Hispanic under-representation is not only severe, but declining at the University of Texas at Austin.  As an Hispanic female professor at UT, I am "statistically insignificant," as one university researcher expressed a few years back when asked why Latinas were not included in a gender equity report.

That statement reveals something powerful about equity (or lack thereof)—or at least it should—even if in practice, it has not.

Some of us Latina/Hispanic female and male professors are also getting older and it's healthy and advisable to have a bench of faculty behind us to assume research, teaching, and leadership positions for when we retire, move, or pass on.  This phenomenon of Hispanic inequity in higher education, in part a casualty of the white-black binary, is so understudied on our campuses throughout the country that it goes unnoticed, perpetuating the inequities.  

Even in so-called "Hispanic Serving Institutions," I am learning, there is a crisis in Latina/o faculty equity in ways similar to those outlined in the Independent Equity Committee Report (also see an earlier opinion piece by the editors of the Austin American Statesman, in this regard).  

Do read this October 30, 2019 column Inside Higher Education authored by Colleen Flaherty titled "Equity for Hispanic Professors: UT Austin faculty group wants the institution to fix what it says is a system that marginalizes Hispanics." 

This grievance is not at all about identity politics. It's about fairness and doing what's right. Most importantly, the exploitation and under-representation of Hispanics in higher education has serious implications for the undergraduate and graduate student experience, alongside research, policy, and theory development pertinent to the Latino community writ large. Scientific research will simply will not get done if the very group that frequently does this work is systematically excluded, under-paid, and marginalized.  

Like it or not, my friends, so goes the Hispanic community in Texas, so goes the state.  So go Texas and California, overwhelmingly Hispanic states, so goes the country.

And based on all the awesomeness around us that abounds, there's plenty of reason to "like it!"  We add enormous value to our institutions.  As Elizabeth Barrett Browning once said, "Let me count the ways..."  

I can say in all confidence and truthfulness that our struggles are for the betterment of the whole.  Depending on how affirmatively the university responds, UT will be better for this, as well.  Much better.

Now, it's time to act. An opinion piece published this week authored by Dr. Daniel Acosta in the Austin American-Statesman offers good suggestions on how to move forward.  This would, of course, only be a start.

Sí se puede!  Yes we can!

-Angela Valenzuela

Opinion: UT should take steps to hire more Hispanic leaders

By Daniel Acosta Jr.

Posted Nov 13, 2019 at 12:17 PM

According to a recent editorial in the Austin American-Statesman, the University of Texas has not been able to recruit and retain significant numbers of Hispanic faculty. The reasons given are a demonstrable lack of understanding of the value that Hispanic faculty bring to the cultural diversity of the campus and the lower salaries that Hispanic faculty receive in comparison to white faculty. It is not surprising then that UT has historically been derelict in not selecting Hispanic academicians to its leadership team.

There has never been a Hispanic president or executive vice president (provost) at UT; the current administration lists no Hispanics in any academic vice president position. As to department chairs, the five largest colleges have only six Hispanics out of 86 positions.

The usual explanation for the low number of minorities in leadership positions at UT and other major universities is that everyone is competing nationally for those few Hispanics with doctorates who are at a point in their careers to be considered for positions of higher responsibility.

Hogwash! One of the nation’s highly-ranked public universities has the power, resources and stature to correct this major blight on its record by attracting more Hispanic faculty and academic leaders to the Austin campus. I offer the following possible solutions to assist the UT administration team in improving its status as a national leader in the promotion of Hispanics to significant positions on its leadership team.

One, nurture your faculty and grow them into leadership positions. Many UT senior Hispanic professors, directors, assistant and associate deans already have the makings of academic leadership. If given appropriate mentoring by high-level UT leaders, they can be groomed to take on more significant leadership responsibilities. The university would be well-advised to start its grooming process now by selecting key UT Hispanic faculty and administrators to attend leadership development programs offered by prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Stanford and Michigan.

