This blog on Texas education contains posts on accountability, testing, K-12 education, postsecondary educational attainment, bilingual education, immigration, school finance, environmental issues, and Ethnic Studies at the state and national levels. It addresses politics in Texas. It also represents my digital footprint, of life and career, as a community-engaged scholar in Texas.
UT-Austin is investigating students for a peaceful sit-in meant to deliver a letter about the Trump Compact and the University’s proposed departmental consolidations—including ethnic and area studies programs, as earlier reporting in The Daily Texan makes clear.
Branding this action as “disruptive conduct” chills student activism and diverts attention from the real issue: students are seeking transparency and accountability in decisions that will reshape their academic futures. A public university should welcome—not punish—such democratic engagement. It is especially disturbing that the very students most directly affected by these decisions are being denied a meaningful voice in the process.
Kelly Soucy, UT’s Associate Dean of Students, and Aaron Voyles, the Associate Dean of Students, tell computer science second-year Daniel Ramirez and graduate student Áine McGehee Marley that she is unable to schedule a meeting between the students and senior leadership after telling the students to leave the tower alongside UTPD Sergeant Chad Martinka following an SDS sit-in Nov. 7.
The University sent notices of disciplinary action to two students on Monday after they conducted a sit-in at the Tower on Nov. 7, according to documents obtained by The Daily Texan.
The students, Daniel Ramirez, a computer science sophomore and a member of Students for a Democratic Society, and Áine McGehee Marley, a College of Liberal Arts Ph.D. student and organizer for UT Graduate Workers Union, received the letters on Monday afternoon in an email. In the letters, the Student Conduct and Academic Integrity committee said they may have violated University policy by engaging in disruptive conduct and unauthorized entry. They are now under investigation.
During the sit-in on Nov. 7, 14 students, including Ramirez and McGehee Marley, attempted to set up a meeting with the University leadership to deliver a letter with multiple demands, including the University to reject the Trump administration’s compact and stop the possible consolidation of smaller liberal arts departments.
Ramirez said he was not surprised to receive the notice, as other students received similar notices during the April 2024 pro-Palestinian protests, also for disruptive conduct.
“Given what we’ve seen in the past from UT administration, they have continuously revealed that they will do whatever they can to stop students from using their campus,” McGehee Marley said. “We are allowed to be on our campus, and to be reprimanded and punished for that is ridiculous.”
The committee claims the 14 students rushed their way into the University Leadership’s offices in the letters, creating a significant disruption. Ramirez said this is an unfair and inaccurate retelling of the events, claiming the actual sit-in was more civil than described.
“We did not rush in there, we walked,” Ramirez said. “The picture they’re trying to create is that we were disruptive, and that we didn’t have authorized entry. But this was a public space, so we think both of these charges are pretty ridiculous.”
The letters initially scheduled the students to meet with the University on Wednesday. McGehee Marley’s meeting was for 1:30 and Ramirez’ was scheduled for 2:30, giving both less than 48 hours of notice. However, the students chose to reschedule their meetings to allow for more time to prepare.
McGehee said the letters show that the University is afraid of student activism.
“This is … supposed to be Texas’s top state school, and there is a complete lack of transparency on how things are being decided by administrators,” McGehee said.
Ramirez said presenting the letter was one of the only ways students can make their voices heard.
“We haven’t seen it done any other way, right?” Ramirez said. “There’s basically no institutional support for democratic accountability from the people who actually attend this University.”
A spokesperson said the University cannot comment on individual student cases due to privacy laws.
Important read by UT History professor Dr. Peniel E. Joseph. I couldn't agree more.
What's happening in Texas right now is most definitely an assault. It's Texas manifesting the intent of the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025 about which I just posted. If you want to ruin your day, just keyword the words, "abolish" and "eliminate" to learn of their explicit intent of a "scorched earth" administration should Donald Trump get elected. These are not my words, but their words as you can also see from this recent April 19, 2024 New York Times article by Jonathan Chait titled, "Lara Trump Threatens ‘Four Years of Scorched Earth’ If Trump Retakes Power: Sounds like a fun time for America" [see video where you can hear Lara express these sentiments].
