No Consolidation

Dear President Davis, Provost Inboden, and Interim Dean Sosa,

We are writing this open letter to express our outrage. The recent decision by the University of Texas at Austin to dismantle the departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies, American Studies, and Mexican American and Latina/o Studies into a single, newly formed Department of Social and Cultural Analysis dismisses the profound contributions and robust expertise of our peers, colleagues, and mentors, along with the intellectual and political traditions that gave birth to these fields of study. We are a group of alumni of these programs as well as the Graduate Program in African Diaspora Anthropology, Borderlands, and Activist Anthropology programs, which preceded the formal establishment of the departments currently being reorganized.

The University has attempted to frame this restructuring as a move to, in the words of UT President Jim Davis, eliminate “significant inconsistencies and fragmentation across the college’s departments.” However, we must name this clearly as a capitulation to the increasingly white supremacist and authoritarian political forces of our time. These actions were preceded by Governor Greg Abbott signing SB 17 into law, banning DEI initiatives in higher education in Texas. While the bill explicitly did not apply to teaching and instruction, we knew that it was only a matter of time before the state would eventually attempt to destroy the pedagogical content and focus of these departments. This became manifestly clear when the administration announced a new policy instructing faculty to avoid teaching “topics and controversies that are not germane” to their courses. The elimination of these Departments was also preceded by the decision in January 2026 to remove the Core U.S. History designation from three courses in African and African Diaspora Studies and Asian and Asian American Studies. In removing this designation, we were shocked to learn that the University claimed that it had done so due to the “narrow topical focus(es) of the courses and administrative concerns about “faculty expertise.” This concern about “faculty expertise” is particularly galling and insulting. Faculty across Ethnic Studies Departments and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies bring well-established expertise to the courses they teach and to their respected publications in top-tier, peer-reviewed academic journals and presses. The University’s attacks on their expertise, scholarship, and pedagogical competence are untenable, unfounded, and profoundly disrespectful.

We could attempt to counter the University’s claims about the “inconsistencies and fragmentation” of these programs by offering evidence to the contrary that clearly establishes the high pedagogical and research standards of these programs. We could point out the number of alumni who are the recipients of awards and fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Mellon Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Inter-American Foundation, and the Fulbright Program, among many others. We could point to the high placement numbers of graduates of these programs as faculty in top-ranked universities in the United States and globally. We could point to the numbers of faculty who have provided expert testimony in international human rights cases or provided expertise while serving in NGOs. We could point to the dozens of books and peer-reviewed articles that we as alumni have published over the last 30-35 years. We could point to our leadership roles serving in the professional associations of our disciplines. We could point to the thousands of undergraduate and graduate students that we have taught and mentored who have gone on to make their mark in academia, the art world, international human rights law, public education, public health, the private sector, and non-governmental organizations and non-profits.

But the truth is that the dismantling and consolidation of these departments is not about academic rigor, research/teaching expertise, or the so-called “fragmentation” of these programs. This decision reflects the University’s decision to collude with the authoritarian right-wing administration of Governor Abbott to roll back more than 50 years of struggle and social change in higher education in Texas. It is part of a broader effort to rewrite and whitewash the history of this country and the contemporary forces of fascism, white nationalism, and anti-democratic conservatism that threaten U.S. democracy. Universities are spaces where we teach students not what to think but how to think. We teach our students to apply the critical tools of social scientific and humanistic inquiry in order to better understand the historical processes and contemporary structural conditions that shape social life. This requires being able to reckon with the complex, violent, and painful histories that have brought us to the present moment in order to imagine a more just, equitable, and livable social order that affirms the inherent dignity of all peoples. In this sense, the attack on these particular areas of scholarship and inquiry constitutes an attack on the university as a whole and its crucial societal role in sustaining democratic institutions.

It is astonishing that rather than defend the university as a space for critical thinking and learning and standing up for academic freedom, the University administration has instead chosen to capitulate to the demands of people who have no expertise whatsoever in higher education, generally, and the fields of study that they are currently attacking, specifically. In so doing, it would appear that the University hopes to protect itself by sacrificing those departments that it views as both dangerous and expendable. Yet, as the case of Columbia University demonstrates, preemptively acceding to the demands of tyrants does not diminish the state’s pressure on higher education. Rather, it emboldens the state – to further crack down on these institutions. As history teaches, authoritarianism is, at its core, an anti-intellectual project that views institutions of higher education as a threat that must be co-opted, silenced, and neutralized.

