Category: In The Media

A number of respected higher education reform leaders, led by the Manhattan Institute, recently issued a statement detailing everything that is wrong with colleges and universities today. Recounting the results of a couple of decades of institutional blight, the comprehensive list names identity politics, DEI, divisive racial quotas, and demonizing the values of Western civilization as the root of campus problems. The higher ed reformers also point to the creation of a dominant leftist ideological culture, which drives every aspect of campus life and systematically discourages open inquiry, debate, and learning. 

The Manhattan Institute academics have asked President Donald Trump to draft a new contract with universities that will pull all federal funds—grants, payments, and student loans—from universities if they do not reverse course.    

It is a good proposal. President Trump has already made significant headway in higher education reform, eliminating DEI and race-based admissions and hiring, as well as demanding that universities rein in anti-Semitism. Focusing on the most visible and belligerent offenders—elite private universities—the president’s leadership is a powerful force in the war to make our universities great again.   

Texas is also fighting that war, and has scored several victories in the last two legislative sessions. Thanks to statewide leadership, particularly that of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who has made higher education reform a priority, the most comprehensive anti-DEI legislation in the country was passed here in 2023. And in the 2025 legislative session, groundbreaking university governance reform legislation also passed.  

Senate Bill 17 banned DEI offices on every state university campus in one fell swoop. It mandated the closing of every DEI office on campus and outlawed any mandatory DEI training. It also ended the requirement that anyone be forced to sign a statement pledging adherence to DEI before they could be considered for a job (that was actually a thing).  

Gov. Greg Abbott signed the law, which echoed his executive order specifying that merit was the only criterion that could be used to hire anyone on a Texas campus or admit any student. Abbott has also made sure that everyone he appoints as a regent to any of the state’s seven flagship universities is committed to ending DEI. 

For the record, some national activists have tried to claim the credit for these reforms, but they came about entirely because of the vision and commitment of Texas statewide leaders, the persistence of the higher education advocates including the Texas Public Policy Foundation, and the demand by Texas taxpayers to stop spending taxpayer dollars on woke programs that were not helping their children succeed in the global marketplace. Other states have written anti-DEI laws, but the success in Texas is due to the vigilant oversight structure built into the legislation.   

Immediately after the DEI legislation passed, DEI officers and faculty in Texas repeatedly told the media they would resist complying with the law. In the months following the bill’s enactment, many campuses did what most observers predicted they would do—they changed the names of their DEI offices—the “Office of Community Engagement” was popular, so was “Office of Belonging,” and they often retained the same staff, who continued to execute DEI policies and programs.  

Fortunately, lawmakers had built legislative monitoring into the bill, and state Sen. Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, the bill’s author, made it clear that passing a law to get rid of DEI on Texas campuses was not a suggestion.  

Just months after the law went into effect, every university president was summoned to the Capitol to update lawmakers on their progress in getting rid of DEI. They were asked about the superficial name changes and DEI programs that were still listed in university materials. With the support of the lieutenant governor, university leaders were reminded that their failure to comply with the law would result in loss of funding.  

Shortly after the first hearings, hundreds of DEI jobs were eliminated on Texas campuses, and projects that divided students and faculty by their racial, ethnic, or gender identity, instead of the merits of their achievements, were gone.   

On-going reports and hearings continue to be required by the Texas Legislature and the Texas’ Higher Education Coordinating Board to ensure no public university backslides on DEI.   

DEI administrators and faculty tried another pushback strategy, insisting that accreditors would not allow the reforms, but that issue was addressed in Texas too. In 2025, building on TFFP’s seminal research into the negative educational impact of accrediting agencies, TPPF was successful in helping lawmakers pass reforms that will give universities the option to select new, non-ideological accreditors. Importantly, no accreditor can require any university to violate Texas law.  

TPPF has also successfully championed a variety of education reforms built around performance-based outcomes, another key to transformational change in higher education. The educational success of every student is the primary goal, along with attention to ensuring a solid return on their investment. 

Throughout the debate over higher education reform in Texas, some administrators and professors have predicted that Texas’ anti-DEI legislation, as well as the new governance and faculty senate reforms, will cause professors to leave, and dissuade people from coming to Texas to replace them, but no exodus has ensued, and job applications on every campus are voluminous.    

Senate Bill 37, another priority of Lt. Gov. Patrick that was signed by Gov. Abbott in June, includes more ground-breaking reforms that bolster the role of the regents who are appointed by the governor to run the universities. SB 37 eliminates the intrusion of faculty councils and senates into the administration of academic institutions and returns the direct responsibility for the hiring of university leadership, as well as oversite of the general education curriculum to the boards. Regents and trustees come from outside academia for a reason. Their real-world experience and insight is critical in ensuring every course of study will prepare graduates to prosper wherever they want to work in the global economy.    

