National scholars of Latino studies protest elimination of the department at UT Austin, K-UT News

Friends:

Glad this rally took place yesterday at the National Latina/x/o Studies Association (LSA) meeting that is taking place currently. News of consolidation is shocking to folks coming from other campuses, a number of whom wouldn't be where they are professionally had it not been for UT Austin's Department of Mexican American and Latino Studies.

David Vazquez framed the site as a cornerstone of the profession, stressing the collective duty to preserve it. As conference participant, Professor Suhey Vega underscores, forcing these communities together creates a system in which they must compete—often with one another—for limited funding, a dynamic that is both unjust and counterproductive. 

In this light, consolidation is not merely administrative efficiency; it becomes a mechanism that redistributes scarcity downward, compelling historically marginalized fields to struggle against each other for survival rather than enabling them to collectively advance knowledge and equity.

We have no other option than to continue protesting this vigorously.

-Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.


National scholars of Latino studies protest elimination of the department at UT Austin

KUT 90.5 | By Greta Díaz González Vázquez
Published March 27, 2026 at 12:01 PM CDT

UT professor Karma Chávez said faculty members were asked to review their curriculum and what majors will be offered in the future. Patricia Lim-K-UT News

As the Mexican American and Latina/o Studies (MALS) department at UT Austin is set to disappear, scholars from all over the country attended the national Latina/x/o Studies Association (LSA) meeting on campus this week. Researchers held a rally on Thursday outside the conference to protest changes at the College of Liberal Arts.

“This place is one of the places that is the origin points of our profession,” said David Vazquez, a professor at American University in Washington, D.C., and the president of LSA. “We need to be here to protect this place.”

In February, UT President Jim Davis announced seven departments, including ethnic and gender studies departments, would be consolidated into two newly created departments and said academic courses would be reviewed.

Since the announcement, UT officials have not shared any further details with the community about the consolidation. But Karma Chávez, a professor in the MALS department, says faculty have been tasked with reviewing the current majors and proposing what majors will be offered in the future.

Suhey Vega, a professor at Arizona State University, where a similar consolidation happened in 2008, says eliminating the autonomy of areas of study comes with long-lasting consequences.

“It's important to realize that in joining these communities together, especially by force, you're creating a system in which they have to fight, sometimes with each other, for funding, and that is ridiculous and unfair,” Vega said.

Vega, who grew up in Texas, said it was important for her to attend the conference to demand that Tejano history is known in the state.

Vazquez, the LSA president, said the conference was held at UT Austin to honor the history and significance its programs have had for Latino studies, and to express solidarity with faculty and students. He said over 600 academics registered for the conference, and over 700 research proposals were submitted, making it one of the biggest Latino studies conferences in the country.

Latino studies at UT began in the 1970s with the creation of the Center for Mexican American Studies. It was born out of community pressure to have a program that reflected Latina/o/x and Chicana/o/x experiences.

Since then it’s been the academic home of internationally renowned scholars, like one of the first border researchers, Américo Paredes, and Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa. MALS was created in 2014 and is now the only department in Texas and one of a few in the country to offer a Ph.D. in Latino studies.

When the consolidation was announced, Davis said UT is committed to ensuring every student has access to a balanced educational experience.

Julie Minich, a professor in UT's English department, said faculty have tried engaging with university officials to show that the work at MALS comes from a diverse point of view, but have not received a positive response.

“Efforts to justify this have been minimal because there are no justifications,” Minich said. “Eliminating our departments and telling their students that their presence at this university is not wanted tells the 40% of Latino population of the state of Texas that the public flagship [university] is not for them.”

KUT News reached out to UT Austin for comment and has not heard back.

Faculty at Texas university fear entire liberal arts departments will be slashed, Alice Speri | Friday, 17 October 2025 | The Guardian

Friends:

News from the University of Texas at Austin this week is deeply alarming. 

Faculty have learned that a committee has been quietly appointed to study the “restructuring” of liberal arts programs, with particular focus rumored to fall onAfrican and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. These are precisely the disciplines that give students the tools to think critically about race, identity, and democracy—areas of study already under sustained political attack in Texas.

That the university has provided no public explanation only compounds faculty and student fears. The timing of this move—just weeks after the state eliminated faculty senates and centralized power in administrators’ hands—suggests a larger pattern of institutional unraveling of higher education.

I fear this is not restructuring at all, but rather a purge of vital fields—like Mexican American Studies—that were born from historic grassroots and civil rights struggles to ensure that the histories, experiences, and contributions of our communities are researched, taught, and valued. Far from “political correctness,” these programs embody the very mission of a public university: to expand knowledge, deepen understanding, and prepare students to engage critically and compassionately in a diverse democracy. 

Like Dr. Julie Minich quoted in the piece below, she represents all of us when she expresses just how offensive an allegation this is when the reality is one of our administrations seeking to censure precious knowledge and our teaching of it.

