

In 2012, Arizona’s HB 2281 targeted Mexican American Studies in Tucson, banning classic works by Anzaldúa, Freire, Acuña, and even Shakespeare. Dr. Ortego correctly identified this as an expression of racism and fear: a refusal to allow students of color to see themselves reflected in history.

Now, looking back from the vantage point of 2025, we see that the attacks on knowledge, history, and identity have only intensified—book bans, anti-DEI legislation, and renewed efforts to silence Ethnic Studies. The struggle continues. And as Ortego insisted, so must we.

Book bans, as he recounts, are atrocious. Heartening is the thought that so many of these books are only a click away.

As Chicanas and Chicanos, as Mexicanas and Mexicanos, as Mexican Americans, we are—always and without question—on our land and in our homeland. This truth cannot be erased. It obligates us to defend Chicana/o Studies, and Ethnic Studies more broadly, because these fields are the repositories of our histories, our voices, and our dignity. Without them, we risk surrendering our story to those who would distort or erase it. That is a price far too exacting to pay.

We are always on our land. We have nowhere to go back to. Our ancestors roamed Turtle Island freely.

As I've always said, someday, these studies will simply be called, "a good and virtuous education." 

-Angela Valenzuela

 “If George Washington’s, my father, why wasn’t he Chicano?" 

by 

Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

Dr. Felipe de Ortego y Gasca

The title of this piece are the last lines of a poem by Richard Olivas penned some years ago. Sitting in his history class, Olivas asked: “If George Washington’s, my father, why wasn’t he Chicano? The question raised in the poem embodies the reason for the emergence of Mexican American/Chicano Studies.

Indeed, the White Studies curriculum of American schools indoctrinates students in American classrooms in the apodictive historical perspective of the nation—myths and all. Until the advent of the Chicano Movement Mexican Americans knew little about their history in the United States as a colonized people. 

Mexican America as an internal American colony

Blame it on Manifest Destiny! By hook or crook, the United States was determined to extend its domain from sea to shining sea. But Mexico was standing in the way. In 1846, President James K. Polk declared war on Mexico on the pretext that Mexico had invaded the United States by crossing into Brownsville, Texas, with armed troops. Only the year before, the United States had admitted Texas into the union even though Mexico had never acknowledged the break-away independence of its Texas province. Despite this international state of affairs with Texas, dead-set on adding Texas to the union, the United States annexed Texas in 1845. 

The U.S. War against Mexico lasted less than 2 years, after which per the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo signed on February 2, 1848, the United States dismembered Mexico and annexed more than half of its territory, permitting Mexicans (by choice) to remain in the American acquired territory of Mexico or to relocate to the new boundaries of Mexico. My father’s family chose to relocate to Guanajuato, Mexico; while my mother’s family chose to remain in San Antonio, Texas, where they had settled in 1731, some 45 years before the break-away American colonies of England in 1776. Most Mexicans opted to stay with what they considered their homeland. 

As an internally colonized people, Mexicans—now Americans by fiat—had to learn English, how to navigate the American political system, and how to survive the American schools. I wrote about that survival in 1970 in a piece entitled “Montezuma’s Children,” published as a cover story by The Center Magazine of the John Maynard Hutchins Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. The piece was read into the Congressional Record by Senator Ralph Yarbrough of Texas in 1970 and was recommended for a Pulitzer. 

 

Mexican America comes of Age

For 162 years—from 1848 to 1960—Mexican Americans sought to become the citizens the United States expected them to be: They fought in every American war since then, distinguishing themselves in World War II as the only group to win more Medals of Honor than any other group. Of the 16 million Americans who served in that conflict, 1 million were Mexican Americans. When the United States called on Americans to defend the nation, Mexican Americans have responded overwhelmingly. 

