Neither Erase Nor Enshrine: Toward a Collective Memory Beyond César Chávez, by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D., April 9, 2026

Neither Erase Nor Enshrine: Toward a Collective Memory Beyond César Chávez

by 

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
April 9, 2026

I offer this reflection with care—and with urgency. I have spent a great deal of time reflecting on this question—not in the abstract, but as a consequence of direct involvement. 

I served on the committee that met regularly to plan and ultimately establish the César Chávez statue that now stands prominently on the West Mall at the University of Texas at Austin. That process was deeply intentional: it was about recognition, visibility, and affirming a history too often pushed to the margins of public memory.

Today, that work is being revisited more broadly. Across cities and campuses, communities—especially within Mexican American and farmworker communities—are debating whether to remove street names, rename schools, and alter murals tied to César Chávez. 

While, to my knowledge, there is no current effort at the University of Texas at Austin to remove the Chávez statue, it is important to anticipate such debates and invite reflection on its presence and meaning within our own campus landscape.

César Chavez statue—UT-Austin

The terms of the debate are stark: preserve or erase, honor or condemn.

But this binary is not only intellectually insufficient—it is politically dangerous.

It flattens complexity at precisely the moment when complexity is most needed. And it unfolds within a broader context in which the machinery of erasure is already accelerating—across public education, libraries, and curriculum. In such a moment, we must be especially vigilant about what—and whose—histories are made to disappear.

The question before us is not simply what to do with monuments to César Chávez. The deeper question is who controls memory—and to what end. Because if we are not careful, the debate over Chávez will not remain about Chávez. 

It will become yet another opening through which the broader history of the Chicana and Chicano movement—and the farmworker struggle in particular—can be quietly, systematically erased.

We are living in the midst of an aggressive political project—aligned with Christian nationalist and right-wing agendas—that seeks to narrow what can be taught, remembered, and valued. From book bans to curricular restrictions to the policing of “controversial topics,” we are witnessing an effort not just to contest history, but to discipline it.

In this context, calls to simply “remove” Chávez risk being folded into a broader logic of disappearance—one that does not stop at individuals, but extends to movements, communities, and entire histories and epistemologies.

And yet, let us be equally clear: uncritical celebration is untenable.

To enshrine Chávez as beyond critique is to betray the very movement he helped lead. It replaces history with mythology. It silences those within the struggle—particularly women and rank-and-file workers—whose experiences complicate the narrative. It insulates power from accountability under the guise of reverence.

If we are serious about justice, then we must be equally serious about truth.

History has never required perfection to warrant remembrance. Figures such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson—both enslavers—remain central to the national narrative, not because they were without contradiction, but because their historical significance is institutionally secured. Their legacies have not been erased; rather, they have been increasingly contextualized.

But Chávez’s legacy does not occupy the same protected terrain.

Unlike Washington or Jefferson, the history of the farmworker movement remains fragile—its presence in curriculum, public memory, and institutional recognition still contested. To collapse that movement into Chávez—and then to dismantle Chávez without preserving the movement—is to risk losing the very history that made possible labor rights, dignity, and collective struggle for generations of Mexican American and immigrant workers.

The farmworker movement was never the work of one man.

It was built through the labor and leadership of countless individuals—many of them women, undocumented workers, and community organizers whose names remain far less known, but whose contributions were indispensable. To engage Chávez critically should not narrow our historical lens; it should widen it.

And this is where the current debate must evolve. The choice is not between erasure and enshrinement. It is between a politics of disappearance and a politics of transformation.

In this moment, I do not support removing the Chávez statue.

Not because it is beyond critique—but because the conditions into which it would be removed are already structured by erasure. To take it down now, without a clear and collectively grounded plan for what replaces it, risks creating a vacuum into which the broader history of the farmworker movement may also vanish.

But neither should the statue remain as it is—unquestioned, uncontextualized, and singular.

Instead, we should treat this as a transitional moment.

