Private Foundations and the Undocumented Student Movement in Higher Education

Kyle G. Southern

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Higher Education) in The University of Michigan 2019

Doctoral Committee:

Professor Stephen L. DesJardins, Chair Associate Professor Cassie L. Barnhardt, University of Iowa Professor of Clinical Practice John C. Burkhardt Assistant Professor Megan Tompkins-Stange

Kyle G. Southern

[email protected]

ORCID iD: 0000-0003-4473-4543

DEDICATION

This dissertation is dedicated to the students who have shown a way toward a more equitable nation through their courage and activism, and to the higher education professionals who each day seek to live their commitments to social justice in their work.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The long, strange trip toward completing a doctoral program involves support along the way from a constellation of supporters. I begin here by thanking members of my dissertation committee, who bore with patience the fits and starts of my effort: Drs. Stephen L. DesJardins,

Cassie L. Barnhardt, John C. Burkhardt, and Megan Tompkins-Stange. I also thank Steve for serving as my academic advisor throughout my time as a doctoral student and candidate at the

University of Michigan. Additional thanks to John for his mentorship at both the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good—the key factor in my decision to come to Michigan— and the National Center for Institutional Diversity. Cassie’s mentorship, even as an early-career faculty member at the University of Iowa, and Megan’s willingness to take on the work of a cognate member also go a long way toward explaining any strengths in this dissertation. Its weaknesses remain my own.

Beyond the members of my committee, I must acknowledge two mentors who I have often referred to as my academic mothers. Dr. Betty Overton provided critical leadership and mentorship to me and many other students at the National Forum. Her course on the History of

American Higher Education also provided a foundation of rich and diverse perspectives from which to build throughout my years at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary

Education. Dr. Stella M. Flores, now of New York University, saw something in me as a

Master’s of Public Policy student at Vanderbilt University more than a decade ago. As her research assistant, I developed a deep interest in and passion for work addressing access and

iii opportunity for undocumented students. Her quick but profound comment on my final paper for her course encouraged me to pursue further work in the field of higher education. Her encouragement then and since goes a long way toward explaining my commitment.

Another professor from my time as a Master’s student, Dr. Michael McLendon, also had a great influence on my development as a scholar and decision to attend the University of

Michigan. The example of his teaching, writing, and connecting research to policy inspired me then and have remained in my mind as a doctoral student.

From even before the first day of classes at U of M, I was fortunate to walk this journey alongside eight other cohort members. The intellectual pushes and pulls from this group provided a foundation for improving my work and deepening my thinking. I thank Jennifer Pollard, Grant

Jackson, Jon McNaugthan, Kimberly Reyes, Feven Girmay, Esmeralda Hernandez, Michael

Brown, and Matthew DeMonbrun for their contributions. In addition, I thank our honorary cohort member, Xiaoyang Ye, for his friendship, sense of humor, and intellectual example.

Although not members of my cohort, other students who shared time with me at CSHPE have been critical to whatever success I have achieved. These colleagues and friends include, but are not limited to: Aurora Kamimura, Mark Kamimura, Brian Burt, Christopher J. Nellum,

Gordon Palmer, Kim Lijana, Raul Gamez, Noe Ortega, Tim Carroll, Will Cherrin, Kamaria

Porter, and Emily House. Beyond the program, friends made through my time in the School of

Education include Chauncey Smith, Bill Lopez, and Charles Wilkes. As a CSHPE spouse, Dan

Lijana’s is also a friendship I value highly from my time in Ann Arbor.

No acknowledgements would be complete without noting another set of mentors and sources of inspiration. These guiding lights include Ignacio “Nacho” Hernandez, Susana

Hernandez, Wil Del Pilar, Matt Matera, Victor Sáenz, Richard Reddick, Susana Muñoz,

Cristobal Salinas, Nabih Haddad, Luis Ponjuan, and Trace Camacho.

Practically, completing this program would not have been possible without the support of

Melinda Richardson and Linda Rayle in the CSHPE office, as well as that of Jessica Mason in the School of Education’s Office of Student Affairs. I am grateful for their guidance through the labyrinthine processes toward degree completion.

For this study, I am grateful for the busy higher education and philanthropy professionals who took time to serve as informants. Their insights, experiences, and candor are the heart of the project and my findings. More importantly, I am grateful for the work they have committed to doing for their careers to advance social equity through the power of higher education.

As important as friends and mentors in the field have been, friends outside of it may be just as crucial in completing a Ph.D. For me, especially crucial friends have included Mike

Gabrys, Andy Enkeboll, Sean Tierney, Boone Lancaster, Austin Dirks, Robel Bekele, Ryan

Kurth, Jan Margaret Craig, Cara Bilotta, Dr. Stuart Hill, Wyatt Smith, Lauren Page Black, Hikel

Boohaker, Joseph Sheeran, Jonah Garson, Lucie Rhoads, Ravi “Guru” Singh, William Bowles,

Josh D. Carpenter, and Myles Zueger. I am also grateful for a group of friends that coalesced in

Chicago—all of whom have served as teachers at some level—but are now spread across the country: Nate Burns, Paul Elkins, Taylor Hindle, and Matthew Hollander.

I have worked with brilliant and supportive colleagues in two professional roles while working, in fits and starts, on my dissertation over the last four years. Among this group, I am most grateful to have shared work with Indira Dammu, Jeremy Meredith, Kenyatta Lovett, and

Andrew Hunt.

Last fall, I visited Turney Industrial Complex in Hickman County, Tennessee. Through

Nashville State Community College, men who are incarcerated at Turney can earn an associate’s degree in advance of their release. There, I met Isiah Robinson. We have kept in contact, and I was honored to attend his graduation inside Turney earlier this year. He continued to write and check my dissertation progress. I am grateful to have had him as an accountability partner, and I am excited to see how Isiah uses his own degree as a foundation for a better life ahead starting next year.

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, I am grateful for the members of my family who loved and supported me throughout my doctoral journey—and whose love and support enabled me to become the person who committed to the journey. My cousin Matthew Lawson and I grew up just a few miles from each other, and although we have very different lives, always share a bond from those early years. By chance, a previous research project led me across the continent, where I connected in 2014 with my cousins Daniel Murray-Badal and Hannah (Badal)

Getachew-Smith. Coming to know them and their love—along with their partners Kara and

David, respectively—has been one of the great and unexpected joys to come from these years.

Although they all transitioned from this world before I started my doctoral program applications and the thought of going away to the University of Michigan would surely have been foreign to them, I hope I have made my grandparents proud. I was fortunate to have Bess

Anderson Southern, Jack Madison Southern, Frances White Griffin, and Grady Miller Griffin, Jr. all within a few miles while growing up in North Carolina. They showed me unconditional love and connected me to the past, effectively rooting me for whatever was to come in my future.

Their children, my parents Stanley Southern and Karen Griffin taught me what hard work looks like and how to live with good humor. My Dad drove a cement truck through the hot North

Carolina summers to make a living—and still does. My Mom was an entrepreneur with a passion for education and good writing. Along with my grandparents, they provided a life that included everything I needed, but not everything I wanted. For that firm foundation, along with all they have done and given and demonstrated over my entire life, I am and will always be most profoundly grateful.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

DEDICATION ii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iii

LIST OF TABLES x

LIST OF APPENDICES xi

ABSTRACT xii

CHAPTER

I. Undocumented Students, Philanthropy, and the Present Study 1

Background 5

Research Questions 25

Guiding Theory 26

Data and Methods 29

Chapter Conclusion 42

II. Immigration Policy, Activism, and Patronage 44

Accounting for the Undocumented Population 45

Brief History of Federal Immigration Policy 46

States and Immigration Policy 50

Undocumented Student Activism 54

Philanthropy’s Investment in Undocumented Students 58

Professional Associations and DREAM Act Advocacy 60

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Chapter Conclusion 62

III. College Network for Educational Equity 64

The Setting: CNEE’s Home Institution 65

Case Study Informants and Data Collection 69

Findings 72

Discussion 89

Chapter Conclusion 92

IV. Western Public Research University 94

Case Study Informants and Data Collection 98

Findings 100

Discussion 126

Chapter Conclusion 129

V. Implications for Theory, Practice, and Research 132

Implications for Theory 133

Implications for Practice 145

Implications for Research 150

Chapter Conclusion 155

VI. Conclusion 157

APPENDICES 161

REFERENCES 177

LIST OF TABLES

TABLE

1. Study Informants 30

2. CNEE Artifacts 71

3. WPRU Artifacts 99

B1. CNEE Case Study Informants 164

B2. WPRU Case Study Informants 165

D1. Codebook for CNEE Case Study 173

D2. Codebook for WRPU Case Study 175

LIST OF APPENDICES

APPENDIX

A. Definitions of Terms 162

B. Study Informants 164

C. Sample Interview Protocols 166

D. Codebooks 173

ABSTRACT

Undocumented students in the United States face uneven prospects for pursuing educational credentials beyond high school as a result of restrictive federal policies and divergent policies and practices across states, systems, and individual institutions of higher education. In the absence of comprehensive immigration reform to open more direct pathways to higher education for this marginalized student population, private foundations have funded a diverse set of initiatives that have effectively financed the construction of an emerging strategic action field

(Fligstein & McAdam, 2012) within the broader field of higher education.

In this dissertation, I explore the influence of private foundations on the undocumented student movement. Employing a grounded theory approach, I conducted two case studies—one of a prestigious four-year public flagship university and a second of a national network of community colleges established to share best practices, advocacy strategies, research, and other resources across varying institutional and state policy contexts. Findings show private foundations have played essential roles in constructing this emerging field during a time of rapidly shifting national immigration policy and political climate. However, foundations have focused their investment more on intermediaries—including community-based organizations, advocacy nonprofits, and on-campus undocumented student resource centers—than direct student support such as scholarships or lobbying campaigns. This approach enables foundations to play a traditional role in partnership with established and new institutions alike to build an emerging organizational field.

xii

I present implications for further research, professional practice within both higher education and philanthropy, and theoretical understanding of the complex relationships involved in building a field of support in a highly contentious context.

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CHAPTER I

Undocumented Students, Philanthropy, and the Present Study

Each year, thousands of high school graduates in the United States face uncertain prospects for pursuing higher education because of their undocumented immigration status. For decades, students, their families, and advocates have worked to make higher education more accessible and affordable for these students. Still, postsecondary prospects vary widely depending on the state in which a student resides and the ongoing legal limbo of their status in this country. States, postsecondary education systems, and institutions of higher education1 have grappled with issues affecting the ability of undocumented immigrant students to access educational benefits such as in-state tuition rates and publicly funded financial aid programs

(Flores, 2010b; McLendon, Mokher, & Flores, 2011; Nicholls, 2013). To date, at least 18 states and many institutions have adopted more inclusive stances toward undocumented students and students who have attained residency status through the federal Deferred Action for Childhood

Arrivals (DACA) program. Another set of states—primarily in the South—have adopted more restrictive measures, as detailed below (Barnhardt, Reyes, Vidal Rodriguez, & Ramos, 2016;

Muñoz & Espino, 2017; National Conference of State Legislatures, 2019).

Although the movement to expand postsecondary opportunity for undocumented students has achieved some policy successes, the movement’s goals of enhanced affordability and access

1 For the purposes of this dissertation, I use “postsecondary education” and “higher education” interchangeably, except in cases making specific reference to particular institutional types. I use both terms to include a full spectrum of programs of study that lead to educational credentials beyond a high school diploma. 1 to higher education remain the subject of legal contest (Kobach, 2007; Texas v. United States,

2016). The Supreme Court’s inability to reach a verdict on the constitutionality of the Obama administration’s efforts to grant deferred deportation status to undocumented youth and their families created additional uncertainty for members of the nearly 11 million-person United States undocumented population (Texas v. United States, 2016). Further, an aggressive posture toward restricting immigration and increasing the number and scale of deportation raids has heightened fear in many immigrant communities. Recent research has shown this intensified enforcement activity can lead to childhood trauma by many young people held in U.S. detention while their cases are processed by courts with sometimes years-long backlogs (Humphrys, et al., 2018;

Lopez, et al., 2016).

Statements made and actions taken by the Trump administration have created further ambiguity for this student population (Binkley, 2017; Goldberg, 2017; Gomez, 2017; Sanchez,

2017; Redden, 2016). For example, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s announcement of

September 5, 2017 that the administration intended to terminate DACA, placing responsibility for addressing immigration reform in the hands of Congress, followed by the failure of the

Senate to pass such legislation and courts ordering DACA applications may continue to be processed have all added further uncertainty to the educational prospects of DACAmented and undocumented students. Prior research has shown detention, deportation, and the perception of undocumented and immigrant communities of an increased likelihood of enforcement actions can have a chilling effect on the academic success and mental and physical well-being of students lacking legal residency (Gonzalez, 2011; Humphreys, et al., 2018; Lopez, et al., 2016;

Suarez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi, & Suarez-Orozco, 2011). Student activists have continued to advocate for the preservation of DACA and passage of the Development, Relief,

2 and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act to resolve the legal ambiguity (Edelman, 1992) in which the undocumented student population now resides and to clarify their prospects for legal residency, educational opportunity, and potential citizenship (Nicholls, 2013; Wides-

Muñoz, 2018).

In the absence of congressional comprehensive immigration reform that could open a pathway to citizenship—and, thus, eligibility for federal financial aid—states, postsecondary education systems, and institutions of higher education have taken a variety of approaches to address issues affecting the ability of undocumented immigrant students to access educational benefits. Such benefits include in-state tuition and access to publicly funded financial aid programs, as well as the ability to gain admission to selective public institutions (Barnhardt, et al., 2016; Flores, 2010b; Dougherty, Nienhusser, & Vega, 2010; McLendon, Mokher, & Flores,

2011; Muñoz & Espino, 2017; Nicholls, 2013; Nienhusser, 2015). As policymakers and higher education leaders consider issues surrounding access, affordability, and on-campus support systems for undocumented students, organizations outside of government—including private foundations—have invested in efforts affecting these students’ prospects for pursuing and completing postsecondary credential and degree programs.

Among patrons of the field, Cheit and Lobman (1979) contended private foundations as a sector hold the most influence per dollar over higher education. More recently, Thelin and

Trollinger (2014) observed major endowments established by leading industrialists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as by wealthy patrons from the technology boom of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, have had marked influence on the field of higher education. In the 2017-18 academic fiscal year, foundations of all kinds contributed an estimated $14 billion to higher education—30% of all voluntary support to higher

3 education and a 4% inflation-adjusted increase compared to 2016-17 (Council for Advancement and Support of Higher Education, 2019, p. 4). Over time, foundations have invested in a range of ways to promote access and success—as measured by degree completion and securing employment or graduate/professional educational opportunities—for undocumented students. In so doing, those investments have fostered the development of a field within higher education of professionals and institutional support structures for this student population. Noting Thelin’s and

Trollinger’s (2014) contention that foundations “represent the institutionalization of philanthropy” (p. 67), in this study I respond to the question, What role have private foundations played in creating a field supporting undocumented students’ pursuit of higher education?

I structure my response to the overall research question, along with a set of sub-questions articulated below, in five chapters. In this chapter, I present background on the issues studied by reviewing empirical literature, research questions that guided the study, guiding theory, and the methods I used in response to the study’s research questions. In Chapter 2, I provide a narrative background that sets context for the study. This chapter includes brief introductions to the history of U.S. immigration policy, the rise of the undocumented student movement, and the growing interest of private foundations in supporting this movement.

Selected cases represent what Maxwell (2013) termed “purposeful selection” of

“particular settings, persons, or activities…to provide information that is particularly relevant to your questions and goals” (p. 97). These revelatory cases (Yin, 2009) in Chapters 3 and 4 provide detailed descriptions of how private foundations sponsored the development of two efforts within the broad field of higher education to improve support for undocumented students.

Chapter 3 is a case study of a national network of community colleges and professional and advocacy groups. This network constitutes a coalition to improve postsecondary and workforce

4 outcomes for immigrant students—especially those who are undocumented and DACAmented.

Chapter 4 is a case study of a single institution, which I call Western Public Research University

(WPRU), and how external funds have contributed to the growth and development of that institution’s on-campus undocumented student resource center.

In Chapter 5, I discuss lessons and implications of the case studies for theory, practice, and further research at the intersection of empirical work on philanthropy, higher education, and the undocumented student movement. Because I used grounded theory to guide my research and methods, I provide the most extensive discussion of theoretical implications after considering the data and findings from the study. In this way, such implications arise from the data and findings to illuminate new understandings and potential paths forward for further work (Charmaz, 2006).

Background

Researchers have considered issues affecting undocumented students’ pursuit of postsecondary education from a variety of perspectives. As examples, to date scholars have examined how and why states have adopted inclusive or restrictive policies toward undocumented students—or left laws and policies unstipulated (Burkhardt, et al., 2012;

Dougherty, et al., 2010; Flores, 2010b; Nienhusser, 2015; McLendon, et al., 2011; Reich &

Mendoza, 2008); the social, psychological, and physical health effects of stigma and discrimination associated with undocumented immigration status (Gonzalez, 2011; Lopez, et al.,

2016; Muñoz, & Espino, 2017; Nienhusser, Vega, & Saavedra Carquin, 2016; Perez, Cortes,

Ramos, & Coronado, 2010; Suarez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi, & Suarez-Orozco, 2011;

Suro, Suarez-Orozco, & Canizales, 2015); and student social movements advocating greater recognition and inclusiveness for undocumented students pursuing education beyond high school

(Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Perez, 2009). Relatively few published studies, however, have

5 examined institution-level effects of policy changes and student activism (e.g., Barnhardt, et al.,

2016; Chuan-Ru Chen & Rhoads, 2016; Forenza & Mendonca, 2017; Southern, 2016).

In this section, I define several key terms and briefly review prior research on undocumented students pursuing higher education and the influence of philanthropic foundations in constructing organizational fields within higher education. These definitions and reviews of relevant research literature contextualize the present study.

Defining Terms

I reference several key terms throughout the following pages. First, for the purposes of this study, undocumented students include students of traditional K-12 and college age (i.e., 24 or younger) who either arrived in the United States without legal documentation or came to this country with valid documentation that has since expired while remaining in-country.

DACAmented students include young people who have received approved applications for the federal Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. President Obama initiated DACA with an executive order in 2012. Since that time, more than 800,000 people have filed and been approved for deferred deportation status (National Immigration Law Center, 2017). This status enables them to work, pay taxes, and pursue education without fear of deportation, provided they meet the DACA program’s eligibility requirements. Because DACA is an initiative directed by executive order, rather than a law, the program could be discontinued by executive order. In

September 2017, then-Attorney General Sessions announced a six-month wind-down of DACA, charging Congress with passing legislation to provide a pathway for continued education, work, and residency in the United States (U.S. Department of Justice, 2017). By choosing not to hear the Trump administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling, the Supreme Court on January 22,

2019 effectively left DACA in operation at least until its 2019-20 term. The DREAM Act is

6 proposed legislation first introduced in Congress in 2001 that would provide a pathway to citizenship for undocumented students through educational attainment or service in the military.

As of this writing, Congress has not passed immigration reform that would secure the residency status of DACAmented people or provide a pathway to citizenship for people living in the

United States without documentation.

