The Governance of Knowledge vs. the Return on Knowing: Project 2025 and the Remaking of Texas Higher Education, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

The Governance of Knowledge vs. the Return on Knowing: Project 2025 and the Remaking of Texas Higher Education

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

August 30, 2026

In 2024, the Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) published Five Threats to Public Education in Our States and Communities: An Analysis of Project 2025, warning that Project 2025 threatened federal education funding, public schooling, civil-rights enforcement, protections against discriminatory discipline, and educational access for immigrant students (Intercultural Development Research Association [IDRA], 2024). Read two years later, the report appears remarkably prescient. Yet what has transpired in 2025–26 suggests something even larger than the dismantling IDRA anticipated.

What is taking shape is a governance of knowledge.

By this I mean an increasingly coordinated effort to determine not merely how universities are funded or administered, but who possesses authority over knowledge itself: what may be taught, which fields deserve institutional protection, which histories are legitimate, which forms of inequality government is willing to recognize, which programs survive, and who gets to participate in those decisions.

This is why Project 2025 should not be understood simply as an agenda for “smaller government.” Government has not simply retreated from education. In important respects, political authority has been redirected and concentrated.

At the federal level, President Trump's March 2025 executive order directed the secretary of education, to the extent permitted by law, to facilitate the closure of the U.S. Department of Education and return authority to states and localities. Days earlier, the department had announced a reduction in force affecting nearly half of its workforce (White House, 2025; U.S. Department of Education, 2025). By July 2026, the department had also rescinded disparate-impact provisions from its Title VI regulations, narrowing an important means through which structurally unequal outcomes can be recognized as civil-rights problems (U.S. Department of Education, 2026).

Source: Texas Border Business

Yet simultaneously, government has become more—not less—assertive in defining acceptable educational practice, DEI, accreditation, curriculum, and institutional priorities. Project 2025's significance therefore lies not simply in deregulation, but in re-regulation around a different ideological conception of education (Burke, 2023).

Texas provides perhaps the clearest example.

Senate Bill 37, enacted in 2025, fundamentally redefined shared governance at Texas public universities. Governing boards must periodically review general education curricula and may reserve authority to overturn institutional curricular decisions. Faculty senates are explicitly declared “advisory only,” while the law defines shared governance as a structure in which governing boards exercise ultimate authority and faculty participation remains consultative (Texas Legislature, 2025).

This is not a semantic change. It relocates authority.

Shared governance has never meant that faculty alone run universities. Its premise is that universities are knowledge-producing institutions and that academic expertise therefore carries distinctive authority in matters of curriculum, scholarship, academic standards, and faculty status. SB 37 turns that relationship on its head. Expertise advises; politically appointed governing authorities decide.

The consequences are already visible. PEN America has documented widespread review of syllabi and courses across Texas public institutions, accompanied by course cancellations, curricular alterations, and faculty uncertainty about discussions of race, gender, and other politically contested subjects (Carter, 2026). The American Association of University Professors consequently launched a statewide inquiry in June 2026 into what it describes as the dismantling of shared faculty governance and threats to academic freedom across Texas public universities (American Association of University Professors [AAUP], 2026).

At the University of Texas System, the May 2026 revision of Regents' Rule 31003 further consolidated presidential authority over the elimination of occupied academic positions and academic programs. Faculty retain opportunities for input, but the president determines whether programs and positions should be eliminated, subject ultimately to System approval (University of Texas System Board of Regents, 2026).

At UT-Austin, meanwhile, African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latino Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies, and American Studies were consolidated into the new Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, affecting programs in which more than 800 students were pursuing degrees or credentials when the restructuring was announced (Dey, 2026). 

Each development can be defended individually as governance, efficiency, accountability, curricular coherence, or institutional restructuring. What matters, however, is the cumulative pattern. As Kamola (2024) demonstrates in Manufacturing Backlash, attacks on DEI, tenure, accreditation, curriculum, and shared governance have not emerged independently. They have been promoted through networks of think tanks and political organizations that have turned dissatisfaction with higher education into a sustained legislative campaign against university autonomy and academic freedom.

The goal of manufactured backlash is therefore larger than winning an argument about DEI or a particular course. Its political power lies in changing the institutional conditions under which knowledge itself is produced, legitimized, circulated, and preserved.

And here lies the extraordinary irony of our historical moment.