Mexican American loyalty and allegiance to the American flag has not waned. What changed was Mexican American expectations of equality for their service to the nation. Those expectations surfaced in 1960 with the Chicano Movement—a groundswell of patriotism in search of recognition. Out of that groundswell emerged the Chicano Renaissance: a literary recognition of their evolution in the American mosaic. In the Fall of 1969 I taught the first course in Mexican American/ Chicano literature at the University of New Mexico. In 1971 I completed Backgrounds of Mexican American Literature(University of New Mexico, 1971), first historical and taxonomic study in the field. In 1960, only 10 novels by Mexican Americans had been published in the United States. Since then, the count has swelled to hundreds. Overall, the count of books by Mexican Americans in the American publishing arena is in the thousands. Mexican Americans realized that if America is to know who Mexican Americans are, then Mexican Americans must write their own stories. Mexican Americans are not who mainstream America says they are; Mexican Americans are the only ones who can say who they are. 

Today, the most egregious example of prejudice and discrimination based on ethnicity and ancestry is the situation in the Tucson Independent School District where Mexican American Studies has been eliminated as a program of study and a list of particular books bans their use in classrooms. These are books by eminent Chicano and Native American scholars. Banned also are Civil Disobedience, Brave New World and Shakespeare's The Tempest. The logic defies understanding except that it seems to be based on ethnicity and ancestry.

All of this hullaballoo is the result of Arizona House Bill 2281 signed by Governor Jan Brewer banning Ethnic Studies Programs (which includes Chicano Studies) on the grounds that these Programs advocate ethnic separatism and encourages Latinos to rise up and create a new territory out of the southwestern region of the United States. Perhaps those Xenophobes need a history lesson on how the Hispanic Southwest came into the American fold. They also need to look at school textbooks to see how under-represented Asian Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, and Mexican Americans are in those textbooks. Which is why we need Asian American Studies, African American Studies, Native American Studies, and Mexican American Studies. What are white Arizonans really afraid of? HB 2281 has come to the attention of the United Nations which condemns the Bill, citing Arizona’s rage against immigration and ethnic minorities as “a disturbing pattern of hostile legislative activity.” The better word would be “racism.”

Chicano Studies as the Voice of Chicanos

Forty-eight years ago when I began university teaching after some years as a high school teacher of French, there was no Chicano Stud­ies. That is, no Chicano Studies as an organized field of study. To be sure, there were Mexican American scholars working on various aspects of Mexican Amer­ican life and its cultural productions, scholars like Aurelio Espinosa, Juan Rael, Arturo Campa, Fray Angelico Chaves, George I. Sanchez, Americo Paredes, and others. Important as this scholarship was, it emerged amorphously, reflecting independ­ent intellectual interests rather than a scholarship reflecting a field of study. This is not to say that some of these scholars may not have considered their work as part of a field of study conceptualized as Mexican American Studies. Despite its lack of an under-pinning, it was a field of Mexican American Studies, its constituent parts subsumed as American folklore. 

 

This situation created a critical barrier to the public discussion and dissemination of information about the presence of Mexican Americans in the Unit­ed States and their contributions to American society. Until 1960 and the emergence of the Chi­cano Movement, Mexican Americans were charac­terized by mainstream American schol­ars–-principally anthropologists and social work­ers–-in terms of the queer, the curious, and the quaint. That is, Mexican Amer­icans were categorized as just another item in the flora and fauna of Americana. 

The Chicano Movement–that wave of concientizaci­on that came to bloom among Mexican Americans in the 60's transforming them into Chica­nos– help­ed to change American perceptions about Mexican Americans. While Mexican Americans knew much about Anglo Americans, Anglo Ameri­cans knew little about Mexican Americans.

In 1970 I was recruited to be founding director of the Chicano Studies Program at the University of Texas at El Paso, first such program in the state (and still there). By this time, I had become “conscien­tized” as a Chicano. From 1967 on, I had become identified as a Quinto Sol Writer, that is, among the first wave of Chicano writers of the Chi­cano Renaissance which had its beginning in 1966 with the creation of Quinto Sol Publica­tions.

The Arizona Challenge

Mexican American accounts of who they are are being challenged in Arizona. The Tucson Unified School District in Arizona made headlines in recent weeks when it eliminated its Mexican American Studies program. John Huppenthal, the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction, declared the program illegal under a state law that bans racially-divisive classes. Books by Mexican American authors have been yanked from TUSD classrooms: Message to Aztlán by Rodolfo Corky Gonzales (2001) and Chicano! A History of the Mexican Civil Rights Movement by Arturo Rosales (1997). 