We should keep the statue in place until we are prepared to replace it with a representation that more fully and accurately reflects the collective nature of the farmworker movement itself. 

There are exquisite representations to choose from. 

That future representation might take the form of a broader memorial—one that honors the movement as a whole, rather than centering a single figure. It could include the iconic imagery of the United Farm Workers, such as the Aztec eagle, a symbol of collective struggle, resilience, and self-determination.

Such a shift would not erase Chávez. It would situate him—properly—within a larger history.

It would move us away from hero worship and toward collective memory. Away from individualization and toward movement-building. Away from static commemoration and toward living history.

This is the work of recontextualization—not erasure.

It requires community engagement, especially with farmworker communities themselves. It requires curricular and institutional commitments to Ethnic Studies and labor history—fields that are themselves under threat. And it requires political clarity about the moment we are in.

This decision does not occur on neutral ground.

In another time, removal might function as accountability. But in this moment—when the state is already engaged in a broader project of historical narrowing—we must ask: What will be lost? And who benefits from that loss?

Rejecting erasure is not the same as defending harm. It is a refusal to allow critique to be weaponized against communities whose histories are already precarious.

The task before us is harder than choosing sides.

It requires us to hold contradiction—to recognize that Chávez can be both consequential and flawed, that movements are always larger than their most visible leaders, and that public memory is not fixed, but contested terrain.

But this is precisely the work of education.

If we do this right, the result is not silence, nor mythology, but a richer and more democratic public memory—one that tells the truth, honors collective struggle, and resists the forces that would prefer we forget.

Because the greatest danger is not that we will remember Chávez imperfectly.

It is that we will stop remembering the movement at all.

References

Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association. (n.d.). George Washington and slavery. https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digitalhistory/digital-encyclopedia/article/george-washington-and-slavery

Thomas Jefferson Foundation. (n.d.). Slavery at Monticello. https://www.monticello.org/slavery/introduction

Invited Testimony of Dr. Angela Valenzuela Texas House Democratic Caucus Special Hearing on Free Speech, December 9, 2025

Friends,

Yesterday I had the honor of testifying before the Texas House Democratic Caucus Special Hearing on Free Speech. Because of time constraints, I delivered a much shorter version of my remarks. What follows is the full testimony I had prepared—one that more completely traces the constitutional, historical, and political stakes of this moment.

I should add that Attorney Richard Martinez, who, among others, litigated the Gonzalez v. Douglas case mentioned below, reviewed my testimony and gave it a thumbs up. 😊

I’m grateful to share it with you here, and I invite you to listen to the entire hearing at this link. The testimonies were outstanding.

-Angela Valenzuela

Invited Testimony of Dr. Angela Valenzuela

Texas House Democratic Caucus Special Hearing on Free Speech
Testimony by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
December 9, 2025

Chair, Vice Chair, and Members of the Committee:

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. My name is Angela Valenzuela, Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the University of Texas at Austin and Director of the Texas Center for Education Policy and a member of the National Academy of Education. 

I speak today as an educator, a scholar of public schooling and higher education, and as someone who has spent decades studying educational barriers facing minoritized youth.

In my remarks, I want to focus specifically on the prohibitions on the teaching of race and gender found in Senate Bill 37—and also embedded, in different form, in the Trump Administration’s Compact for Higher Education. 

I will first frame the moment we are living through, and then turn to the precedent-setting Gonzalez v. Douglas case in Arizona, which challenged the dismantling of the Mexican American Studies program in the Tucson Unified School District. That case, I would argue, has direct bearing on the constitutionality of SB 37 and similar prohibitions in higher education, particularly where there is evidence of discriminatory intent or viewpoint-based discrimination or censorship.

We are living through a coordinated backlash against DEI, Ethnic Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and public education itself. This moment is not about “protecting students” or “ending indoctrination,” as proponents claim. It is about enforcing ignorance and preserving racial and gender hierarchies. At the highest level, it is about erasure and control, controlling the narrative and imposing limits to community self-awareness and empowerment.