As I wrote earlier this year in “Exponential Knowledge, Narrowing Worlds,” Derek J. de Solla Price's classic Little Science, Big Science demonstrated that modern scientific knowledge expands exponentially rather than linearly (Price, 1963; Valenzuela, 2026a). Subsequent bibliometric research has confirmed the extraordinary growth of scientific publication over time (Bornmann & Mutz, 2015).

Humanity is therefore living through an unprecedented expansion of knowledge.

But more knowledge does not automatically produce a more inclusive knowledge order.

As I argued in that essay, the growth curve identified by Price remains compelling, but expansion may simultaneously intensify “asymmetries of recognition, visibility, and institutional power” (Valenzuela, 2026a). An exponentially expanding knowledge system can still privilege some languages, institutions, histories, disciplines, and populations while marginalizing others.

Texas reveals a domestic political version of precisely this paradox.

At the very historical moment when knowledge is multiplying at unprecedented speed, government is becoming increasingly involved in determining which knowledge counts.

We are simultaneously experiencing an expansion of knowing and a narrowing of epistemic authority.

This development stands diametrically opposed to what I have called the Return on Knowing, or ROK (Valenzuela, 2026b).

ROK asks us to move beyond the increasingly dominant language of return on investment, or ROI, in which universities and disciplines are evaluated principally according to earnings, workforce demand, enrollment, efficiency, and immediate economic productivity. It instead asks a deeper question: What becomes possible because people know more—and what does ignorance cost us? (Valenzuela, 2026b).

The distinction is crucial.

A Return on Knowing recognizes historical, cultural, scientific, linguistic, and civic knowledge as public infrastructure. Knowing more about the peoples with whom we live, the institutions that govern us, histories that produced the present, and perspectives unlike our own strengthens judgment, professional competence, democratic literacy, institutional trust, and society's capacity to solve problems.

A governance of knowledge moves in the opposite direction.

ROK asks how we can enlarge society's capacity to know.

The governance of knowledge asks which knowledge authorities will permit institutions to sustain.

ROK treats intellectual plurality as an asset.

The governance of knowledge treats certain forms of plurality as problems requiring oversight.

ROK disperses epistemic capacity.

The governance of knowledge concentrates epistemic authority.

That distinction helps explain why shared governance matters so profoundly. The erosion of faculty authority is not simply an employment issue for professors. It alters the architecture through which societies decide what knowledge will exist.

The chilling effect follows naturally. Faculty need not be formally censored if they begin anticipating what legislators, regents, presidents, donors, or administrators might regard as objectionable. Institutions need not formally abolish fields if those fields can be consolidated, audited, deprived of autonomy, or required repeatedly to justify themselves according to politically defined measures of relevance. The most effective governance of knowledge may ultimately be the system in which universities learn to regulate themselves.

The K–12 implications identified by IDRA remain important as well. Texas enacted its private-school voucher program in 2025, moving public dollars into private educational settings, while federal retrenchment in civil-rights enforcement and the removal of disparate-impact protections potentially weaken safeguards for students experiencing systemic inequities (IDRA, 2024; Office of the Texas Governor, 2025). These developments belong to the same larger struggle over whether education is understood as a democratic public institution carrying obligations to everyone or increasingly as a collection of individual choices governed by markets and political authority.

But higher education adds another dimension because universities are among society's central institutions for producing new knowledge.

This is what makes the current moment so consequential.

The central question before Texas is no longer simply whether DEI programs should exist, whether one course is sufficiently “balanced,” whether a faculty senate should have sixty members, or whether a particular academic department should remain administratively independent.

The question is who gets to govern knowledge.

Who decides what Texans need to know? Who determines which forms of knowledge merit investment? Who decides what constitutes a legitimate discipline? Who determines whether a politically controversial subject is nevertheless academically indispensable? And what institutional protections remain when knowledge produced through scholarly inquiry conflicts with political power? Yes, lots of questions, but important ones.

Price showed us a world in which knowledge expands exponentially.

Our political challenge is to ensure that the institutions responsible for that knowledge do not simultaneously become narrower.

Because a society can possess more information than any civilization in history and still become less capable of knowing itself.

That is the danger of manufactured backlash.

And it is precisely why a Return on Knowing offers a profoundly different vision for the public university: not an institution disciplined into producing only politically approved or immediately monetizable knowledge, but one capable of expanding what society can understand, remember, imagine, and become.