Everywhere, there are xenophobic and fas­cist forces that threaten the existence of Chicano Studies. Mainstream suspicions about the ideological agenda of Chicano Studies has become paranoiac. In Arizona there are legislative initiatives to remove from the schools programs deemed to be seditious, programs that promote divisiveness and breed revo­lution, programs like Chic­ano Studies–any ethnic studies program that challen­ges Western values. One Arizona legislator believes that such an initiative will restore the image of the United States as a “melt­ing pot”—that relic salvaged from the reliquary of dystopic America.

Tony Diaz, founder of the literary nonprofit Nuestra Palabra: Latino Writers Having Their Say is organizing a caravan from Houston to Tucson over spring break to raise awareness about the situation and taking Hispanic books to Tucson students. He calls it the Librotraficante movement. It begins in Houston on Monday, March 12 and ends in Tucson on Saturday, March 17. Along the way, the caravan will stop in San Antonio, El Paso and Albuquerque, for read-ins and other activities. The caravan will be filled with authors and activists, accruing people as it proceeds toward Tucson.

Como una hija querida, tenemos que defender Chicano Studies porque si no, perderemos nuestro futuro. That’s too important a future to lose, too ex­acting a price to pay. This is the exact moment of history for Chicanos to rise to the occasion. Inaction sustains the status quo. Now, more than ever, we must band together in common cause. Chicano Stud­ies deserves no less. Actually, all Americans must stand up to this current wave of xenophobia.

WORKS CENSORED OR BANNED BY THE TUCSON SCHOOL DISTRICT PER SB 2281

American Government/Social Justice/Education

• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson 
• The Latino Condition: A Critical Reader (1998) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic 
• Critical Race Theory: An Introduction (2001) by R. Delgado and J. Stefancic 
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed (2000) by P. Freire 
• United States Government: Democracy in Action (2007) by R. C. Remy 
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales 
• Declarations of Independence: Cross-Examining American Ideology (1990) by H. Zinn

American History/Mexican American Perspectives 

• Occupied America: A History of Chicanos (2004) by R. Acuña 
• The Anaya Reader (1995) by R. Anaya 
• The American Vision (2008) by J. Appleby et el. 
• Rethinking Columbus: The Next 500 Years (1998) by B. Bigelow and B. Peterson 
• Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992) by J. A. Burciaga 
• Message to Aztlán: Selected Writings (1997) by R.  Gonzales 
• De Colores Means All of Us: Latina Views Multi-Colored Century (1998) by E. S. Martínez 
• 500 Años Del Pueblo Chicano/500 Years of Chicano History in Pictures (1990) by E. S. Martínez 
• Codex Tamuanchan: On Becoming Human (1998) by R. Rodríguez 
• The X in La Raza II (1996) by R. Rodríguez 
• Dictionary of Latino Civil Rights History (2006) by F. A. Rosales 
• A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (2003) by H. Zinn

English/Latino Literature 

• Ten Little Indians (2004) by S. Alexie 
• The Fire Next Time (1990) by J. Baldwin 
• Loverboys (2008) by A. Castillo 
• Women Hollering Creek (1992) by S. Cisneros 
• Mexican White Boy (2008) by M. de la Pena
• Drown (1997) by J. Díaz 
• Woodcuts of Women (2000) by D. Gilb 
• At the Afro-Asian Conference in Algeria (1965) by E. Guevara 
• Color Lines: "Does Anti-War Have to Be Anti-Racist Too?" (2003) by E. Martínez 
• Culture Clash: Life, Death and Revolutionary Comedy (1998) by R. Montoya et al.
• Let Their Spirits Dance (2003) by S. Pope Duarte 
• Two Badges: The Lives of Mona Ruiz (1997) by M. Ruiz 
• The Tempest (1994) by W. Shakespeare 
• A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (1993) by R. Takaki 
• The Devil's Highway (2004) by L. A. Urrea 
• Puro Teatro: A Latino Anthology (1999) by A. Sandoval-Sanchez & N. Saporta Sternbach 
• Twelve Impossible Things before Breakfast: Stories (1997) by J. Yolen 
• Voices of a People's History of the United States (2004) by H. Zinn