That erasure extends beyond policy. It echoes across our shared cultural memory—shaping what is preserved, what is honored, and what is pushed into oblivion. The attacks on Ethnic Studies, the banning of books, the silencing of educators who dare to speak truth—all reflect a calculated project to reorder memory itself. 

The troubling intent is not simply to stifle dissent, but to render entire histories incomprehensible to generations yet to come. In this context, ignorance is not an accident; it is carefully manufactured, fortified, and deployed to uphold the existing order—not least by preserving the incumbencies of those in power, as the recent fight over mid-decade redistricting makes clear.

The constitutional lessons from Arizona are not abstract. They map directly onto the policies Texas has now enacted.

In Texas, Senate Bill 17 prohibits DEI offices and programming in public universities. Senate Bill 37 eviscerates faculty governance across the entire higher education system, replacing longstanding traditions of faculty oversight with politically appointed boards and administrators beholden to partisan interests. Together with earlier laws like Senate Bill 3, Texas’s anti–Critical Race Theory bill that constrains the teaching of race and history in K–12 schools, these laws form an interlocking architecture of repression (see Intercultural Development Research Association, 2021).

The effects are concrete. UT Austin alone suffered at least $47 million in cuts to research due to federal funding rollbacks—cuts that have damaged work across race, gender, immigration, public health, and mental health. Projects like Dr. Danielle Clealand’s research on Black Cuban immigrant histories are being erased (Valenzuela, 2025). 

This is epistemic violence pure and simple. It is a purge of inconvenient truths. And yet, even in this landscape of "organized forgetting"—or what I term in my own work, either "subtractive schooling," or the "politics of erasure," we still have the U.S. Constitution.

I want to turn now to an important precursor to our current moment: Arizona’s ARS § 15-112, the law used to dismantle Tucson’s Mexican American Studies program. That law prohibited courses that “promote resentment,” “are designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group,” or “advocate ethnic solidarity.” These vague, ideologically charged provisions became the blueprint for today’s curriculum wars.

We now see unmistakable echoes of ARS § 15-112 in Texas.

Texas Senate Bill 3 uses nearly identical language in its ban on teaching concepts that might cause students to “feel discomfort, guilt, or psychological distress” because of race or sex—an interpretation so broad that it suppresses discussions of racism, structural inequity, and collective historical experience. Senate Bill 17 bans identity-based programs and affinity centers in higher education, mirroring Arizona’s prohibition on courses “designed primarily for pupils of a particular ethnic group.” And Senate Bill 37 continues this trajectory by restricting what can be taught in college classrooms about race, gender, and social identity—precisely the kinds of restrictions that were struck down in Gonzalez v. Douglas.

In other words, Texas has not adopted Arizona’s Ethnic Studies ban in one statute. It has adopted it in pieces, across multiple laws. The through-line from ARS § 15-112 to Texas policy is unmistakable: constrain what can be taught, surveil the curriculum for “divisive concepts,” eliminate identity-affirming programs, silence collective narratives, and enforce an atomized, decontextualized vision of the individual student. That is exactly the logic Arizona used, and it is exactly the logic Texas has now replicated.

Gonzalez v. Douglas

I had the honor of testifying in the Arce v. Douglas case—now formally known as Gonzalez v. Douglas. Teachers and students sued the Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction and members of the Arizona State Board of Education after the elimination of the successful Mexican American Studies program in Tucson. The argument of "viewpoint diversity" was central to the case, but not in the distorted sense we hear today from conservatives who allege—without evidence—that their perspectives are excluded from the college curriculum.

Teachers and students argued that the state targeted their curriculum precisely because it foregrounded Mexican American perspectives, histories, and intellectual traditions (Cabrera et al., 2014). The entire effort was motivated by racial animus and a political agenda to "organize forgetting."