References

American Association of University Professors. (2026, June 24). AAUP launches inquiry into academic freedom in Texas. AAUP inquiry

Bornmann, L., & Mutz, R. (2015). Growth rates of modern science: A bibliometric analysis based on the number of publications and cited references. Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology, 66(11), 2215–2222. https://doi.org/10.1002/asi.23329

Burke, L. M. (2023). Department of Education. In P. Dans & S. Groves (Eds.), Mandate for leadership: The conservative promise (pp. 319–362). The Heritage Foundation.

Carter, C. (2026, May 7). Texas universities are taking censorship into their own hands. PEN America. 

Dey, S. (2026, February 12). UT-Austin to consolidate race, ethnic and gender study programs. The Texas Tribune. 

Intercultural Development Research Association. (2024). Five threats to public education in our states and communities: An analysis of Project 2025. https://www.idra.org/resource-center/five-threats-to-public-education-in-our-states-and-communities-an-analysis-of-project-2025/

Kamola, I. (2024). Manufacturing backlash: Right-wing think tanks and legislative attacks on higher education, 2021–2023. American Association of University Professors. https://www.aaup.org/sites/default/files/Manufacturing_Backlash_final_0.pdf

Office of the Texas Governor. (2025, May 3). Governor Abbott signs landmark school choice legislation into law. Governor's announcement

Price, D. J. de S. (1963). Little science, big science. Columbia University Press.

Texas Legislature. (2025). S.B. 37, 89th Legislature, Regular Session. Enrolled Senate Bill 37

U.S. Department of Education. (2025, March 11). U.S. Department of Education initiates reduction in force. Department of Education release

U.S. Department of Education. (2026, July 23). U.S. Department of Education removes disparate-impact from Title VI regulations. Department of Education release

University of Texas System Board of Regents. (2026). Rule 31003: Elimination of faculty positions or academic programs. Regents' Rule 31003

Valenzuela, A. (2026a, April 28). Exponential knowledge, narrowing worlds: Justice in an unequal global order. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/04/exponential-knowledge-narrowing-worlds.html

Valenzuela, A. (2026b, July 14). The return on knowing: Why Mexican American and Latino Studies is an economic investment in our shared future. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas. https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2026/07/the-return-on-knowing-why-mexican.html

White House. (2025, March 20). Improving education outcomes by empowering parents, states, and communities. Executive order

What You Need to Know about the US Department of Education as Linda McMahon Goes Before Congress

Trump is aiming to shut down the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE)—a long-standing conservative goal—but everyone should know that doing so would require congressional approval (also read "Trump wants to shut education department heres why what that means") Sometime soon, Trump is expected to sign an executive order directing the future secretary of education to carry this out with the idea of transferring education responsibilities to the 50 states, with the presumptive nominee, Linda McMahon, developing a plan for closing the USDOE

The Chronicle of Higher Education article below raises a lot of important questions should this dismantling occur. Where would its essential functions like student financial aid be transferred—to the Treasury or Justice department? How is Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) involved in overseeing budget cuts? Why are universities concerned about funding cuts, and what legal challenges have arisen regarding unauthorized access to student data?

How are House Democrats and college leaders opposing the move, especially as related to research funding and institutional stability? What federal agency or mechanism would Trump's administration use to enforce education-related policies such as bans on DEI programs and transgender athletes in women's sports?

It's incredible to learn that 20 House Democrats were recently locked out of the USDOE building after demanding a meeting with the acting secretary to protest Trump's closure plans.

-Angela Valenzuela

What You Need to Know as Linda McMahon Goes Before Congress

By Alissa Gary February 12, 2025

Linda McMahonTom Williams, AP

Linda McMahon, President Trump’s pick to lead the Education Department, will testify before the U.S. Senate’s education committee on Thursday.

If she’s confirmed, Trump has said her first task would be to “put herself out of a job.”

Trump has promised to shut down the department in favor of reducing federal spending and putting education in the hands of the states — a sentiment embraced by conservatives since the department’s founding 45 years ago.

A president can’t unilaterally eliminate the department without congressional approval.

But the Trump administration has already tried to shutter an agency — directing mass budget and staffing cuts at the United States Agency for International Development — and pause billions in federal funding, including for higher-ed research. Courts have ordered the administration to unfreeze funding; news reports indicate that some parts of the government, including the National Institutes of Health, have not fully complied.

