Texas House Bill Proposes to Ban DEI in Required University Curriculum: We must OPPOSE HB 2548, HB 2311, and HB 2339

These extremists think they are so clever with their Defunding Indoctrination in Education (DIE) Act which is, of course, a play on words with the ongoing attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI.  Geez, what a lie that it "harms community" without providing evidence that this is so and without being transparent that this is an attack by white leaders on the 1964 Civil Rights Act that allowed Black and Brown communities access to public accommodations, education, employment opportunities, and voting rights by prohibiting discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. 

Now, their contrived deployment of the scientistic language of "a positive return on investments...after graduation" is white supremacy disguised as race-neutral economic rationality, while reinforcing systemic barriers to access and success for marginalized communities and obscuring the structural inequalities that shape educational and career outcomes that the 1964 CRA addressed.

By framing education solely in terms of financial returns, they ignore the historical and ongoing discrimination that limits opportunities for Black and Brown communities, perpetuating the very inequities the 1964 Civil Rights Act aimed to eliminate.

Rep. Ron Reynolds is absolutely correct that HB 2548 in his analysis of the bill:

"H.B. 2548 is nothing more than an ideological gag order designed to keep students from learning the full truth about American history and society," he said in a written statement shared by AJC.

Please learn from this piece and these links about HB 2548, HB 2339, and HB 2311—and the damage that they portend. How? These bills are not just misguided—they are weapons designed to disfigure public education, siphoning resources, eroding equity, and dismantling the foundation of opportunity for marginalized communities. We must recognize this threat for what it is: a deliberate assault on our future. And we must resist—vigorously, relentlessly, and without compromise.

-Angela Valenzuela

Texas House bill proposes to ban DEI in required university curriculum

Lily Kepner, Austin American-Statesman. March 1, 2025



Before students at the University of Texas graduate, they are required to take global cultures and cultural diversity courses. It's part of a plan set in 2006 to ensure students take "skills and experiences courses" to prepare them to enter the world and hold successful careers after graduation.

Former UT President Jay Hartzell has said the university is reviewing its graduation requirements to ensure they are still best for students and the workforce. But state Rep. Cody Harris, R-Palestine, has filed a bill to limit diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education curriculum.

House Bill 2548 — one of several proposals to legislate courses and curriculum over race, gender or sexuality at public universities — comes after similar attempts in the 2023 legislative session to pass legislation to keep faculty members from "compelling" students to adopt a belief about race, sex, society or politics died in the House.

HB 2548 specifically seeks to ban coursework that is required or otherwise "constrain(ed)" — such as by "failing during any semester to provide sufficient open seats in alternative courses" — on the following topics as they "relate to contemporary American society":

• Critical race theory, whiteness, systemic racism, institutional racism, anti-racism, microaggressions, decolonization
• Race-based reparations, privilege, diversity, equity, inclusion, stratification, marginalization
• Intersectionality, gender identity, social justice, cultural competence, decolonization
• Systemic or structural bias, implicit bias, unconscious bias, decolonization

The bill would not prevent required classes on "historical movements, ideologies, or instances of racial hatred or discrimination," including slavery and the Holocaust, but it says the courses can't "distort significant historical events" or consist of curriculum based on "theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States." If degree programs specifically state they concern one of those topics, such as LGBTQ+ or African American studies, they can continue with the requirements, but other majors, like sociology, cannot.

The Austin Justice Coalition, university professors and community members came together last week to oppose Harris' bill, saying the proposal would censor diversity courses.

Chas Moore, founder and co-executive director of the Austin Justice Coalition, a local organization that advocates to improve the lives of people of color and impoverished Texans, said the bill is "another attempt to erase, eradicate and diminish very large groups of people," invalidating the experience of marginalized residents who still face oppression.

"Our college institutions ... are the places where a lot of kids, for the first time, they get to take deep dives into history," Moore said. "But now instead of incentivizing this, we want to penalize institutions, take away academic freedom, put all types of work into the administration just in the name of this crazy attack on diversity, equity, inclusion."

Rep. Ron Reynolds, D-Missouri City, who sponsored the conference room at the Capitol for the AJC and others, said Harris' bill follows a national pattern to "suppress discussions on system injustice and maintain the status quo of inequality."

"H.B. 2548 is nothing more than an ideological gag order designed to keep students from learning the full truth about American history and society," he said in a written statement shared by AJC. "We will not let extremists erase our history or dictate what knowledge students can access."

Harris did not return multiple American-Statesman calls seeking comment.

Other proposals

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who presides over the Senate, on the first day of the legislative session had indicated his desire to ban "critical race theory" in higher education, and many GOP lawmakers have been outwardly critical of diversity-related coursework.

