by
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
At a moment when Texas is rapidly remaking higher education, the question posed at a recent gathering at the University of Texas—“Where are the Democrats?”—should not be dismissed as rhetorical. It is a warning.
Over the past three years, Texas Republicans have not merely criticized universities; they have systematically restructured them. Through Senate Bill 17, diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts have been dismantled. Through Senate Bill 37, faculty governance has been weakened and authority shifted upward to politically appointed boards. Beyond legislation, we are now witnessing the installation of former lawmakers as university system chancellors, direct pressure campaigns on faculty and programs, and the quiet but consequential narrowing of curricula—particularly in Mexican American Studies and Ethnic Studies more broadly.
This is not episodic policymaking. It is coordinated governance.
And yet, as Lily Kepner, writing for the Austin American-Statesman reports, Democratic leadership has largely chosen to sideline higher education as a central political issue heading into the midterms, citing the press of “kitchen table” concerns like affordability and health care. The calculus is familiar: higher education is perceived as politically risky, too easily caricatured, and insufficiently resonant with voters.
This is precisely the miscalculation.
Higher education is a kitchen table issue. It is where students decide whether they belong. It is where families encounter the rising costs of tuition and the shrinking availability of programs that reflect their histories. It is where future teachers, nurses, engineers, and civic leaders are formed. To wit, it provides access to all of the professions.
And increasingly, it is where political actors—rather than professors who have devoted their lives and careers to scholarship and teaching—are deciding what can be taught, what can be researched, and what can be said.
To treat this as peripheral is to concede the terrain.
Republican leaders understand this well. Their messaging—casting universities as sites of “indoctrination”—has been paired with policy that transforms governance structures, disciplines faculty speech, and reorients curriculum. As one policy advocate bluntly stated, the work of “getting rid of stuff” is giving way to a new phase: building a reordered university. That includes proposals to center “Western civilization” in core curricula, monitor foreign influence, and further regulate academic standards.
In other words, the project is not simply subtractive. It is reconstructive.
Democrats who choose not to engage this arena are not avoiding risk; they are absorbing it. By ceding narrative control, they allow higher education to be defined by its critics while alienating students, faculty, and communities already mobilizing in defense of it. They also miss an opportunity to connect higher education policy to the very concerns they claim to prioritize. Affordability, workforce development, and democratic participation are all shaped—profoundly—by what happens on our campuses.
There is also a deeper issue at stake: democracy itself.
When faculty self-censor out of fear, when programs like Mexican American Studies are administratively weakened or eliminated, when governance is restructured to minimize dissent, the university ceases to function as a space of inquiry and becomes instead a managed environment. What we are witnessing is not simply policy change, but a redefinition of the public university’s role in a democratic society.
This is why the current moment demands more than quiet concern or behind-the-scenes conversations. It requires a clear, public, and sustained defense of higher education as a public good.
To be sure, Democrats face real constraints in Texas. They do not control the legislature, and they are navigating multiple urgent crises. But political limitation is not the same as political absence. Messaging, coalition-building, and agenda-setting remain powerful tools—even, and especially, in minority positions.
Indeed, we have seen glimpses of what this could look like: public statements in defense of students, testimony challenging vague restrictions on classroom speech, and convenings that center free expression. But these efforts remain fragmented, intermittent, and insufficient to match the scale of the transformation underway.
Meanwhile, the consequences are anything but abstract. Students report feeling unheard. Faculty describe narrowing their syllabi. Entire fields—especially those grounded in the histories and experiences of communities of color—face an uncertain future.
And still, the question lingers: Where are the Democrats?
If higher education continues to be treated as a secondary issue, the answer will become increasingly clear—not in press conferences or policy papers, but in the very structure of our universities.
By 2027, when the Texas Legislature reconvenes, the groundwork being laid today will shape what is politically possible tomorrow. The choice is not whether to engage, but whether engagement comes too late.
Because by then, the question may no longer be where the Democrats are.
It may be whether there is anything left to defend.
Going into the midterms, Texas Republicans say they have momentum to build conservative values in higher ed. Some advocates say Democrats aren’t doing enough.
By Lily Kepner,Staff WriterApril 22, 2026 |
American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, left, with Texas AFT President Zeph Capo, speaks at a news conference at the AFL-CIO in Austin on Tuesday, Jan. 6, 2026. Weingarten said in April that Democrats need to do more to address conservative reforms of higher education. |
Randi Weingarten could have chosen anywhere to launch the American Federation of Teachers’ plan to elevate higher education issues in the midterm elections. She chose the University of Texas.