What the Department Does

In higher education, the Education Department distributes grants for minority-serving institutions and student success, manages the federal work-study program, argues civil-rights cases, and awards more than $120 billion a year in federal student aid.

It’s unclear what exactly Trump plans to do with essential functions, such as financial aid, if he closes the department. Some Trump allies have floated moving financial matters, like grants and loans, to the Treasury Department. Civil-rights cases could fall under the Department of Justice, said Kenneth L. Marcus, a lawyer who served as an assistant education secretary for civil rights during the first Trump administration.

Marcus believes some shifts could be beneficial: Integrating education with other departments could result in more staffers with certain skill sets — like accountants and lawyers — handling non-policy matters like finances and investigations, as opposed to former educators and school administrators.

“That could facilitate a smoother function and greater efficiency and possibly a shift from administrative approaches,” Marcus said.

Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist and trustee at New College of Florida, a small public institution that’s seen its curriculum and culture reshaped by Republicans, laid out his own vision for the shutdown in an article on Tuesday.

If the Education Department closes, Rufo wrote, student financial assistance should “spin off” into a different, independent financial entity that would evaluate costs and reduce the total amount of loans. (Federal Student Aid is an office of the Education Department but already operates independently, thanks to a decision made nearly three decades ago by Republican lawmakers.)

Even if the department remains operational, Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, spearheaded by the tech mogul Elon Musk, could severely reduce its size and capabilities. DOGE posted Monday on X that it had ended 89 contracts with the Education Department worth $881 million. Most of those cuts fell within the Institute of Education Sciences.

Trump’s attempt to dismantle the department is another example of “unprecedented governmental overreach and intrusion” into higher education, said Lynn Pasquerella, president of the American Association of Colleges and Universities, or AAC&U.

Even if the department’s responsibilities and funds are transferred elsewhere rather than cut, “it’s not clear that there’s capacity to handle these enormous tasks,” she said.

Other Closure Attempts

Trump is far from the first Republican politician to try to eliminate the Education Department. In 1980, Ronald Reagan called the agency a “bureaucratic boondoggle” during his campaign against then-President Jimmy Carter, who had founded the department the previous year. Reagan later said he’d seek to close it as president.

In 1996, conservatives were united behind shuttering the department, but the idea was blocked by then-President Bill Clinton, a Democrat. More recently, in 2023, a Republican representative from Alabama introduced a bill that aimed to “abolish” the Education Department and transfer responsibility of Pell Grants and federal loans to the Treasury Department. That bill died in committee.

U.S. Rep. Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, introduced a bill this year that states simply: “The Department of Education shall terminate on December 31, 2026.” The bill hasn’t advanced further.

Trump in his first term proposed cutting $9.2 billion, or about 13 percent, of total federal funding to K-12 and higher education, but his cuts were not adopted by Congress. His administration also came up with a plan to merge the Education and Labor Departments, but that didn’t go anywhere, either.

This time around, Trump seems more intent on eliminating the department and cutting federal spending, said Patrick McGuinn, an associate professor of political science at Drew University who studies federal education policy.

“The pace and scope of change that we’ve seen in just the first few weeks of Trump’s administration indicates that he’s quite serious about doing some of these things,” McGuinn said.

Closing the department could complicate Trump’s education agenda, McGuinn added. In his first week in office, Trump issued executive orders that aimed to end diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts across the public and private sectors. Last week, he issued another order banning transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports.

To ensure those rules are enforced, Trump needs a government agency, McGuinn said.

“Same department,” McGuinn said, “but used for a different purpose.”
Pushback and Privacy

On Friday, about 20 House Democrats were barred from entering the Education Department’s building after gathering to demand an impromptu meeting with the acting secretary, Denise L. Carter, hoping to protest Trump’s plan for closure.

“A year ago, I’d be able to walk into this building and not be locked out,” said Rep. Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, in a video posted to his X account. “This is what they’re doing. Elon is allowed in. But not you, not your elected representative, not parents, not students.”

Musk, who owns the social-media platform, responded to Frost by saying the Education Department “doesn’t exist.”

Musk came under fire last week when some of DOGE’s employees received access to Education Department databases containing confidential student data, including Social Security numbers, personal information needed to receive financial aid, and even family members’ immigration status.