Although people living in the United States without documentation have origin stories that begin in all parts of the world, data show the majority of this population emigrated from

Latin American countries. Acknowledging the broad diversity and distinct national origins of people from Latin America, I use the term Latinx (pronounced as Latin-ex) in referring to a broad population residing in the United States. By using this emerging term with origins in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities, I part from the gendered terms Latino/Latina from Spanish language. The use of Latinx remains contested. However,

Salinas and Lozano (2017) “defined Latinx as an inclusive term that recognizes the intersectionality of sexuality, language, immigration, ethnicity, culture, and phenotype.” They note this approach is consistent with “researchers who use Latino Critical Race Theory as a form of liberation for Latinx communities” (emphases in original text, p. 9). Because I refer to a broad population and not specific individuals who identify as Latino or Latina, Latinx is an appropriate, inclusive term of reference (Salinas & Lozano, 2017).

I confined this study to funding granted to institutions or postsecondary systems by independent, private foundations. Such foundations, distinct from corporate and other foundation forms, “are typically endowed by a single source (e.g., a family or group of individuals), have a board of directors or trustees which often includes a tie to the family or donor, and have the flexibility and legal authority to exercise broad discretion in executing [their] funding decisions”

(Barnhardt, 2017, p. 186). Private foundations are institutionalized mechanisms of philanthropy, which has played a long-standing role in advancing various social causes in the history of the

United States (Barnhardt, 2017; Clotfelter, 2007; Thelin & Trollinger, 2014; Tompkins-Stange,

2016). Payton (1988) provided a straightforward conception of philanthropy as “voluntary action for the public good.” Thelin and Trollinger (2014) add that philanthropy, at its core, is both “a private form of expression and public form of action” (p. 41). As they also detail, however, philanthropy should be seen as distinct from charity or altruism. The latter imply gifts offered without expectation of return, but philanthropy carries an expectation of reciprocity—giving toward a specific outcome achieved or cause advanced. For the purposes of this study, therefore,

I define philanthropy as granting funds by private foundations to nonprofit organizations for the purpose of advancing predetermined social, political, cultural, educational, or medical goals.

My interest in the influence of foundations on the creation of a field within higher education of professional norms and institutional support for undocumented and DACAmented students motivated this study. DiMaggio and Powell (1983) conceptualized an organizational field as a group of “organizations that, in the aggregate, constitute a recognized area of institutional life” (p. 148). McAdam and Scott (2005) added that in fields “participants take one another into account as they carry out interrelated activities” (p. 10). According to Bartley

(2007),

building an organizational field means creating an arena that brings a number of

actors (often with different interests, ideologies, and organizational forms) into

routine contact with one another, under a common frame of reference, in pursuit

of an at least partially shared project. (p. 233)

These definitions provide a broad sense of how the field of higher education may be understood as a network of related institutions sharing the general aim of providing learning opportunities for students beyond a high school diploma. Within the broad field of higher education, for this study I focused on a sub-field constituted by agents in the undocumented student movement.

Definitions for additional key terms appear in Appendix A.

Undocumented Students Pursuing Higher Education

Based on U.S. Census data, Migration Policy Institute researchers recently estimated

98,000 undocumented students graduate from high schools each year (Zong & Batalova, 2019).

This estimate revises an often-cited previous estimate of 65,000 by Pew Research Center demographers (Passel & Cohn, 2009). These students face uneven prospects for pursuing postsecondary credentials because of the varying state, system, and institutional policies affecting access to and affordability of postsecondary programs. In addition, undocumented and

DACAmented students often report fears of deportation—either for themselves or friends and family members—stigma associated with their residency status, and marginalizing behaviors directed at them by instructors, staff, and fellow students (Enriquez, 2011; Muñoz & Vigil, 2018;

Nienhusser, et al., 2016). Cumulatively, the legal ambiguity (Edelman, 1992) of their status and chilly campus climates many undocumented and DACAmented students encounter may deter thousands of students from pursuing education beyond high school. As an indicator of this reluctance, Passel and Cohn (2009) estimated 5-10% of traditional age potential undocumented students are now enrolled by colleges and universities nationwide.

Exclusion of undocumented immigrants from higher education may mean a substantial human capital loss for the U.S. economy. Restricting the ability of the undocumented population to prepare and receive training for living wage jobs also comes at a cost in tax revenues to local,

9 state, and national coffers. According to researchers at the Institute on Taxation and Economic

Policy, comprehensive immigration reform that opened pathways to citizenship through higher education would add an estimated $2.1 billion in state and local tax revenues (Gee, Gardner,

Hill, & Wiehe, 2017). Through sales, excise, property, and personal income taxes, undocumented U.S. residents already contribute approximately $11.7 billion in tax revenues

(Gee, Gardner, Hill, & Wiehe, 2017). Further, as Justice Brennan noted in the Plyler v. Doe

(1982) decision affirming the right to a free public education, regardless of citizenship or residency status,

This situation [i.e., creating cost burdens to education] raises the specter of a

permanent caste of undocumented resident aliens, encouraged by some to remain

here as a source of cheap labor, but nevertheless denied the benefits that our

society makes available to citizens and lawful residents. The existence of such an

underclass presents most difficult problems for a Nation that prides itself on

adherence to principles of equality under law.

Although Brennan’s words referenced access to free public K-12 education, shifts in workforce demands have increasingly required postsecondary credentials as a hurdle to clear toward careers with wages that can sustain a family (Carnevale, Rose, & Cheah, 2011). The undocumented student movement has also called for tuition equity at in-state, public institutions—not free college—as a reflection of contributions undocumented residents make to state and local revenues. Total average per pupil expenditures each year of approximately

$12,500 mean billions of dollars are spent nationally each year on K-12 education for undocumented students (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017; Passel & Cohn, 2016).

Undocumented student advocates point to workforce realities to note this investment does not

10 lead to maximum benefit when high school graduates are denied postsecondary opportunities.

The movement’s efforts, therefore, advance arguments by turns rooted in conceptions of economic justice and educational opportunity (Muñoz, 2015; Muñoz & Espino, 2017; Nicholls,

2013; Perez, 2009), reflecting the important role higher education plays in creating access to opportunities high school diplomas are unlikely to open.

The following subsections briefly review previous literature on federal and state policies affecting undocumented students’ prospects for higher education and on the social and emotional experiences that many such students report as part of their educational journeys.

Federal and State Policy. Policy scholars have examined the effects of varying state, system, and institutional policies on undocumented students’ enrollment in and ability to pay for postsecondary programs of study. Flores (2010b), for example, found significantly greater odds of Latinx foreign-born non-citizens enrolling in postsecondary institutions in Texas than their peers in the Southwest following that state’s adoption of in-state resident tuition (ISRT) eligibility for undocumented students. These gains mainly accrued, however, to the community and technical college sectors during a time of deregulated and rapidly increasing four-year tuition. Flores and Horn (2009-2010) found Latinx undocumented students who received ISRT benefits at the flagship University of Texas at Austin persisted at rates comparable to those of their U.S. citizen and documented resident Latinx peers who were ineligible for the benefit.

Based on this finding, Flores and Horn suggest that lowering the price of higher education opens opportunity for students with the ability to achieve academically, even given the stressors associated with undocumented status. For a national perspective, Flores (2010a) provides an econometric analysis that indicates undocumented students have greater odds of postsecondary

11 enrollment in states with in-state tuition eligibility policies compared to their peers in states with similar demographic and labor force profiles but lacking such a policy.

Following studies of the effects of Texas’s first-in-the nation ISRT eligibility law,

McLendon, et al. (2011) examined potential influences on the likelihood of an ISRT bill appearing on a state’s legislative agenda in a particular year. Although the prevalence of Latinx members of the legislature bore no demonstrable effect on this likelihood, the prevalence of women legislators and percentage of a state’s population born outside the U.S. enhanced the prospects for ISRT legislation. McLendon and colleagues also found no evidence that partisan composition of legislatures or state policy diffusion (i.e., the hypothesis that “states adopt new policies in part as a response to the past policy behavior of their neighbors or peers” [p. 576]) affected the chances of ISRT legislation coming up for a vote in a state legislative chamber.

The work of McLendon and colleagues provided a national perspective on agenda-setting for tuition policies affecting undocumented students following a single-state examination by

Reich and Mendoza (2008). In considering the case of the conservative Kansas legislature passing an ISRT bill, Reich and Mendoza contended the bill’s success depended on how sponsors framed their motivation for the legislation. Kansas’s conservative political culture and overall aversion to offering public benefits to undocumented immigrants, according to Reich and

Mendoza, made the state an unlikely proving ground for ISRT legislation. Still, the bill’s advocates’ frame of expanding educational opportunity as a means of enhancing workforce competitiveness provided a powerful counter-narrative to concerns expressed by the bill’s opponents that its passage would amount to “coddling criminals.” The researchers found legislators’ prior histories of supporting public education initiatives presented the most powerful predictor of support for the ISRT bill, even controlling for party affiliation. Although focusing on

12 the issue as one of educational access and workforce preparedness proved effective in Kansas at the time of their study, Reich and Mendoza speculated the increasingly fraught politics of immigration reform would challenge subsequent state efforts to open ISRT eligibility to undocumented students. Varying state policy approaches to the presence of undocumented residents since Reich’s and Mendoza’s writing has borne out their prediction that legislators’ prospects for pursuing ISRT legislation in states with differing political cultures would be largely attributable to how sponsors framed the issue (Nienhusser, 2015; Tamburin, 2016).

For a comparable analysis of the starkly different approaches addressing undocumented student educational access taken by Arizona and Texas, Dougherty, Nienhusser, and Vega

(2010) examined the effects of advocacy coalition (Sabatier & Weible, 2007) influence and policy entrepreneurship (Kingdon, 1995) on the former state’s restrictive and the latter state’s inclusive approaches. They found advocacy groups on the issue of in-state tuition eligibility are differentiated by their “sets of beliefs around the nature of society and of citizenship, the meaning and impact of immigration, and the proper role of government in addressing immigration” (Dougherty, et al., 2010, p. 163). In Arizona, according to Dougherty and colleagues, anti-immigrant and anti-Latinx sentiment fueled a popular referendum movement to prohibit undocumented students from qualifying for in-state resident tuition. In Texas, where voters do not have the option of the popular referendum, a Republican-controlled state government endorsed in-state tuition eligibility for undocumented students. The authors attributed success of ISRT legislation in Texas to the relative strength of coalition-building among supportive advocacy groups compared to that of opponents, broad—if not openly public—support from business leaders, and an interest in appealing to the growing bloc of Latinx voters in the state. Much as in Kansas, advocates for Texas’s ISRT legislation tied the measure to

13 the potential deleterious effects on the state’s economy of restricting higher education access for undocumented students—a concern that resonated with business-minded conservatives

(Dougherty, et al., 2010).

In contrast to Texas, Latinx officeholders do not represent a significant voting bloc in the

Arizona legislature, and the coalition of groups opposing legislation barring undocumented immigrants from qualifying for such public benefits as in-state tuition did not coalesce as strongly as in Texas (Dougherty, et al., 2010). Coupled with less involvement from business groups, Arizona’s strong anti-immigrant sentiment following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks further strengthened the position of legislators and advocacy groups working to restrict public benefits accessibility to undocumented residents. Although Democratic Governor Janet

Napolitano supported the DREAM Act and would veto measures preventing undocumented immigrants from accessing in-state tuition, Arizona’s constitutional provision for direct ballot referenda enabled a strong, well-financed coalition to succeed in garnering more than 70% of the vote in 2006 to pass Proposition 300, barring public institutions from making in-state tuition available to undocumented students (Dougherty, et al., 2010).

Some observers of higher education noted an increased openness at both public and private institutions of higher education to offer admissions and financial aid to undocumented students following the Obama administration’s implementation of DACA (Harris, 2015).

Although states with large undocumented populations including Texas and California enacted in- state tuition eligibility laws well before DACA, efforts to serve undocumented students at the institutional level often took the form of ad hoc workarounds and shared understandings among admissions counselors and their colleagues in financial aid. Such efforts, however, remained contentious—both among lawmakers and the faculty and staff of postsecondary institutions

(Contreras, 2009; Harris, 2015, Nienhusser, et al., 2016). Many higher education leaders argued

DACA fostered an increased sense of legitimacy for public efforts to increase access and affordability for students who attained this legal residency status.

Advocates opposed to expanded access and affordability for undocumented students, most prominently Kobach (2007), have contended students without legal residency should not have access to educational benefits such as in-state tuition when some U.S. citizens (e.g., out-of- state students) lack access to those benefits. Opponents of opening access to such benefits often point to Section 505 of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of

1996, which states in part, “…an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State...for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit...without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.” Kobach (2007) describes measures to offer in- state tuition to undocumented students as “perhaps the most brazen case of state legislators defying federal immigration law” (p. 474). Primary points of opposition put forth by Kobach include the increasing share of college expenses borne by students and their families; in-state tuition eligibility punishes legal immigrants by offering a discounted rate to undocumented immigrants living within a given state that is not available to them; and undocumented people are not legally allowed to work in the United States.

According to Kobach, two-thirds of American college graduates carry student loan debt with them after completing their degree programs, with an average debt load of more than

$19,000. In the context of rising prices of college education borne by American families, opponents of in-state tuition for undocumented students contend such policies represent an unfair approach to distributing public resources. If state policy opens in-state residency tuition benefits

15 to students who are not legal residents of a state, according to the opposition argument, legal residents and U.S. citizens who can legally pursue employment after graduation should receive those benefits rather than students residing without documentation in the state. To counter arguments that U.S. citizens could pay in-state rates to their home states’ public institutions,

Kobach contends undocumented immigrants could likewise return to receive publicly financed educational benefits to which they are entitled as citizens in their native countries.

In Kobach’s words, states that allow undocumented students to pay in-state rates, but not immigrant or international students with appropriate documentation, reward “illegal behavior by expressly denying the benefits to aliens who comply with federal immigration law…” (emphasis in original, p. 500). He found four states—California, Kansas, New York, and Utah—in which undocumented students could access in-state residency tuition rates for which “aliens who compl[ied] with federal immigration law” living in other states were not eligible. “In a world of limited higher education resources,” according to Kobach, “it is difficult to fathom why taxpayer subsidies should be offered to illegal aliens who are violating federal law, while law-abiding

U.S. citizens from out-of-state are denied such subsidies” (p. 502).

Opponents, including Kobach, contend that even with sterling academic credentials, undocumented residents of the United States lack legal standing to pursue careers in this country.

They lack work permits or Green Cards, and they do not have valid Social Security numbers to register with the Internal Revenue Service. Why provide tens of thousands of dollars in tuition discount benefits to undocumented students, opponents ask, when those students cannot legally apply what they learn in a job after graduation? Since Kobach’s (2007) writing, the IRS has established Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers as a way for non-citizens to pay federal income taxes, regardless of their immigration status (Internal Revenue Service, 2017). DACA

16 enabled approved applicants to obtain a work permit and identifying number to pay federal taxes.

Their ability to remain in the workforce may or may not be sustained, pending congressional action or inaction following the Trump administration’s rescinding DACA (U.S. Department of

Justice, 2017).

Because the current administration has sought to end DACA, uncertainty about the future prospects for higher education access and attainment will persist for the undocumented student population. Pending congressional action, students and families will remain in a state of legal ambiguity (Edelman, 1992; Gámez, Lopez, & Overton, 2017) about their ability to pursue higher education and remain in the United States. In the midst of this uncertainty, decisions on whether and how to serve students from this population remain in the purview of institutional and system leaders. Those leaders include system heads and campus leaders including presidents, general counsels, and chief diversity officers—all of whom must interpret the legal and political environment to chart a course forward (Barnhardt, Phillips, Young, & Sheets, 2017; Flores &

Oseguera, 2009).

Although the Trump administration has sought to terminate DACA, recent research indicates a set of social and economic benefits tied to the program. In a working paper for the

National Bureau of Economic Research, Kuka, Shenhav, and Shih (2018) used a difference-indifference approach to compare a treatment population of immigrant non-citizens to a comparison group of immigrant citizens. Based on their analysis, Kuka, Shenhav, and Shih found an 11.4 percentage point increase in high school completion; among undocumented

Hispanic students, more than 49,000 additional students completed high school because of

DACA. They also found a 25% increase in Hispanic women enrolling in college and an increase in workforce participation among DACAmented students who pursued postsecondary education.

Among DACA-eligible women aged 15-18, Kuka, et al. identified a 45% reduction in pregnancy rates compared to the mean. They proposed these outcomes all spoke to an increased sense of possibilities among DACA-eligible young people to complete postsecondary credentials and pursue meaningful work opportunities.

Studies of political framing, the effects of enhanced affordability on undocumented student enrollment and persistence, and legal challenges are all important contributions to the literature, but this work leaves unexamined the field-level involvement of philanthropic foundations. As patrons of social movements—including the undocumented student movement—further work is needed to enhance our understanding of foundations as actors in the undocumented student movement. Ongoing political upheaval and legal ambiguity amplify this need. Organizational theory can be instructive to understand how higher education leaders, when faced with contentious issues such as those tied to undocumented students, look to signals from the field to inform actions aligned with their institutional contexts (Barnhardt, et al., 2016;

Edelman, 1992; Lounsbury, 1991; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; Rojas, 2006, 2007).

Socio-Emotional Experiences. Previous scholars have addressed the need for policy changes to mitigate trauma resulting from immigration enforcement and open more postsecondary opportunities for undocumented youth in this country. For example, Abrego

(2008) found a state’s adoption of in-state tuition eligibility for undocumented students can lead to improved psychological well-being for students from this population. This improvement,

Abrego contended, can be traced to enhanced sense of belonging and decreased stigma associated with immigration status. To represent the lived experiences of undocumented students working to overcome systemic barriers to postsecondary education, Perez, Cortes, Ramos, and

Coronado (2010) relied upon a socioemotional development framework in a qualitative study

18 that gave voice to the sense of shame and discrimination participant students felt as a result of their residency status. Based on their findings, the authors suggest the potential of institutional agents, peer support networks, campus support programs, and civic engagement to mitigate the sense of marginalization many undocumented students may encounter during their college careers (Perez, et al., 2010). More recent work has further stressed the important role of faculty and staff campus allies in building substantial institutional support for enrolled undocumented and DACAmented students (Chuan-Ru & Rhoads, 2016; Nienhusser, 2018; Southern, 2016).

Recent institution-level findings align with earlier quantitative work indicating undocumented high school students achieve academically despite supposed risk factors such as low parental education levels, large time commitments to jobs, and feelings of isolation associated with immigration status. These students encounter comparable levels of threats to their academic success but benefit from environmental resources including parental encouragement and participation in extracurricular activities that provide access to adults equipped to facilitate access to further resources on behalf of undocumented students (Enriquez,

2011; Perez, Espinoza, Ramos, Coronado, & Cortes, 2009). In their study, Perez and colleagues

(2009) found that among 110 undocumented Latinx students interviewed in California,

“extracurricular participation and volunteerism were the strongest predictors of academic achievement,” as these opportunities enabled students “to develop relationships with supportive adults and peers engaged in prosocial activities” (p. 174). These networks became sources of resilience for students as they navigated hurdles toward high school and college completion.

Although undocumented students often face marginalization tied to their residency status, support networks and on-campus personnel Stanton-Salazar (2011) would term institutional empowerment agents can serve as important factors supporting students’ personal and academic

19 success (Southern, 2016). On-campus allies and support services can also embolden undocumented students to share their stories and engage in political activism (Forenza &

Mendonca, 2017). Activism by and on behalf of undocumented and DACAmented students has spread as a social movement across higher education, including over the past two years in opposition to the Trump administration’s efforts to end DACA and ongoing deportation raids.