Weingarten, the president of the national teachers' union, last week spoke before a crowd of about 100 people gathered to oppose threats to academic freedom and protect ethnic studies programs at higher education institutions.
At UT, President Jim Davis has promised to address conservative concerns that the university has let indoctrination replace inquiry by recommitting his institution to “balance” and civic education. The changes during Davis' first year in office — including the consolidation of gender and ethnic studies and leadership shakeups — have made some faculty fearful that UT is changing in response to political pressure, not input from students, staff or the public.
At a time when Republicans are successfully reforming higher education, Democrats, Weingarten said, are not doing enough to stop them or to advocate for universities.
“We know where the Republicans stand,” Weingarten said. “We see this stripping out of people’s right to learn, right to teach, and we’re seeing the undermining of pluralism. And so part of my question — and I say this as a lifelong Democrat — is where are the Democrats? Where is the fight?”
Ahead of midterm elections, changes to higher education should be a central issue for Democrats, Weingarten said. But as conservatives are shaping Texas universities in their image, Democrats, experts say, can’t keep up — and may not benefit strategically from trying.
Michael Harris, dean of Southern Methodist University’s Simmons School of Education and Human Development and an expert in university behavior, said Republicans in Texas “without question,” have controlled the narrative around higher education for decades.
But how Texas conservative leaders have reshaped the state’s colleges and universities is unlikely to be a big factor in the midterm elections for Democrats given the success Republicans have already had and the other pressing national issues dominating the news, he said.
Kendall Scudder, chairman of the Texas Democratic Party, said that the party considers education access a “kitchen table issue” and is concerned about how political interference will impact educator retention. But Texas Democrats are limited in what they can message on as other issues like affordability or health care intensify, he said.
The party isn’t intentionally sidestepping higher education, but it is prioritizing other pressing concerns families face, he said.
“I understand this frustration from these organizations with us, I get it, but the challenge that Democrats are facing is that we’re drinking through a fire hose,” Scudder said. “Of course, these issues are important to us. I mean, we are the ones who created these institutions and invested in them in the first place, and that could be part of why Republicans are trying to tear them down.”
‘Now we can finally start’
As Democrats fight other battles, Republicans will want to center education in the midterms because their messaging works, said Cal Jillson, a politics professor at SMU.
“They’re running against universities as hotbeds of socialism,” Jillson said. “And that intimidates and frightens lots of parents.”
Republicans are also in a position of power to drive the debate around higher education in Texas, Harris said.
Since 2023, Texas Republican lawmakers — who hold a majority in the Texas Senate and House and every statewide seat — have banned diversity, equity and inclusion programs at universities, weakened tenure, curbed free speech and gutted faculty’s role in governing their schools.
This year, conservatives have secured non-legislative wins too, pressuring universities to fire professors and eliminate classes and departments targeted for being too liberal. Since the beginning of 2025, three former conservative lawmakers were named chancellors of state university systems, putting them in a position to further change how their universities operate.
Texas Tech University Chancellor Brandon Creighton is one of those newly
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Sen. Brandon Creighton looks over paperwork with his staff at a Senate Committee on Education hearing. Creighton now leads the Texas Tech University System as chancellor. He is one of several Republicans appointed to higher education leadership positions in 2026. |
Glenn Hegar, the newly appointed chancellor of the Texas A&M University System is now overseeing a vast overhaul of how LGBTQ, gender and race topics are taught at all his system campuses.
Before 2027, when the Texas Legislature next meets for a regular session, Republicans are planning how to be more proactive around higher education policy.
“We’ve been getting rid of stuff in higher ed, and now finally we can actually start to pass things instead of clearing the way,” said Kate Bierly, higher education policy director for TPPF.
In an interview, Bierly said the think tank is planning future changes, including drafting legislation that would center Western civilization in core curriculum, curb foreign influence and target grade inflation.
‘An assault on public education’
Higher education is certainly not above reproach, according to the Pew Research Center, which found 70% of Americans believe higher education is heading in the wrong direction. Universities are to blame for the public’s lack of trust, a report from a specially appointed Yale University committee concluded this week.
The committee, charged with investigating public distrust in higher education, found that grade inflation, varied intellectual experience, political correctness, affordability challenges and investments into areas outside of a university’s core academic purpose detract from universities’ ability to build public trust and grow and produce knowledge.