That worried the University of California Student Association, a group representing the UC system’s 295,000 students. The association filed a lawsuit on Friday against Carter and the department to block the DOGE employees’ “unlawful ongoing, systematic, and continuous” access to student information.

Amid DOGE’s targeting, analytics data show a spike in downloads for the complaint form used to allege violations of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.




After a judge intervened, the Education Department agreed to suspend DOGE’s permissions until at least February 17. The Federal Student Aid office published a statement asserting that its staff “have not engaged in any activities that would expose data through unauthorized or unlawful means.”

On Thursday, McMahon could also face questions about Trump’s orders banning diversity, equity, and inclusion programs and threatening cuts to grant funding; those moves have prompted lawsuits.

In an email to the campus community last weekend, Jeffrey P. Gold, president of the University of Nebraska system, provided guidance on grant cuts and implored faculty, staff, and students to continue conducting research. “As we work through this time of change, please continue to do what you do so well,” Gold wrote.

Pasquerella, the AAC&U president, advised colleges to keep an eye on executive actions but to focus time and energy on their institutional missions.

“It creates such disruption, chaos, and uncertainty,” Pasquerella said, “that people are spending a good deal of time focusing on putting out fires and how they can respond to the latest executive order, and not being able to focus on the day-to-day work.”


Dan Bauman, a Chronicle senior reporter, contributed reporting.
Read other items in this What Will Trump's Presidency Mean for Higher Ed? package.
We welcome your thoughts and questions about this article. Please email the editors or submit a letter for publication.

Raise the Bar: Pathways to Multilingualism / ELEVAR LAS EXPECTATIVAS: Crear vías para el compromiso global from the U.S. Department of Education

Friends:

Check out this U.S. Department of Education piece titled, "Raise the Bar: Pathways to Multilingualism." Multilingualism should be the norm everywhere.

Favor de leer este artículo del Departamento de Educación de EE.UU. titulado, "ELEVAR LAS EXPECTATIVAS: Crear vías para el compromiso global." El multilingüismo debería ser la norma en todas partes. 

-Angela Valenzuela / -Ángela Valenzuela

Raise the Bar: Pathways to Multilingualism

Goal: Provide every student with a pathway to multilingualism.

The Problem

The number of people in the United States who speak a language other than English at home has nearly tripled over the last three decades, our nation is continuing to grow more diverse, and our economy is becoming ever more globally connected. But only 20 percent of Americans can converse in two or more languages. Additionally, English learners are one of the fastest-growing student populations in our nation’s public elementary and secondary schools; yet, far too often, the opportunities for English learners in school are limited.

We must do all we can to improve the learning environments in which English learners are learning English and increase access to high-quality language programs so that they, along with all students, have the opportunity to become multilingual.

Our Strategies

To be sure, the over 5.1 million English learners in our nation’s classrooms must be seen as assets—young people who come to school with wonderful languages and cultures to be shared and valued—and multilingualism should be viewed as the superpower that it truly is.

The Department is committed to working with leaders at the state and local levels to invest in, promote, and support evidence-based language practices and programs. Strategic action in the areas below represent key levers to provide every student with a pathway to multilingualism.
Equitable Access for English Learners:

To expand equitable access to a high-quality education to all English learners, the Department is developing and implementing processes that enhance oversight for the civil rights protections of English learners, as well as related funding obligations for English learner services. We also are promoting evidence-based practices to address the barriers that English learners can encounter in education. And importantly, the Biden-Harris administration has expanded funding for Title III over the last few years, which is crucial to supporting millions of multilingual learners across the country. Through $890 million in Title III grants to states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, the Department will continue to help improve the education of English learners and immigrant youth.

The Department also is continuing its robust oversight of the obligations that schools have to serve English learners under Title VI. The law requires that schools, districts, and state educational agencies take affirmative steps to address language barriers so that English learners may participate meaningfully in their schools' educational programs.

Despite progress across the country, the current, unfortunate reality is that English learners continue to graduate from high school at a lower rate than their peers and face barriers to a high-quality education that other students do not have to overcome. It is important to pay close attention to graduation rates because this data can be indicative of larger issues around equitable access to core curriculum, advanced coursework, and extracurricular programs.

The table below shows the percent of English learners graduating in four years compared to the overall graduation rate across the United States for the 2020-2021 academic year.


