I received the following notice from Dr. Angela Valenzuela of the University of Texas. She has written extensively about diversity, exclusion, inclusion, equity, and history. Her original letter was sent to executives at the American Educational Research Association. She shared it with me, and I am sharing it with you.
As I am sure everybody knows, we are in the throes of a major fight here in Texas over DEI, academic freedom, CRT in higher education, tenure, and so much more and these folks are loaded with hubris—like they can just roll right over us. That’s what DeSantis is demonstrating. So I and others have been working for close to a year now in trying to unite our communities. We are doing this through an organization we’ve named, Black Brown Dialogues on Policy and now, so that we don’t become Florida by uniting as black and brown humanity. Intersectional. Intergenerational. Civil rights, Gen Z inclusive, white allies—and all people of good conscience. This is the Beloved Community, El Pueblo Amado.I just love how it sounds in Spanish.
There’s more that unites than divides us. We’ll have the program up soon, as well, on our website.
Next Saturday, March 11, BBDP is organizing a Virtual Town Hall on DEI and Ethnic Studies and all are welcome to attend:
We get going at 10AM CST and you can view it and post questions from our Facebook page:https://www.facebook.com/TeamBlackBrown
We hope to have the Virtual Town Hall program up on our website soon.
AERA luminaries Drs. Francesca Lopez, Christine Sleeter, Kevin Kumashiro and Stella Flores are part of the program. Texas legislators and two Gen Z panels, too.
Media industry professionals are producing it and we are using this Virtual Town Hall as an informational opportunity and organizing tool through which to, on the one hand, pass Ethnic Studies legislation (HB 45), and on the other, defeat terrible bills like those listed below.
HB 45 is about Ethnic Studies. It doesn’t make ES a requirement. Rather, it creates a pathway to a high school diploma through the taking of either Mexican American or African American Studies, courses that are currently electives in state policy at the high school level. Native American Studies and Asian American Studies were “passed,” along with the other two courses in 2018. I and so many others were involved in its passage. And the SBOE has waited for a more conservative board to get in to decide whether and when to align Native American Studies and Asian American Studies to state standards. They’re foot dragging. What we need is a law, or HB 45.
Check out these horrible bills.
The specific bills represent an attack on DEI in higher education: House Bill 1006, House Bill 1607, and House Bill 1046. I heard there was one more, too. We can’t keep up. But these are sufficiently draconian to be concerned.
House Bill 1006 seeks to “prohibit: (A) the funding, promotion, sponsorship, or support of: (i) any office of diversity, equity, and inclusion; and (ii) any office that funds, promotes, sponsors, or supports an initiative or formulation of diversity, equity, and inclusion beyond what is necessary to uphold the equal protection of the lawsunder the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.”
House Bill 1607 is the higher education analogue to Senate Bill 3 last legislative session that some have dubbed the “Texas anti-CRT” bill, House Bill 1006.
HB 1046 seeks to prohibit what they’re calling “political tests” in higher education utilized in hiring decisions or in student admissions as a condition of employment, promotion, or admission, to identify a commitment to or make a statement of personal belief supporting any specific partisan, political, or ideological set of beliefs, including an ideology or movement that promotes the differential treatment of any individual or group based on race or ethnicity.
It will really make a difference if folks from all over the country attend to convey solidarity with our cause. Public statements, letters to Governor Greg Abbott and the Lt. Governor Dan Patrick in defense of Ethnic Studies, CRT, and DEI are also much appreciated.
I’m sure I missed some folks, so apologies if I left you out. We have a lot on our plates at the moment.
Hasta pronto! Buenas noches. May all have a blessed week.
Peace / paz,
Angela Valenzuela, Ph.D.
Co-founder and convener
Black Brown Dialogues on Policy
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Forwarded to National Literacy Association blogsite. CBK
I don’t know about most of this stuff, but universities should not be allowed to require job applicants for professorships to submit statements demonstrating their understanding of “diversity and equity” and explaining how their academic work will increase diversity and equity. If HB 1046 bans that practice, it’s a good bill.