The federal court agreed, holding that Arizona had engaged in unconstitutional viewpoint discrimination motivated by hostility toward Mexican Americans (Gonzalez v. Douglas, 2017).

The court ruled that teachers have a right to teach, and students have a right to learn, a curriculum that reflects their experiences and intellectual traditions. Gonzalez v. Douglas stands as a precedent-setting case underscoring this point. 

While a state may legislate restrictions on teaching and research, the mere passage of a law does not guarantee its constitutional survival. As Gonzalez demonstrated, when a state suppresses particular perspectives or academic fields—especially those tied to the histories and identities of marginalized communities—it invites serious First Amendment scrutiny and is unlikely to prevail.

In summary, Senate Bill 37, like Arizona’s ARS § 15-112, is vulnerable to a First Amendment challenge because it targets specific viewpoints and identities for suppression.

Some day, Ethnic Studies courses will simply be called “a good education.”

Thank you for your time.

References

Cabrera, N. L., Milem, J. F., Jaquette, O., & Marx, R. W. (2014). Missing the (Student Achievement) Forest for All the (Political) Trees: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson: Empiricism and the Mexican American Studies Controversy in Tucson. American Educational Research Journal, 51(6), 1084-1118. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831214553705

Gonzalez v. Douglas, 269 F. Supp. 3d 948 (D. Ariz. 2017). https://www.thefire.org/sites/default/files/2018/01/22133613/Gonzalez-v.-Douglas-Memorandum-of-Decision.pdf

Intercultural Development Research Association. (2021). What Texas’ classroom censorship law means for students & schools. IDRA. https://www.idra.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/What-Texas-Classroom-Censorship-Law-Means-for-Students-and-Schools-IDRA-2022.pdf

Valenzuela, A. (2025, May). UT loses $47M in research grants under Trump Administration; more than 60 projects cut: The ideological purge of public research [Blog post]. Educational Equity, Politics & Policy in Texas.  https://texasedequity.blogspot.com/2025/05/ut-loses-47m-in-research-grants-under.html

© 2025 Angela Valenzuela. All rights reserved.
This blog post may not be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author, except for brief quotations in academic, journalistic, or critical reviews with proper attribution.

UT explores merging 'fragmented' departments, raising fears over ethnic studies’ future | “What Happens Here Happens to Us”

The sense of alarm among many right now is profound. What appears to be a routine “consolidation” of departments within UT Austin’s College of Liberal Arts is, in truth, anything but routine. Words like “flexibility” or appeals to “political neutrality” mask a deeper politics—not only of erasure, but of disciplining how we think, teach, and speak from the authenticity of our own experience and standpoint.

I’m reminded of a conversation years ago with my dear friend and former UT professor, Doug Foley. In the middle of a lively exchange, he looked at me with that characteristic glint in his eye and belted out with his voice, “You’re not supposed to have a standpoint!”

For a moment I was taken aback—“Them’s fightin’ words,” my face must have said. Then he burst out laughing. “What do you expect? You’re a Chicana!” He made me smile.

But his point stays with me. Our universities are under siege. Instead of embracing deliberation and democratic dialogue, they are succumbing to control—decisions made in private rooms, cloaked in bureaucratic language. Words like “consolidate” can easily mask what is, in practice, the erosion of intellectual autonomy and the quiet dismantling of programs that took generations to build—programs born from community struggle and sustained by public trust. It’s disheartening how similar this language sounds to the rationale now being used for the next wave of school closures in the Austin Independent School District.

Departments such as African and African Diaspora Studies, Mexican American and Latina/o Studies, Asian Studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies are not bureaucratic redundancies—they are living archives of research, creativity, and truth-telling. They produce cutting-edge scholarship that grapples with some of society’s hardest questions. These programs exist because communities demanded greater balance in perspectives forged through struggle and love.