Student Social Movements

Postsecondary institutions and systems have moved toward more inclusive postures toward undocumented and DACAmented students in many cases following periods of student protest and activism (Harris, 2015; Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Perez, 2009; Wides-Muñoz,

2018). As both members of the campus community and consumers of the education provided by institutions of higher learning, students are uniquely positioned to advocate for organizational change. According to Barnhardt (2014), “the student activists’ task is to transform the mundane into the profane so that it compels campus administrators and/or peers to respond, or take ameliorative action” (p. 47). To encourage their institutions to adopt policies or practices that align with their collective interests, student social movement leaders may frame their activism as expressions of institutional pride. They agitate because they are devoted to and proud of their institution, not in spite of their devotion. As organizational insiders, students are more likely to employ conventional, rather than disruptive tactics, while affirming identification with institutional values, traditions, and norms (Barnhardt, 2014; Walker, Martin, & McCarthy, 2008).

Attributable largely to the campus activism of the 1960s, campus administrators and faculty may perceive campus protest movements not so much as transgressive as a kind of shadow curriculum during the college years. Altbach and Cohen (1990) contended the relative lack of campus protest in the 1980s represented more an aberration than a return to normalcy.

They based this finding on the rise of student movements to counter racially motivated incidents against minoritized populations and to demand divestment of institutional funds from South

African firms to pressure the government to dismantle apartheid.

As protest has become more accepted as an expected state of affairs, or as an institutionalized aspect of campus life, some scholars have proposed the ubiquity of campus social movements has led them to rely upon disruptive or transgressive tactics with less frequency than in more turbulent times such as the 1960s (Soule & Earle, 2005). Still, student social movements including #BBUM (Being Black at the University of Michigan) and

DREAM/undocumented student protests have employed a variety of both conventional (e.g., speaking at public hearings, petitioning for institutional policy change) and disruptive (e.g., campus walkouts, interrupting campus events, blocking traffic) actions (Brandon, 2015; Calfas,

Gringlas, & Rubenfire, 2013; Nicholls, 2013; Wides-Muñoz, 2018). Nicholls (2013) chronicled the direct and indirect activities of the Undocumented and Unafraid protest movement. Like prior social movements, the movement for greater access to higher education and to secure tuition equity for undocumented students at public institutions has included activists who favored both direct, transgressive tactics to force institutional and public policy changes and others who favored more conventional approaches to work toward movement goals (Nicholls, 2013; Wides-

Muñoz, 2018).

Rojas (2007) examined the relationship between campus protest movements and the construction of the field of Black Studies across higher education. The Ford Foundation played a leading role in financing the development of Black Studies, but Rojas found personnel transitions and changing organizational priorities at the foundation led to waxing and waning periods of support. Rojas chronicles the transition of campus protest under the banner of Black Power to

21 institutionalized academic programs constituting the field of Black Studies. This work exemplifies the potential of scholarship to illuminate the role of philanthropic investments in building the field of higher education broadly and subfields within higher education such as ethnic studies or, in the present study, the undocumented student movement.

In their examination of philanthropy’s influence on the movement for African American civil rights in the mid-20th century, Jenkins and Eckert (1986) contended, “Private foundations are…institutionalized agencies of the capitalist class and, as such, will generally be politically cautious in their support for social reform” (p. 819). Their evidence showed foundations were

“overwhelmingly reactive, lagging considerably behind the movement” in their patronage of civil rights groups (p. 819). Based on trends of movement actions and grants distributed, Jenkins and Eckert found evidence to support the “social control thesis” that foundations, through the groups and actions they supported, sought to curtail more radical or disruptive activity in favor of professional social movement organizations that employed less disruptive tactics. While noting the effectiveness demonstrated by women’s and environmental movements in seeking goals through “close monitoring of government agencies and professionalized lobbying,” Jenkins and

Eckert contended “if the goal is bringing an excluded group into the polity, a mass movement is necessary” (p. 827). In building professionalized networks from grassroots or insurgent undocumented student activism, this kind of elite patronage may channel movement activity into more institutionally legitimized forms than disruptive direct-action campaigns.

Philanthropy and Field Construction in Higher Education

Private foundations have histories dating to the early twentieth century of engaging in policy issues and issue advocacy (Barnhardt, 2017; Callahan, 2017; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018;

Thelin & Trollinger, 2014; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Tompkins-Stange (2016) contended the

22 prominence of private foundations may be attributed to “America’s historical reliance on private charity rather than the state to provide public welfare…in distinct contrast to other modern democracies’ state-centric provision of social needs” (p. 11). More broadly, Thelin and

Trollinger (2014) chronicle the inextricable ties between higher education and philanthropic giving from the field’s origins in what would become the United States. An initial gift of £700 and a set of books by John Harvard led to the first college in America bearing his name (Thelin

& Trollinger, 2014).

Drawing from their prominence in the realm of social problem amelioration, foundations began participating in the policy realm during the Progressive era of the early 1900s. The

Rockefeller Foundation, for example, privately funded the Rockefeller Sanitary Commission in

1909, which evolved into the government-sponsored U.S. Sanitary Commission to address public health concerns (Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Since the Progressive era, private foundations have played important roles building fields including public health, education, environmental protection, and civil rights (Barnhardt, 2017; Bartley, 2007; Rojas, 2007; Tompkins-Stange,

2016). Across all fields supported by foundations, however, previous analyses have estimated between 22% and 26% of all foundation grant dollars have benefitted higher education

(Barnhardt, 2017).

The influence wielded by private foundations intervening on issues of interest to their wealthy patrons has prompted critique by scholars, public officials, and activists alike (Clotfelter,

2007; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018; Rogers, 2011, 2015; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). Apart from the requirement to expend at least 5% of their holdings annually on projects benefiting the public, private foundations operate with few measures of required transparency or accountability

(Rogers, 2015). Foundation program officers are unelected but may oversee substantial

23 portfolios of projects directly affecting local communities. Based on concerns about the Ford

Foundation—a major patron of civil rights activism in the 1960s (Rojas, 2007)—serving effectively as a “sub-government that swayed the thinking of legislators and executive branch officials” (excerpt from the Congressional Record, Tompkins-Stange, 2016, p. 13), Congress passed the Tax Reform Act of 1969. This act placed substantial restrictions on the ability of private foundations to engage in direct lobbying. In response, foundations moved toward funding portfolios of research, broad educational initiatives, convenings, and other activities that, while lacking direct billing as policy activism, raised awareness of social issues and supported disseminating knowledge and practices that reflected the values foundations sought to institutionalize in public policy (Tompkins-Stange, 2016).

Given the societal place of higher education as a field in which research is conducted, convenings are held, and activism is a norm, scholars have documented the close relationship between higher education and private foundations (Barnhardt, 2017; Cheit & Lobman, 1979;

Clotfelter, 2007; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018; Thelin & Trollinger, 2014). Still, some funders— dissatisfied with the perceived progressive agenda of university-based social science researchers and higher education more broadly—have sponsored an alternative field of research within think-tanks and policy study centers outside of academia (Barnhardt, 2017). Barnhardt (2017) argues these “external knowledge organizations have tested the limits of what constitutes expert knowledge, and have created direct competition for the field of higher education” (p. 232).

Further, conservative activists at least since the Vietnam War student protest era have contended institutions of higher education are too often refuges of radical academics seeking to marginalize students who do not express socially and politically progressive views (Binder &

Wood, 2013). To oppose what they see as an oppressively progressive agenda across much of the

24 higher education field, financial support to organizations including the Young America’s

Foundation, Hoover Institution at Stanford University, and Mercatus Institute at George Mason

University has championed an agenda of intellectual diversity—elevating conservative voices on campuses and in research literature (Binder & Wood, 2013). Still, Barnhardt (2017) notes, compared to the level of research to date on large foundations with progressive social policy orientations, “there is substantively less empirical literature that coincides with conservative oriented foundations, and scant literature regarding contemporary foundations” (p. 183). Despite the paucity of research on more conservative funders inclined toward restricting access to public benefits for people living in the U.S. without documentation, these groups leverage their influence to sustain a counter-movement to the undocumented student movement that deserves empirical attention (Reilly, 2019).

Research Questions

Recognizing the gap in current literature regarding the influence of private foundations on the undocumented student movement, in this dissertation I respond to the overall question,

What role have private foundations played in creating a field supporting undocumented students’ pursuit of higher education? To identify examples of foundations’ influence in the emergence of this field, I respond to three sub-questions through case studies:

1. How has private foundation funding of a national network of community colleges

contributed toward constructing a field of support for undocumented students?

2. How has private foundation funding of an on-campus undocumented student resource

center at a public flagship research university contributed toward constructing a field of

support for undocumented students?

3. What implications for theory, practice, and research can be drawn from these case

studies?

These three sub-questions guide Chapters 3 through 5, respectively. In the following section, I lay out the theoretical concepts that guided my work.

Guiding Theory

Because I sought in this study to build and consider theory for a previously unexamined area, I followed Eisenhardt’s (1989) guidance that theory-building case study “investigators should formulate a research problem and possibly specify some potentially important variables”

(p. 536) without hemming in the work with an abundance of formalized theory. Nonetheless, several key concepts emerged from reviewing relevant literature to inform my interview protocols and thinking about this study’s subject.

The concept of a strategic action field provides a framework for understanding the emergence of the undocumented student movement in higher education. Sociologists Fligstein and McAdam (2012) defined an emerging field as, “a socially constructed area occupied by two or more groups whose actions are oriented to each other but who have yet to develop a stable order that effectively routinizes field relations” (p. 86). When groups of individuals feel aggrieved by conditions in a field, they challenge existing power structures through direct action.

Fligstein and McAdam (2012) contend activists contribute to the emergence of strategic action fields to counter laws and structures they find flawed or unjust. In turn, incumbent powerholders may resist the challenge to their authority. Challengers and incumbents, therefore, engage in a kind of call-and-response of actions and reactions aimed at legitimizing and further empowering their respective strategic action fields (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012). I use key elements of strategic action field theory—including incumbents, challengers, and governance units; social

26 skill; broader field environment; exogenous shocks; episodes of contention; and settlement—as lenses to view the phenomenon of interest here.

As noted by Schneiberg and Soule (2005), “movements can be institutionalized as part of a system’s ongoing routines” (p. 154)—such as in the case of the undocumented student movement pressing for greater inclusion and opportunity. Issues involving undocumented students’ higher education access and opportunity thus provide a chance to consider dynamics between social movement actors and organizational actions in the context of a broader contested policy area. Further, the absence of a comprehensive policy solution to the question of whether undocumented students should have access to higher education and, if so, to public financial aid benefits, amplifies the relevance of foundations as de facto policy actors that may push institutions and systems toward more inclusive postures.

Related to the concepts from strategic action field theory, I incorporate additional elements of prior work uniting literatures on social movements and organizational theory (Davis,

McAdam, Scott, & Zald, 2005). Institutional entrepreneurs (DiMaggio, 1988; Maguire, Hardy and Lawrence, 2004; Tracey, Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011), institutional agents (Nienhusser, 2018), and institutional empowerment agents (Stanton-Salazar, 2011) emerge from the stories of how higher education professionals facilitate access to resources for students from historically marginalized populations (Kezar, 2010). Maguire, Hardy and Lawrence (2004) defined institutional entrepreneurship as, “activities of actors who have an interest in particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones” (p. 657). By virtue of their ability to leverage social, financial, and intellectual capital to advance new institutional fields, foundations can be conceptualized as organizations that function as institutional entrepreneurs (Quinn, Tompkins-Stange, & Meyerson, 2014).

Activism by students themselves also has played an essential role in advancing the undocumented student movement (Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Perez, 2009; Wides-Muñoz,

2018). To examine potential prompts from the undocumented student movement spurring institutional action, I draw from prior work on student activism and the tactics student movement organizers have employed to advance their causes (Barnhardt, 2014).

Tompkins-Stange (2016) categorizes foundations as either outcome-oriented or field- oriented. Outcome-oriented foundations seek “to achieve goals that are determined at the outset of an initiative and measured by indicators that grantees are held accountable to” (p. 55). Field- oriented foundations, however, seek “to build, support, or transform existing or new organizational fields through investing in organizations’ capacities to pursue social change over a long time period” (Tompkins-Stange, 2016, p. 55). Compared to their outcomes-oriented counterparts, foundations in the latter category are more likely to be decentralized—meaning they turn more control over to their grantees—focused on supporting grassroots activism, adaptable to complex social problems with unclear solutions, and interested in plausible influence on complex social problems than quantifiable demonstrated impact (Tompkins-Stange,

2016).

Fleishman (2007) also proposed a typology of foundation functions in facilitating their strategic goals for social change. Under this model, a foundation serves as a driver, partner, or catalyst. Drivers lay out a vision and exercise a high degree of control as grant recipient organizations are tasked with implementing the vision. Partners identify potential partner nonprofit organizations and set mutually agreed-upon goals for funded projects with grant recipients.

Catalysts support leaders and innovators in emerging fields, with largely undefined goals but a shared sense of purpose (Fleishman, 2007). Rather than draw strict distinctions across these

28 foundation functions, Fleishman’s typology provides a basis for examining how foundations supporting the undocumented student movement have engaged with grant recipients. This typology can also frame studies of the potential relationships between the type of involvement foundations have had and outcomes to date of the activities they have sponsored (Barnhardt,

2017).

According to Eisenhardt (1989), “building theory from case study research is most appropriate in the early stages of research on a topic or to provide freshness in perspective to an already researched topic” (p. 548). Fligstein and McAdam (2012) also note the appropriate use of case studies to test their own propositions for identifying strategic action fields. Because this study is the first empirical inquiry of which I am aware to specifically focus on philanthropy’s role in shaping a new field in higher education oriented toward supporting undocumented students, conducting case studies offered a promising approach to identify potential emerging trends and consider the utility of several theoretical concepts as this field develops. Case studies based on key tenets of grounded theory provide rich data from which to build deeper theoretical understanding of developments at the field level and identify areas for future research. I discuss data collected and methods used for this study in the following section.

Data and Methods

To tell the story of the interplay of actors involved in constructing the undocumented student field in higher education, I needed to hear the stories of people involved in this process. I therefore conducted two case studies focused on generating data from those stories, with an eye toward building understanding of the phenomenon of interest and laying a foundation for future research. In this section, I discuss the data I used for this study and the methods I employed to gather and analyze those data.

Access to Data

I collected data primarily through in-person and telephone interviews with people involved in constructing the field of undocumented student support across higher education. I gained access to study informants through a combination of existing relationships and snowball sampling. In advance of on-campus interviews, for example, I would ask confirmed informants who else at their institutions or organizations (e.g., community-based organizations and private foundations) would bring direct knowledge and helpful perspective. Several informants also provided me with institutional reports or additional artifacts that provided further context to the history and ongoing efforts to support undocumented and DACAmented students that related to their own involvement. Table 1 details the roles of informants and selected contributions to the study that came from these interviews. For additional details on informants, see Appendix B.

Table 1. Study Informants

Roles of Informants Number of Contributions Informants

Discussed motivations for grantmaking toward Foundation Program Officer / 4 undocumented student movement and higher Analyst education access; shared perspectives on evolution of undocumented student movement and philanthropy’s response; offered guidance on additional resources.

Discussed development of programs serving On-Campus Student Affairs 6 undocumented/DACAmented students and Professionals sources of philanthropic funding; shared perspectives on evolution of student support following national, state, and institutional policy changes; offered institutional reports and internal communications as study artifacts.

Discussed strategy and motivations for Executive Leaders (CEO / Vice 3 pursuing grant funding; shared perspectives on President Level) challenges and opportunities in advancing undocumented student services, effects of

national, state, and institutional policy changes; forecasted direction of the field.

Discussed origin and growth of partnerships Community-Based Organization 2 with higher education institutions, as well as Leaders advocacy efforts, direct student services, and engagement with philanthropic sector to generate support.

Discussed nature of federal advocacy for National Professional 1 community college sector, nature of agenda- Association Lobbyist setting for the sector, and political challenges and opportunities associated with undocumented student movement.

Discussed philanthropic support for Community College Foundation 2 community college through associated Board Leaders foundation; shared perspectives on culture of giving toward community college; offered insights on opportunities and limitations of using philanthropic dollars to advance undocumented student services.

Discussed origin and development of National College Network 1 community college network, resources made Director available to network members, strategic planning process for the network, and advocacy tools; shared perspectives on evolution of undocumented student movement tied to changes in national, state, and institutional policy; forecasted direction of network and influence of philanthropic patronage on network agenda.

Total 19

To inform protocols for semi-structured interviews with study informants, I conducted extensive online searches for documentation of activities at the institutions associated with undocumented students. These searches produced institutional task force reports, press releases about approved grant-funded projects, and op-eds by representatives from the case study sites.

When I found announcements of grant-funded projects, I cross-referenced the announcements with reports and tax documents from the funding foundations. Information from these sources enabled me to develop at least a rudimentary timeline of how the programs I sought to understand through the case studies engaged with the philanthropic sector. This understanding then enabled me to construct questions that reflected baseline understanding with informants and establish credibility as a researcher with people who had done the work of prospecting, securing, and approving grant funding.

I sought additional data from publicly available sources to enable me to portray each case with context about the populations the profiled institutions serve. To provide a sense of institutional size, demographics, and geographic context, I introduce each case study below with a set of descriptive statistics. I accessed these data through institutional research reports, the

Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) hosted by the U.S. Department of

Education, and U.S. Census data. In general, I avoid including specific references to institutional research units or reports, and I leave some other data sources unattributed. This departure from convention reflects my commitment to anonymizing campuses and protecting the confidentiality of informants associated with the institutions profiled in case studies.

Case Study Methodology

According to Merriam (1998), case studies are appropriate when “researchers are interested in insight, discovery, and interpretation rather than hypothesis testing” (p. 28-29).

Muñoz and Espino (2017) selected case study methodology in their study of Freedom University, an unaccredited learning center for students whose citizenship status under current policy makes them ineligible to attend selective public institutions in Georgia. This approach reflected the authors’ interest in “the social, economic, political, ethical, and/or aesthetic contexts of [the]

32 case” and how those contexts “provide rich and significant insights” into an institution committed to serving undocumented students pursuing education beyond a high school diploma

(Muñoz & Espino, 2017, p. 539). Further, by focusing on individual representations of a phenomenon of interest, the case study researcher “aims to uncover the interaction of significant factors characteristic of the phenomenon” (Merriam, 1998, p. 29).

Key characteristics of case studies include their particularistic, descriptive, and heuristic nature (Merriam, 1998). Case studies are particularistic in focusing on a single occurrence to illuminate insights on a larger phenomenon of interest. According to Shaw (1978), “They are problem centered, small scale, entrepreneurial endeavors” (p. 2). They provide thick descriptions that relate comprehensive understanding of their subjects. Reflecting their heuristic nature, according to Stake (1981), “Previously unknown relationships and variables can be expected to emerge from case studies leading to a rethinking of the phenomenon being studied. Insights into how things get to be the way they are can be expected to result from case studies” (p. 47).

Drawing from Yin (1984), Eisenhardt (1989) contended, “Each case is analogous to an experiment, and multiple cases are analogous to multiple experiments” (p. 542). Although a standalone case study can illustrate a phenomenon of interest, additional settings to examine the phenomenon may enable the investigator to identify stronger findings that can, in turn, better inform theory. Cross-case comparison, coupled with a researcher comparing findings from the present study to those from previous studies, adds validity to propositions grounded in the data.