Since Trump's extremist party has no vision for the future, they're quickly working themselves out of a job when they could be doing the opposite and at least offer a little hope for an increasingly diverse and complex world, clarifying to us why they are the party to lead our democracy. In contrast, they have no high-sounding rhetoric or hopeful vision for the future. Quite the opposite. This means that they're at rock bottom, showing that all they have left is fear, spite, violence, and repression.
What is sad and lost is a recognition of how these very communities they seek to continue subordinating—with their cynical and horrific 900-page plan that Project 2025 represents—namely, Black, Latinx, Indigenous, Asian, Native American, immigrant, queer, and working class communities—are the very ones that have strengthened our democracy.
Theirs is a power grab that threatens to consume the whole. We must clearly vote this far-right party out of power.
If you're in Travis County, here is all the information you need on the vote. This calendar document is also a good tool that we can all pin to our refrigerators to make sure that we never miss an election. I imagine that similar information is available for every county in the U.S.
Everyone must fully understand and accept the importance of voting. It's remarkable to consider that we could effectively reclaim our country from extremism if everyone understood the true power of their vote. The fact that those in power go to great lengths to prevent us from voting, through gerrymandering and other tactics, underscores just how potent our votes can be. Limiting education is yet another way to disenfranchise people.
Voting is the ULTIMATE form of patriotism, a gift to ourselves and the next generation.
CNN —For nearly a decade, I have been honored to be a faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin. As a scholar whose research and teaching hinge on histories of racism and activism, this April was an exceptionally harsh one for me — and for all of Longhorn Nation. A month that began with the gutting of resources devoted to our students has ended with shocking scenes of crackdowns by law enforcement in our midst. I have been left heartbroken. This spring, our motto, “What Starts Here Changes the World,” has taken on a bitterly ironic meaning.
On April 2, the university’s president, Jay Hartzell, delivered a devastating blow via email, announcing the firings and demotions of nearly 60 individuals, all victims of the university’s newly enforced compliance in the wake of Senate Bill 17, which prohibited DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) initiatives in all parts of campus except research and teaching.
Hartzell, in a letter, said, “associate deans who were formally focused on DEI will return to their full-time teaching positions,” while the “positions that provided support for those associate and assistant deans and a small number of staff roles across campus that were formerly focused on DEI will no longer be funded.” These people are not just numbers. They were members of our community. The shortsightedness of this decision led over 500 professors, including me, to sign a letter of no confidence with respect to the president.
What made the firings especially hurtful is this university’s long history of racial exclusion, sexism, homophobia, transphobia and discrimination against students of color. The “40 Acres,” which constitutes the original size of land set aside for the university, is also shorthand for the pride that Longhorn Nation takes in the campus as both a real and imagined community. A significant part of that community’s history includes racial discrimination that required the courageous activism and organizing of students and community members to break down ancient barriers. The social integration of Black people and people of color at the university has been paralleled by the growth of Black, Women and Gender and Mexican-American Studies as globally recognized academic disciplines and departments.
To see these programs arise and grow, and to know that this flagship university has acknowledged marginalized communities only to then shut down programs that offer them a critical lifeline during their time here is profoundly disturbing to witness. Countless numbers of students have expressed to me their fear, anxiety, disappointment and depression. My colleagues and I have commiserated about the devolution of racial justice in Texas and nationally over the past four years. And an even larger number of “allies” have disappeared from view, which, although expected in many ways, is disappointing.
What makes the present so dispiriting is the reckless manner in which the goodwill of the recent past has been squandered.
George Floyd’s murder on May 25, 2020, sparked a nationwide movement that forced institutional reckoning with America’s long history of racial subjugation.