Their existence testifies to the courage of generations of students, faculty, and community members who refused to let their histories, languages, and epistemologies be erased. I am a product of Mexican American Studies—and I am proud of it. I am a teacher, researcher, friend, and colleague shaped by a tradition of care, rigor, and purpose. We prepare exceptional scholars and public servants who engage the needs of our communities with professionalism, insight, and hope. We do this work well—and it matters.

After all, many of us are from here and live here. We’ve been here since before there ever was a Texas or a United States. Contrary to what some might think, we have nowhere “to go back to.” Our histories, our children, our grandchildren, and our dreams are interwoven with this place. What happens here happens to us.

There’s nothing “woke” about this—there’s only truth: the truth of who we are, where we come from, and our enduring commitment to the future of this place we call home.

Students and faculty are right to demand clarity, transparency, and above all, honesty. We deserve to know what problem this reorganization is meant to solve—and at what cost. When programs that have long served the heart of our communities are merged, diminished, or dissolved, we are not strengthening the university—we are surrendering its soul. And for what? And for whom?

This is not consolidation; it is capitulation.

— Angela Valenzuela

UT explores merging 'fragmented' departments, raising fears over ethnic studies’ future

As rumors circulate that UT’s ethnic studies programs may be at risk of consolidation, the school’s College of Liberal Arts told faculty a committee is reviewing “overly fragmented” departments.

From left, Mia, Daniel Schoeggl and Elijah Rivera, from Students for a Democratic Society, lead the crowd in chants at a protest at the University of Texas at Austin on Monday, October. 13, 2025. About 150 people gathered to protest Trump's compact, which was sent to UT and eight other schools. If signed, UT will get exclusive benefits but also pledge to follow trump's guidance. Aaron E. Martinez/Austin American-Statesman

By Lily Kepner, Staff Writer, Austin American-Statesman, Oct 30, 2025

As rumors circulate that the University of Texas’ ethnic studies programs may be at risk of consolidation, the school’s College of Liberal Arts told faculty a new committee is exploring administrative changes to some of the school’s departments that “may have become overly fragmented.
In an Oct. 23 email sent to department chairs, an associate dean wrote that the advisory committee is considering changes to the “administrative departmental structure of the college,” not individual academic programs or centers. However, the consolidation changes may result in some programs losing autonomy, the administrator conceded in the email obtained by the Statesman.

“There are, of course, tradeoffs to be considered, including potentially some loss of autonomy for small units,” wrote Daniel Brinks, the associate dean for academic and faculty affairs. “But the ultimate goal is to strengthen the college and its individual components.”

The task force’s work is to propose ways to reorganize some departments into new larger units that will “provide greater opportunities for collaboration and have more flexibility to accommodate change,” Brinks added.

The email did not name which departments are poised for consolidation, but the committee includes representatives from Asian Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, Classics, American Studies, American Sign Language, Spanish and Portuguese and is chaired by Brinks.

The announcement comes as Texas public universities face tremendous political pressure to rid institutions of “gender ideology” and target LGBTQ and ethnic studies. Texas A&M recently fired children’s literature professor Melissa McCoul when a student accused her of teaching about gender identity in a viral video that caught the attention of Gov. Greg Abbott.

RELATED: Texas A&M professor loses job after talking on gender identity in children’s lit

Third-year PhD student Lena Mose-Vargas, who is pursuing a doctorate in Mexican American and Latino/a Studies, is one of many students who emailed the College of Liberal Arts to oppose the feared consolidation and ask if their program will be impacted. Mose-Vargas, who spoke to the Statesman on behalf of themself, said they received no information in response. They chose to study at UT because of the program’s rigor and fear the rumored changes will compromise their program’s excellence.

“Students are asking questions and they’re not receiving answers,” Mose-Vargas said. “We anticipate, in this political climate and with the particular attacks on WGS (Women and Gender Studies) and ethnic studies, that this is likely going to be what we’re looking at.”

‘A full education’

In a recent speech, President Jim Davis said that UT will restore balance and “completeness” to students’ education amid concerns that departments have become too “splintered and specialized” at the expense of including all viewpoints.