Two, recruit proven Hispanic leaders from key Texas universities and colleges, such as University of Texas El Paso, UT-San Antonio, and UT-Rio Grande Valley, to leadership positions at UT-Austin. Because these universities have sizable Hispanic student populations, there are several Hispanic leaders at these institutions who have experience and skill sets to assist UT with the growing Latino population in the state. To reduce resentment by these universities who might see such action as a raid of their Hispanic administrators, a collaborative program could be developed by the Austin campus and these key universities to work together to attract Hispanic leaders to all of their administrations.

Three, recruit prominent Hispanic academicians from major universities across the country. For years, leading universities including UT-Austin have paid handsomely to attract academic stars in chemistry, physics, molecular biology, engineering, classics, history, law, etc. to establish their disciplines at their institutions. UT should be able do the same to entice Hispanic academic stars to Austin.

It is imperative that high-profile Hispanic role models be readily visible in the classroom, the research enterprise and the administration’s leadership team for the many Hispanic students studying at UT (23% of the 40,000 undergraduate students). As one of the leading public universities in the country, the University of Texas can further enhance its academic and educational prominence by hiring more Hispanic leaders.

Acosta Jr. is the former director of the graduate toxicology training program at the University of Texas and former dean of pharmacy at the University of Cincinnati.

Rudy Ramirez is a brilliant theater director and we are so fortunate to have him here in Austin.  His equally brilliant and beloved mother, Dr. Blandina "Bambi" Cardenas, too.  Due in great part to the existence of the black-white binary—where race for these groups stubbornly equates to "black" or "white," invisiblizing Latinx peoples—we who are Latinx know just how woefully under-recognized in all our complexity we are in society, politics, and the arts.  Through his award-winning theater, Rudy is helping to change this.  And how better than through theater and the arts?  I love this quote from this piece:

"It's necessary to tell stories that say, 'Our beauty doesn't come from fitting into the idea of what a citizen or a woman should be, but rather, our absolute inability to be contained by those words.'" 

To get a taste of his magic, consider attending the FuturX  theater & performance festival next week at the VORTEX Theater.

Congratulations, Rudy! We love all that you do. By attending to our multiple marginalities, your raise silent voices and un-mute unspoken topics that promise to liberate, even as they complexify. Godspeed!

-Angela Valenzuela

Rudy Ramirez's FuturX Festival Puts Latinx Performance Center Stage

The theatrical Renaissance man moves Latinx performance out of the margins

BY TREY GUTIERREZ, FRI., NOV. 1, 2019

Rudy Ramirez (Photo by David Brendan Hall)

Representation.  Its importance is a hot topic among theatremakers. But when the conversation shifts toward actually achieving it, Rudy Ramirez believes a lot is left unsaid. "People don't tend to think about diversity within communities of color. They don't think it's there." As a member of both the Latinx and queer communities, the award-winning director has time and time again found meaningful onstage inclusion either lacking or nonexistent. "I realized if I was going to talk about Latinx experience in a non-simplified way," Ramirez says, "it'd have to be from my own perspective."

In recent years, Ramirez has led a charge for broader Latinx visibility in Austin's performance scene. Doing so across several mediums, the artist's most notable push began in 2018 in the form of the FuturX Festival, a multi-day showcase of forward-thinking, Latinx-penned performances, including solo shows, plays, improv, and a host of avant-garde work.

Described by collaborators as a "theatrical Renaissance man," Ramirez seems the ideal candidate to organize this event. Since beginning his tenure as Vortex Repertory Company associate artistic director in 2011, the artist has earned a reputation (as well as five B. Iden Payne Awards and a Chronicle "Best of Austin" award) for staging fresh, challenging work. "Rudy has this ability to recognize and summon people's internal power," says actor/playwright Krysta Gonzales. "When you invite people in to see what they have to offer, magic happens."

At its core, FuturX is just that: an invitation to experiences typically hidden from the mainstream. "I'm interested in highlighting the margins of Latinidad," says Ramirez. "Latinx identity in dialogue with, say, indigenous, African American, trans, or queer identity." Considering their affinity for inclusive narratives – the artist is currently directing three: one for bilingual theatre company Teatro Vivo and two for FuturX – it's telling that until 2015, Ramirez hadn't staged a Latinx-written show: "There was no real opportunity to do anything that spoke to my background. Even when I found ostensibly 'Latinx' work, I wasn't connecting with it specifically."