Hello FLERP! who writes, ” . . . universities should not be allowed to require job applicants for professorships to submit statements demonstrating their understanding of ‘diversity and equity’ and explaining how their academic work will increase diversity and equity. If HB 1046 bans that practice, it’s a good bill.”
Please tell us: why not? CBK
I don’t think physicists, chemists, mathematicians, historians (and so on) should have to show that their work promotes diversity because it has nothing to do with their field. It is effectively a political test.
But that’s just me. I assume my opinion on this is shared by nobody here.
Hello Flerp! You write: “I don’t think physicists, chemists, mathematicians, historians (and so on) should have to show that their work promotes diversity because it has nothing to do with their field. It is effectively a political test. But that’s just me. I assume my opinion on this is shared by nobody here.”
I think it’s a fine opinion, . . . as long as you are talking about, as you say, teaching subjects (except history) such as physics, etc., where notably the content doesn’t include people (except our physical aspects) or the sciences and fields that are about us/them. Where biases that commonly occur in those fields (still) is in the prior selection of students and faculty . . . not in teaching the subjects once the curriculum is set. (Certainly you understand the movement away from sexism and racism over the last 50 years at least).
But the programs they are talking about are different in that they are BOTH tacitly open to biases of powerful people in the beforehand selection of students and faculty, AND in how such subjects as diversity itself are directly taught ABOUT, and presumably its history and how it is still a part of our culture.
So the question becomes, can a person who is not aware of their own biases developed in their own past (or aware of them and still keep them?) be qualified to teach ABOUT those same biases, and of course the political attitudes that not only come into play with individuals, with the whole range of content, but also in the foundations of democracy itself which is about equality and freedom?
How would it be if a fascist or racist were chosen to teach such a course?
I think administrators (and developed protocols) owe it to those who are paying for their children to get a good education deserve a modicum of deeper scrutiny in such course materials and instruction?
The difference, again, between physics and diversity (for instance) is in the fact that physics is not essentially political (and intelligent, moral, social, spiritual); and where those aspects are human so that both students and teachers and administrators are already involved in development aspects of those qualities.
Your point, though, is about the vast difference between the study of humans and of non-human subject matter. Though the teaching of the foundations of the natural sciences tacitly includes teachers and students seeking the truth about those sciences under the accepted protocols of empirical method, those foundations ARE political in the fact that those studies require an openness to the truth of their evidence (whatever that is). That openness is essential . . . rather than lies or propaganda, or believing a leader, or twisting history on the side of (in this case) biases on the side of (to put it bluntly) white males, and variably biased against all sort of (diversities of) color, nationalities, religions, etc.
So as long as everyone is on the same page about openness to understanding/truth-finding via the evidence, someone’s ethnicity takes a back seat to their intelligence and willingness to study and make a contribution to the field. but again, those biases are clearly evident in ethnicities getting seats in or teaching those classes in the first place.
Complicated or not, it’s our job (and those in academia) to understand it and find a way through that complexity. But it’s not the first time politicians have distrusted teachers. Would you trust Ron DeSantis or Trump to teach a class in ANYTHING, much less diversity? CBK
I can see where the science classes might become deeply entangled in racial and gender issues. For example, scientists discuss the sources of intelligence. Nature vs. nurture. Is there a racial or gender component to intelligence. In the past, scientists have made proclamations about racial and gender differences in intelligence and in capacity to learn. Our history has had many scientific treatises on the IQ of difference racial and ethnic groups. If a scientist believed sincerely that intelligence is determined by the color of one’s skin, how would he or she interact with students of color? Is that a fair question? Or should universities be indifferent to the ideological views of their faculty? Just wondering.