The selected cases represent what Maxwell (2013) termed “purposeful selection” of

“particular settings, persons, or activities…to provide information that is particularly relevant to your questions and goals” (p. 97). Recognizing that community colleges, as open-access institutions, serve larger enrollments of undocumented students than selective four-year

33 institutions (Flores & Oseguera, 2009; Nienhusser, 2014; Perez, 2010; Szelenyi & Chang, 2002;

Teranishi, Suárez-Orozco, & Suárez-Orozco, 2011), I sought a case study that could elevate the story of philanthropic investment in two-year institutions. This search led me to identify a national network of community colleges that collaborate through convening, sharing research, and policy-oriented activism. I refer in this study to the network as the College Network for

Educational Equity (CNEE).

In keeping with organizational theory associated with the influence of established institutions legitimizing processes, policies, and structures to address contentious or uncertain issues (Fay & Zavattaro, 2016; Meyer & Rowan, 1977; DiMaggio & Powell, 1983, 1991), I looked for a case study from a public flagship institution with a high degree of recognized prestige in the field. This interest led me to Western Public Research University (WPRU). These case studies present just two manifestations of my phenomenon of interest: How philanthropic funding has enabled work to advance equity in higher education for undocumented students in the absence of comprehensive immigration reform. I approached each case in keeping with

Eisenhardt’s (1989) contention that case studies bring value to research literature by bringing evidence to bear in theory generation.

In both cases, initial funding came from private foundation, rather than public or institutional sources. Eisenhardt (1989) noted “the search for similarity in a seemingly different pair [of cases] also can lead to more sophisticated understanding” (p. 541). As a public flagship research institution, WPRU has longstanding structures and processes in place for seeking and employing external funds for on-campus research and other programs. Although CNEE’s host institution has an affiliated foundation and a culture of philanthropy among individual alumni and supporters, community colleges in general lack the structural support for grant seeking and

34 reporting. As a highly prestigious institution, WPRU attracts many students from beyond the state that, as a public institution, representatives of the state founded it to serve. CNEE is based at a community college, but the network includes colleges serving diverse areas across the country. Case studies of WPRU and CNEE thus are particularistic in nature, but findings should inform a broader understanding of a national phenomenon. Because I had previous professional relationships with key personnel involved with both initiatives at WPRU and CNEE, I approached these distinct institutional contexts as an opportunity to leverage what Eisenhardt

(1989) contended: “cross-case searching tactics enhance the probability that the investigators will capture the novel findings which may exist in the data” (p. 541).

I conducted what Harvey (2011) termed “elite” interviews—seeking information from people most directly involved with the phenomenon of interest in the study. For example, I spoke with senior campus administrators, student affairs professionals working directly with undocumented at DACAmented students, and foundation program officers who have approved and served as points of contact with CNEE and WPRU. I also interviewed representatives from a nonprofit advocacy organization, one of whom has been active in the undocumented student movement for more than a decade and another who has both worked for a CNEE member institution and for the advocacy organization. Between March and May 2018, I conducted a total of 19 interviews, ranging in duration from 40 to 75 minutes. Appendix C includes sample interview protocols from the case study research.

During the interviews, I asked informants working at institutions to reflect on the role and necessity of external funding to start and expand their work serving undocumented students. For program officers, I asked about motivations and goals for making grants related to undocumented students. I asked all informants about interpretations of the evolving political and

35 legal environment for serving undocumented and DACAmented students over recent years.

Because most informants have been in their positions since before DACA’s inception, they could provide a historical perspective that accounted for changing attitudes on campuses or within foundations. I could then explore how those attitudes may have affected the field development of initiatives intended to facilitate postsecondary opportunities for undocumented and

DACAmented students.

After each interview or day of multiple interviews, I wrote a reflective memo to examine how well the research protocol guiding these semi-structured interviews served me. When needed, I adjusted the protocol in advance of the next interview. I also noted ethical challenges that arose in data collection such as when an informant called back to express concern she had

“been too candid.” I transcribed all interview recordings, after which I provided an opportunity for informants to member check (Charmaz, 2006; Maxwell, 2013) the accuracy of transcript contents.

I analyzed transcripts in a three-step coding process. First, I read each transcript and engaged in open coding. The transcripts are near-verbatim documentation of interview recordings (omitting some extraneous words such as “so,” “uhm,” etc. when these pauses or transitions did not add to the meaning conveyed by respondents). I sought to assign consistent terms for indicators of the same or similar phenomena within each transcript. This intra- transcript comparison reflects guidance by Boeije (2002) to make this step a foundational aspect of constant comparative analysis. According to Boeije, “The aim of this internal comparison in the context of the open coding process, is to develop categories and to label them with the most appropriate codes” (p. 395). Using these transcripts, I marked excerpts and assigned codes. This process led to an initial codebook of 116 codes for the CNEE case study and 150 codes for the

WPRU case study.

Second, I reviewed the initial open codes and looked for connections and themes among the codes. I then developed a second set of themes, grouping sets of initial codes under each. As noted by Boeije (2002), “In many cases, some codes are combined with other codes and form a pattern” (p. 397). For both case studies, I discarded initial codes that were in vivo comments from informants that only received one mention in the data and could not be reasonably grouped under any of the second-round codes. I discarded these codes and associated comments, resulting in a crosswalk of the 107 remaining codes grouped under the 16 final codes for the CNEE case study and 133 remaining codes grouped under 15 final codes in the WPRU codebook. Appendix

D includes final codebooks for both case studies.

Third, I returned to the transcripts and assigned second-round codes to excerpts in the data. I also noted exemplar quotations to include in the findings section of each case study. These excerpts emerged as particularly powerful, clear, or nuanced representations of the codes and themes that emerged from the data analysis process. I copied these excerpts into an Excel spreadsheet under tabs for their respective codes as exemplar quotations.

In addition to interviews, I conducted an extensive web search of available foundation

IRS filings for grants related to undocumented and DACA-eligible students; institutional task force reports and student resource center materials; and publications from organizations such as

Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and Refugees (GCIR) that address the needs of students without documentation who are pursuing higher education. Observations from reading these materials helped inform my research protocol and round out the narrative of how, where, and when foundations have invested in the undocumented student movement.

Tax-exempt organizations file 990 forms with the IRS each year to provide information on aspects including governance, compensation to board members and executive leaders, and grants received or made. After selecting WPRU and CNEE, I sought 990s to gain a sense of the trajectory of support they have received over the last 10 years from private foundations. CNEE maintains a webpage listing funders that have sponsored the network. I referenced this list to identify private foundations, then searched online to find 990s listing grant amounts in line items on their filings. Because WPRU receives millions of dollars in external funding from a variety of sources each year, I took a different approach to identify funders of undocumented student- oriented work there. Task force reports, resource guides for serving undocumented students, and other materials acknowledge grant funding. I developed a list of sponsors mentioned in these documents, then located 990s for their respective years of publication. Although this list may not be comprehensive, the resulting information enabled me to develop a sense of major milestones in philanthropic funding for Undocumented Student Services at WPRU. In both cases, searching through available artifacts prepared me with a working knowledge of support foundations have provided CNEE and WPRU for their work regarding undocumented and DACAmented students.

That knowledge informed my interview protocols and analysis of resulting data.

Limitations and Trustworthiness

All research methods come with inherent benefits and downsides. As case studies,

Chapters 3 and 4 also have limited generalizability. Because I was particularly interested in the process of field construction enabled by foundation funding, however, case studies are an appropriate approach to understanding the phenomenon of interest (Maxwell, 2013; Merriam,

1998). Eisenhardt (1989) speculated “there are probably as many approaches [to within-case study data analysis] as researchers” (p. 540). The critical aspect of any analytical approach,

38 however, should be intimate familiarity with “each case as a stand-alone entity” (Eisenhardt,

1989, p. 540). Deep engagement with the data enhances the quality of theory that emerges from analysis (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 540). Including multiple cases such as the two in this study allows the researcher to compare data across differing contexts and “go beyond initial impressions, especially through the use of structured and diverse lenses on the data. These tactics improve the likelihood of accurate and reliable theory” (Eisenhardt, 1989, p. 541).

In reviewing tax filings by foundations that have invested in undocumented student movement activities, I used foundation websites to identify potential program officers for interview requests. Citing busy schedules or a reluctance to speak about foundation decision- making, several invited respondents declined my requests. Others did not respond to repeated inquiries. These declines and non-responses led to a smaller number of foundation voices informing my findings than I had hoped. However, one former program officer with whom I spoke turned out to have played perhaps the most important role in constructing the undocumented student field across the community college sector. Three other current program officers at nationally recognized foundations also provided invaluable insights.

To ensure accuracy of the data, I sent via email initial drafts of interview transcripts to all participants and provided the opportunity for them to correct any errors of fact (e.g., position titles and timelines of events). I also requested that respondents provide amplifying or clarifying comments for points that may have been unclear in the transcripts they reviewed. The resulting case studies rely heavily on perceptions and experiences of campus professionals in a variety of roles. Therefore, the analysis is subject to the perceptions of informants that have arisen from those experiences. Although my review of tax documents and other artifacts informed my interview protocol design and case study descriptions, my commitment to informants to protect

39 the confidentiality of their identities limits my ability to discuss these data sources in the findings.

Although Eisenhardt (1989) noted the value of multiple researchers conducting case studies as a team that could bring complementary insights to and strengthen the confidence of findings, the nature of this project meant that I conducted the research alone. Whatever strengths that arise from this study, therefore, are tied to my perceptions alone. My own perspective, however, was not strengthened through a process of converging ideas with a research partner or team.

Statement of Positionality

The position of researcher as the data collection instrument in qualitative research requires the researcher to reflect on his or her identities and the potential influence of those identities on both how data are collected and subsequently analyzed. Guillemin and Gillam

(2004) noted the importance of reflection on researcher positionality as:

a way of ensuring rigor…[that] involves how critical reflection of how the

researcher constructs knowledge from the research process—what sorts of factors

influence the researcher’s construction of knowledge and how these influences are

revealed in the planning, conduct, and writing up of the research. (p. 275)

As a White, male, cisgender, native-born U.S. citizen, I carry a high degree of privilege into any space considering marginalized and oppressed populations in this country. Simply acknowledging this privilege, however, does not constitute a full reflection on the potential of my privilege to affect my understanding of the experiences of oppressed communities (Cabrera,

2012). “Working through Whiteness,” to borrow Cabrera’s term, requires continuous reflection.

I interrogated the potential influence of my identity by writing reflective memos throughout the data collection and analysis processes. In previous qualitative work, I have discerned my affiliation with a recognized research university granted me a great deal of legitimacy in the eyes of my informants. I noted times during interviews, however, when I interrupted respondents or otherwise spoke when I likely would have been better served by allowing pauses or responses to continue. Based on previous self-reflection, for this study I practiced more intentional listening during the proposed case study interviews. In addition to deeper listening, working through Whiteness also requires a concern for leveraging privilege to dismantle oppressive systems, policies, and institutional practices. My ultimate goal for this project was to develop a deeper understanding of how resources, regardless of their source, may be best directed to effect a more inclusive and supportive field of higher education for a marginalized student population.

Because the choices made by qualitative researchers carry implications about the values researchers bring into the data collection and analysis processes—including whose voices are brought into the data and whose are excluded—I approached this project following guidance by

Guillemin and Gillam (2004) to engage in reflexive practice not only as a means of ensuring rigor, but also as an ongoing concern with ethical practice. In each reflective memo I wrote following interviews, I responded to a self-posed question: What ethical issues arose during the course of the interview, and how did I handle them in the moment? This question served two purposes during my data collection. First, in responding to it after each interview, I took time to reflect on how both verbal and nonverbal responses to challenging or sensitive moments affected the conversation and, thus, data generated by the interview. Second, knowing in the back of my mind that I would need to respond to this question in a reflective memo elevated a concern for an

41 ethic of care in considering the positionality that both informants and I brought to each interview.

Adopting this broadened conception of reflexivity as both a means toward ensuring rigor and a commitment to continually self-evaluate “interpersonal and ethical aspects of research practice”

(Guillemin & Gillam, 2004, p. 277) enabled me to practice a commitment to ethical, justice- focused qualitative data collection.

My interest in this area of research derives from a commitment to the public good mission of higher education. This commitment informs my view of higher education as a means to empower people to participate in an active democracy and a belief that higher education should be a force for social empowerment, despite often serving to perpetuate systems of social stratification. I share the belief expressed by Forenza and Mendonca (2017) that “all educational practitioners must work to create and maintain stigma-free educational communities, as they relate to issues of residency” (p. 298) because fostering such communities enriches them as environments for learning. Based on my interactions with study informants, I believe by reflecting this belief in my conversations and by demonstrating a genuine commitment to listening to and learning from informants, I was able to establish positive rapport and, therefore, generate rich data for this study.

Chapter Conclusion

In this chapter, I have introduced my study of ways private foundations have played a role in constructing a field within higher education concerned with advancing the aspirations of undocumented students. In reviewing research to date, I identify the need to elevate this gap in the literature to better understand the complex set of actors involved in the phenomenon of field construction. The contemporary and contentious nature of the fundamental issue (i.e., the undocumented students’ cause) makes this a timely topic to pursue and consider, and results

42 should be of interest to professionals in the fields of higher education, philanthropy, and potentially beyond. This chapter also presents the research questions that guided my inquiry, after which I discuss the data and methods I pursued to answer them. As with any study, my approach had limitations, and I worked to mitigate the effects where I could, all the while interrogating the influence of my own identity as both research and data collection instrument.

The two case studies at the core of this project provide the first documented empirical inquiries of which I am aware into philanthropy’s involvement with elevating work supporting undocumented students pursuing higher education. Before presenting those cases, however, I provide in the chapter that follows a brief introduction to immigration policy and its effects on people living in the United States over the past century and a half, as well as how a movement of students arose in the last 30 years to advance their pursuit of higher education. Study informants frequently referenced historical context for their work. Therefore, a contextual narrative should frame consideration of data and findings from this study.

CHAPTER II

Immigration Policy, Activism, and Patronage

In this chapter, I provide a brief background and history of the undocumented student movement. Previous writers have provided more comprehensive histories of the Dreamer movement and the critical role of student-led activism in shaping the legal and political landscape, as well as public perception, affecting access to and affordability of higher education

(e.g., Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Wides-Muñoz, 2018). Rather than replicate such efforts here, this chapter includes a broad overview of historical, legal, and political forces that serve as the backdrop to the case study research I present in the following chapters. Although space limitations here prevent a thorough account of signal events in the long course of immigration policy and immigrant rights movements in the history of the United States, the context I provide in this chapter acknowledges that history and honors activists named and unnamed alike who have worked to advance educational equity for people living in this country without documentation. This context matters for understanding the complex dynamics within the undocumented student movement over a series of movement waves responding to policy changes and pursuing institutional transformations.

I begin this chapter by providing data on the estimated prevalence and demographic trends within the population of people living in the United States without documentation. I then provide a very brief overview of major federal policy and enforcement actions from the nineteenth century to present day. Although the federal government exercises primary authority over immigration policy, state and local governments have set their own policies affecting

44 undocumented residents’ access to public benefits, including in-state tuition eligibility. After discussing state actions over recent decades, I provide a narrative of the undocumented student movement that has, according to many informants of this study, compelled private foundations to invest in activism, direct support, research, and campus-based services to advance the stated aims of this movement and its student leaders. Next, I discuss a set of initiatives undertaken by private foundations to bolster support of this movement, both in spite of and in response to growing anti- immigrant sentiment in many parts of the country. To conclude the chapter, I note the important role of higher education associations working at the federal policy level to advocate on behalf of the DREAM Act. These associations serve as the most recognized voice for higher education on federal policy topics (Cook, 1998; Ortega, 2011), and by supporting the DREAM Act, they effectively legitimize work on campuses nationwide to support educational equity for undocumented students—a population that, as the following section shows, includes broad diversity and can be found in places nationwide.

Accounting for the Undocumented Population

According to most recent estimates from the Pew Research Center, approximately 10.7 million people now live in the United States without authorization. This number represents a decline of 13% from the historic high of 12.2 million undocumented residents in 2007. By 2016, approximately two-thirds of the unauthorized population had lived in the United States for more than 10 years; an estimated 18% had lived in this country for fewer than five years at that time.

Unauthorized immigrants have lived in the U.S. for a median of nearly 15 years (Krogstad,

Passel, & Cohn, 2018). Mexican immigrants represent approximately half of all people in the

U.S. without authorization, although the undocumented population of Mexican-native immigrants has declined over recent years. During this time, migrants from Central American

45 countries including El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras have come to the United States in growing numbers. Undocumented workers make up just less than 5% of the overall workforce, with the largest share—one in four—performing jobs in the agricultural sector (Passel & Cohn,

2018). Nearly 60% of undocumented immigrants reside in six states: California, Texas, Florida,

New York, New Jersey and Illinois. Overall, undocumented residents make up 3.3% of the total population of the United States and 23.7% of the overall immigrant population (Passel & Cohn,

2018). Among the undocumented population, approximately 5.6 million U.S.-born children now reside with at least one undocumented parent. Four million K-12 students come from these mixed-status households. These young people are part of the pipeline of prospective college and university students over the coming decade (Passel & Cohn, 2018).

Successive waves of immigration from varying parts of the world have both led to and followed evolving immigration policies in the United States. Each wave has prompted concerns about the availability of jobs, depression of salaries, and economic impact on native-born

Americans who themselves likely descended from immigrants to this country. The following section provides a very brief overview of federal policies beginning in the late nineteenth century. This history provides vital context for contemporary policies, anti-immigrant sentiment, and immigrant rights movements.

Brief History of Federal Immigration Policy

Policies restricting access to the United States and to public benefits for immigrants have a long history in the United States. In the nineteenth century, Congress passed the Chinese

Exclusion Act of 1882, the first federal action restricting immigration. The law responded to protests by White workers on the West Coast who believed the growing presence of Chinese immigrant laborers led to depressed wages. Under the law, the federal government barred

46 immigration of skilled or unskilled laborers from China for 10 years and forced any person from

China to carry documents attesting to their “status as a laborer, scholar, diplomat, or merchant”

(U.S. Department of State, n.d.). The Chinese Exclusion Act remained in federal law until 1943, when Congress repealed the law in an overture to China as an ally against Japan during World

War II.

The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of visas available to people from any country to 2% of the number of people sharing that national origin in the 1890 Census. This act barred immigration from Asian countries, except Japan and the Philippines—then a US protectorate. This restrictive action by Congress arose from anti-immigrant sentiment during

Word War I. The law effectively increased visa provisions for immigrants from England and other Western European countries while restricting immigration from Eastern Europe and Asia, all with the intent of protecting White racial homogeneity (U.S. Department of State, n.d).

As the civil rights movement grew in the 1950s and early 1960s, advocates for racial equity raised calls against the race- and ethnicity-based quotas of the 1924 immigration law.

President John Kennedy announced support for reforming federal immigration policy before his assassination. Picking up this cause after Kennedy’s death, President Lyndon Johnson signed a new Immigration and Nationality Act into law that brought previous quota to an end. This measure established five family-based visa categories and five employment-based visa categories. Along with a Diversity Visa Program for nationals of countries underrepresented among visa seekers and a refugee protection program, the Immigration and Nationality Act of

1965 remains the essential framework for immigration policy (Chishti, Hipsman, & Ball, 2015).