Moreover, if these programs do not promote the kind of workforce readiness that SB 37 insists upon, I don’t know what does. The capacity to think critically, navigate complexity, communicate across difference, and lead with empathy—these are precisely the skills our state and nation need to thrive. To dismantle the very programs that cultivate them is not only short-sighted policy but a profound disservice to the students and communities that public education was created to serve.

-Angela Valenzuela

Faculty at Texas university fear entire liberal arts departments will be slashed

University of Texas at Austin faculty fear changes from new taskforce that could restructure humanities programs

 The first day of classes at the University of Texas at Austin on 25 August 2025. Photograph: Jay Janner/

The Austin American-Statesman via Getty Images.

Alice Speri | Friday, 17 October 2025 | The Guardian

Faculty at the University of Texas at Austin fear entire academic departments may be on the chopping block after the university quietly appointed a committee charged with studying the restructuring of its liberal arts programs.

The university – the largest in the public University of Texas system – has not made any announcements about cuts or restructuring, but faculty there have learned the committee was established earlier this semester and tasked with a review that they believe is focused on ethnic and regional disciplines such as African and African diaspora studies, Mexican American and Latina/o studies, as well as women’s and gender studies.

The university did not respond to the Guardian’s request for comment and faculty who asked administrators about the committee said they have received no clear answers. On Thursday, UT Austin also announced a taskforce to conduct a “thorough review” of the university’s core curriculum – a set of required courses taken by all students – “to better fulfill the purpose of this curriculum and identify gaps in quality, rigor, or intellectual cohesion”, the university’s president wrote in an email.

The taskforce is made up of 18 professors – none from the departments where cuts are feared. Students have circulated an image in private emails and chats mocking the fact that almost all faculty on it are white.



An image circulated by students at the University of Texas at Austin. Photograph: Obtained by The Guardian.

“We’re hearing bits and pieces,” said Julie Minich, a professor in the English and Mexican American and Latina/o studies departments at UT Austin. “We’re hearing that the dean appointed a restructuring committee. We’re hearing rumors about who’s on it. And then we’re trying to read the tea leaves.”

Concerns escalated after a new state law went into effect on 1 September, disbanding the public university system’s long-established faculty senates and giving university administrators near-absolute control over university governance matters. While university senates hold advisory roles at most schools, they are generally a primary outlet for faculty to engage in decisions concerning the university.

As the law kicked in, UT Austin’s new president – the first to be appointed without faculty input – announced the establishment of a 12-person faculty advisory board entirely selected by him and “charged with advising on institutional matters and focusing on the best interests of the entire University”.

While UT Austin leaders have said little about their plans for the university’s future, the new provost, William Inboden, recently outlined his vision in a 7,000-word manifesto published in National Affairs, a rightwing magazine. In the essay, he laments the crisis of “legitimacy and trust” in US higher education and universities’ “ideological imbalance”, in part blaming the “identity-studies framework” for them.

“Too many American history courses present the American past as a litany of oppressions and hypocrisies, leaving students with an imbalanced view of the United States,” he wrote, repeating a position often invoked by conservatives, including Donald Trump, who have railed against universities as bastions of woke liberalism.

Inboden’s manifesto “really outlines his sense that the humanities and liberal arts are full of pathology and rot”, said Craig Campbell, an anthropology professor at UT Austin. “That’s what they’re going after.”

He added that the uncertainty had been a major distraction this semester. “It’s a horrible, horrible climate right now.”

“We really took this article as an indication of hostility for our field,” echoed Minich, referring to Inboden’s essay. “The combination of the formation of this committee without any communication with the faculty and then this article published by the provost has really put a lot of people on edge.”

Earlier this year, the Trump-aligned America First Policy Institute also took aim at UT Austin. In a report titled “Are the ‘Studies’ Worth Studying?”, the conservative thinktank appears to foreshadow the targeting of the same departments faculty now fear are under threat.

“The ‘Studies’ – e.g., ‘Women’s Studies,’ ‘Asian American Studies,’ ‘Critical Disability Studies,’ etc. – are activist rather than scholarly disciplines,” the report concludes, claiming that they are rife with “grade inflation”. “‘Low hanging-fruit’ remedies to grade inflation include eliminating low-rigor disciplines (such as the Studies).”

Minich flatly rejected the report’s conclusions.

“I would vigorously dispute any characterization of area studies or ethnic studies as ideologically engaged in the indoctrination of students,” she said. “My goal in the classroom is never to tell students what to think. It’s to give them tools for how to think about a complicated world, and the fact that I feel I'm being prevented from doing that seems to me to be a real problem."

UT Austin leaders have not yet responded to the president’s offer. Earlier this week, about 200 students made their opposition to it clear as they chanted “do not sign” in front of the administration’s main building.