Moore said at the Feb. 20 news conference that the group was highlighting Harris's bill because of his seniority. Rep. Daniel Alders, a freshman republican from Tyler, introduced a similar bill on course requirements.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation, an influential conservative think tank, released draft legislation that would push civic education as required coursework and establish an "independent School of General Education" at each higher education institution that has the "sole control over most of the new required courses," also reflecting a push to center civics and Western history over more diverse requirements.

Rep. Carl Tepper, R-Lubbock, and Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, both proposed bills that would sunset programs that do not give students a positive return on investments on average after graduation, likely in response to an interim charge from Patrick seeking to prioritize "credentials of value" over "DEI."

Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, has filed legislation to further expand the state's DEI ban in higher education. HB 2311 would fully eliminate DEI-related coursework, student organizations, research and recruitment — which were exempted in Senate Bill 17, the 2023 law by Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, that prohibited DEI-related offices, programs and hiring at public universities and colleges effective Jan. 1, 2024.

Harrison also filed HB 2339, the Defunding Indoctrination in Education (DIE) Act, which would prohibit LGBTQ+ courses and programs at colleges and universities as well as any program "in diversity, equity, and inclusion, including but not limited to, promoting differential treatment of individuals on the basis of race, color, or ethnicity."
'Going to inevitably harm our communities'

Esmeralda Rubalcava Hernandez, an adjunct professor in social work at St. Edwards University and a doctorate candidate at the University of Texas at Arlington, who studies how immigration and policing intersect, said at the news conference that bills targeting higher education curriculum would prevent requiring sociology students from taking courses in diversity, giving them a limited understanding of the future people they might serve.

"To send social work, sociology, criminal justice and other students out into the profession without knowing the realities that impact every single one of us today, regardless of our racial identities, of our ancestries, we are all impacted," she said. "Not having students who know this and are out doing work in communities, is going to inevitably harm our communities. It is going to cause a great amount of danger to people who are already marginalized."

Sully Snook, at St. Edward's University senior, said they became a sociology major to "learn how the world works" and has gained valuable knowledge about society by taking diversity courses. They spoke at the conference to ensure other Texas students wouldn't lose that chance.

"I'm learning so much that lower ed doesn't teach people," Snook said in an interview after the news conference. "It's so important and impactful to be able to see the truth."

Mary Elizabeth with the Austin Justice Coalition, said Harris' bill will "stifle free exchange of ideas" and prevent societal problems from being addressed. Elizabeth, a white woman, said she was shocked to see Harris' bill would restrict required courses mentioning gender too.

"That's new for me," Elizabeth said. "While I support all marginalized groups, I want women across Texas to know they're in the spotlight as well."

Dominique Alexander, a minister who is the founder and president of social justice organization Next Generation Action Network, said Harris' bill would prevent students from learning about the racism, gender inequity and injustice in today's world and thus prevent them from solving it.

"We understand that the American history, the true American history, is a history of all," Alexander said. "This kind of censorship creates the fear of classrooms. It forced professors to second guess their words and suppress a critical conversation that is necessary to shape and inform citizens, limiting students' educational exposure."

The House Committee on Higher Education has not yet met to consider these bills. The Senate Committee on K-16 Education has not yet heard bills related to higher education curriculum.

"We cannot build a society if students are denied the tools to understand injustice," Alexander added. The next "Thurgood Marshall, Angela Davis, Barack Obama could be sitting in a Texas classroom right now. We cannot rob them of the knowledge or the courage that's needed to form and transform our society."

Eric Hepburn, a San Gabriel Unitarian Universalist fellow, introduced himself as a white Christian man who is against HB 2548 because he believes it would prevent Texans from confronting the hard truth about modern society.

"I walk here with only love in my heart," he said. "No one can be protected from the truth."

Florida Eliminates Sociology as a Core Course at Its Universities, New York Times, Jan. 24, 2024

Outlawing Sociology in Florida is outlandish. It's hard to take DeSantis and his right-wing activists seriously. On another matter of curriculum—namely, Critical Race Theory (CRT)—which most certainly isn't getting taught in Florida schools—consider one of DeSantis' appointments to Florida’s Department of Juvenile Justice named Eric Hall. This person used CRT as a framework for his dissertation research study back in 2014, earning him a Ph.D. at the University of South Florida.

His was clearly a good and appropriate use of CRT in a study on two alternative schools and how expulsion rates and other factors create a “school-to-prison pipeline," for minoritized youth. 

Research like this is helpful to policymakers who seek alternatives to expulsions when schools work closely with youth to not only lower such rates but to do so by exposing the culprit structures and processes that do this. That is what CRT does. It illuminates disparities and possible remedies that at their best, change systems that are punishing and inequitable, particularly for youth of color, as well as for all youth, as a whole.

Clearly, DeSantis cared less about this rather important detail when making his appointment. Go figure. As for Eric Hall, what a turncoat. I'm sure his decision is paying off handsomely, albeit at Black and Brown children's and taxpayers' expense.