As noted by the Migration Policy Institute, Congress in 1964 eliminated the Bracero program, which since 1942 had allowed Mexican temporary agricultural workers to fill farm jobs

47 in the United States. More than 4.5 million guest workers (including the father of one informant to the case study in Chapter 3) took advantage of the program. After its termination, many workers continued to come into the country pursuing agricultural work. However, since

Congress terminated Bracero, these workers no longer had recognized legal status to do so

(Chishti, Hipsman, & Ball, 2015). Even during Bracero, in an episode of xenophobic policy, the federal government funded “Operation Wetback,” during which U.S. Border Patrol agents employed military-style tactics to sweep factories, farms, and communities to detain and deport undocumented workers. The program sent fear through Mexican immigrant communities, where memories remained of previous forced deportations—including of Mexican descendent US citizens—during the 1930s. Federal lawmakers at that time sought to exclude these immigrants from New Deal-era social welfare programs (Blakemore, 2018). From the New Deal to the Great

Society, federal policies by turn invited immigrant labor, permitted and undocumented alike, and sponsored mass deportation efforts that splintered families and contributed to the rise of a shadow population within this country’s borders.

President Ronald Reagan signed the Immigration Reform and Control Act in 1986, an amnesty measure that enabled 3 million immigrants who arrived in the United States before 1982 to seek legal residency, provided they had lived in the country continuously and maintained clean criminal records. His successor, President George H. W. Bush established a “family fairness” policy that deferred action on deportation of immediate family members, including children, of amnesty recipients under the 1986 law. Congress soon followed suit, passing the

Immigration Act of 1990. This measure “broadened Bush’s family fairness policy to include children under 21 and increased family immigration visas, ultimately providing more families a

48 path to citizenship” (Noferi, 2014). The first President Bush’s deferred action decision provided a precedent for the DACA program President Obama put into place two decades later.

In 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant

Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). This federal law continues to provide the essential framework for the immigration policy and law enforcement nationwide. Among IIRIRA’s provisions, Section

287(g) authorized the US Attorney General to enter Memoranda of Understanding with local and state law enforcement agents, effectively enabling those agents to serve in lieu of federal immigration enforcement officers. Section 505 of the IIRIRA stipulated undocumented residents,

shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State (or a political

subdivision) for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national

of the United States is eligible for such a benefit (in no less an amount, duration,

and scope) without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.

States and institutions have read this section in different ways since IIRIRA’s enactment and taken distinct approaches to the issue, ranging from explicitly offering in-state residency tuition to these students to banning them from public institutions of higher education and taking no action at all (Flores, 2010a; Flores & Chapa, 2009). According to the National Immigration Law

Center (2018), the provision “does not preclude states from providing in-state tuition to undocumented residents of the state as long as nonresidents in similar circumstances also qualify” (p. 3). Similarly, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 barred undocumented residents from qualifying for federal benefits—including student financial aid programs—but did not forbid states from allowing undocumented residents from accessing state-funded benefits programs (Bjorklund, 2018).

Federal policies restricting and relaxing immigrants’ access to the United States have ebbed and flowed in response to public sentiment over the course of time. After a long period of strict, largely racialized quotas, President Lyndon Johnson’s signature ushered in a new era of more permissive policy. The legacy of this legislation remains relevant today, even as legal efforts among states have added further complication to the ability of immigrant residents, including those who are undocumented, to access resources such as public education.

States and Immigration Policy

Although the federal government maintains the strongest power of authority over setting immigration policy, states throughout this country’s history also have set numerous policies affecting immigrant communities, including undocumented residents (Singer & Wainer, 2014).

Because laws can vary widely across state lines, the Supreme Court has been among judicial bodies deciding the parameters of state-level immigration laws. Under Texas law in the late

1970s, for example, the Tyler, Texas public schools barred children of undocumented immigrants who did not pay thousands of dollars in tuition (Bjorklund, 2018; Lepore, 2018). A challenge to the case ultimately made its way to the United States Supreme Court. During the

Court’s hearing on the case, Plyler v. Doe, Justice Thurgood Marshall challenged John Hardy, the school district’s attorney, in a telling exchange:

Marshall: Could Texas deny them fire protection?

Hardy: Deny them fire protection?

Marshall: Yes, sir. F-i-r-e.

Hardy: Okay. If their home is on fire, their home is going to be protected with the

local fire services just—

Marshall: Could Texas pass a law and say they cannot be protected?

Hardy: —I don’t believe so.

Marshall: Why not? If they could do this, why couldn’t they do that?

Hardy: Because…I am going to take the position that it is an entitlement of

the…Justice Marshall, let me think a second. You…that is…I don’t know. That’s

a tough question.

Marshall: Somebody’s house is more important than his child?

In deliberations, Justice Marshall claimed the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment should be taken at face value to protect each child’s fundamental right to a public education.

Other justices expressed reluctance to enshrine public education as a fundamental right, leading to a round of compromise drafts led by Justice William Brennan (Lepore, 2018).

The Court ruled by a vote of 5-4 in favor of a student’s right to an education, regardless of immigration status. This prevailing opinion applied only to K-12 education, however, leaving open the question of whether undocumented students should have access to such benefits as public sources of financial aid to pursue higher education. Although limited in scope, Plyler effectively cut off any further state-level action to restrict access to public K-12 education.

Soon after the Plyler decision, a student in California challenged state law preventing undocumented residents from qualifying for in-state tuition in the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU) systems. The student, referenced as Leticia A. in court documents, won her challenge, and neither system appealed the state court’s decision. Following the Leticia A case, member institutions of both the UC and CSU systems adopted policies allowing undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition if they had lived in California for at least a year and demonstrated a commitment to remaining in the state upon graduation. To support qualifying students, a group of “counselors, teachers and employees from all three higher

51 education segments, community advocates, students, parents, and civil rights advocates” formed the Leticia A. Network across California (Guillen, n.d.). According to Guillen, this network provided members with a forum to share policies and practices affecting Leticia A. students across institutions and systems.

The legal landscape for in-state tuition shifted in California again in the early 1990s. A former registrar’s office staff member—referenced as Bradford in court documents—from the

UC system challenged Leticia A. after being forced to leave his position because of his refusal to process in-state tuition qualification for Leticia A. students. Bradford won an injunction against the UC system, and the CSU and community college systems soon followed suit. By 1995, all three public higher education systems in California excluded undocumented residents from qualifying for in-state tuition rates. The passage of Proposition 187 in 1994 also excluded undocumented residents from qualifying for any public benefits, including K-12 and higher education. Subsequent court rulings found much of Proposition 187 unconstitutional, and by

1999 the state no longer defended it. Just two years later, Governor Gray Davis signed Assembly

Bill 540 into law, which exempts undocumented students who graduated from high school and have lived in California for three years from paying out-of-state tuition. These legal changes took place against the backdrop of an increasingly diverse state population that pushed California lawmakers toward more progressive policies toward undocumented immigrants.

Over the course of the 1990s, California’s undocumented populations grew from an estimated 1.5 million to 2.2 million residents (Passel & Cohn, 2018), and the politics of the state changed substantially (Nowrasteh, 2016). More than 20% of the country’s undocumented population now reside in the state, meaning exclusionary education policies would effectively suppress human capital development for millions of undocumented Californians (Passel & Cohn,

2018). The evolution of demographics, politics, and policies affecting undocumented students indicates the complex interplay of these forces. Scholars of evolving state, system, and institutional policies consistently have examined the potential influence of changing demographics on adoption of more permissive or restrictive policies governing qualification for in-state tuition and public financial aid (Flores, 2010a; Dougherty, Nienhusser, & Vega, 2010;

McLendon, Mokher, & Flores, 2011; Muñoz & Espino, 2017; Nicholls, 2013; Nienhusser,

2015).

Although California law has allowed undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition at public institutions of higher education since 2002, Texas in 2001 passed the first such measure: HB 1403 (Bjorklund, 2018; Flores, 2010b). According to Bjorklund (2018), “between

2001 and 2016, 20 states passed legislation or Board of Regents policies that offer ISRT policies for undocumented students—16 by state legislation and 4 via state university systems” (p. 635).

Five states have joined California in opening access to loan and other financial aid programs:

Washington, New Mexico, Minnesota, Oregon, and Texas. As these states adopted more inclusive policies, four states—Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, and South Carolina—enacted legislative effectively precluding access to public institutions for their undocumented residents

(Bjorklund, 2018; NCSL, 2019). States with even similar balances of political affiliations have, in some cases, taken drastically different approaches to opening higher education opportunities to their undocumented populations.

The inability of federal lawmakers to pass the DREAM Act, comprehensive immigration reform, or any other measure that would place undocumented students on more solid footing to pursue higher education and access federal financial aid—coupled with a variety of state-level policies enacted over the past two decades—has created a patchwork of educational opportunity

53 for this student population. Since 2001, however, a growing student-led movement has advocated for policy change at the institutional, system, state, and national levels. Those efforts have achieved some successes and experienced setbacks. But as in other civil rights movements throughout American history, student voices have shaped the terrain of a complex political and legal environment.

Undocumented Student Activism

On May 17, 2010, five young activists entered Arizona Senator John McCain’s office in

Tucson and began a dramatic sit-in to protest both Congress’s inability to pass the DREAM Act and the senator’s own refusal to support this legislation (Nicholls, 2013; Wides-Muñoz, 2018).

Senator McCain had previously supported immigration reform efforts but backed away in advance of his 2008 presidential campaign. By 2010, he faced a difficult challenge from the more conservative J.D. Hayworth. Feeling the need to protect his right flank, McCain joined conservative voices calling for more security along the U.S.-Mexico border before addressing comprehensive immigration reform or the DREAM Act. The sit-in protest by Tania Unzueta,

Mohammed Abdollahi, Lizbeth Mateo, Yahaira Carrillo, and Raúl Alcaraz drew inspiration from both other undocumented student activists who preceded them and from the LGBTQ movement pushing more states and the federal government to embrace marriage equality and other rights for LGBTQ Americans (Nicholls, 2013; Wides-Muñoz, 2018). They wore buttons with a photo of activists Cinthya Felix and Tam Tran. In 2007, as a UCLA film student, Tran flew to

Washington to show before a House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration hearing a film of

DREAM-eligible students sharing their stories. Felix and Tran died in an auto accident in Maine just days before the Tucson Five entered McCain’s office wearing graduation caps and gowns.

This protest became a signal moment in the Undocumented and Unafraid movement, both for honoring the legacy of “DREAM elders” like Tran and Felix and embodying the deep connection between this movement and the struggle for LGBTQ rights. Four of the five protesters identified as LGBTQ, making them among the many undocuqueer activists who faced the daunting reality of “coming out” across two identities—their immigration status and their sexual orientation (Cisneros, 2019; Wides-Muñoz, 2018). The parallel movements for undocumented student and LGBTQ rights converged dramatically in the US Senate by

December 2010, when the upper chamber of Congress struck down the military’s “Don’t Ask,

Don’t Tell” policy the same morning senators could not muster sufficient support to bring the

DREAM Act up for a vote.

The defeated DREAM Act of December 2010 marked just one chapter in the long story of activists’ efforts to open opportunities for higher education and pathway to legal permanent residency. As chronicled by Wides-Muñoz (2018), in the fall of 2000 Josh Bernstein—a

Washington, DC-based attorney with National Immigration Law Center who years earlier married an undocumented woman from Mexico—fielded numerous calls from undocumented parents seeking advice for their children who neared an uncertain future resulting from their immigration status upon high school graduation. He researched and worked on legislative language that could open higher education opportunity for these undocumented young people.

Senator Dianne Feinstein of California turned down Bernstein’s proposal, but fellow Democratic

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois agreed to sponsor the legislation. He joined forces with

Republican Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah as co-sponsors of the Development, Relief, and

Education for Alien Minors Act.

A bipartisan pair of House members agreed to sponsor the DREAM Act, and after his inauguration in January 2001, President George W. Bush signaled an interest in tackling immigration reform early in his first term. Durbin arranged for undocumented students from

Illinois, including then-teen-aged Tania Unzueta, to share their stories with legislators in

Washington. The DREAM Act was placed on the docket for its first hearing on September 12,

2001. That hearing did not happen, as the nation reeled from the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Political winds quickly shifted toward a primary concern with protection from outsiders, scuttling chances for the DREAM Act or other immigrant integration legislation.

Two years later, a diverse set of 900 immigrants and advocates set off from Los Angeles on a nationwide Immigrant Workers Freedom Ride, invoking the Freedom Rides of the early

1960s civil rights leaders in the American South. Wides-Muñoz (2018) characterizes this bus tour of “tomato pickers, hotel maids, and construction workers” traveling to Washington, DC as a “coming-out of sorts for the immigrant rights movement” (p. 32). Over subsequent years, higher education associations, labor unions, religious leaders, and other influencers of public opinion grappled with how to address the open questions of accessibility to and affordability of higher education for undocumented students. They also confronted broader questions of comprehensive immigration reform and the place of student activists within the larger policy conversation about the future of national immigration policy.

In 2007, Bernstein would step back from his leadership of the movement as youth activists including Tran, Julieta Garibay, Juan Rodriguez, and others founded United We Dream, breaking away from veteran immigrant rights activists to form an undocumented student-led organization focused on DREAM Act passage. In 2008, student activists at Miami-Dade College led an Undocumented and Unafraid march from the college to the Department of Homeland

Security’s downtown Miami office. On January 1, 2010, student activists Carlos Roa, Gaby

Pacheco, and Felipe Matos locked arms with Juan Rodriguez to begin a 1,500 Trail of Dreams march from Miami to Washington, DC to draw attention to ongoing marginalization of people living without documentation in the United States. “With this walk,” Matos declared, “we are announcing to the world we are coming out of the shadows” (Wides-Muñoz, 2018, p. 102). As informants to this study noted throughout the data collection process, student activists led the way to push higher education to recognize their needs. As the levers of policy at the national level failed repeatedly to work in their favor, institutions and philanthropic funders sought to address those needs outside the halls of Congress. Further, as students found allies on their campuses and formed communities of trust, they became more likely to participate in political activism that diminished feelings of shame and fear (Bjorklund, 2018; Gonzales, 2011; Negron-

Gonzales, 2013).

The student-led movement to secure recognition for in-state resident tuition eligibility, to qualify for financial aid, and to foster more inclusive campus climates for undocumented students was not sparked by any one event, piece of legislation, or charismatic leader. Instead, the Undocumented and Unafraid movement emerged following decades of marginalization and living in the shadows of American life. Although youth activists are rightly credited with the courage to come out of the shadows and demand changes in policies and practices that effectively shut the doors of higher education to them, their activism drew from lessons learned in other social movements (Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Wides-Muñoz, 2018). Comprehensive action to open eligibility for federal financial aid and a pathway to permanent legal status or citizenship, however, remains the responsibility of Congress and the president.

Philanthropy’s Investment in Undocumented Students

In advocating for the DREAM Act, organic activism coalesced into organized action.

Leaders in the philanthropic field saw a need to support this action and responded by establishing intermediary mechanisms such as the Four Freedoms Fund to direct resources where they were needed to fuel the movement (Wides-Muñoz, 2018). Foundation representatives who informed this study spoke of the alarm many in their field have felt since the current administration announced the so-called Muslim Ban in early 2017. They reported working through both established and new channels to meet the urgent and growing needs of immigrant communities, including undocumented immigrants struggling to find and maintain opportunities to pursue postsecondary education.

The Four Freedoms Fund functions as “a national donor collaborative working toward full integration of immigrants” (Four Freedoms Fund, 2018). Founded in 2003 under the guidance of program officers from the Ford Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Four Freedoms Fund enables private foundations and donors to direct resources and provide consulting to immigrant rights advocates and movement organizations. According to two program officers I interviewed for this study, by giving to the Fund, member foundations can support direct services to immigrants and capacity-building for grantee organizations with greater flexibility than would be possible through the traditional grantmaking cycle. In addition to long-term operating grants, the Fund can process funding requests on a “quick-turnaround” basis, approving and sending funds sometimes in as little as two weeks, according to one study informant program officer. Fourteen member foundations constitute the Four Freedoms Fund’s funder table (Four Freedoms Fund, 2018). Through the Fund, member foundations supported 95 organizations in 29 states and Washington, DC in 2015. The Fund describes grassroots local and

58 state-level grantees as “the driving force fueling culture change and policy reform at all levels of government,” which speaks to the intention behind member foundations to enact changes in culture and policies nationwide.

In addition to the Four Freedoms Fund, Grantmakers Concerned with Immigrants and

Refugees (GCIR) since 1990 has connected a national network of funders placing immigrant and refugee rights among their highest priorities (GCIR, 2018). According to GCIR’s 2017 annual report, in that year alone, 30 member foundations participating in the group’s Delivering on the

Dream (DOTD) network raised approximately $10 million “to support direct assistance to

DACA recipients, know-your-rights outreach, legal screenings, and deportation defense” (GCIR,

2018, p. 8). Since DACA’s inception in 2012, foundations participating in the DOTD network collectively have contributed more than $55 million toward legal services support infrastructure for DACA recipients (GCIR, 2018).

Beyond funding projects, GCIR conducts monthly webinars to inform members about policy developments and emerging issues, as well as regular in-person conferences for grantmakers to share strategies for supporting immigrant and refugee populations. GCIR also provides member funders with policy advocacy updates and resources. Through these and other activities, GCIR serves as a kind of connective tissue for 1,500 national and regional foundations who have an active interest in supporting immigrants—including those who are undocumented or DACAmented (GCIR, 2018).

Initiatives like GCIR, the DOTD network, and Four Freedoms Fund exemplify an interest among private foundations in influencing policy and practice without engaging in direct political lobbying. On a constantly evolving issue such as higher education equity for undocumented students, observers may expect foundations with an interest in field construction to take greater

59 interest than those seeking quantifiable outcomes and quick policy changes. Nonetheless,

Tompkins-Stange (2016) notes foundations have an important role to play in advancing the cause of marginalized populations whose interests may not be served under majority rule in democratic societies. Foundations “can use their power to advocate for competing or unpopular versions of public priorities, acting as a check on government or as a counterweight to government orthodoxy” (Tompkins-Stange, 2016, p. 130).

Previous research has found that foundation influence can “channel” social movement activity away from disruptive direction action strategies toward more conventional field-building activities (Barnhardt, 2017; Jenkins & Eckert, 1986; Rojas, 2007). As the case studies in this dissertation indicate, foundations attune their involvement with controversial topics while monitoring and mindful of broader political climates—both to stave off interference from government agencies and to support policy activism without engaging in it directly themselves.

Scholarship on foundation involvement with social movements, therefore, should account for both the manifest functions of grantmaking to advance a social cause and latent functions that may diminish a movement’s power by pulling its strategies into more institutionalized or legitimized forms (Rogers, 2015).

Professional Associations and DREAM Act Advocacy

As noted in Chapter 1, private foundations have played critical roles in sponsoring the development of higher education associations. Associations including the American Council on

Education (ACE), American Association of Community Colleges (formerly American

Association of Junior Colleges), and American Association of State Colleges and Universities

(AASCU), among others, often come together on shared legislative priorities (Cook, 1998;

Ortega, 2011). The National Center for Higher Education at One Dupont Circle in Washington,

DC became a shared headquarters for dozens of associations representing higher education interests by 1970. Today, the building serves as headquarters for 16 higher education interest groups, including ACE. Even this building itself owes its existence, in part, to private foundation investment. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation contributed $2.5 million of the total $9 million in construction costs (ACE, 2018). These associations serve as a voice for the higher education community on a host of shared and particular issues facing the federal government.