I watched this history unfold while simultaneously participating in it, writing for CNN, conducting numerous interviews and delivering keynote speeches that doubled as sermons, evangelizing my hopes for building a Beloved Community out of the ashes of our centuries-long agony of racial discontent, political division and police violence.
For a time, it appeared that things were, in fact, changing, with corporate America embracing the Black Lives Matter movement and the cause of racial justice in ways that enhanced opportunities, recognition and dignity for employees of color.
Meanwhile, universities expanded their DEI programs to create a welcoming environment for historically marginalized and underrepresented students but also to correct moral failings that included histories of racial segregation.
On this score, the University of Texas at Austin — still affectionately referred to as the “40 Acres” — has considerable work to do. Founded in 1883 as a racially segregated university of “the first class,” the university did not open its doors to a single Black student until 1950, when Heman Sweatt (the Sweatt Center for Black Males was forced to drop any mention of race as part of the SB 17 compliance) began but did not finish law school.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators face off with Texas DPS officers on Wednesday, April 24, 2024. Jordan Vonderhaar/Bloomberg/Getty Images
When racial integration arrived in the 1950s on the heels of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision, the earliest Black Longhorns — known as the “precursors” — found an inhospitable racial climate where they were not allowed to live on campus dorms joining fraternities and sororities and faced general disrespect.
Flash forward to 2024. At the very moment the university announced the creation of a new School of Civic Education to bolster viewpoint diversity that favors conservatives, it fired dozens of staff connected to DEI, the favorite target of the far-right.
As a vocal scholar-activist whose work continues to revolve around histories of race, democracy, and power in the United States and globally, I have watched, with growing alarm and sadness, the impact anti-DEI legislation has had on my students, colleagues and staff. The waves of political backlash unfolding around the nation also extend beyond DEI and indeed, beyond the walls of the university to include protests against the horrors in Gaza. This moment has turned universities such as Columbia in New York and Emory in Atlanta — among many others — into roiling battlegrounds that echo the clashes between anti-war and Black Power advocates and law enforcement on college campuses in the 1960s and 1970s.
Students march with anti-war placards on the campus of the University of California at Berkeley, California, 1969. Archive Photos/Getty Images
But UT is different from a number of these other schools. What makes us unique is our public mission to leverage higher education in a way that positively and life-alteringly impacts the city of Austin, the state of Texas and the nation. Before the shuttering of the university’s Division of Diversity and Community Engagement (DDCE), we had the largest such initiative in the nation, the jewel in the crown of efforts to offer a world-class education to students of all backgrounds.
The violence on campus against student protesters and the anti-DEI legislation are both parts of a larger suppression of speech and expression. They are aspects of a political environment that have also given rise to attacks on voting and reproductive rights, marked by book bans and threats of retaliation against college students with unpopular opinions.
I abhor the very real instances of antisemitism that have flared across college campuses in the wake of the October 7 massacre and pray for the safe return of hostages. I also denounce the very real instances of anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Black sentiment that have occurred in that time.
Unfortunately, our leaders have widened political and ideological divides instead of building bridges toward healing on campus. The far-right has used fear, name-calling and outright lies to suppress freedom of speech and expression on college campuses, the latest salvo in a concerted, and thus far successful, effort to erode public trust in longstanding institutions.
For those of us committed to building a vibrant, multiracial democracy in the heart of the largest state in the former Confederacy, these attacks represent more than a backlash against the era that I have characterized as the nation’s “Third Reconstruction.”
What we are experiencing here in Texas is an assault on the nation’s democracy. As in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s Florida, Gov. Greg Abbott’s efforts here amplify conservative legislators’ vision of “reclaiming” the university from a so-called “woke mob” apparently populated by folks who look like me.