The urgency to review the general education curriculum was apparent after university catalogs revealed hundreds of DEI-based classes being taught on Texas campuses—the University of Texas at Austin had over 400 courses with the term “gender” in the course title—even though they were rarely related to skills needed to graduate. 

Texans share the commitment of the authors of the Manhattan Statement on Higher Education Reform to “push back the forces of radicalism and create the space for real knowledge.” It is a tough challenge, but Texas state leaders have learned that it is not impossible if you pass comprehensive laws and closely monitor compliance, break up accreditation cartels, focus on performance-based outcomes for students and make sure the regents and trustees who are charged with running universities are empowered to do so—overseeing the education of those who will become the next “guardians of our Republic.”

Sherry Sylvester is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the former senior advisor to Texas. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick.   

TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester testifies on SB 37, which helps protect our college students from being bombarded with ideology in class, before the Texas Senate Committee on Public Education K-16.

This commentary was originally published in the San Antonio Express-News.

My sister, award-winning historical romance writer Pamela Morsi, died a few days before Christmas, leaving behind a family of loving children and grandchildren, longtime friends and me, her newly widowed sister.

She’d been battling a terminal genetic disease for more than a year, but she lingered longer than many expected to make sure I was going to be all right.

She also left a legacy of 29 novels that transformed popular women’s fiction in America.

A past president of the San Antonio Romance Writers, my sister earned national accolades for creating down-to-earth, honest heroes who did not rescue beautiful damsels in distress and heroines who were often spinsters or widows, not that beautiful but maybe saddled with running the broken-down farm or finding a way to drag the family out of poverty.

Rendezvous said her novels “transformed everyday people into memorable giants.”

Publishers’ Weekly called her “the Garrison Keillor of romance fiction,” but her range went far beyond Keillor’s Lake Wobegon.

Before she launched a new book, Pam did extensive research — traveling in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Louisiana and Texas to dig into the crannies of communities that had rarely or never been used as romantic settings.

She created stories that revealed the humor in virtually every situation — one of my favorites is set in Dead Dog, Okla. — and what she called the “honor in everyday people.” Both were trademarks of everything she wrote.

Pam was born in Muskogee, Okla., and grew up in the oil fields. She lived in Spain and Charleston, S.C., before coming to San Antonio in 1992.

She had a degree in humanities from Oklahoma State University and a master’s in library science from the University of Missouri.

She began writing stories as a child and never stopped. In 1991, writing at a dressing table in her bedroom after her workday and making dinner for her two children, Pam completed her first novel.

I was living in New York City and cautioned her not to get her hopes up. I told her the chance of her novel even being read were slim and the odds of it being published were infinitesimal.

I worried my sister’s dreams would break her heart, but I was wrong. Her book was bought by a major New York publishing house, which offered her a three-book contract.

She became a USA Today bestselling author, a two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America Award for best historical fiction, and the  winner of the Maggie Prize for Historical Fiction, the Reviewers Choice and a bestselling award from WaldenBooks.

“Simple Jess,” frequently referred to as her masterpiece, featured a hero with cognitive challenges. It was included on the Los Angeles Times list of best love stories of all times.

The Miami Herald said her books “read like fables or parables, grounded in sweetness and human fallibility.”

My sister called herself “a cheerleader for all things human.”

If her readers were dazzled by the authenticity of her writing, she was not. She once told a critic: “The absolutely most well-written character can’t hold a candle to the complexity of the most ordinary human.”

She loved San Antonio. Several of her novels are set in the Alamo City, and she dedicated one of them to the wonderful folks at Delicious Tamales on the South Side.

She died in her home in Alamo Heights in a house built in the 1920s that she and her late husband, Bill Kiel, had restored to its original glory. She chose the Bishop Jones Center at the top of Torcido Drive to be her final resting place, alongside her husband.

Our city has always been home to so many wonderful writers and artists. We have lost one who was not just very important to me but whose body of work will always be remembered for the lessons it teaches about laughter, love and the “honor in everyday people.”

Sherry Sylvester is a former political writer for the San Antonio Express-News and a distinguished senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Jan 3, 2025
Sherry Sylvester

This commentary was originally published in Townhall.

Texas Longhorns were stunned when the news broke that the University of Texas at Austin had fired as many as 60 employees connected to so-called “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” programs. A week prior to the firing, Texas Senate Education Committee Chairman Brandon Creighton, R-Conroe, had alerted Texas universities that he would be calling them to the Capitol in May to provide an update on their progress in ridding Texas campuses of DEI.

With the support of Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Creighton wrote the strongest anti-DEI legislation in the nation, and his letter reminded university leaders that failure to comply with the law could ultimately affect their funding.

DEI is the acronym for “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” a deceptively named race-based ideology that divides people into two groups—oppressors, who are mostly white people, although increasingly Jews and Asians are included in the oppressor group—and victims, who are African American, Hispanic or gay. Sometimes women are included in the victim group, though rarely white women. Victims also include those who are suffering from gender dysphoria.

