Since January 20, 2017, and especially after January 17, 2025, the US has been experiencing increasingly xenophobic sociopolitical dynamics. Federal policies have disproportionately targeted people racialized as Latine, who are often presumed to be undocumented regardless of immigration and citizenship status. Several executive orders issued between January and May 2025 further advanced restrictive immigration measures that criminalize Latine communities1.
Higher education is also under attack. Executive Order 14279 inaccurately equated diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices with a partisan agenda.2 This conflation revealed an inaccurate understanding that DEI practices - which are invested in supporting historically minoritized groups, such as Latine communities- perpetuate discrimination. Subsequently, in order to preserve federal funding, higher education institutions throughout the Nuevo South1 quickly leapt to eradicate DEI and the hard-won protections they afford ethnically and racially minoritized groups . For example, the University of North Carolina system issued guidance requiring all state system public universities to remove DEI requirements from general education and major curricula, merely three weeks after the executive order.3
eHSIs: Promising affordances
Despite tumult against Latine communities and higher education writ large, Emerging Hispanic Serving Institutions (eHSIs) persist, and their numbers continue to grow. The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) reported – from 2023-2024 IPEDS data – that eight of ten Nuevo South (NS) states (Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia) have eHSIs (N = 58): North Carolina (NC), has the largest proportion (n = 21) and is followed by Georgia and Oklahoma, (n = 10, n = 10, respectively). NC is additionally among the top seven states nationally for eHSI representation, and the national numbers are growing overall from 412 eHSIs in 2022 to 425 in 2023 across 43 US states.5 The growth of eHSIs is just one positive trend for Latine college students.
eHSI designations offer recognition and resources to institutions that invest in enhanced support for Latine students through intentional campus structures and resources. Although eHSIs have not satisfied the full requirements for HSI designation, they actively bolster resources and implement initiatives to better support Latine students. “Support” for Latine college students comes in many forms, ranging from academic to cultural, personal to co-curricular, and eHSIs are well-positioned to elaborate on these. Ramos et al.6 (2021) explored the relationships between the sociopolitical climate and Latine students’ ethnic identification – or personal understandings of one’s ethnicity and/or race(s). Results demonstrated that Latine students’ had positive ethnic perceptions related to co-curricular engagement with issues of equity and justice affecting their communities – in spite of the racialized discrimination they faced in the South.7 Latine students at eHSIs could have access to a broader variety of co-curricular opportunities that affirm their ethnic and racial identities while also addressing issues that affect their communities.
Cautions for eHSIs
Affordances aside, some institutions may struggle to adequately fulfill the goals associated with the eHSI designation. Sometimes the designation may be merely a marker of structural diversity or a recruitment tool, without focused efforts on tangibly advancing meaningful and? sustained support for Latine students on campus.8 Failure to uphold the spirit of the designation undermines an eHSI’s ability to deliver on its intended promise.
In the Nuevo South, eHSIs are critical to advance postsecondary success for Latine students because of socio-political hostility toward Latine communities. For instance, Camargo et al.9 (2022) found that Latine students in the Nuevo South often perceive that the state undervalues their presence, despite growing demographic significance. Students also reported a troubling invisibility of Latine histories within the college curriculum – contributing to exclusion and alienation on campus. Similar research (Camargo et al., 2024)10documented NS states’ cultural erasure of Latine communities via inadequate access to basic needs and services, further exacerbating Latine precarity. Camargo and colleagues (2024)11 asserted that a Southern Epistemology12 tied to white supremacy, reliant on racism, race evasiveness, and romanticizing of the past, justified and normalized Latine college students’ disenfranchisement. The hostility of the NS is undeniable – and spreading throughout the US: eHSIs have an urgent charge to embody the designation authentically to intentionally foster Latine students’ success.
Future Directions for eHSIs amidst current political pressures
Given the current sociopolitical climate, emerging HSIs must proactively imagine strategies that fulfill the spirit of the designation while deepening their commitment to Latine student success. This may involve finding ways to operate within existing systems without abandoning their equity-driven mission. For instance, eHSIs can build coalitions of institutional agents—faculty, staff, students, and community leaders—who can collaboratively advocate for and sustain support structures for Latine students despite external pressures.