Like many creatives of Mexican descent, Ramirez's heritage isn't exactly simple. Their father descended from a long line of working-class Tejanos and his mother from 20th-century Mexican landowners fleeing political unrest – leaving their son with a complicated understanding of class and race that never aligned with propagated Latinidad narratives. "Chicano theatre is often about certain experiences: being an immigrant or migrant worker. There are experiences of Mexicanidad that I'll never know – and to stage those stories would be appropriative." It doesn't help that these narratives are frequently resolved in predictable ways. "I've always been chafed at those plays that culminate in the embrace of family and tradition – 'Always trust what abuelita says.' As a queer person, I can't readily look at tradition as 'that's where home is.' The home I've mostly made for myself is with friends: my chosen family."

Ramirez would chase his own representation through playwriting, performing their solo piece Promised Land: A Radical Queer Revival in 2009 and the duo show Footnotes for People Who Don't Speak Spanish with Beliza Narvaez in 2011. Then, in 2015, things finally clicked. While directing Tanya Saracho's El Nogalar, a loose adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard set against the backdrop of Mexico's drug wars, they saw reflections of their family's unique backgrounds: namely, their father in the hardworking, class-conscious character Lopez. "[Nogalar] addresses prevailing attitudes in upper-class Mexican culture vs. working-class culture. It felt like two halves of myself meeting for the first time."

Today, El Nogalar remains a blueprint for Ramirez's FuturX planning, not only for its thematic freshness, but for how Saracho's writing refuses easy answers. "As terrifying as the drug cartels have been, they're one of the few opportunities for working-class folks to gain wealth in a segregated, caste-like society. Classism is always racism in Mexico, and there's nowhere near enough work about the racism we put on each other." Ramirez's eagerness to complicate conversations surrounding Latinidad would similarly draw them to directing FuturX's first headline performance, (Un)Documents, Jesús I. Valles' poetic solo show that, in addition to foregrounding queer Latinx intersectionality, balanced the question of "Why fight for citizenship if, to exist, it must delegitimize?" against "What happens without it?"

"Tension is one of my favorite words in theatremaking, saying, 'Neither answer is right, so let's sit in that neither-is-right-ness and experience the pull.' Maybe there we'll find something new." This year, in staging Krysta Gonzales' new play Más Cara at FuturX, the director aims to bring that same dramatic tension to another rarely seen experience: Latina womanhood. A fantastical dissection of gender expectation and tradition, 2019's flagship show follows headstrong Latina Alma on a lifelong journey toward self-respect. Her quest is aided by Mexican folklore goddesses Coatlicue, La Llorona, and Tonatzin – themselves representing archetypes of Mexican femininity. "While [Más Cara] is about empowerment for women, it refuses to say, 'And that's when I left my husband, lived my best life, got remarried ....' Sometimes you don't find somebody else, but nevertheless, respecting yourself necessitates that sacrifice."

As each passing rehearsal brings FuturX 2019 closer, Ramirez has been reflecting on how these performances shaped their up-and-coming festival. "It's necessary to tell stories that say, 'Our beauty doesn't come from fitting into the idea of what a citizen or a woman should be, but rather, our absolute inability to be contained by those words.'" While Ramirez will be the first to tell you that representation is a complex, multifaceted subject, it seems that so many of their efforts center on that basic idea of resisting containment, be it in the form of easy answers, tired narratives, or someone else's expectations. "When you're Latinx, so often you're told, 'You're just too much, too emotional, too sexual, too needy ...' I think sometimes the 'too much' is them saying, 'There's too many of you.' Look at some theatre seasons, and apparently, yeah, even one Latinx program is too much." Clearly, there's work to be done, but where better to begin than affording voice to unheard perspectives?

"We want to create work that says, 'I'm not too much. I'm enough,'" says Ramirez. "'And if you don't think so, you'd better get out of the way.'"