We want to be clear: throwing these programs under the bus will not protect the University from the authoritarian forces threatening to dismantle the University as such. The radical Right’s assault on the University will not end by removing these programs; instead, the University’s willingness to yield to these anti-democratic demands paves the way for future partisan encroachment into higher education that undermines universities as spaces of intellectual autonomy, critical thought, and academic exchange. This move to consolidate these critical departments is an assault on higher education and democracy itself.

We demand that the University reverse this policy decision and allow these departments to continue carrying out their pedagogical mandate to educate the next generation of global leaders. This includes a stated commitment to protect the faculty, students and staff of these programs. We expect these protections would take the form of defending the departmental autonomy of these units particularly in the areas of administration, faculty hiring, the tenure and promotion process, and departmental staffing. We further demand that the University guarantee the continued operations of the John L. Warfield Center for African And African American Studies, the Center for Women’s and Gender Studies, and the Center for Mexican American Studies as important sites of research and programming. In addition to maintaining departmental autonomy, we further demand that the University take immediate action to uphold academic freedom and defend DEI programmatic and pedagogical initiatives on campus. Faculty should be free to teach the courses that align with their research expertise, as well as courses in the core curriculum, without censorship or repression. Finally, as alumni, we call on the University to stand up to the anti-democratic interventions of Governor Abbott and reject the Republican Party’s extreme partisan and authoritarian efforts to dismantle higher education and refashion it into a vocational school.

“What starts here changes the world” is the official slogan of the University of Texas at Austin. In a certain sense, this is clearly true. By consolidating these departments you have aligned the University with the growing national effort to dismantle critical programs that teach students how to understand the systems of power that shape their lives. This is a disturbing trend, one whose effects are already being felt across the country as many universities follow suit, hoping to avoid the wrath of the federal government.

But this statement, ironically, is also true in ways that you might not fully appreciate. As scholars trained in the Austin School, we carry the vision of transformative education that we learned in Texas. We are everywhere teaching in North America, Central America, South America, Western Europe, and Asia. Our scholarship is transforming the many fields in which we work. We are educators, lawyers, podcasters, artists, filmmakers, policy makers, non-profit leaders, writers, and musicians. No matter how much the University may attempt to dismantle the hard-won gains of these programs and to diminish their contributions, it will never be able to erase the legacy of scholarship, critical education, and activism that we learned at UT and that lives on in our work. It is a light that no one can put out.

While this letter is addressed to you, we are making the contents of our letter public as part of our committed role as educators to contribute to broader societal debates and rendering transparent our position and demands as alumni and as recognized professionals in our fields. We welcome your timely response.

Sincerely,

Courtney Desiree Morris, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program with a Portfolio in Gender and Women’s Studies), 2012
Associate Professor of Gender and Women’s Studies, University of California, Berkeley

Mariana Mora, PhD (Anthropology) 2008
Associate Professor of Anthropology, Center for Advanced Studies and Research in Social Anthropology (CIESAS), Mexico City, Mexico

Christopher A. Loperena, PhD Anthropology, 2012
Associate Professor of Anthropology, The Graduate Center, City University of New York

Angela Stuesse, PhD, Anthropology, 2008
Associate Professor of Anthropology and Global Studies, UNC-Chapel Hill

Elizabeth Velásquez Estrada, PhD, Anthropology, 2017
Assistant Professor of Latina/Latino Studies and Anthropology, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

Sarah Ihmoud, PhD, Anthropology, 2017
Assistant Professor of Anthropology, The College of the Holy Cross

Pablo Gonzalez, PhD, Anthropology, 2011
Continuing Lecturer and Distinguished Teacher, Chicanx and Latinx Studies, UC Berkeley

Maya J. Berry, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2016
Associate Professor of African Diaspora Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Nancy Ríos, PhD, Anthropology, 2013
Director, Institutional Equity and Belonging, Colorado College

Robert Ortiz Stahl, BA, Geography, 2008
PhD Candidate in Anthropology, UC Berkeley

Jennifer Goett, PhD, Anthropology, 2006
Associate Professor of Comparative Cultures and Politics, Michigan State University

Junaid Rana, PhD, Anthropology, 2003
Associate Professor of Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Alex E. Chávez, PhD, Anthropology, 2010
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Notre Dame

Lynn M. Selby, PhD, Anthropology, 2015

Ricardo Tane Ward, PhD, Anthropology, 2014

Gwendolyn Ferreti, PhD, Anthropology (Graduate Portfolio in Mexican American Studies), 2016
Associate Professor of Latinx Studies, Berea College