DEI advocates have been working for more than a decade to re-segregate university campuses in Texas and across the country so “victims” aren’t required to interact with “oppressors” in classes and activities. Many Texas universities have segregated graduations for Black students and Hispanic students. “Lavender graduations” are held for gay students.

Arguing in favor of DEI programs, a student at the University of Texas at Austin, where only 5.5 percent of students are African-American despite two decades of DEI programs, said, “I don’t feel like I go to a (predominately white institution) because I’m always around my Black friends”

Imagine if a white student boasted, “I don’t feel like I go to a racially integrated university because I only hang out with my white friends.”

There has been massive blowback on Texas campuses following the passage of Senate Bill 17. The Austin-American Statesman reported that both students and faculty are rattled, exhausted and confused. DEI has infiltrated every aspect of university life, because it seems administrators have been allowed to put forward almost anything in the name of DEI without assessing the impact on students or its relevance to the educational mission of the academic institution.

For example, in a move that harkens back to the “Whites Only” signs before the Civil Rights Act, in the name of DEI, at least one flagship university established separate study rooms in the library for only LGBTQ students. When the library was crowded, other students were required to sit on the floor—whether the separate study rooms had people in them or not.

Students at Texas A&M lamented that when the so-called “Pride Center” closed down, there would be no place for women students to get binders to smash down their breasts so they looked like men. But administrators at the University of Texas at Dallas bragged that they were able to keep their “transition closet” open to provide cross-dressing outfits and supplies for students who believe they are the other gender. The officials insist they are now using “transition” as a broader term.

When the University of Texas announced that it would change the name of the Gender and Sexuality Center to the “Women’s Community Center,” it stated its mission was to provide “a place for Longhorns of all genders to connect, find resources, and get support around experiences of intersectionality, community, and gender solidarity.”

“Longhorns of all genders?” Clearly, they just didn’t get it. Leaders of the Women’s Community Center are among those who are being let go. Other campuses have also been slow to respond.

An official at Texas A&M was caught on tape saying that DEI programs were simply being “rebranded.” At the University of Texas at Tyler, an administrator said they were getting around SB 17 by “being creative.” At Texas Tech, an administrator said DEI programs were now all operating under the Campus Access and Engagement program.

Sen. Creighton made clear in his letter to university leaders that none of this is permissible under the law.

These frantic administrators who are clinging to DEI seem unaware that the biggest indictment against it is that it doesn’t work. A British study is the latest to reveal what we have seen in Texas—DEI makes no difference in increasing the recruitment of minority and marginalized students or improving their academic outcomes or career opportunities. In Texas, shutting down racially divisive and ineffective DEI policies wasn’t a suggestion—it is Texas law that could cost them their funding.

States like Texas and Florida are fighting back against the left’s radical ideology that permeates nearly every major American institution. The panel discusses the success conservatives are having and the where the battle moves next.

To watch more videos from the 2024 Texas Policy Summit, click here.

Brian and Derek have the pleasure of sitting down with TPPF’s Distinguished Senior Fellow Sherry Sylvester to discuss the results of the 2024 Primary Election, from a national, statewide and, local perspective.

Subscribe to The Right Idea on Apple or Spotify.

TPPF Distinguished Senior Fellow Sherry Sylvester explains the intentions of Texas Senate Bill 17, which bans Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) from public higher education institutions.

Tuesday, December 5, 2023 | 12 PM CST

Diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have become deeply rooted in American society, becoming a top priority for corporations, universities, and colleges across the country. But does pursuing diversity actually unify Americans?

Please join Dr. Carol Swain in a discussion about her new book, Adversity of Diversity, taking a deep dive into the world of DEI programs and the damage they are causing to American society. Moderated by Sherry Sylvester, this event will trace the roots of diversity, equity, and inclusion, why universities and corporations everywhere are adopting them, and why we must institute real unity programs in their place.

Speakers

• Sherry Sylvester (Moderator) – Distinguished Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Carol Swain, Ph.D. – Author, Adversity of Diversity

As Israel fights to destroy Hamas and violence in the Middle East threatens to escalate, the collaboration between radical progressive “woke” groups in America and radical Islamists is becoming glaringly visible with a resultant surge in anti-Semitism. The present unrest in America has its roots in identity politics and its ongoing war against Western ideas and moral order.

TPPF hosted a livestream discussion of this dangerous partnership and the vulnerability the radical progressive groups are exposing America to at every level. TPPF’s Sherry Sylvester, Chuck DeVore, and Erin Valdez, along with Rabbi Dan Ain, have everything you need to know about the rise of anti-Semitism in the United States.

Speakers

• Sherry Sylvester (Moderator) – Distinguished Senior Fellow, Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Rabbi Dan Ain – Rabbi and Founder, Moontower Minyan
• Hon. Chuck DeVore – Chief National Initiatives Officer, Texas Public Policy Foundation
• Erin Valdez – Policy Director, Next Generation Texas, Texas Public Policy Foundation