Ortega (2011) examined how professional associations approached advocacy for the

DREAM Act from 2006 - 2009. Across a sample of 68 higher education professional associations, Ortega found that although only 16% of these associations had made a public declaration supporting the federal DREAM Act by 2006, that proportion increased to 46% by

2009. Associations representing community and junior colleges emerged as early proponents of the DREAM Act. Over the course of the study’s time period, Ortega found a growing number of

“professional associations and learned societies” joined the call in favor of passing the DREAM

Act through Congress. Among the “Big Six” major higher education associations, including

ACE, all six had expressed support for the DREAM Act by 2007 and continued to advocate for the DREAM Act through 2009. According to Cook (1998), professional associations serve as the primary voice of the field on federal policy matters. On the issue of support for undocumented students’ pursuit of equitable access to higher education, national higher education associations for nearly a decade have presented a united front.

Beyond the major lobbying associations representing higher education to federal policymakers, other professional associations have taken up the cause of undocumented students over recent years. Within NASPA - Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education, for example, an Undocumented Immigrants & Allies Knowledge Community seeks to “share

61 knowledge, resources, and research on/for undocumented students and students from mixed status families” (NASPA, 2019). The Knowledge Community provides both online and in- person opportunities for higher education practitioners and researchers to share best practices and action alerts on issues affecting undocumented student communities. NACADA, the international association for academic advising, maintains an online resource page for counselors seeking to serve undocumented students pursuing college admission (NACADA, 2017). Efforts by national higher education advocacy and professional associations show high-level support for undocumented students, but the DREAM Act, DACA, visa policies for international scholars, and other issues at the intersection of immigration and higher education policy may rise and fall on associations’ priority lists. Advocacy on these issues has been further complicated in light of the current administration’s expressed desire to increase border security and enforce deportation orders of people living in the United States without documentation.

Chapter Conclusion

In this chapter, I have provided important context for the case study research that follows.

Although this chapter offers only glimpses of a complex history of immigration policy at the national and state levels, the resulting rise from the shadows of an undocumented student movement, and the efforts by some private foundations and higher education associations to support the movement, findings from this study are rooted in this history. As the remainder of this dissertation makes clear, students have formed a social movement that is both informed by previous movements and vexed by the fraught politics of immigration that characterizes so much of this country’s history. For DREAM-eligible youth, DACA recipients, and the remaining undocumented population, achieving their dreams of higher education remains subject in many ways to their state of residence and the accommodation of systems, institutions, and individuals

62 on campuses who take up their cause. As the political and legal landscape remains uncertain, private foundations have provided crucial support to the movement; only comprehensive policy reform such as measures put into place at other points in U.S. history can create a smoother path toward postsecondary opportunity.

CHAPTER III

College Network for Educational Equity

One challenge a researcher faces in describing the College Network for Educational

Equity (CNEE) is to determine an exact number of institutions that call themselves members of the network. CNEE includes a diverse set of more than two dozen community colleges, college systems, and nonprofit interest groups. Because some members include systems, rather than individual institutions, counting which institutions within member systems acknowledge their place in the network creates some ambiguity. This is a diffuse network of community colleges, independent nonprofit partners, and postsecondary systems coming together to share practices, research, and advocacy strategies all intended to 1) empower community college professionals to serve and advocate for the interests of undocumented and DACAmented students, and 2) legitimize this work by establishing formal communication channels, professional development opportunities, and a regular schedule of in-person and online convenings. CNEE member institutions are located in urban metropolises on the East and West Coasts, university towns in the South, and in the desert of the Southwest. They are situated in states with a broad range of policies affecting access to and affordability of postsecondary education for students who are undocumented or have DACA. This diversity, according to several informants, constitutes much of the network’s strength and value. By communicating with each other, student services professionals can learn from people doing similar jobs in differing contexts, ultimately broadening their concepts of the ways in which they can serve undocumented and DACAmented students—and how.

CNEE facilitates strategic partnerships for network members, provides legislative and legal updates to points of contact at member institutions and systems, and maintains an online portal to make resources, including practice guides and research reports, available to representatives of their members. CNEE also hosts an annual summit and conducts outreach to college presidents encouraging them to express public support for the DREAM Act and undocumented students. Two staff members—one full-time and another who splits time with a senior campus leadership role—at one community college lead all of this work, and have from the beginning. This staffing model limits organizational capacity, but both staff members pointed to the constant support of their institution as a key factor in CNEE’s development to date.

The Setting: CNEE’s Home Institution

Lakeside Community College (LCC) is the base campus for the College Network for

Educational Equity (CNEE). Situated in a suburb of a sprawling East Coast urban center, a main campus and four extension locations throughout the county comprise LCC. The main campus is a bucolic setting that formerly served as the summer home of a wealthy family. That home still stands on campus, serving as the offices of the LCC president and other senior leaders.

LCC offers a comprehensive set of academic programs that, according to the vice president of workforce development, seek to “meet people where they are”—both geographically and academically. At its core, LCC serves as an institution dedicated to empowering a diverse student population to overcome the poverty in which many grew up. Campus administrators speak of “the two Lakesides”—one an affluent suburb and another that is largely urban, with many immigrants and low- to lower-middle income residents. LCC primarily serves this second population.

According to the most recent available Census data, approximately 1 million people reside in Lakeside County. Nearly 17% of Lakeside residents identify as African American or

Black, 25% identify as Hispanic or Latinx, and just over half identify as White. Almost 90% of

Lakeside residents 25 or older hold a high school diploma, matching the national average.

Postsecondary attainment, however, outpaces the national average, with 48% of adult Lakeside residents holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 31% nationally. The median annual household income of $90,000 exceeds the national average of $58,000, and while Census data show 12% of people nationwide live in poverty, less than 9% of Lakeside residents do so.

Lakeside’s relatively high levels of postsecondary attainment and household income align with one of the two Lakesides one LCC informant described, but these data can obscure a subpopulation confronting the realities of poverty that challenge many students and prospective students in their pursuit of higher education and improved income potential.

Student demographic data from LCC indicate differences in the population served on campus compared to the overall Lakeside community. Twenty percent of LCC students identify as African American or Black, 35% as Hispanic/Latinx, and 31% as White. Compared to countywide data, therefore, Hispanic/Latinx students represent a higher proportion of the population on campus than Hispanic- and Latinx-identified residents overall. Students who identify as African American or Black are overrepresented by a smaller, but notable amount. In contrast, students who identify as White comprise a smaller proportion of the LCC student population than residents of Lakeside County who identify as White. Nearly 60% of LCC students are between 18 - 21 years old, and 90% are younger than 30 years old. According to the most recent Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) data, LCC enrolled approximately 9,500 full-time students in the 2016-17 academic year. Among first-time enrolled

66 students from the fall 2013 term, 17% had graduated within three years; 24% had graduated by

2017. In 2016-17, 54% of first-time, full-time students received Pell grants, with an average grant amount of $4,600. Two-thirds of students received some form of federal financial aid. LCC students can also qualify for a state program that covers their full cost of tuition, on the condition of remaining in the state to work for a predetermined period of time after graduation. LCC charges between $2,000 and $2,500 in tuition for full-time enrollment of 12 credit hours or more per semester.

LCC offers more than 60 associate’s degree programs, dozens of student interest clubs, and intercollegiate athletics. The college’s foundation raises funds that support student scholarships and campus capital projects. The LCC Foundation has a small staff that has demonstrated success among the top fundraising operations among community colleges nationwide. According to the LCC Foundation’s executive director, members of the foundation’s board span a wide ideological spectrum, but share a belief in the fundamental purpose of a community college as an open-access institution: providing opportunity, especially to students who otherwise may have no postsecondary option. This commitment from a board of more than

50 members, many of whom come from some of the most affluent families in an unusually affluent community embedded in a broadly diverse county, may make LCC uniquely positioned to spearhead a national movement among community colleges to support undocumented students. As a reflection of the resources available through the foundation, in one recent academic year, LCC provided more than $1.5 million in student scholarships thanks to contributions from local corporate partners and individual donors.

LCC stands apart from many community colleges as a well-resourced campus with the feel of an elite liberal arts institution. On campus, faculty and staff may lunch at a cafe operated

67 in all aspects by culinary arts students. They daily prepare mocktails and four-course meals while honing their skills in cooking, menu development, and restaurant management. The buildings are set in a wooded area that carries the feel of an elite private university more than the utilitarian nature of many community colleges. In the center of the main campus, a gleaming building constructed at a cost of more than $40 million houses business classes, modern languages, and

English as second language programs. This building serves as a space for the college’s English

Language Institute, which provides English language programs to more than 5,000 students each year. Two large retail companies provide funding for programs that prepare non-native English- speakers with workforce language skills to fill area jobs for their employers. This meshing of programs places immigrant services at the physical and academic center of LCC. This centralization reflects the fact that approximately 25% of the 1 million people in LCC’s service area are foreign-born.

People who work on campus are quick to reference two eras in the life of the institution.

These eras correspond to the terms of the current president and this president’s predecessor, who served in that role for more than 40 years. A set of retirements and other transitions for many senior campus leaders followed the previous president’s retirement, and an interim president was reluctant to make significant moves without a clear direction to follow. The current president cited the institution’s dedication to immigrant integration and education as a critical factor in her decision to take on the role. Now, her full embrace of immigrant outreach and education programs is a hallmark of her tenure. According to on-campus informants, the president understands the important role CNEE serves as a facilitator of research, advocacy, and best practices across member institutions nationwide. Managing the network, therefore, remains a key

68 aspect of the vice president of workforce development’s portfolio—a role that carried over from the vice president’s previous leadership position.

Approximately 150 tenured and tenure-line faculty and 500 adjunct faculty make up the teaching force at LCC. The institution recently began a campus conversation about a reshaping of the faculty that will result from many expected retirements by Baby Boom generation faculty members. Although LCC presents what may be a uniquely resourced and positioned community college to host CNEE, especially given the ongoing support from the president’s office, it is also a place confronting ongoing changes among those leading the work—its instructors of record.

Case Study Informants and Data Collection

Transcripts from interviews I conducted between March - May 2018 comprise the primary source of data for this study. I interviewed the two principal LCC staff members who direct CNEE’s work from their on-campus offices, along with other staff members associated with the college, a board member of the college’s philanthropic foundation (which functions as a separate legal entity from LCC itself), and a lobbyist for the American Association of

Community Colleges who has served throughout CNEE’s conception and development as a principal point of contact at the community college sector’s national association in Washington,

DC.

In addition to interviews conducted on the campus of CNEE’s host institution, I interviewed other informants associated with CNEE both by phone and in person. One informant serves as student services coordinator focused on outreach to the Latinx community in the area surrounding her employer—a CNEE member institution. This institution serves a medium-sized town that is home to the southern state’s public flagship university. The university serves as the center of economic and social life in town and, according to an informant, overshadows the local

69 community college as a postsecondary option. Across the country, I conducted an on-campus interview at an urban community college on the West Coast. By visiting campus, I was able to speak informally with students who staff the college’s undocumented student resource center, as well as their staff advisor. The college enrolls a student population comparable in size to many public flagship universities. My interviews with student services personnel at these two CNEE member institutions produced data on how these institutions serve undocumented students in starkly different geographic and state political contexts. Informants at these community colleges also discussed the ways they have worked to secure funding to address the needs of undocumented students their institutions enroll.

Interviews provided opportunities to hear how, if at all, membership in CNEE affected on-campus practices oriented toward undocumented and DACAmented students.

Critically for the findings below, I conducted an extensive interview with a former foundation program officer credited by all parties with conceiving of CNEE. Now an independent consultant working on immigrant integration issues, this former program officer served as perhaps the critical institutional entrepreneur planting seeds that ultimately bore fruit as a field of immigrant and undocumented student support. Although I originally planned to conduct more interviews in- person, a winter weather event forced several informants to cancel their in-person interviews during my LCC site visit.

After each interview or day in which I conducted interviews, I wrote a brief (1 to 2 page) reflective memo. These memos provided opportunities to consider any potential adjustments needed in my interview protocols (see Appendix C), reflect on the potential effect of my identity on the course of the interview/s, and note general attitudes exhibited by the informants. During the first on-campus interview I conducted at CNEE, I spontaneously added a thought exercise as

70 a question: How would the work shift if the DREAM Act passed next week? Upon reflecting on the informant’s response later that day, I decided to make this question part of the protocol for all other interviews. This is one example of an adjustment I made during the data collection process as a result of reflective memoing.

In advance of these interviews, I conducted an extensive online search of IRS filings, press releases, foundation annual reports, LCC institutional reports, and other documents. This process enabled me to see which foundations had funded CNEE over time, along with the amounts of grants made. Table 2 details the nature of this set of artifacts.

Table 2. CNEE Artifacts

Source Material Year(s) Description

Grant proposal 2009 Details the need for a national community college network focused on immigrant integration, sharing promising practices, professional network development, and advocacy. Funder 990s 2010, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2015 Provide amounts and brief project descriptions for grants made by private foundations to CNEE. Press release 2014 Announces national foundation grant to support strategic plan development. Benefits and Expectations n.d. Details key aspects of CNEE agreement for CNEE member membership for institutional institutions leaders considering involvement with the network. National think tank profile 2016 Profiles immigrant integration efforts for workforce development. CNEE research report 2011 Details framework for advancing immigrant integration in community college education, coupled with institution-level profiles of promising practices. Press release 2018 Profiles CNEE member institutions’ efforts to serve undocumented students in light of planned DACA termination.

Because of the abbreviated or vague nature of many grant project descriptions in these publicly available sources, this review process sparked questions in my mind to include in the interview protocol for CNEE staff and grant makers alike. Doing so enabled me to make comparisons across the motivations of CNEE informants and expectations of program officers who approved grants for which CNEE informants applied. Illuminating these perceptions and motivations added richness to the data. I describe findings from this case study in the following section.

Findings

Informants to this study consistently spoke of both CNEE’s value in the field of higher education and potential to do and become more, provided sufficient resources. By providing both a physical and virtual space for this activity to take place—along with a network of campus- based professionals, advocates, and researchers to connect—CNEE has served a key role in developing the field of undocumented student services across the United States. As noted by

CNEE’s executive director, “I think that we’ve helped to create the field in a pretty significant way, and a field that’s much broader than just community colleges.” Over the first six years of

CNEE’s existence, one foundation’s 990 filings show five grants to the network. These grants totaled more than $500,000 during this start-up phase of the network. During that period, another national foundation granted more than $100,000 to CNEE for an 18-month strategic planning process. CNEE’s initial invited grant proposal details five primary objectives for the network:

1. Continue to build a robust and engaged infrastructure and leadership for CNEE.

2. Leverage the power of CNEE’s relationships with key organizations to promote

awareness and advocacy on immigrant education issues.

3. Document effective administrative practices and systems that support the development of

pioneering programs at community colleges addressing immigrant education needs.

4. Promote the visibility of immigrant education as an issue and increase access to relevant

research and information.

5. Bring together resources to help build career pathways and explore options for using and

adapting credentials attained outside the U.S.

These objectives all indicate a commitment by leaders at LCC to a project that would effectively build a basis for a broader field of immigrant student support across the country—not just for students in the LCC service region. The initial proposal also listed one national foundation among founding partners, demonstrating engagement from a philanthropic partner at the network’s inception.

Although headquartered on a community college campus, according to institutional staff members who lead CNEE, the network owes its inception and continued growth to philanthropic support. CNEE’s executive director stated categorically, “I’ll only say without philanthropy

CNEE would not have existed.” One foundation program officer emerged from my research as a kind of serial entrepreneur, seeding immigrant integration efforts across the country. Sites for these investments included arguably unexpected locations such as a community college campus that have given rise to much of the undocumented student services field. Although the political and legal environment multiple informants described as “toxic” challenges practitioners in the field and the students they serve, informants to this study revealed the combination of DACA and policies they perceive as hostile toward immigrants have led to broader efforts to facilitate higher education attainment for undocumented and DACAmented students. CNEE’s partnership

73 with and sponsorship by private foundations shows both the promise and limitations of such patronage.

Through my analysis, I identified four key areas of findings from this case study. First, institutional identity and mission drive membership in CNEE and the work of on-campus practitioners serving undocumented and DACAmented students. Community college practitioners who see their mission as to open opportunity for populations of students who may not otherwise pursue postsecondary options see undocumented student services through an open- access lens. Informants at a public flagship university tied their commitment to undocumented student equity to their institution’s mission to serve the people of their state and to set an example for the field of higher education. Second, this case shows the potential impact an individual—an institutional entrepreneur—can have in the proliferation of a field of activity within the larger field of higher education. Third, the commitment of CNEE campus practitioners to their mission, coupled with the legitimacy conferred by participation in an increasingly recognized field in higher education, enables ongoing efforts and advocacy in the face of a challenging political and legal environment for undocumented immigrants. Finally, student activism has pushed higher education toward a more inclusive posture for undocumented and

DACAmented students, but a different mix of resources and demonstrated success in changing policy may be needed to sustain this effort. Each of these themes illuminate aspects of the complex but critical relationship between private foundation funding and the growth and development of CNEE.

Institutional Identity and Mission

Consistent with previous research (Nienhusser, 2018; Southern, 2016), informants across the CNEE network repeatedly referenced the open-access mission of community colleges as a

74 motivating factor for their work supporting undocumented students. Serving all students, regardless of background or immigration status, emerged as a critical value for higher education professionals in the community college sector. The executive director of the LCC Foundation made this point clear:

...the college is already 100% open access. So we don’t turn away undocumented

students in the first place. I think the donor mentality is similar. I don’t need to

explain to our donors that we need funding for a special project that’s going to

support immigrant students. Because they know who our population is, and of

course that’s an ongoing communication—education that we have to do all the

time to make them aware of who our students are. I think our donors really do

understand the community college mission.

The community college’s foundation primarily receives donations from individual donors, rather than private foundations, but this strong expressed commitment to the values of a community college came up across interviews.

CNEE’s executive director defined LCC’s mission as, “Bringing people out of poverty.

Bringing higher education to folks whose only access may be the community college.” The executive director’s description echoes the college’s stated mission to provide “accessible, high quality and affordable education to meet the needs of our diverse community” (emphasis added).

CNEE’s base on a community college campus embeds the network’s work in an institution dedicated to opening access to students who may not otherwise have the ability to pursue higher education. This placement also situates the work in a field within the broader field of higher education that places particular value on enabling access.

Informants at member community colleges revealed the commitment of CNEE points of contact on those campuses to opening opportunities for higher education to all students, regardless of their personal background or immigration status. A student services coordinator at a member institution expressed her commitment by sharing her work to spread awareness that state law in her southern state allowed undocumented students to qualify for in-state tuition. This informant shared, “I realized there were some institutions that hadn’t yet started to implement policies for tuition equality to enroll undocumented students in their schools.” Following this discovery, the student services coordinator began an outreach effort to spread awareness of in- state tuition eligibility by working with area congregations, student groups, and admissions and financial aid officers both on her own campus and at other higher education institutions in the region.

Another informant working as student services director at a CNEE member institution in another region of the country offered a different story of how work at her campus began to explicitly support undocumented students. While attending a professional conference, this informant and the vice chancellor of her division heard a panel of undocumented students share their stories of struggling to access, afford, and complete higher education. She recalled, “[The vice chancellor] was bawling her eyes out, and she’s like, ‘Do we have students like this?’ I go,

‘I work with students like this all the time.’ She says, ‘We have to do something about this!’ And

I’m like, ‘Yes!’” With support from the vice chancellor, this informant set up a task force of faculty and administrators to propose ways the institution could support undocumented students on the main campus and across a network of eight satellite campuses. As the task force considered next steps, students took the initiative to form a club for those who identified as undocumented. The task force recommended establishing an identified office for this student-run

76 organization, which at the time of my campus visit served the institution’s approximately 600 undocumented students.

