Opinion: What's happening in Texas is an assault on American democracy

Opinion by Peniel E. Joseph

CNN
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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.

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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.

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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.

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Long read but well worth it. Time someone called the govenator out.