• Live from Death Row (1996) by J. Abu-Jamal 
• The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fist Fight in Heaven (1994) by S. Alexie 
• Zorro (2005) by I. Allende 
• Borderlands La Frontera: The New Mestiza (1999) by G. Anzaldua 
• A Place to Stand (2002), by J. S. Baca 
• C-Train and Thirteen Mexicans (2002), by J. S. Baca 
• Healing Earthquakes: Poems (2001) by J. S. Baca 
• Immigrants in Our Own Land and Selected Early Poems (1990) by J. S. Baca 
• Black Mesa Poems (1989) by J. S. Baca 
• Martin & Mediations on the South Valley (1987) by J. S. Baca 
• The Manufactured Crisis: Myths, Fraud, and the Attack on America's Public Schools (1995) by D. C. Berliner and B. J. Biddle 
• Drink Cultura: Chicanismo (1992) by J. A Burciaga 
• Red Hot Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Being Young and Latino in the United States (2005) by L. Carlson & O. Hijuielos 
• Cool Salsa: Bilingual Poems on Growing up Latino in the United States (1995) by L. Carlson & O. Hijuelos 
• So Far From God (1993) by A. Castillo 
• Address to the Commonwealth Club of California (1985) by C. E. Chávez 
• Women Hollering Creek (1992) by S. Cisneros 
• House on Mango Street (1991), by S. Cisneros 
• Drown (1997) by J. Díaz 
• Suffer Smoke (2001) by E. Diaz Bjorkquist 
• Zapata's Discipline: Essays (1998) by M. Espada 
• Like Water for Chocolate (1995) by L. Esquievel 
• When Living was a Labor Camp (2000) by D. García 
• La Llorona: Our Lady of Deformities (2000), by R. Garcia 
• Cantos Al Sexto Sol: An Anthology of Aztlanahuac Writing (2003) by C. García-Camarilo et al.
• The Magic of Blood (1994) by D. Gilb 
• Message to Aztlan: Selected Writings (2001) by Rodolfo "Corky" Gonzales 
• Saving Our Schools: The Case for Public Education, Saying No to "No Child Left Behind" (2004) by Goodman et al.
• Feminism is for Everybody (2000) by b hooks 
• The Circuit: Stories from the Life of a Migrant Child (1999) by F. Jiménez 
• Savage Inequalities: Children in America's Schools (1991) by J. Kozol 
• Zigzagger (2003) by M. Muñoz 
• Infinite Divisions: An Anthology of Chicana Literature (1993) by T. D. Rebolledo & E. S. Rivero 
• ...y no se lo trago la tierra/And the Earth Did Not Devour Him (1995) by T. Rivera 
• Always Running - La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. (2005) by L. Rodriguez 
• Justice: A Question of Race (1997) by R. Rodríguez 
• The X in La Raza II (1996) by R. Rodríguez 
• Crisis in American Institutions (2006) by S. H. Skolnick & E. Currie 
• Los Tucsonenses: The Mexican Community in Tucson, 1854-1941 (1986) by T. Sheridan 
• Curandera (1993) by Carmen Tafolla 
• Mexican American Literature (1990) by C. M. Tatum 
• New Chicana/Chicano Writing (1993) by C. M. Tatum 
• Civil Disobedience (1993) by H. D. Thoreau 
• By the Lake of Sleeping Children (1996) by L. A. Urrea 
• Nobody's Son: Notes from an American Life (2002) by L. A. Urrea 
• Zoot Suit and Other Plays (1992) by L. Valdez 
• Ocean Power: Poems from the Desert (1995) by O. Zepeda

UPDATE, Monday, January 16, 2012

Bless Me Ultima by Rudolfo Anaya 

• Yo Soy Joaquin/I Am Joaquin by Rodolfo Gonzales 
• Into the Beautiful North by Luis Alberto Urrea 
• The Devil's Highway by Luis Alberto Urrea