I attended two demonstrations at the university this past week — one in support of Palestinians and free speech (where I was heartened to see a small pro-Israel demonstration taking place alongside the larger gathering), the other a long-delayed protest in support of DEI. At the same time, elsewhere on campus, activists attempting to set up encampments were confronted by law enforcement, placing this community I love in the news for all the wrong reasons.
What gives me hope now, in the face of all this, are my students and their allies among the faculty and advocates here in Austin. So many of them are standing up for the need to continue working in the belly of the anti-DEI backlash to build a multiracial democracy.
Standing beneath a hot sun, chatting with students and colleagues, bumping into familiar faces and meeting new ones reminded me of the promise and potential of higher education I first encountered in New York at the age of 17. Attending Stony Brook University improved my life, paving the way for me to grow the voice I have today.
Higher education, both its positives and negatives, is simply a reflection of us, our society and its constantly evolving understanding of what dignity, citizenship and democracy mean. It is also an engine of wealth and job creation, a policy and technology hub, a sports, entertainment, and artistic incubator, and a site for science, health, engineering and law innovation.
The humanities — the study of our intellectual, spiritual and moral purpose through inquiry and experimentation — is perhaps the least well-regarded part of the university and most important. All the talk about Artificial Intelligence and transformation in technologies of the future will be for naught if we lose sight of our horizon by failing to invest in the multiracial democracy necessary to make our universities and the nation thrive.
This will not happen by scapegoating DEI programs, brutalizing student protesters and threatening the livelihood of faculty and staff. What happens here can indeed change the world. But not just in one direction. April has offered definitive proof that institutions of higher education can be leveraged as a tool to crush dissent and curtail freedom of speech and expression.
What starts here changes the world: Only we — students, faculty and staff collectively — can make that slogan something to be proud of once more.
I for one still believe in the power of a just university and intend to fight for it.
Here's a recent piece on Texas' medieval “book ban law," or House Bill 900, that passed in the regular 88th (2023)Texas Legislative Session. The short of it is that banning books violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and is just plain bad for business—or as Molly Ivins used to say—"bid-ness," in Texas. This specific piece addresses the converting of some Houston Schools' libraries into detention centers referenced in the piece I just posted to this blog.
What distinguishes us as a democracy is freedom of speech, thought, and equal protection under the law. I wish those filing suit a successful day in court, beginning with a preliminary injunction hearing in Federal Court on August 18th here in Austin, Texas. If we can't win these battles in the legislature, we must turn to the courts.
Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop, is part of a lawsuit aimed at stopping a law that would require bookstores to label books with sexual content.
Brett Coomer/Staff photographer
It is only fitting that the battle over House Bill 900, Texas’ new “book ban law," would start at the Alamo — or, to be more specific, across the street at the historic Menger Hotel. In April, more than 75 booksellers had gathered there to preview and celebrate the year’s forthcoming books. The star writer in the room that day was Houston’s Bryan Washington. Among those on hand to take it all in were more than a dozen new booksellers who have opened stores in the state in recent years, including David and Dara Landry, owners of CLASS bookstore.
The booksellers were concerned. The Texas Legislature was about to vote on and pass the new law that demands, in part, that “library material vendors,” including booksellers and publishers, create and implement a rating system for books sold to Texas schools and school libraries based on the book's “sexual” content. The intent, said lawmakers, was to protect children and keep pornography out of schools. (A cause that would be better served by taking away their phones and shutting off the school Wi-Fi.) The consequence of not doing so or getting the rating wrong, according to the state, is to be blacklisted from selling books to any Texas schools.
What’s ironic is that for all of Texas’ flag-waving talk about personal freedom, independence and freedom of speech, this law is akin to those in China, Cuba, Saudi Arabia, Turkey or Russia — all countries where the government controls what books can be published and put on sale.
That’s some nefarious company.