“We don’t want degree programs that are so narrow they develop only one perspective,” Davis said. “Instead we must provide a balanced education — a full education — for every degree program.”

Students have protested the new College of Liberal Arts committee in demonstrations across campus, calling for the institution to resist external political pressures. UT has been silent on whether it will accept an offer from the administration of President Donald Trumpthat would require the institution to close or change programs that “belittle” conservative voices.

TRUMP'S DEAL: UT Austin refuses to say if it will make a deal with Trump to get more funding

Like students who oppose combining ethnic studies departments, Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies Chair Mary Neuburger joined other department faculty in writing a letter to Interim Dean David Sosa to critique the concept of consolidation. The faculty members said consolidation would threaten their department’s ability to teach the cultural complexities of regions.

“People are upset about this for good reason,” Neuburger said. “Because we’re not understanding what is going to be gained, and we are definitely seeing what is going to be lost.”

The Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies opened in 1917, Neuburger said. Though her department is a segment of global area studies, she fears its size could make it eligible for consolidation. But its size is also an advantage, she said.

The department provides a key opportunity for specialization that can distinguish graduates from other job candidates and allows for in-depth learning. A broadening of her department would prohibit students from deeply understanding important parts of Slavic history, impacting the work and grants its research center brings in, she said.

But Neuburger fears “it’s inevitable,” she said. “It’s going to dilute our ability to do what we want to do. It’s going to dilute our community, and it’s going to take away from our leadership, all the work on our curriculum but also extracurricular programming that’s really important to students.”

The university and the College of Liberal Arts declined to comment.

‘Fighting for a voice’

The College of Liberal Arts houses 20 departments, 18 centers, 9 institutes and 14 programs. The structure of ethnic studies programs is similar to peer colleges, such as the University of Michigan. The Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies reaches students in a wide variety of majors through cross-listed courses and core classes, Neuburger said.

Ethnic studies units, including Mexican American Studies and African American Studies, have existed for more than fifty years, and the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies opened in 1979. Several rose out of student advocacy, expanding over the years to produce more research, programming and academic options, including doctoral programs.

“These programs come from a very long history of students in marginalized communities fighting for a voice,” Mose-Vargas said. “Getting rid of ethnics studies or (Women's and Gender Studies) at UT is not just some meaningless maneuver, it would directly be removing a part of UT’s history from itself, a part that is indispensable to ethnic studies as a whole.”

Last year, Texas A&M University cut its LGBTQ minor along with 51 other minors and certificates because of “low enrollment” after facing pressure from the extremely vocal Rep. Brian Harrison, R-Midlothian, who called it a “victory.” Texas A&M faculty said they were not given an opportunity to raise enrollment before the cuts.

A department reorganization isn’t the only change UT could face. The UT System is auditing courses concerning gender identity to ensure compliance with system priorities and the law, and the university is conducting its own audit of courses. UT launched a new core curriculum task force to “thoroughly review” general education.

Senate Bill 37, the higher education reform bill passed last session, also charges regents with reviewing programs to ensure schools meet standards for enrollment and return on investment.

Brinks said in his email that the college will consult faculty, staff and students once a proposal is formed. Neuburger said she hopes the College of Liberal Arts listens to faculty and is transparent about goals.

“For an R-1 institution like ours, this is just the model that has worked, that exists nationally for a reason,” Neuburger said, referencing UT's research status. “If they would tell us what exact number is the problem, or what exact problem they’re trying to solve, we could sit down with them and be creative and think through how to solve whatever problems they’re seeing, but they have not.”


Editor's note: This report was updated to reflect that the Department of Slavic and Eurasian Studies is not classified as an ethnic studies program, but as a global areas study program.


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.

Affirm Life, Not Erasure: Punishing Education Policy and the Dehumanization of Trans Youth in Texas by Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Affirm Life, Not Erasure: Punishing Education Policy and the Dehumanization of Trans Youth in Texas

by

Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.