As for denying Sociology courses to Florida college youth that college-educated DeSantis, his staff and cabinet have all surely had, how hypocritical. A more troubling interpretation is ultra-conservatives' pursuit of a world where only some, like DeSantis and his team, have and hold these perspectives that come out of CRT, sociology, and other critical perspectives while the rest are to work for those that do—as Eric Hall's case suggests as a possibility.

I am confident that most Floridians see through all this smoke and mirrors for what it is: Doing everything they can to preserve both their white privilege and their incumbencies in office in the face of a browning America—a diverse nation that makes our country strong.

-Angela Valenzuela

Reference

Dixon, M. & Atterbury, A. (2021, December 20). Top DeSantis official embraced critical race theory in dissertation, Politico.

Florida Eliminates Sociology as a Core Course at Its Universities

In December, Florida’s education commissioner wrote that “sociology has been hijacked by left-wing activists.”

The board of governors for Florida’s state university system approved “a factual

history course” as a replacement for sociology.Credit...Erich Martin for The New York Times

By Anemona Hartocollis
Published Jan. 24, 2024

Updated Jan. 26, 2024

Students can no longer take sociology to fulfill their core course requirements, Florida’s state university system ruled on Wednesday. Instead, its board of governors approved “a factual history course” as a replacement.

The decision by the 17-member board of governors came after fierce opposition from sociology professors in the university system, which includes the University of Florida and Florida State.

And it is the latest move by the administration of Gov. Ron DeSantis to challenge the education establishment, and what the governor portrayed as its liberal orthodoxy. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, had tried to leverage his education record in his failed campaign for president.

In a brief announcement on Wednesday, Chancellor Ray Rodrigues said he was proud of the board’s decision and looked forward to the history class and “the positive impact the addition of this course will have on our students and their future success.”

The replacement history class includes “America’s founding, the horrors of slavery, the resulting Civil War and the Reconstruction era.”

Florida has one of the country’s largest public university systems, with more than 430,000 students.

The move alarmed sociology professors, who believed it could lead to fewer students taking classes and majoring in the subject. The American Sociological Association said in a statement Wednesday that it was outraged by the decision, and that it was made without any “evidentiary basis.”

“The decision seems to be coming not from an informed perspective, but rather from a gross misunderstanding of sociology as an illegitimate discipline driven by ‘radical’ and ‘woke’ ideology,” the statement said. “To the contrary, sociology is the scientific study of social life, social change, and the social causes and consequences of human behavior, which are at the core of civic literacy and are essential to a broad range of careers.”

Manny Diaz, the education commissioner, wrote that sociology has been hijacked 

by the left-wing activists.Credit. Alicia Devine/Tallahassee Democrat, via 

USA Today Network


In December, Florida’s education commissioner, Manny Diaz Jr., wrote on social media that, “Sociology has been hijacked by left-wing activists and no longer serves its intended purpose as a general knowledge course for students.”

He added that under Governor DeSantis, “Florida’s higher education system will focus on preparing students for high-demand, high-wage jobs, not woke ideology.”

Some professors have supported the move.

Jukka Savolainen, a sociology professor at Wayne State University in Detroit, said in an opinion essay in The Wall Street Journal in December that the discipline was troubled and had become “brazenly political.” He called for including more contrarian points of view in the teaching of sociology.

“I have taught undergraduate sociology courses since 1996,” he wrote. “Through the decades, I have watched my discipline morph from a scientific study of social reality into academic advocacy for left-wing causes.”

In November, the board of governors approved removing Principles of Sociology from a list of courses that students can take to satisfy their general education requirement. The approval on Wednesday finalized that decision after a period of public comment.

The course covers topics like race, gender and sexual orientation, which conservatives in Florida and other states have targeted and tried to restrict.

In 2022, Mr. DeSantis signed legislation that restricted how racism and other aspects of history can be taught in schools and workplaces. The law’s sponsors called it the Stop WOKE Act. Among other things, it prohibits instruction that could make students feel responsibility for or guilt about the past actions of other members of their race.

“The governor-appointed administrative bodies overseeing Florida’s institutions of higher education have found a new target in the culture wars they are waging on the state’s campuses,” Anne Barrett, a sociology professor at Florida State University, wrote in an opinion essay published Wednesday on the website of the National Education Association.

She wrote that the removal of the course would be ”devastating for sociology in Florida,” adding, “enrollments will plummet. The opportunity to recruit majors will almost disappear. Weakened sociology departments are ripe for elimination and, ultimately, layoffs.”

This recent article in the Washington Post is a must-read. This conversation against CRT keeps us from having the more important one of expanding African American, Mexican American, Asian American, Native American and Indigenous Studies, Women's and Disability Studies to the entirety of the K-12 curriculum. 