“Both sides of the political aisle should be alarmed and even appalled at the lack of quality civic education that kids are getting at universities,” Bierly said in an interview before the report was released. She added that her organization’s suggested policies could gain bipartisan support.
But Weingarten said the Republican-controlled discourse discredits the good higher education already does and distracts from pressing issues like affordability and equal college access.
AFT’s policy blueprint for the midterms centers around broad issues with wide appeal, including regulating artificial intelligence and enhancing career education and innovation. The teachers’ union higher education platform also outwardly opposes the federal government’s “unprecedented campaign to control higher education” through research and program cuts that threaten the institutions, she said.
Weingarten said the policies are something either party could adopt to get higher education back on track. But Democrats aren’t engaging, she said, and in doing so, they’re leaving higher education behind.
Centering higher education’s value and adopting AFT’s platform before the midterms would be an unnecessary political risk for Democrats with little potential reward, Jillson, the political scientist, said.
Because of the Republican majority, “it is very difficult for Democrats in Texas to shape issue definition, let alone policy,” he said. With affordability issues and the declining trust in President Donald Trump’s leadership, Democrats, he said, “should play the hand that they hold right now.” They should focus on attacking Republican policies instead of trying to define new ones, Jillson said.
“Much of the public believes that there are issues and problems that need to be addressed and resolved. So you can’t just be a proponent of higher education as it currently exists without some danger,” said Jillson. “Certainly they don’t want to make it a midterm issue.”
That wasn’t always the case. Two years ago, Democrats often stood with students in opposition to Republican policies on college campuses. U.S. Rep. Greg Casar, D-Austin, visited UT with other Democrats the day after dozens of people were arrested at a pro-Palestinian protest. Texas Democrats also drafted statements and made public remarks opposing UT’s decision to fire staff after it adopted Senate Bill 17, a law banning diversity, equity and inclusion support for students.
At the AFT press conference last week, Casar, who is up for reelection, decried Texas’ “extremist politicians trying to control what gets taught in our classroom,” but left before questions. Colin Diersing, a spokesperson for Casar, declined to respond to criticism from AFT on Democrats’ lack of action or answer if Casar has reached out to Texas university leaders directly.
Still, some Texas Democrats are paying closer attention and weighing in on higher education changes in their own way. Last December, the Texas House Democratic Caucus held a virtual “People’s Caucus” on free speech in December to counter an official interim hearing focused on civil discourse after Charlie Kirk’s murder.
In November, Rep. Donna Howard, D-Austin, who is the vice chair of the House Higher Education Committee, testified against the UT System Board of Regents’ policy limiting how professors can discuss controversial topics. The lawmaker said she feared the policy would be too vague and could chill classroom debate. The board thanked her, but passed the policy regardless.
At the same press conference Casar spoke at, Howard said she has met privately with UT President Davis to share her concerns on academic freedom and pressure from conservatives and the federal government. She said she knows leaders may be “hesitant” to meet with a Democrat in this political climate.
“There is probably less communication going on than there should be and that I would like to see,” Howard said about the relationship between Democrats and university leaders. “The leadership of the institutions have been put in a very difficult position.”
UT did not respond to requests for comment.
On the windy march to the Texas Capitol where Weingarten launched AFT’s higher education policy platform, students, professors and community members chanted: “Save UT.”
Professors spoke of censoring themselves out of fear of retaliation if they said the wrong thing. Students spoke of their desire to be heard in university decisions impacting the classes and programs available to them.
“If you are fighting against the assaults on higher education and trying to make the case about how important it is to the next generation of students,” Weingarten said. “Why not go right to the place where the fight is?”
April 22, 2026
Lily Kepner
HIGHER EDUCATION REPORTER
Lily Kepner started at the American-Statesman in October 2023. She has appeared on BBC, NPR and Texas Standard to talk about her coverage, which has spanned the impact of state laws and politics on the University of Texas, pro-Palestinian protests, free speech, the anti-DEI ban, LGBTQ student belonging and more. Kepner graduated with honors from Boston University's College of Communication in 2023, where she received the college's highest awards for writing and journalism leadership and led the award-winning student newspaper as Editor-in-Chief. In her time with the American-Statesman, she contributed to reporting that won an Edward R Murrow Award for breaking news, won the School Bell Award for Outstanding Feature from Texas State Teachers Association, and Critics Choice for Best of Austin in the Austin Chronicle. Previously, she has been published in USA Today, The Boston Globe, The National Catholic Reporter and GBH. Kepner is passionate about accountability and service journalism and encourages anyone to reach out to her to tell their story or share a tip.