High School Graduation Rates for English Language Learners SY 2020-2021
(download data as a spreadsheet)

Increase Access to Quality Bilingual Education for All:

Knowing additional languages along with English is a much-needed skill that will have an enormous impact on our nation’s future workforce as well as our ability to compete and engage globally.

The Department is working diligently to increase access to high-quality language programs. We are continuing to provide technical assistance and oversight to promote research-based bilingual educational opportunities and language instruction in early childhood education settings and beyond.

The Department also is highlighting states and districts that are implementing innovative approaches to serving multilingual students and we are elevating evidence-based programs, including seals of biliteracy at the state level.

The map below shows the total number of districts and the percentage in each state with dual language or two-way immersion programs that receive federal Title III funding.

Being bilingual and biliterate are proven to have significant academic, cognitive, economic, and socio-cultural benefits that are important to recognize and leverage as we prepare students to move into post-secondary education or careers.


Bilingual Education for English Language Learners, 2020 - 2021
(download data as a spreadsheet)



Prepare a Diversified Bilingual/Multilingual Educator Workforce:

To develop and grow a diverse educator workforce that can robustly serve our English learners, multilingual leaners, and multicultural students, the Department is providing technical assistance and funding opportunities through competitive grants, including through first-time funding for the August F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence program.

We also are disseminating information about and supporting evidence-based state and local programs that are building educator workforce capacity, including grow-your-own programs, teacher residencies, and apprenticeship programs. Additionally, the Department is supporting graduate fellowships and colleges and universities that are prioritizing English as a Second Language and bilingual educator preparation programs for bilingual and multilingual educators. If we are to prepare students for a global society and economy, we must continue to increase opportunities for future educators to participate in state, local, traditional, and non-traditional educator preparation programs that provide teacher candidates with the knowledge and skills to serve English learners and multilingual students.

Through the use of the bully pulpit, grant funding, and a new Native Language Resource Center, the Department will continue to elevate the need to support a diverse and multilingual educator workforce to serve our increasingly diverse students and ensure they have the skills to meet the needs of a global economy and society.
Sampling of ARP Funding Highlights:Through the American Rescue Plan (ARP), states and districts are engaged in important work to expand pathways to multilingual education and to support English learners. For example:Indiana's Teacher of English Language Learners (I-TELL) program is paying for tuition and fees for current educators to earn the additional licensure they need to become teachers of record for students who are learning English. This program is a partnership between the Indiana Department of Education and the University of Indianapolis' Center of Excellence in Leadership of Learning.​
The Red Hawks Rising Teacher Training Academy is a partnership among Montclair State University, the Newark Board of Education, and the American Federation of Teachers. The program prepares students of color to become teachers who reflect the diversity of the Newark community.
Collier County Public Schools in Florida has launched specific strategies to bridge the digital divide for migrant students based on feedback from migrant students and families and community partners. Schools within the district also are home to Migrant Resource Centers where students and families can go to receive targeted supports, services, and mentoring.
California's West Contra Costa Unified School District is using surveys to keep track of English learners' overall well-being and providing their families with translated communications on available services, including school counseling.​
The Illinois State Board of Education has created a $4 million grant from federal pandemic relief funds that will help to increase the number of bilingual educators in the state.​
Grants and Resources:To capture the ways in which the Department is working to provide every student with opportunities for multilingual learning, the agency released a one-pager with links to federal resources and grants.
For the first time ever, the Department awarded funding for the Augustus F. Hawkins Centers of Excellence program. Through this program, $18 million in federal funds will be put to use to support colleges and universities in prioritizing educator preparation programs that prepare multilingual teachers of color to become fully certified to teach multilingual learners, including in dual language programs.​
The Department's National Professional Development grant program is supporting 44 colleges and universities to deliver professional learning for teachers of English learners, with a focus on school readiness and early childhood development.
The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition has disseminated more than 25,000 resources to the field, including briefs, fact sheets, toolkits, podcasts, and other information to serve multilingual learners and highlight their needs.

Everybody needs to read every word of this U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights Fact Sheet: Diversity & Inclusion Activities Under Title VI two-pager. DEI is not only legal but exists because of structural racism in higher education at its root. 

As indicated by David Hinojosa, who directs the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C., this means that without diversity-focused programs and initiatives of the kind outlined in the Fact Sheet above, a lot of preferential hiring on the basis of "fit," as opposed to merit, is more likely to occur.