Among so many other things, these courses illuminate struggles over symbols, difference, and narrative power and who gets to tell what history of Texas, Florida, and the United States. 

The irony of the situation is staggering. 

This is an agenda that is about narrowing curriculum and ensuring thought control ("Don't say gay") in a context that screams for more humane policies where both teachers and their students are getting the tools and resources they need to manage the meteoric rise in knowledge and information over the last several decades to the point of risking getting buried under it.

It's no wonder that so many kids and teachers in school suffer from a great deal of anxiety and depression. So many stressors...

Geez, then you, as a kid, have to split your brain and put up with a backwards, hostile, uncaring curriculum just to make it through your day?! 

How will all the children subjected to such hostility and contempt then be able to do well—that is, to "succeed" in this reduced, dumbed-down, uninspiring way? One possible consolation is that many of them already never had a just and caring curriculum and pedagogy to begin with.

That said, what's different in the current context is that unlike previous generations, our Gen Z youth are within a click of all that so-called "dangerous knowledge" that our governors seek to curb.

It's all so predictable. 

Even if some good things still happen in school, it's an education that our youth will mostly not believe in. Not that it has ever been Nirvana by any stretch of the imagination, but rather that the racial animus embedded in the policy intent is clear and will inescapably show up in the implementing of these retrogressive policies and policy agendas.

We must collectively fight and stop this nonsense. 

Gen Z, you have a major stake in the outcome of these battles.

One good way is to fight back is to advocate for Ethnic Studies. Go before your school boards and engage them in the matter. Get involved and be a voice to reason. Run for office.

Remember that it is a vision for greater peace and justice that motivates and inspires. African American Studies is precisely anchored in these same ways of knowing and being in the world. 

Everyone should at least have one chance in their lives to take an African American or other Ethnic Studies course. They provide the intellectual tools—and thusly, a quality mind—that helps students to understand the world in which they live. A sociology course would also help, but would likely not equally serve as a vehicle for healing and reconciliation, beginning with oneself. 

Within the academy, we totally need to hold onto our Ethnic Studies and Women and Gender Studies programs as these are the spaces within which difference can be discussed in deep and meaningful ways. At their best, they also double as a second home to all of our communities, on an off campus.

One day, I trust, all of our Ethnic Studies programs will simply be called "a good education."

-Angela Valenzuela

DID POLITICS SCRUB ‘SYSTEMIC’ FROM AP AFRICAN AMERICAN STUDIES PLAN?

Writing and editing the Advanced Placement course framework was a tense exercise in a polarized America

(Illustration by Katty Huertas/The Washington Post; 2022 AP African American Studies; 2023 AP African American Studies; iStock)

By Nick Anderson |Washington Post

Feb. 19 at 6:00 a.m.

A politically charged adjective popped up repeatedly in the evolving plans for a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies. It was “systemic.”

The February 2022 version declared that students should learn how African American communities combat effects of “systemic marginalization.” An April update paired “systemic” with discrimination, oppression, inequality, disempowerment and racism. A December version said it was essential to know links between Black Panther activism and “systemic inequality that disproportionately affected African Americans.”

Then the word vanished. “Systemic,” a crucial term for many scholars and civil rights advocates, appears nowhere in the official version released Feb. 1. This late deletion and others reflect the extraordinary political friction that often shadows efforts in the nation’s schools to teach about history, culture and race.

The College Board, which oversees the AP program, denies that it diluted the African American studies course in response to complaints from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) or his allies. But a senior College Board official now acknowledges the organization was mindful of how “systemic” and certain other words in the modern lexicon of race in America would receive intense scrutiny in some places.

“All of those terms were going to be challenging,” said Jason Manoharan, vice president for AP program development. He said the College Board worried some phrases and concepts had been “co-opted for a variety of purposes” and were being used as “political instruments.” So the organization took a cautious approach to the final edits even as it sought to preserve robust content on historical and cultural impacts of slavery and racial discrimination.

“We wanted this course to be adopted by 50 states, and we wanted as many students and teachers as possible to be able to experience it,” Manoharan said. His acknowledgment underscored the inherent politics behind promoting a course that deals so squarely with race in America.

Documents and interviews with several people involved in the course’s creation, including university professors in the field, show the process was both routine and fraught. While Florida, a major state, raised objections behind the scenes, there is scant evidence tying its complaints to specific changes in the course.

[More states scrutinizing AP Black studies after Florida complaints]

Course developers had long discussions on how many weeks should be devoted to origins of the African diaspora and a student research paper on an elective topic — a back-and-forth typical for academia. Those decisions squeezed time allotted to contemporary issues. But the tense political atmosphere guaranteed the winnowing of lessons on topics such as reparations and movements for Black lives would be second-guessed even if experts deemed it necessary for pacing of the course.