Under the cover of darkness, in the early hours of Wednesday morning, the Texas Legislature pushed through House Bill 229—a bill that erases complexity, ignores science, and imposes a rigid, biologically reductionist definition of sex based solely on reproductive capacity. This isn’t about governance—it’s about control. HB 229 mandates that every state agency flatten Texans’ identities into one of two state-sanctioned boxes: “male” or “female,” no nuance, no exception, no humanity. Let us be clear: this is state-enforced erasure masquerading as policy.

It explicitly denies the existence of transgender and intersex people, treating them as legal fictions rather than as human beings worthy of dignity and protection. This is not a neutral administrative decision—it’s state-sanctioned erasure. And it has devastating consequences.

Source: Tx Tribune https://tinyurl.com/5h7sxczu

Let’s be honest about what’s at stake. We are talking about young people—transgender and nonbinary youth—whose very lives hang in the balance when their identities are denied or erased. According to The Trevor Project’s 2022 National Survey, nearly 1 in 5 transgender and nonbinary youth attempted suicide in the past year alone. 

That number should stop us in our tracks. And the data is even more harrowing when we look at the role of affirmation: youth whose pronouns were not respected by those around them attempted suicide at more than twice the rate of those whose identities were affirmed (The Trevor Project, 2022; Borge, 2020; Christensen, 2023). This isn’t theoretical. It’s not about political posturing. It’s about creating the conditions for young people to live, to thrive, and to know they belong. Denial is not neutral. It’s deadly.

And yet, this bill dares to claim that “separate is not inherently unequal,” invoking the very language that upheld racial segregation in the Jim Crow era. It claims to protect women and girls by reducing them to biology, as if equality requires exclusion, and as if safety comes from stigmatizing others rather than addressing the root causes of violence. This is not about safeguarding anyone—it’s about tightening the grip of ideological conformity and silencing difference.

Let us not pretend this is benign. It is a policy of fear, not care. It is an assault on public integrity, not an act of protection. And it will cost lives—not metaphorically, but literally—by reinforcing a culture that tells LGBTQ youth that they do not belong.

We have a duty to speak up, not only because we are educators and advocates, but because we are human beings. H.B. 229 is not just bad policy. It is a moral failure.

—Angela Valenzuela

References

Borge, J. (2020, July 31). 2 in 5 LGBTQ youth have ‘seriously considered’ suicide in the past year—Here’s how to help. Well+Good. https://www.wellandgood.com/lgbtq-youth-suicide-mental-health/

Christensen, J. (2023, June 28). Transgender people face significantly higher suicide risk, Danish study finds. CNN. https://www.cnn.com/2023/06/28/health/transgender-suicide-risk-danish-study/index.html

Czopek, M. (2022, May 11). Why it’s not ‘grooming’: What research says about gender and sexuality in schools, PolitiFact. https://www.politifact.com/article/2022/may/11/why-its-not-grooming-what-research-says-about-gend/

The Trevor Project. (2022). 2022 national survey on LGBTQ youth mental health. https://www.thetrevorproject.org/survey-2022/

Texas bills invite political interference in the teaching of U.S. history | Opinion by Dr. Lauren Gutterman | Austin Am-Statesman

Friends:

Please note that Senate Bill 37/HB 4499 and SB 2714/HB 2548—highlighted in this excellent op-ed by Dr. Lauren Gutterman—pose serious threats to both K-12 and higher education in Texas. It’s deeply troubling to see some of our state leaders advancing policies that could severely undermine, even disfigure, public education in our state.

I appreciate Dr. Gutterman for rightly identifying the legislature itself as the driving ideological force behind these efforts. If you oppose these harmful bills, I strongly encourage you to contact your representatives and make your voice heard. If you're unsure who represents you, you can find out here: https://wrm.capitol.texas.gov/home

If you're in Austin—or can get to Austin—in the next week or so, consider visiting your representative at the Texas Capitol. With the legislative session winding down, it's a crucial time to share your thoughts.