Regarding the alleged idea of “purg[ing] conservative thought," I've come across some interesting research by Dr. Jeffrey Sachs at Columbia University that suggests that universities may not be liberalizing communities, so much as communities liberalizing universities. 

With that as the hypothesis or premise in mind, it does seem compelling that universities are located—so many of them—in liberal towns within each state. To be sure, liberalism is a continuum unto itself. Austin, Madison, UCLA, Berkeley, Cambridge, Denver, Ann Arbor and so on, come easily to mind. 

Supposing that this hypothesis is actually true—and Sachs leans in that direction—the policy solution is perhaps rural universities—although that would re-segregate higher education. Not that this would concern some policymakers, but rather that prospective students—an increasingly black and brown demographic—would not be attracted to such institutions when there are great options and alternatives.

Expressed differently, the research suggests that they're not going to ever find all these cadres and cadres of conservative faculty that they seem to think are out there.

Policymakers need to stop churning up moral panics and fear and decide, instead, to adjust to the times that always bring new realities. As Heraclitus once said, "change is the only constant in life." 

Angela Valenzuela

Exclusive: Gov. Greg Abbott explains his fight against diversity hiring programs on college campuses

Jeremy Wallace, Austin Bureau

March 3, 2023Updated: March 3, 2023 6:13 p.m.

Even as Gov. Greg Abbott successfully pressures Texas universities to retreat from using diversity, equity and inclusion programs, he is adamant that doesn’t mean he’s against diversity on college campuses and in the government.

“Diversity is something that we support,” Abbott said in an exclusive interview with Hearst Newspapers.

THE ISSUE: As Gov. Abbott attacks diversity hiring, Biden launches all-out defense of the programs

The Republican governor said everyone is for equality and anti-discrimination policies. But he contends that diversity, equity and inclusion programs proliferating on college campuses have drifted far from advancing equal opportunity and are instead leading to hiring decisions based on the race of applicants. Further, he says they are part of a larger effort to “purge conservative thought.”

“What we’ve seen in our universities is DEI practices that are there for political purposes, advancing political agendas, blanketed with the perception that they are trying to protect diversity,” he said.

Advocates of diversity and equity programs say Abbott has it wrong. They say the goal is to increase pools of applicants for positions and address systemic barriers that have kept people from underrepresented backgrounds from advancement opportunities in the past.

In the past, many institutions thought they were hiring people based on merit when they were really hiring and promoting people based on how “they fit” with the organization, said David Hinojosa, the director of the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law in Washington, D.C. That often meant decisions reflected the biases of the people doing the hiring, he said.

“The bottom line is these diversity, equity and inclusion programs are mostly set up because of these institutional biases against people of color,” said Hinojosa, a graduate of Edgewood High School in San Antonio who has argued affirmative action cases before the U.S. Supreme Court.

Abbott said his fight over DEI is bigger than just one program. He said he’s concerned about the atmosphere of college campuses where conservative ideas are not allowed to be expressed.

“They are purging any conservatives from the faculty and allowing the faculty to be led only by liberal leftists,” he said. 

Universities move to comply

Abbott is already seeing results since his office sent stern warning letters to all public Texas colleges and universities about DEI in January.

First, Texas Tech University officially removed DEI statements from faculty hiring requirements.

Then, the University of Texas last week announced that it had paused all new DEI initiatives and launched a review of existing programs.

On Thursday, the Texas A&M University system ordered all its schools and agencies to remove requirements that job applicants provide personal statements about their commitment to DEI efforts. Some units of the A&M system had such requirements, but others did not.

Those moves all come as the Republican-dominated Legislature has threatened funding for universities that espouse DEI. 

“Unfortunately, we’re paying for these things that we know are bad,” state Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, said during a panel discussion of the matter put on Thursday by the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation in Austin. “The state of Texas shouldn’t be paying for that.”

DEI has been around for decades, but after the murder of George Floyd by a Minnesota police officer in 2020, those programs got a boost as colleges addressed demands that they foster more diverse leadership on campuses. 

“Some university trustees didn’t know what hit them,” anti-DEI advocate John D. Sailer said at the Thursday panel discussion.

Sailer said that nationally, schools are imposing DEI priorities in all facets of university life, including making it a litmus test for promotions, tenure and hiring. The result, he said, is applicants know that if they don’t subscribe fully to DEI efforts, that can be used against them.