The federal funding landscape is increasingly constrained and unstable due to shifts in federal policy and priorities. eHSIs may reconsider their dependence on federal funding as a primary resource. Instead, eHSIs can seek local funding and partnerships to develop more sustainable finances independent of shifting political priorities. Changing primary funding sources would pose long-term benefits and sustainability for fulfilling commitments to Latine college students.
Given the expansion of anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-DEI policies, eHSIs may find relief and fortitude by building or expanding community connections beyond campus. eHSIs are particularly well placed to emulate interdependence and communitarian perspectives by being present in the community and inviting local grassroots organizations or leaders to student events or classes. Robust relationships that cross the community-campus boundary expand Latine students’ access to richer knowledge, support, and advocacy opportunities.
Historical regional distinctions are vital for eHSIs to fulfill their commitments to Latine students. In the South, especially, robust community organizing among Latine communities is newer than in California which had, for example, the 60s/70s Chicano movements for justice. This historical variation makes cultivating co-curricular affinity spaces even more necessary in the states of the Nuevo South. Co-curricular spaces at eHSIs can be organized around multiple Latine expressions of identity and heritage to empower Latine students in an atmosphere of harmful racialized political dynamics. Co-curricular spaces that explicitly address issues most important to Latine students and their communities are yet another avenue to strengthen the recognition and distinction inherent in the eHSI designation.
References
1. Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). (2025, Jan. 22). Trump issues more executive orders targeting immigration and DEI. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/trump-issues-more-executive-orders-targeting-immigration-and-dei
2. Nadworny, E. (2025, Apr. 24). Trump signs executive actions on education, including efforts to rein in DEI. Morning Edition: National Public Radio (NPR). https://www.npr.org/2025/04/23/nx-s1-5374365/trump-signs-education-executive-actions
3. Scott, A. (2025, Feb. 11). UNC System suspends general education and major-specific DEI requirements. The Daily Tarheel. https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2025/02/university-dei-majors
4. Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). (2025). Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) 2023-24. https://hacu.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2025_EmergingHSILists.pdf
5. Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU). (2025). Emerging Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) 2023-24. https://hacu.net/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/2025_EmergingHSILists.pdf
6. Ramos, D., Camargo, E., Bennett, C., & Alvarez, A. (2021). Uncovering the effects of the sociopolitical context of the Nuevo South on Latinx college students’ ethnic identification. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000307
7. Ramos, D., Camargo, E., Bennett, C., & Alvarez, A. (2021). Uncovering the effects of the sociopolitical context of the Nuevo South on Latinx college students’ ethnic identification. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/dhe0000307
8. Aguilar-Smith, S. (2021). Seeking to serve or $erve? Hispanic-Serving Institutions’ race-evasive pursuit of racialized funding. AERA Open, 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/23328584211057097
9. Camargo, E., Ramos, D., & Bennett, C. B. (2022). Siendo Latinx en el Nuevo South: Defining identity, social justice, and equity. Innovative Higher Education, (47)1-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2023.2179055
10. Camargo, E., Ramos, D., & Bennett, C. B. (2021). Siendo Latinx en el Nuevo South: Defining identity, social justice, and equity. Innovative Higher Education, (47)1-31. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2023.2179055
11. Camargo, E., Ramos, D., Bennett, C. B., Talley, D. Z., Chavis, T., & Kennedy, B. (2024). Making the Nuevo South home: Latinx college students’ forms of resistance to Southern epistemology. Journal of Latinos and Education, 23(2), 659-675. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348431.2023.2179055
12. Whitaker, W., Hardee, S. C., Johnson, L. C., & McFaden, K. L. (2018). The Southern mind and the savage ideal: Deconstructing identities of place in the Cracker State. Teaching Education, 29(4), 407-420.
About the authors
Dras. Bennett, Ramos, and Camargo comprise a research collective dedicated to upholding the assets of and educational justice for Latine college students in the South; they have been researching, publishing, and developing knowledge and confianza together since 2019.
Cathryn B. Bennett, Ph.D. (she, her, hers) is a forced migration scholar and advocate with New Arrivals Institute.
Delma Ramos, Ph.D. (ella, she, her) serves as Associate Professor of Higher Education in the Teacher Education and Higher Education Department at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG).
Elsa Camargo, Ph.D., (ella, her, her) is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.