Elvia Mendoza, PhD, Anthropology, 2016

Jemima Pierre, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2003
Director & Distinguished Faculty of Arts Professor of African and African Diaspora Studies
The Social Justice Institute (GRSJ), University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Kia Caldwell, Ph.D., Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 1999, M.A. Latin American Studies, 1994, Professor, African and African American Studies, Washington University in St. Louis

Juli Grigsby, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2014
Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, Long Beach City College

Nick Copeland, PhD, Anthropology, 2007
Associate Professor of History, Virginia Tech

Julio Cesar de Tavares, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 1998.
Professor of Anthropology, Graduate Program in Social Anthropology
Director of Laboratory of Study and Ethnography on Communication, Culture and Cognition
Federal Fluminense University, Niteroy, Brazil.

Maryam Kashani, PhD, Anthropology, 2014
Associate Professor, Gender and Women’s Studies & Asian American Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Damien Sojoyner, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2009
Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Irvine

Jodi Skipper, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2010
Professor of Anthropology and Southern Studies, The University of Mississippi

Raja Swamy, PhD, Anthropology, 2011
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Tennessee.

Peggy Brunache, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2011
Senior Lecturer in Public History and Archaeology, University of Glasgow, UK

Robert L Adams, Jr., PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 1999, BA, Sociology, 1990
Executive Director, Penn Center, St. Helena Island, SC.

Shanya Cordis, PhD, Anthropology, 2017
Assistant Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Emory University

Gina Sảnchez Gibau, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 1999
Associate Vice President of Faculty Affairs, CSU Channel Islands

Mark Anderson, PhD, Anthropology, 2000
Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Nedra Lee, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2014
Associate Professor of Anthropology, University of Massachusetts Boston

Marc D. Perry, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2004
Associate Professor of African American Studies, Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender & Sexuality Studies, University of Texas at San Antonio

Jennifer R. Nájera, PhD, Anthropology (Doctoral portfolio in Mexican American Studies), 2006
Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California, Riverside

Santiago I. Guerra, PhD, Anthropology (Doctoral Portfolio in Mexican American Studies), 2011
Associate Professor of Southwest Studies, Colorado College

Brenda Sendejo, PhD, Anthropology (Doctoral Portfolios in Mexican American Studies and Women’s and Gender Studies), 2010. Anthropology, BA, 1995.
Owner and Founder, Brenda Sendejo Consulting
Former Associate Professor of Feminist Studies and Anthropology, Southwestern University

Ben Chappell, PhD, Anthropology, 2003
Professor of American Studies, University of Kansas

Teresa A. Velásquez, PhD, Anthropology, 2012
Professor of Anthropology, California State University, San Bernardino

Maria E. Cruz, PhD Anthropology (Graduate Portfolio in Mexican American Studies), 2013
Professor of Chicana/o Studies, San Jose State University and Executive Director of TRIO Programs, McNair Scholars and SSS.

Alix Chapman, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2013
Assistant Professor of African American Studies, Emory University

Mohan Ambikaipaker, PhD, Anthropology, 2011
Associate Professor of World Cultures and Literatures, University of Houston

Shaka McGlotten, PhD, Anthropology, 2005
Professor of Media Studies and Chair of Gender Studies, State University of New York at Purchase

Pablo José López Oro, PhD, African & African Diaspora Studies, 2020
Assistant Professor of Africana Studies & Program Director of Africana Studies, Bryn Mawr College

Whitney Battle-Baptiste, PhD, Anthropology, 2004
Professor, Department of Anthropology, Director, W. E. B. Du Bois Center at University of Massachusetts-Amherst, Past-President, American Anthropological Association (23-25)

Mubbashir Rizvi, PhD (Anthropology), ‘13
Sr. Lecturer of Anthropology, American University

Pablo José López Oro, PhD, African & African Diaspora Studies, 2020
Assistant Professor of Africana Studies & Program Director of Africana Studies, Bryn Mawr College

Bárbara I. Abadía-Rexach, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2015
Associate Professor of Latina/o Studies, San Francisco State University

Sônia Beatriz dos Santos, PhD, Anthropology (African Diaspora Program), 2008
Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Education/ College of Education at the Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro/RJ, Brasil

Simeon Floyd, PhD, Anthropology, 2010
Professor of Anthropology, College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Universidad San Francisco de Quito, Ecuador