“Universities exist for the pursuit of truth,” said Sailer, who is a fellow with the New York-based National Association of Scholars. “But DEI represents a distortion of that mission to pursue social justice and a specific political goal.”

In January, Sailer issued a report on DEI programs at UT-Austin. He said DEI has “invaded every aspect” of the school.

“These policies espouse a specific set of contentious political views, dictate a new curriculum and embed the principles of DEI into the fabric of the university,” his report said.

Less than two weeks after the report, Abbott's staff sent a letter to all Texas public colleges, including UT, the governor's alma mater, warning them about DEI and repeating Sailer's concerns.

“Rebranding this employment discrimination as 'DEI' does not make the practice any less illegal,” wrote Gardner Pate, Abbott's chief of staff.

'Enormous harm'

On the other side, Texas NAACP President Gary Bledsoe has called the effort to dismantle DEI an attempt to return to Jim Crow-era laws and set back progress that communities of color have made.

“The governor's initiative will do enormous harm and take the state backwards,” Bledsoe said at a news conference last month blasting the effort.

Bledsoe says it is absurd for Abbott to claim he supports diversity when he’s going after the very programs that are helping to diversify institutions.

“You cannot support diversity and kill DEI,” Bledsoe said.

jeremy.wallace@houstonchronicle.com

This is great news. The survivors of the Uvalde tragedy are getting federal government support. Thank you, U.S. Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona for visiting Uvalde, as well as for your leadership and caring.

-Angela Valenzuela

U.S. Department of Education Delivers $1.5 Million in Emergency Funds to Support Uvalde Schools

U.S. Department of Education sent this bulletin at 06/13/2022 10:42 AM EDT

Having trouble viewing this email? View it as a Web page. FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 13, 2022 CONTACT: Press Office, (202) 401-1576 or press@ed.gov U.S. Department of Education Delivers $1.5 Million in Emergency Funds to Support Uvalde Schools   Today, the U.S. Department of Education furthered the Biden-Harris Administration’s whole-of-government response to the tragic mass shooting at Robb Elementary School by disbursing a $1.5 million School Emergency Response to Violence (Project SERV) grant to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District (UCISD). The proactive release of grant funds reflects the extraordinary and immediate needs facing UCISD and follows Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona’s visit to the district on May 31 and June 1, 2022.  Project SERV funds are authorized under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and may be used for activities that help restore a sense of safety and security for the district’s students, teachers, staff, and families, and that address specific needs of those individuals directly affected by the shooting. Such activities include mental health services for staff and students, and overtime pay for teachers, counselors, and security staff, and may take place over the summer in the form of additional summer programming.   Secretary Cardona initiated the emergency funding through a letter to the district superintendent that outlines key assurances around the federal funding. In the days following the tragedy, Secretary Cardona and other Department staff communicated with UCISD leadership and their Texas Education Agency colleagues and pledged to support recovery efforts in the district and community with a range of technical assistance, including direct access to Department personnel and partners who have helped other communities respond to and recover from acts of school violence.    “No community should have to experience a tragedy like this alone. While in Texas, I saw the Uvalde community come together in deep and meaningful ways to support one another and all the families who lost loved ones; and it is our turn to support them,” said Secretary Cardona. “In the hours and days since that tragic day, we have committed to providing the Uvalde community with every available resource they may require from the Department. Today’s release of these emergency funds is an initial step that will be followed by technical assistance and on-the-ground supports in the months and years to come.”  The Department’s communication with UCISD acknowledges that the community’s needs and challenges in restoring the learning environment may change over time. Secretary Cardona committed that members of his team will provide direct support to the district in adjusting its Project SERV agreement to reflect these evolving needs. While funds may be used for a 12-month period, the Department stands ready to provide additional, longer-term assistance as requested.  The Department’s Readiness and Emergency Management for Schools Center builds the preparedness capacity (including prevention, protection, mitigation, response, and recovery efforts) of schools, school districts, colleges, and their community partners at the local, state, and federal levels; and serve as the primary source of information for schools, school districts, and colleges for emergencies. The National Center on Safe and Supportive Learning Environments offers information and technical assistance focused on improving school climate and conditions for learning.  For more information about the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitments to the Uvalde community, see the letter on the disbursed funds and Secretary Cardona’s statement immediately following the tragic events.   ###

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