Diane The difference is between the kinds of subjects, human or otherwise. Though again, potential biases come forward in the selection of faculty and students in the first place. But once a student or faculty is teaching the field on its own principles, e.g., physics, the potential for biases tends to recede in a way that they do not and should not when teaching in the human sciences and fields. The principles of physics are the same for anyone trying to understand them.
Whereas with diversity, political viewpoints, for example, are a necessary part of the subject matter as well as a developmental aspect of both the teachers and the students. So in some sense, administrators and program supervisors would be endorsing ignorance if they didn’t take into consideration such viewpoints in some way. The more subtle point in your note is about ideology . . . a good teacher in my view and in the view of many others is not ideologically driven; and if they have ‘views’, they can explore, explain and address questions about them where students are left to their own questions, and not the imposition of this or that ideology. The only ideology at work in education is the “idea” of openness . . . it’s a “univers-ity.”
But we wouldn’t have these kinds of questions and problems to work through in an authoritarian political system, or open universities, for that matter. Just think what the reigning authority tells you to think . . . or get a bullet in your head.
As an aside, Jefferson designed his University of Virginia with a “round” of one story student “dorm” rooms . . . circled around a large grassy area where all the rooms opened out to the inner circle, . . . look up, and you saw the universe. CBK
Diane Correction in my last note:
. . . and if they have ‘views’, they can explore, explain and address questions about them where students are left to their own questions, and NOT with the imposition of this or that ideology. (Big difference!)
Of course if you are teaching a particular person’s
works, say, Montessori, Plato, Kant or Piaget, you would identify THEIR ideology as a part of understanding that person’s works, or in the case of biography; if they were important to the work. CBK
“I assume my opinion on this is shared by nobody here.”
Wrong FLERP!
I’d bet more than just me agree with you. This is not quite the totally polarized blog as your statement suggests.
Thank you to Catherine King and Diane Ravitch for your well-reasoned and carefully argued responses to someone who doesn’t understand that TEACHING and INTERACTING WITH and MENTORING students is also part of “the work” of being a university professor.
Apparently, there are people who believe that teaching and mentoring of students are “political” actions that have nothing to do with the “field” of being a university professor.
flerp! did not explain WHY he is certain that promoting diversity has nothing to do with the job of teaching and mentoring students. Just saying “it’s political” is meaningless and evasive. People who aren’t trolling but truly believe the slogans they offer up aren’t afraid of defending their ideas.
“It’s political” evokes typical right wing sloganeering. There is nothing more “political” than throwing out meaningless phrases like “it’s political” and refusing to engage in a discussion or defend one’s views.
Notice the careful and considerate way that Catherine and Diane responded. They treated flerp! with respect, and tried to engage him in a serious discussion and he responded with another meaningless slogan and the gratuitous phrase “But that’s just me. I assume my opinion on this is shared by nobody here.” As if he is being victimized by people like Catherine and Diane who tried to engage him to defend his views.
There was a time not so long ago where women in the sciences experienced what it meant to be in universities where nearly all the professors were white men who were certain that their condescending treatment of female students was simply a reflection of “girls” inferiority. Those professors sought out the white male students they felt comfortable mentoring not for any sexist or racist reasons but because they “knew” those white male students were superior.
I don’t understand anyone who can’t defend their own assertions that it is “political” to expect professors whose job INCLUDES teaching a diverse group of students to think about their own implicit biases when they interact and mentor and teach students.
The “But that’s just me” defense does suggest that someone’s opinion is biased and not fact-based and they know it.
It really is amazing how comfortable people are to express their bigotries these days, isn’t it? Thanks for pointing out the incessant hypocrisy.
Trump said that it’s ok to be politically incorrect, which meant to show your bigotry w/o shame.
“Trump said that it’s ok to be politically incorrect, which meant to show your bigotry w/o shame.”
That’s code for “become more like Trump by abandoning your conscience, your integrity, and your moral comportment.” Sounds like gang-talk to me. CBK