To her surprise, with support from the chancellor, the student services director received approval from her community college’s board to fund undocumented student services with a budget allocation of $600,000. Although the board approved this investment, she revealed a concern about long-term sustainability:

I: Now, this is the part we're starting to build this program and it's all going to be

institutional funding. The institution has to figure out where it's going to come

from. Is it going to come from equity? Is it going to come from [inaudible]

money? They're scrambling around now trying to figure [it] out, but it is all going

to be institutionalized now.

Q: And so there are to your knowledge no sort of philanthropic or foundations

funding that work?

I: There are, and we were trying to get some foundations. [...] We are looking for

more foundation money because, of course, they're like, ‘Oh, my God, how are

we going—how are we going to fund this all?’ I think that there are a couple of

foundations that they're looking at but we are looking for more because otherwise,

it's going to be on institutional money.

Q: What's the capacity within the college to do the work of pursuing a $600,000

grant or something like that a year?

I: From what I hear, it's possible. That's what I'm hearing. That's what I'm hearing

from the trustee, from the vice chancellor. Of course, not everybody wants to do

it.

Despite an indication of some resistance to investing more than half a million dollars in undocumented student support services at one CNEE member institution, this informant spoke to the commitment of senior campus leaders to meeting the needs of this student population as a reflection of the institution’s open-access mission. They have pursued this commitment while simultaneously seeking external funding from private foundations to support the work on a longer-term basis. Foundation funding could prove crucial to sustaining undocumented student services at this CNEE member campus, especially in the context of resource constraints many community colleges face.

Multiple informants noted challenges associated with public disinvestment in higher education and persistently under-resourced programs for student services. CNEE’s work thus takes place in a field of practitioners dedicated to access for undocumented and DACAmented students, but who must take on what one informant termed “a resiliency model” to identify and leverage both institutional and community resources to help students reach their educational goals. These practitioners serve as what Stanton-Salazar (2011) termed “institutional empowerment agents” who empower students from marginalized and minoritized backgrounds to navigate complex systems along their educational journeys. Efforts to secure resources often lead to pursuing grant funding from external sources.

Institutional Entrepreneurship

Just as individual institutional empowerment agents can make the difference in whether a student persists and graduates or does not, I identified an individual institutional entrepreneur without whom, according to multiple informants, CNEE would not exist. In the case of CNEE, a national foundation program officer focused on immigrant integration perceived “a void” among activities aimed toward supporting immigrants in finding meaningful employment and securing

78 civil rights. Based on this program officer’s research, although community colleges served a disproportionate number of undocumented and immigrant students in general, no formal network existed for best-practice sharing, advocacy, and professional networking across these institutions.

According to CNEE’s first-year grant report, “Before CNEE’s founding, despite the tremendous impact that immigration has had on community colleges, the issue was virtually invisible.

Traditional education/advocacy groups had not embraced immigration issues.” Further, when the program officer looked for activities supporting immigrant students on the website of the

American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), the word “immigrant” did not appear on the site.

Although the director of CNEE contended, “I think there is a recognition, in general, among people in philanthropy, that there is a definite need for them to be stepping up in support of Dreamers—and I think they have,” no private foundation by the late 2000s had funded work explicitly focused on building a field to support immigrant students, including those without documentation. According to the (now former) foundation program officer,

I realized immigration was a hot-button issue for community colleges, even

though so many of them were getting more students from among that population.

I went to a bunch of places...because I thought [we at the foundation] could

potentially try to build a network of forward-thinking community colleges that

were already embracing this population and developing programs and services to

really help those students succeed. [emphasis added]

This statement reveals an entrepreneurial impulse to seed and cultivate what Fligstein and

McAdam (2012) termed a strategic action field within the broader field of higher education—

79 one constituted by a network of organizations at the vanguard of publicly supporting immigrant students’ postsecondary success.

Campus-based practitioners recognized the unique role of a program officer in the process of establishing this field. A former financial aid officer at one CNEE member institution told me that to understand the growth of the network, I had to know about one program officer. A student services program director at a CNEE member institution across the country told me,

If it weren’t for [a funder] believing in what we were doing...a lot of the great

work that’s happened across the country that has helped maintain tuition equity,

like in Texas, and then also spread tuition equity in places like Washington State

and Connecticut—it would have happened, but it would not have happened in the

way that it did and spread so quickly. [Our funder] gave that seed money that was

a catalyst, if you will.

These findings indicate the strong influence an individual actor can have in identifying and directing foundation resources to address needs they perceive in their field of interest.

Institutional entrepreneurs situated in the philanthropic field can have a transformational influence on higher education by directing available resources, but campus leaders who serve as

CNEE points of contact have also garnered needed resources to build capacity and provide needed services to undocumented student communities. One student services coordinator at a

CNEE member institution shared the story of identifying and pursuing a grant to support the

Latinx Community Outreach office on that institution's campus. As a grant recipient from a national private foundation with significant investments in higher education, this informant’s institution was able to add staff and fund outreach programs to spread awareness about

80 postsecondary opportunities that were available to undocumented students, most of whom in the area identify as Latinx. Among these programs, the Latinx Community Outreach office hosts a summer pre-orientation program to introduce college expectations to both incoming students and their families. The student services coordinator stressed programs offered through the office may change from year to year in response to needs expressed by the community they intend to serve.

Work funded by this grant also put the informant into regular contact with representatives at four-year institutions—including the state’s public flagship—to share strategies for reaching out to immigrant and undocumented communities. The community college made sub-grants to public and private four-year institutions to support outreach efforts and on-campus support services oriented toward undocumented students. In so doing, the grant catalyzed an emerging field of higher education professionals working with and on behalf of undocumented students statewide. However, the student services coordinator expressed disappointment the contact with four-year institutions has all but ceased since the grant’s conclusion. According to this informant, counterparts at the public flagship made comments to the effect of,

‘Wow, I can’t believe a community college has this program and you have it more

together than we do as a university.’ There’s just a sense of superiority within

these institutions that grant bachelor’s degrees and Master’s degrees and

doctorates, versus we’re just a small community college. That’s been really

frustrating.

This manifestation of prestige as an institutional differentiator has held back further growth of the field in this state. In this case, the informant’s story shows an example of the limitations of foundation grantmaking when on-campus professionals do not take on responsibility for institutionalizing the work beyond a grant’s term and return to their silos of operation.

Even as foundations can make grants that lead to changes in the field of higher education, grantmaking institutions change their understanding of and approach to addressing complex social issues in response to lessons illuminated by grant recipients’ experiences and expertise.

The student services coordinator at a CNEE member institution provided an extended example of how this interchange progressed over the course of a grant received from a national foundation:

I know this may be a big statement to make, but I really feel like it was those

conversations that we had with [the foundation] that helped lead them to be

outward and supportive of undocumented youth now. Because in our early

conversations, we asked them, ‘We want to make sure we can support

undocumented students with these funds. Can we?’ And they would just make a

blanket statement like, ‘These funds are for everyone.’ They weren’t saying, ‘Yes,

you can,’ but they also weren’t saying, ‘No, you couldn’t.’ I think they wanted to

be as inclusive as possible, but they were still figuring out their own vernacular,

their own stance on how they could support undocumented students. And now

you see they’re pushing our legislators to support a solution for DACA and the

DREAM Act. I think before [this grant initiative], they hadn’t really wrestled with

that yet. And those grants, that cohort [of grant-recipient institutions], really kind

of pushed them to think about that and be more outward and support

undocumented students [Emphasis added]. In this particular situation, it was the

reverse, it wasn’t the grantmaking institution that helped support—they did help

support—they didn’t tell us we couldn’t, but I think they learned as much from us

about how to support undocumented students as we did from them about how to

implement a collective impact effort.

In this example, a set of grant-recipients using funds from a private foundation to support undocumented students among historically underserved populations on their campuses provided context and catalyzed a more public agenda on the part of their funder. According to the informant, over time representatives from the foundation became more comfortable with explicitly stating the foundation’s support for Dreamers, undocumented students, and

DACAmented students.

Foundations that have supported CNEE and the network’s member institutions have contributed toward a growing field within higher education sharing practices and advocacy strategies to facilitate postsecondary opportunities for undocumented students. They have done so as the political and legal environment for this work has shifted in dramatic ways. Although informants quickly referenced the challenges posed by the current environment, they also noted the deepening interest among supporters in committing funds toward equity efforts targeting undocumented students.

Political and Legal Environment

When I spoke with the institutional entrepreneur discussed above, the former program officer stated bluntly, “I feel like what’s happening now, as epitomized by [President Donald]

Trump’s election and the rise of White nationalism, I think points to the fact that it’s unclear what the future of our immigration policy is going to be.” From the Justice Department’s effort to rescind DACA to regular anti-immigrant statements by the president, coupled with often competing judicial decisions in response to federal policy changes and ramped-up deportation enforcement, informants uniformly discussed the current political and legal environment as a motivator for their work supporting undocumented and DACAmented students. A student services director at one CNEE member institution expressed her concern:

It's so hard to say right now with the presidency. It's really, really hard to say

where it's going to go. I feel like there was a time...things were going really well.

And the [state] DREAM passed and DACA came, and we're like, ‘Do we need to

still do this work? When is it going to be that we don't need it anymore? This is

great.’ This is going like this and our students were getting jobs and they've got

DACA. They were able to work in the [undocumented student] resource center

because before they couldn't do that. And they were able to get the [state]

DREAM and get their fee waivers. Everything was going so great and then this

happens. It's like we're going backwards again.

This informant’s take on the effects of the political environment for serving undocumented students reflects a deep concern about future prospects for the work—especially in as public a way as CNEE institutions have pursued it.

Rather than step back from their efforts, however, higher education practitioners and funders appear to bring an enhanced level of commitment in response to the federal government’s actions. The executive director of CNEE stated,

I have to tell you the Trump administration has emboldened people, I think, and

the lack of clarity around the future for undocumented individuals in this country

has provided, I think, a platform for the majority of us ([be]cause it is the majority

of us, right?) who believe that they have an opportunity in this country and that

they have a right to stay. So I think we have a platform and a space to talk about it

more openly than ever before.

CNEE provides a mechanism for policy advocacy on behalf of undocumented and DACAmented students. Through CNEE, member institution presidents regularly sign onto letters encouraging

84 lawmakers to take action to protect DACA, enact comprehensive immigration reform, and establish a pathway to citizenship for undocumented youth. This kind of advocacy reflects the long-standing commitment of higher education’s primary national associations to encourage legislators to pass such measures (Ortega, 2011).

In addition to the important forum CNEE provides for professional networking and best practice-sharing, the network can also mobilize community college leaders to speak on behalf of their students. Many participate in the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and

Immigration. Signatory presidents commit to:

1. Educate the public and policymakers about the value and contributions of international

and immigrant students and scholars to our campuses, communities and nation

2. Improve how we support international and immigrant students on our campuses,

including by sharing best practices with each other

3. Support the consideration and adoption of federal immigration policies and practices as

well as relevant state policies that honor our values and commitments as educational

institutions and press for re-examination of those that do not. (Presidents’ Alliance on

Immigration, n.d.)

CNEE’s initial funding program officer expressed frustration with a perceived lack of attention and energy to issues affecting immigrant students and undocumented students on the part of

AACC. This view contrasts with that of an AACC lobbyist, who spoke of the association’s long- standing commitment to the DREAM Act and other policies that would open access and affordability:

I think, maybe, early on, when this issue first came up legislatively with the

DREAM Act, the comfort level was higher in dealing with the aspect of that act

that was really right in our backyard, with in-state tuition. And as the comfort

level grew, then we as an association could start talking more about essentially an

aspect of the issue that is broader than us as educational institutions, if that makes

sense.

Here, a member of AACC’s lobbying team alluded to a shift in members’ advocacy from a sole focus on opening eligibility for in-state tuition and financial aid to legislative efforts to establish a pathway to citizenship. This informant attributed that broadened agenda to DACA legitimizing efforts such as CNEE within higher education to facilitate greater access and affordability for undocumented students. Their ability to obtain a work permit under DACA proved crucial in opening the dialog about this segment of the student population community colleges serve. The student services coordinator at a CNEE member institutions corroborated this view:

I think DACA was a major catalyst in making both funders and institutions more

comfortable. I remember the pre-DACA days. I remember how—everyone from

educators and the [national foundation]. I remember the [Latinx Community

Outreach] program was created in 2011. There was a spirit and a willingness to

work with undocumented students, but we weren’t going to make it about that.

The talking points were about how this [was] for Latino students. We’re going to

focus on that, not on these other issues, right? And then when DACA happened,

the students now had this lawful presence within the United States, and they were

employable. That made people a lot more comfortable and a lot more would say,

‘These youth are the future of the American workforce.’ That gave folks

permission to create a rhetoric that would include them. I saw that across the state,

too, through other institutions of higher education. This policy made those

students more politically palatable. We can talk about those students now because

they are protected from deportation, and they were able to work. And because

they’re able to work, we should invest in them educationally and through

leadership, and make them integral members of our community.

DACA therefore marks what Fligstein and McAdam (2012) would term an exogenous shock that helped catalyze the development of a strategic action field concerned with supporting undocumented students pursuing postsecondary education. By legitimizing work supporting undocumented students who received protected status from deportation, DACA created new opportunities to engage the issues affecting their postsecondary prospects in public ways and with programs in which foundation grant-makers could feel more comfortable investing.

Although DACA may have led foundations into a more assertive posture on undocumented student issues, a representative from AACC noted the organization’s policy agenda is guided by its member institutions. Those institutions take on a wide array of issues that can compete for attention. Early discussions led by the initial program officer funding CNEE included AACC as a potential host organization for the network. Ultimately, however, AACC leaders encouraged basing the CNEE on a community college campus, where practitioners working directly with students could bring those students’ stories to bear in ongoing advocacy efforts. As noted by the AACC lobbyist who participated in this study, “...we’re 40-some-odd people here in Washington, in terms of AACC. And I’m sure as much as we’d like to, it’s just, practically speaking, we can’t do everything. So the job can get done better in that kind of situation.” As national organizations based in Washington, DC confront the tumultuous political and legal environment, practitioners and private foundations remain critical actors in maintaining

87 momentum on behalf of the undocumented student movement. These efforts, however, are also energized by the ongoing activism of students themselves.

Student Activism and Sustaining the Work

Across sectors, informants all noted the essential role of activism by students themselves in motivating institutional leaders, foundation program officers, higher education advocates, and other stakeholders to invest in efforts to open postsecondary opportunities for undocumented and

DACAmented youth. Previous scholars have chronicled the emergence of the Undocumented and Unafraid movement (Chuan-Ru Chen & Rhoads, 2016; Muñoz, 2015; Nicholls, 2013; Perez,

2009; Wides-Muñoz, 2018), but informants to this study made plain the importance of pushes from groups such as United We Dream on the Obama administration to put a measure like

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals into place. President Obama instituted DACA through an executive order after years of thwarted legislative reform efforts. Despite lacking the force of federal law passed by Congress, DACA gave cover to higher education professionals and funders alike to support students qualifying for deferred action who previously had been reluctant to show their support in explicit, public ways. By opening a door to legal employability, DACA served as a mechanism to legitimize work across higher education to enhance support for undocumented students through policy and practice. This legitimacy, in turn, opened dialog about how institutions and community partners could improve services through best practice sharing, research, and professional networking—the very elements of field construction facilitated by CNEE thanks to its foundation funding.

Student activism played a critical role in bringing about DACA (Wides-Muñoz, 2018), but the power of students’ stories also has motivated foundations to invest in their success.

CNEE’s executive director made this point by stating,

Clearly, you know, I think that a great deal of funding—they might not call it a

great deal—is going to those United We Dream kinds of organizations. They are

student-led, student advocacy, student voice, all of that. And I think without that

voice in the story—it’s like anything, how do you share the success stories? How

do you share the activism of your students? How do you de-mystify what it means

to be undocumented if you don’t put those voices out there and show the value

and the assets, etc. that are these students? So, I think they’re critical to engaging

philanthropy.

AACC’s lobbyist also spoke of the importance of groups like United We Dream, an undocumented student-led advocacy group: “Obviously groups like United We Dream and other large coalitions that are comprised of actual Dreamers, they’re going to be the primary voice on this issue. So we are always very cognizant of taking our lead from them, and certainly not contradicting them.” AACC, like many membership organizations, pursues a broad policy agenda, with an interest in immigration reform that would benefit students among ongoing agenda items. Based on this statement by an AACC representative, an observer could gather that the association looks to follow the direction of student activists and leading actors in the field of activity oriented toward supporting undocumented students’ postsecondary opportunity.

Undocumented students thus play a role in shaping the contemporary higher education field that resembles that of African American students advocating for ethnic and Black Studies departments in the 1960s and 70s (Rojas, 2007).

Discussion

Findings from this case study show how a diverse network of professionals across community colleges, foundations, advocacy organizations, and the national association for the

89 community college sector have developed a field oriented around advancing postsecondary opportunity for students who are undocumented or DACAmented. Informants attributed the existence of the College Network for Educational Equity to an individual foundation program officer who identified a gap in the field of higher education and sought to spark action through initial grantmaking. By basing the network on a community college campus, the people most responsible for starting and developing CNEE made a strategic decision to embed the network within the sector rather than operate it through a standalone organization or previously existing organization such as the American Association of Community Colleges. This placement means the directors of CNEE have closer connection to the lived daily experiences of the students the network intends serve. Beyond the evident benefit of having leaders on a campus that serves a significant population of undocumented and DACAmented students, having the headquarters of

CNEE on a community college campus also means the network’s directors must build the network in a more resource-constrained environment than they might at, for example, a four-year research institution or national advocacy organization. While bolstered by the existence of a relatively well-endowed foundation associated with the college, the challenge of managing institutional administrative responsibilities while also serving as a resource to colleges spread across the country creates readily apparent capacity challenges.

According to informants working on member campuses in other parts of the country, the professional network CNEE facilitates may remain the greatest benefit of the network. Rather than feel isolated in their work to serve a student population that largely existed in the shadows of American life and on colleges campuses for many years, in the context of a fraught political and legal environment, points of contact at CNEE institutions can call upon colleagues leading comparable efforts at institutions nationwide. The network provides research and advocacy tools

90 to members, along with space and time to convene and develop collective strategies for policy advocacy. In serving these functions, CNEE fulfills the vision set for it by a foundation program officer nearly a decade ago.

Through a series of grants from national foundations, CNEE has worked to build capacity—both for internal management and for on-campus professionals spread across its diverse member institutions. As the person most responsible for envisioning and funding CNEE at the outset left a program officer position to pursue other professional opportunities and another national foundation’s grant to support a strategic planning process came to a close, however, the future of CNEE became hazy. This uncertainty points to the challenge community colleges may face, given limited capacity to pursue external funding. Multiple informants wondered aloud whether and how CNEE may find a model for financial sustainability, given the anticipated ongoing challenge posed by this limited capacity for grant-seeking. Further, the program officer who worked in close partnership with LCC leaders to establish CNEE on their campus took a direct, hands-on approach to partnership. Other program officers may be unlikely to engage in this kind of close partnership. This more laissez faire relationship could limit CNEE’s access to external thought leaders that could lead to financial support from other foundations.

