How a radical nationwide organization’s tentacles extend into Texas higher education.

How a radical nationwide organization’s tentacles extend into Texas higher education.

By | Texas Scorecard | June 23, 2025

A national academic association that promotes radical ideologies and activism has stashed assets across Texas universities, most notably at UT-Austin.

One of those assets is Pauline “Polly” Strong. She directs the program in Native American and indigenous studies and is a professor of anthropology.

Her official biography lists “feminist anthropology,” “Identity and difference,” and “Politics of representation” among her interests. She brags about having “published on the representation of Native American cultures and identities in North American literature, scholarship, film, art, museums, sports events, legislation, social movements, and youth organizations.”

Her views are in line with those of her associated organizations. She is the current president of the UT-Austin chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), a nationwide trade association for left-wing faculty that is on the front lines of the culture war in academia.

AAUP

For the past decade, revelations regarding the radical indoctrination and activism efforts of government universities in America have reached a fever pitch and have triggered a nationwide effort for reform, including within Texas.

AAUP is part of the organized resistance to those reforms within academia. The association framed President Donald Trump’s efforts to hold universities accountable for left-wing ideological capture as “political attacks on higher education.”

Founded in 1915, AAUP says its mission is to advance “academic freedom and shared governance” while protecting faculty compensation and shielding it from oversight.

In Texas’ government universities, “shared governance” describes a system in which universities’ boards of regents, which are accountable to Texans through the public servants who hire them, share power with the faculty. The faculty is represented by an unaccountable faculty senate—or, in the case of UT-Austin, a faculty council.

Critics have argued that faculties have been a source of woke ideology at universities, leveraging “shared governance” to advance their activist agendas both in the classroom and on campus.

The Texas Legislature abolished the practice of “shared governance” in the recently passed Senate Bill 37.

AAUP has been a vocal opponent of higher education reform efforts during the past two state legislative sessions.

In 2025, the organization opposed restoring oversight powers to boards of regents, and it argued in favor of DEI in 2023 when the state sought to ban it from higher education.

AAUP has also attacked former University of Texas President Jay Hartzell over his refusal to allow Columbia University-style tent encampments during anti-Israel protests last year.

The AAUP’s resistance to reform is not new, especially at UT-Austin.

During the 1940’s, the group vocally opposed efforts by the University of Texas’ Board of Regents to remove university president Homer Rainey. Regents had sought to terminate Rainey’s employment due to several acts of insubordination.

When regents refused to reinstate Rainey, AAUP censured the University of Texas until 1953. While this form of “censure” was toothless, it nevertheless impacted the reputation of the university.

Strong’s AAUP membership provides the organization influence on the UT-Austin campus.

Pauline Strong

Texas Scorecard reviewed Professor Strong’s university bio, salary information, academic writing, course syllabi, social media accounts (primarily X), campaign donations, and media interviews.

While a comprehensive examination of Strong’s background would span dozens of pages, public information consistently reveals her to be a left-wing ideologue whose views and values do not align with those of Texas’ taxpayers and voters.

Strong’s formal academic writing covers a variety of woke topics.

In 2014, she wrote an article in “Anthropology Now” that accuses professional sports teams such as the Atlanta Braves, Kansas City Chiefs, the then-Cleveland Indians, and then-Washington Redskins of “trademarking racism.”

To advance her ideology, she framed the use of American Indian-related sports team names as inherently denigrating:

[T]he mascot slot is a way of objectifying, appropriating and signaling the inferiority of Native American cultures and peoples. The mascot slot is certainly not, despite enthusiasts’ claims to the contrary, a way of honoring them.

Other examples of Strong’s academic writing include “The Mascot Slot: Cultural Citizenship, Political Correctness, and Psuedo-Indian Sports Symbols,” “John Dewey’s Philosophy of Education in a Neoliberal Age,” and “Cultural Appropriation and the Crafting of Racialized Selves in American Youth Organizations: Toward an Ethnographic Approach.”

The use of woke terminology such as “cultural appropriation,” “neoliberal age,” and “racialized selves” illustrates her worldview and the lens through which she approaches her work.

Strong’s official curriculum vitae lists nearly 20 pages of similar material.

In spring 2022, she taught a course titled Representational Practices, which the university describes as a “graduate-level seminar [that] will consider, first, some theories and critiques of representation current in anthropology, Native American and Indigenous Studies, gender studies, cultural studies, and other disciplines[.]”

Topics for discussion in the course included “the relationship of representation to race, colonialism, objectification and appropriation; postmodern and postcolonial forms of representation.”

In spring 2021, Strong taught Introduction to Feminist Anthropology. The course covered “a survey of the impact of first, second, and third wave feminism within anthropology,” and “contemporary topics including feminism and science; feminist methodologies; culture and biology; sex, sexuality and gender; the anthropology of reproduction; and the anthropology of power.”

According to TexasCollegeSalaries.com, taxpayers currently pay Strong $137,818 annually. It is unclear whether that figure refers to total compensation or is limited to the portion designated as salary. An open records request for Strong’s current employment agreement is pending.

Strong has made numerous donations to Democrat politicians, including Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, and Colin Allred.

She also makes extensive use of social media. She lists her pronouns on LinkedIn:

But X is where Strong has the most substantial presence.

Consistent with her stances on team names documented above, in 2020, Strong attacked her employer’s iconic fight song, “The Eyes of Texas.” She closed her tweet with the hashtag “#antiracism.”

In 2021, she welcomed incoming freshmen to campus by encouraging them to take the COVID-19 vaccine, which has since come under intense scrutiny.

Additionally, she has posted in favor of DEI and a left-wing version of so-called “academic freedom” and has publicly taunted conservative elected officials, including Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz.

AAUP and UT-Austin did not respond to a request for comment.

The values and views of AAUP’s individual members illustrate the nature of the group and are noteworthy for all Texans. This is especially true when these individuals are employed by a taxpayer-subsidized institution.

Texas Scorecard will continue to examine higher education in the state. If you or anyone you know has information regarding universities, please contact our tip line: scorecardtips@protonmail.com.

Adam Cahn is a journalist with Texas Scorecard. A longtime political blogger, Adam is passionate about shedding light on taxpayer-subsidized higher education institutions.