Something had to be done about this intimidation, the booksellers agreed. And the fight was on.Last week, Houston bookseller Valerie Koehler, owner of Blue Willow Bookshop joined Charley Rejsek, CEO of BookPeople bookstore in Austin, in filing a lawsuit in federal court to try and get the law struck down. The pair were joined in their case by the American Booksellers Association, the Association of American Publishers, the Authors Guild and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund — a group that represents pretty much anyone and everyone who writes or sells you a book.
Their argument is that not only does the law violate the First and Fourteenth Amendments, but that it is vague, sweeping and, frankly, untenable. As Koehler put it to me for an article about the lawsuit in Publishers Weekly, “The hours, the payroll that it would require for us to check and rate every book we sell, and then do it retroactively for the all the books we’ve ever sold, as the law implies we must do, is just absurd. Our job is to sell, not rate, books.”
If you’re not familiar, Koehler’s store, Blue Willow, is nationally known and considered one of the best in the country. It runs hundreds of events a year, including numerous author visits to schools and three book festivals for children and teens, including Bookworm Festival, Tweens Read, and Teen BookCon. She estimates sales to schools account for 20 percent of her annual revenue. For bookstores that operate on extremely thin margins — 3 percent profit is considered good — this lost revenue could be catastrophic.
To call this law foolhardy is to be kind to it. It’s simply ignorant. Rejsek told me that in the debate on the floor of the Legislature the lawmakers presumed this would only impact a handful of vendors, 50 or so at most. Instead, it impacts hundreds. No company, not even Amazon, could comply with this law. It’s an exercise in existential bullying, simply put. Or maybe the lawmakers are hoping AI can step in and take over the job.
The chilling effect of the law is already being felt. The Katy ISD school board has said that it willnot put any new books in circulationuntil the books are reviewed for content. Expect this to be the case more and more often in other Texas counties. And sometimes, the educators themselves take the lead on curtailing access to books, such as new HISD superintendent Mike Miles who isconverting the libraries of some challenged schools into centerswhere disciplined kids will be sent. That’s the way to promote a lifelong love of reading and literature: Equate being among books as punishment.One cannot help but think that the passage of HB 900 reeks of grandstanding and currying favor. Why go after booksellers and librarians, and not, for example, the large media and telecom companies that pump the internet and its trillions of sexually explicit (and worse, much, much worse) images and content directly onto our phones, iPads and computers? Could it be that this would, by extension, implicate every parent who ever bought their child a mobile phone? Or more likely lawmakers probably thought the bookish people were soft targets; after all, the tech companies have deep pockets and, let’s be frank, are pumping billions of dollars through the Texas economy. The booksellers? They don’t account for nearly as much.
What’s more, I suspect there’s a certain amount of self-congratulation among the politicians that they outsmarted the smarty-pants people. Readers are to be viewed as suspicious; after all, they might learn to think for themselves. This isn’t new: look up the late Houston comedian’s Bill Hick’s routine from the 1990s, “What are you reading for?” on YouTube.
Koehler and her colleagues in bookselling and publishing are fighting uphill. They also know that the only argument that politicians will listen to is one that concerns money. “To be honest, I never thought this law would pass. No one in their right mind did,” Koehler told me. “Clearly no one thought this through. In one of the most business-friendly states in America, this is one of the most business-unfriendly laws ever passed.”
A preliminary injunction hearing is being held in Austin on Aug. 18. What can you do to help in the fight? In the past, I might have told you to “write to your legislator.” But it appears our legislators don’t like to read and at this point, that option is passed.
Ideally, I’d urge you to go to Austin and show your support for our freedom to read in person. I know I’ll be there. But if that is not an option for you, how about this: Go to a bookstore. Talk to a bookseller. Ask for a recommendation. Buy the book. Read it. And repeat. You get extra points if you share it with your children, their teachers, friends and family.
It’s easy. That’s it. Buy books. Read. Repeat. Vote with your dollars. Then, when the time comes, vote the knuckleheads responsible for this out of office.
Ed Nawotka is a Houston-based writer and the international editor at Publishers Weekly.