-Angela Valenzuela

#youwillnoteraseus #youwillnotsilenceus

Texas bills invite political interference in the teaching of U.S. history | Opinion

Lauren Gutterman

Austin American-Statesman | April 14, 2025

As a historian and faculty member at the University of Texas, I love teaching students about the complexity of the American past and helping them make connections between what seems like ancient history and their own daily lives. Several pending bills in the Legislature would make those aspects of my instruction harder, by hindering or outright prohibiting the teaching of honest and comprehensive U.S. history in public colleges and universities in our state.

According to Texas Education Code §51.302, every student graduating from a college or university receiving state funding must complete six semester hours of American history, which may include up to three semester hours of credit in Texas history. Courses partially fulfilling this requirement — which I regularly teach — would be directly affected by Senate Bill 37/HB 4499 and SB 2714/HB 2548, should either or both of these bills become law.

SB 37, one of Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick’s top 40 legislative priorities, would require the politically-appointed governing board of each public institution of higher education to review general education courses to ensure that they do not “distort significant historical events” or include a curriculum that “teaches identity politics,” “requires or attempts to require students to adopt an ideology,” or “is based on a theory that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, or privilege is inherent in the institutions of the United States.”

These restrictions invite political interference in the teaching of U.S. history through both their vagueness and their specificity. SB 37 does not explain what it means to “distort” the teaching of history, and it does not attempt to define what constitutes an “ideology,” thus allowing administrators wide latitude to censor teaching on aspects of American history they find objectionable.

At the same time, these prohibitions explicitly seek to constrain teaching on issues of inequality in the U.S. My own research focuses on women’s and LGBTQ history. By merely presenting students with evidence of trans and gender non-conforming people’s existence in the past I could easily be accused of indoctrinating students with “gender ideology.”

SB 2714 goes even further in constraining teaching in core curriculum courses by banning discussions of “whiteness,” “systemic racism,” “intersectionality,” “gender identity,” “social justice” and “decolonization” among many other concepts. This language pertains to teaching regarding “contemporary American society,” and the bill purports to exempt instruction on race and racism in the past.

But I encourage students to see the legacies of historical events, policies and people today. For example, after discussing the development of the suburbs, housing segregation and the meaning of the American dream in the post-World War II period, I ask students to research the history of their homes and communities and interpret it for themselves. Many students see this project as a highlight of the course.

SB 37 and SB 2714 and their companion bills threaten the teaching of U.S. history in Texas public colleges and universities in accordance with the Texas Education Code. If signed into law, these bills would undermine the liberty to learn and to think that has long been at the core of American institutions of higher education.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote regarding the University of Virginia, which he founded in 1819: “This institution will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error, so long as reason is left free to combat it.”

In considering SB 37 and SB 2714, I hope our state lawmakers will stay true to Jefferson’s vision of higher learning and choose not to impose limits on the minds of Texas students who are more than capable of drawing their own conclusions about the American past.

Lauren Gutterman is an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Texas.

🔴 Rapid City Central High School Students Organizing a Walkout

NDN Collective

So happy to learn about the Lakota Empowerment Club in Rapid City,
South Dakota Central High School Students and their September 12, 2021 walkout. Not unlike so many of our youth here in Texas, these are a group of young students who want their culture—that they refer to as their Oceti Sakown Essential Understandings—to get taught in the schools. They describe their public education as "Genocide Part 2," that involves erasing their cultures and language.

What a wonderful concept to advance, "Essential Understandings." And what a far cry from sterile discourses like "standards" and "skills."

Right now—and despite the anti-CRT agenda in Texas—the Texas State Board of Education is establishing a TEKS-aligned high school elective course in Native American Studies.

Thanks to Paco Robles for letting me know about this mobilization by youth. I hope that these students prevail.

-Angela Valenzuela