As in the case of a four-year public flagship institution profiled in the following chapter, informants consistently referenced both the challenge of serving undocumented and

DACAmented students as the Trump administration pursues terminating DACA and increasing enforcement, detention, and deportation. The leading voice for the community college sector,

AACC, has consistently voiced support for measures supporting undocumented students, including the DREAM Act (Ortega, 2011). Issues affecting this student community, however, are part of a larger slate of advocacy agenda items for AACC. In a time when, according to an

AACC lobbyist and other informants, prospects for advancing comprehensive immigration reform appear remote, higher education leaders appear resolved to continue their advocacy. Their advocacy agenda for the time being may elevate other issues with better prospects to pass through Congress. In this environment, foundations have played a key role in sustaining CNEE and work on the campuses of CNEE member institutions to support undocumented students pursuing postsecondary programs of study.

Findings from this case study reveal different perspectives on the past, current standing, and prospects of CNEE, but all indicators point to the essential role private foundations have played in the network’s development to date. Leaders of CNEE who work full-time at LCC must manage competing priorities on campus while sustaining the growth, development, and advocacy presence of CNEE. Individuals at member community colleges continue to find ways to bring in resources, either from external sources or institutional budget allocations, to serve students who are undocumented or DACAmented. But capacity challenges to grow and sustain the network and the resources of research, professional collaboration, and connection to policy advocacy, appear likely to remain constrained—especially as the needs of students and their families remain urgent.

Chapter Conclusion

By sharing their stories and coming out of the shadows, findings from this and other studies show undocumented students have inspired efforts by higher education leaders, private foundation program officers, and even policymakers to open postsecondary opportunities for this historically marginalized population. Informants on community college campuses bring admirable passion for their students’ cause and dogged commitment to the open-access mission of community colleges to their efforts. However, without dedicated budget lines or other long-

92 term financial sustainability plans for undocumented and DACAmented student services, an outside observer can come away with lingering questions about the viability of their work, particularly in a time of anti-immigrant rhetoric by the president and his political allies.

Foundations can provide critical funding to seed and scale up new fields in higher education, and philanthropic investments have played a critical role in establishing a field of support for undocumented students. As Rojas (2007) showed by examining the rise of Black

Studies, however, foundation support can be fickle. Without secured institutional support, transformative work in higher education can go through periods of latency and re-emergence. In the case of undocumented students, such rising and falling action could effectively expand and constrict postsecondary opportunities for thousands or even millions of people. The will of community college professionals to support their students should not be questioned, but the question of whether their institutions will provide resources commensurate with the needs they confront remains open.

CHAPTER IV

Western Public Research University

Western Public Research University (WPRU) is part of a multi-campus system of four- year institutions governed by a centralized Board of Regents and ultimately led by a system president. WPRU occupies a sprawling campus dotted by rolling creeks, tree canopies, and historic buildings where some of the leading academics in the world have taught and conducted groundbreaking research. An observer walking the paths between buildings or having lunch in one of the many campus common spaces would likely overhear much more talk of mathematical proofs, philosophical theories, and economic principles than of fraternity parties or romantic encounters. That same observer could pass by rows of reserved parking spots designated for

Nobel laureates. Faculty, staff, and students all share a reverence for the institution and its prestige among the preeminent public universities in the United States, as well as its high regard around the world. Display cases in buildings across the campus include timelines of historic milestones for the institution and artifacts of times gone by. Members of this academic community encounter regular reinforcement of the responsibility they bear to uphold the legacy of innovation and achievement handed down from their forebears.

WPRU students enter a campus with a rich history of social activism. Demonstrations for causes as diverse as environmental protection, animal rights, socialism, and free speech for conservative commentators all contribute to the atmosphere of activism that pervades the campus. The general social and political liberalism of the campus culture feeds and is fed by the political culture of the city surrounding WPRU. Students walking to lunch off campus could

94 easily pass several radical bookstores, coffee houses with open mic social commentary nights, and activists distributing literature for any number of causes. Those students would also, however, encounter encampments of people living with homelessness, mental illness, and drug addictions. Living conditions for these neighbors of the campus stand in stark contrast to the elite, privileged feel of the on-campus community.

Many people have been pushed to society’s margins because of the high cost of living in the area surrounding WPRU. Some of the richest people in the country live within a short driving distance from WPRU, and housing prices are among the nation’s highest. In a community of unabating demand, students frequently cite their struggles to secure off-campus housing among their primary complaints. High housing costs also force many students from low- and middle- income backgrounds to live in perimeter suburbs and endure long commutes via public transportation to attend their classes. Their commutes and housing situations make it difficult for these students to experience WPRU in full. Evening study group sessions, on-campus speakers and concerts, and other aspects of the core WPRU experience for better-resourced students may be foreign to their peers who live far from campus or hold down one or more jobs to make ends meet.

Everyone associated with WPRU who served as an informant for this study mentioned the institution’s reputation as a leader in the higher education field when speaking about the importance of advancing equity on campus. But they also noted the challenges of doing this work in the context of constrained resources and a labyrinthine organization with a strong history of shared governance across faculty, administration, and a Board of Regents. One senior administrator stated,

Western Public has a name and reputation attached to it. It’s a public Research I

university. If you can do equity work in a complicated bureaucracy like WPRU,

you can make it work anywhere. It’s a good place to look for proof of concept.

It’s important for us to lead the field from a philosophical perspective.

This administrator, who has held a succession of positions with increasing responsibility, reflected the view of many colleagues that equity work must be done at WPRU to signal its importance to the broader field of higher education. This work must be done despite the challenges of overcoming a complex bureaucracy to realize institutional change.

According to Census data, WPRU is situated in a county of approximately 1.6 million residents. However, this number does not tell the full story of a sprawling metropolitan region.

Just over 11% of residents identify as African American or Black, 23% identify as Hispanic or

Latinx, and 43% identify as White. Nearly a third of area residents identify as Asian American.

As in Lakeside County, 90% of the WPRU community’s residents 25 or older hold a high school diploma, matching the national average. Postsecondary attainment there also outpaces the national average, with 45% of adult residents holding a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to

31% nationally. The median annual household income of $104,000 nearly doubles the national average of $58,000. Census data show 12% of people nationwide living in poverty, a slightly higher rate than the 11% of WPRU area residents who do so. The relatively high average income in the WPRU area belies one of the highest costs of living in the country. Residents in homes with less than six-figure incomes may struggle to meet the costs of housing and everyday living, making the effects of living in poverty especially profound.

Student demographics at WPRU reflect a public institution with wide appeal. Nearly three-fourths of WPRU students qualify as in-state residents, while the remaining quarter come

96 from other states or abroad. Institutional data show that among all WPRU undergraduates, 3% identify as Black or African American, 15% as Hispanic or Latinx, and 39% as Asian. One out of four students identify as White. Further 23% of first-year students identify as first-generation college students. One out of five undergraduates are transfer students, and more than 40% of transfer students identify as first-generation. Among transfer students, 44% receive a Pell grant, compared to 23% of first-year students. According to the most recent IPEDS data, WPRU enrolled nearly 30,000 undergraduates and 11,500 graduate students in the 2016-17 academic year.

Among first-time enrolled students from the fall 2009 term at WPRU, 73% had graduated within four years; 92% had graduated by 2015. In 2016-17, full-time students with Pell grants received an average grant amount of $4,500. Nearly 60% of students received some form of federal financial aid. WPRU students can also qualify for one or several sources of state-funded financial aid programs, with criteria ranging across income level and prior academic performance. State law in recent years has opened eligibility for state-funded aid programs to students who are undocumented or DACAmented.

WPRU offers more than 300 degree programs across more than a dozen colleges and schools. The campus boasts that 70% of classes enroll fewer than 30 students. WPRU’s multi- billion-dollar endowment ranks among the highest for public institutions, although the endowment trails that of notable private institutions and a set of other prestigious publics.

Several study informants spoke of the benefit of having development officers staffed to raise money specifically for diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts at the university. This kind of institutional support, however, has come only in recent years after some earlier struggles that are discussed in more detail later in this chapter.

WPRU employs more than 1,600 full-time faculty members, 99% of whom hold a terminal degree. This percentage of terminal-degree holders holds true for the more than 700 part-time faculty. Approximately one-third of faculty identify with “minority groups,” according to an institutional research report. WPRU’s world-renowned faculty, prestigious reputation, metropolitan setting, financial aid resources, and diverse academic offerings are all key drivers drawing applicants from around the world to pursue studies there. This interest results in a highly competitive admissions pool each year. Students who attend WPRU have demonstrated academic and personal achievement, along with high potential, regardless of their citizenship or documentation status.

Case Study Informants and Data Collection

Transcripts from 11 interviews I conducted between March - May 2018 comprise the primary source of data for this study. I interviewed the director of WPRU’s undocumented student services (USS) office, as well as mid- and senior-level campus administrators who have played instrumental roles in initiating and developing the USS office over recent years. I also interviewed a former vice president of WPRU’s diversity and equity division. USS is one of many programs structured within the division. The retired chief executive officer of the university also participated as an informant for this study, providing crucial insights from the person who set the institution’s priority for serving its undocumented students in a direct, explicit, and public way. In addition to on-campus informants, I interviewed community-based partners and national funders who have invested in the USS at WPRU. In the findings below, however, I discuss how personal backgrounds of several informants motivate their interest in and dedication to work facilitating access to and success through college for undocumented and

DACAmented students.

In preparation for on-campus interviews, I reviewed task force reports, campus newspaper articles, and op-ed pieces written by study informants related to undocumented students at the institution. I also read major speeches by the retired chief executive officer, including the investiture address offered by this campus leader upon taking the institution's highest position. During and following some interviews, informants shared with me internal memos, grant documents, and other artifacts that helped inform my understanding of the growth and development of the USS at WPRU, as well as the role of private foundations to make that growth and development possible. Table 3 provides brief descriptions of these artifacts.

Table 3. WPRU Artifacts.

Artifact Year Description

Inaugural address 2005 Remarks by newly inaugurated chief executive officer of WPRU Ethnic Studies research report 2009 Report on postsecondary challenges and opportunities for undocumented Latinx students. Equity strategic plan 2009 Strategic plan for Division of Equity and Inclusion. Task Force report on 2011 Recommendations to campus CEO for undocumented members of improving campus climate and support WPRU community for undocumented students. 990s 2012, 2014 Provide amount and brief project descriptions from a locally based and national foundation. Latinx faculty letter of support 2017 Open letter expressing support for on- campus DACAmented students and families. Faculty Association Board letter 2017 Open letter denouncing Trump of support administration’s decision to rescind DACA. Psychology faculty letter of 2017 Letter to CEO calling for increased support financial aid and protection from deportation of enrolled DACAmented students.

As in the CNEE case study presented in Chapter 3, following each interview or day of interviews, I composed a reflective memo. I noted the effectiveness of the protocol and the of my

99 preparation for interviews in producing valuable data. In addition, I noted the starkly personal nature of most interviews for this case study. Informants shared stories of growing up in mixed- status homes or in low-income, economically vulnerable families. These personal backgrounds sparked and drove a desire among on-campus professionals to leverage the prestige and resources of an institution like WPRU to empower today’s students from marginalized circumstances while carrying on the institution’s reputation for campus activism and serving as a bellwether for the field of higher education.

Findings

In many ways, it all started over two meals. According to multiple informants, WPRU’s initiative to establish a formal resource center for undocumented student services began when the institution’s chief executive officer (CEO) attended a luncheon on campus and met students who shared their stories of being undocumented. These stories prompted the institution’s leader to learn more about the challenges and lived realities of undocumented students. Then the leader of a local immigrant-serving nonprofit organization partnered with on-campus student affairs professionals to arrange a dinner at the CEO’s home, during which undocumented students shared their stories with major benefactors of the institution. Moved by these stories, a board member of a private foundation expressed interest in funding a resource center for WPRU’s undocumented students. From there, the institution added full-time staff and a growing set of services designed to meet the academic and personal needs of students and their families.

Beyond that initial grant, made in a time of severe budget constraint tied to the Great Recession’s impact on state funding, additional support has come from national and local private foundations.

This funding has enabled USS staff and affiliated colleagues to offer trainings and technical assistance to institutions across the state, at professional conferences, and on campuses

100 nationwide. Foundation funding sparked the creation of USS. By showing the impact of this resource center for hundreds of students, USS staff garnered funding from additional foundations to make significant contributions toward a developing field of undocumented student campus- based and community services.

In this section, I present findings across five primary themes. First, on-campus informants uniformly cited the institution’s identity as a prestigious public institution as a guiding force for their work on behalf of undocumented students. As in the CNEE case, institutional identity and mission serve as the starting points for further discussion of how this effort has progressed.

Second, a small but influential group of faculty and staff at WPRU served as institutional entrepreneurs who, in a time of diminished public and institutional resources, garnered external funding to make USS possible. Third, for study informants, the political is personal. Individual identity informed professional values that, in turn, led to involvement with securing resources for undocumented and DACAmented students. Fourth, the external political and legal environment led to successive waves of student activism. The evolution of this movement led to a changing landscape for the students and their advocates seeking philanthropic funds to meet new and evolving needs over time. Finally, I discuss the power of shared governance at WPRU and the influence of both faculty and student activism on the institution’s approach to serving undocumented students. Each theme illuminates its own aspect of a complex story that, on the surface, began over lunch and dinner tables nearly a decade ago.

Institutional Identity and Mission

Each campus informant at WPRU referenced the identity of the institution as a leader in the field for advancing progressive social causes and the mission as a public institution of serving the state and all of its people. An assistant vice president contended, “It's...important

101 from a philosophical perspective that if you're a public institution, then that should mean something. It should mean that you're serving a broad swath of different constituents that make up [our state].” Respondents cited the public mission of the university as a driver for on-campus equity and inclusion efforts, and they noted Undocumented Student Services as a primary example of the institution's commitment to a position at the vanguard of the field of higher education in supporting undocumented and DACAmented students. Despite stated commitments to equity and meeting the needs of a diverse population, the size and organizational complexity of WPRU present challenges to institutionalizing equity programs. The assistant vice president for diversity and equity noted,

WPRU has a particular name and attention applied to it. It's a public research

institution. It's a Tier One research institution. I think that it's a question of, for

me, given the bureaucracy of WPRU and given the different constituents and

stakeholders that you have to deal with, from politicians to donors to

administrators to students to a shared governance with the faculty, if you could do

it in a complicated area like WPRU, then with some tweaks to make it work at

your particular institution, it could be done.

For this administrator, the value of instituting support programs for marginalized student populations, including undocumented students, takes a dual form. First, these programs reflect the public mission of service to all students in support of reaching their educational goals. More broadly, establishing such programs at WPRU helps legitimize work oriented toward supporting these students to the field in an explicit, public way. In the words of a former vice president for diversity and equity, “...we like to think—I can't speak for anyone else, but we like to think that we're looked at as a progressive example of higher education that we have. People watch what

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WPRU does.” Data from across informant interviews revealed a prevalent concern with institutional prestige and the power of WPRU to legitimize new areas of work across the broader field of higher education.

Informants also cited WPRU’s culture of student activism as a key contributing factor to the start and growth of USS. Several informants mentioned the frequency and diversity of causes pursued by campus-based protests. Student activism, therefore, is part of the institutional DNA at

WPRU. Because of this expectation of activism, student views and voices generally receive the attention of institutional decision-makers. As the former vice president for diversity and equity shared,

...there's a lot of just the way people do things, and at WPRU also, the students

have a pretty strong voice as well, and they're happy to get out there and

demonstrate if they don't like what they're hearing, and you've got to handle that

and listen to them. Actually, everybody feels like they are empowered to give

input and should be heard and so it's—that makes it tricky right there, right?

The former vice president recalled a Latinx student-led protest at the main administration building on campus following the passage of SB 1070 in Arizona. (Opponents criticized the state by contending it empowered local law enforcement agents to demand residency documentation from anyone suspected of being undocumented.) This protest led to a campus task force to identify and address the needs of WPRU’s undocumented population. Over time, USS would become the primary product of this task force’s work. Student activism, in this case, led to an organizational change at WPRU designed to support undocumented students’ academic success and personal development.

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WPRU’s culture of student activism has led private foundations to take note of on- campus efforts to support undocumented students. The former chief executive officer of WPRU talked about how students sharing their stories at a luncheon and then at a dinner attended by potential donors led to financial support needed to start a USS office. For students—both the

CEO and other informants who attended or were familiar with the dinner noted—sharing undocumented residency status required courage, trust, and vulnerability. Their willingness to share their status indicated a supportive atmosphere for students to share sensitive information about themselves in service of larger causes. Ultimately, all on-campus informants contended, student activism pushing for institutionalized support services for undocumented students, paired with financial resources that followed meeting and sharing stories with potential donors, showed the power of students within WPRU’s institutional identity.

On-campus informants consistently viewed the public mission of the institution as a motivating force for equity initiatives, including the USS. This orientation toward equity, however, can also lead to tension with the institution’s concern with maintaining prestige. The executive director of the Division of Diversity and Equity asserted,

...you can get frustrated with what this place is supposed to be—as a public land

grant institution and as a [public university]. As a way that I resolve that for

myself—as a public institution that should be committed to public service, to

public access—really what equates to a social justice framework.

In this executive director’s view, approaching student services work through an explicit social justice framework reflects service to a broader institutional public mission. Still, “Those things are just ideals; they’re not where we’re at. And I think that until we across the board—and I mean as a great society, and as [a state]—until we get closer to that, we’re going to need

104 programs like ours to make that happen.” The Division of Diversity and Equity, under which the

Undocumented Student Services program falls, serves as a conduit for staff and student activism in pursuit of social justice causes. Activist staff and students contend pursuing such causes reflect their responsibility to uphold the institution’s public mission and values.

One representative of WPRU’s diversity and equity division made a strong connection between the institution’s reputation for academic rigor and the need for broader understanding of the real challenges many students—especially those who are undocumented or DACAmented— to satisfy academic requirements while simply surviving. Many students served by campus equiyt programs experience issues including housing and food insecurity at disproportionately high rates. This informant made the point by sharing,

What people do need to be told is that there are very low-income students having

to compete with very well-resourced students in order for them to perform and

graduate at high levels that would then allow them to transition into their job

sectors while literally being in survival mode every single day. It’s not only the

academic survival; it’s the life survival that students are experiencing. So equity

consciousness is what helps you understand that 1) that’s the day-to-day reality;

2) that it’s our institutional responsibility that all students have the information,

the materials, the resources, and the support that they need so that they can

graduate. Because we don’t accept students so that they can drop out; we accept

students to graduate them. So it’s our responsibility that that happens.

Informants working on behalf of undocumented students at WPRU view their work in the context of an institutional responsibility to first include students from all backgrounds across the state and then provide the resources they need to complete their programs of study. This view of

105 institutional identity and mission compels staff within the Division of Diversity and Equity to secure resources, including those from external funding sources, to address student needs. In turn, as the director of USS noted, “For funders who are looking to better understand the intersection of immigration and higher education, they’re asking, ‘Where are the labs? What are the spaces of innovation and newness that are happening?’ And WPRU was one of those places and had a unique spotlight because of its history.”

Institutional Entrepreneurship

As noted in the previous chapter, Maguire, Hardy and Lawrence (2004) defined institutional entrepreneurship as, “activities of actors who have an interest in particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones” (p. 657). In the CNEE case study, findings pointed to an individual foundation program officer who identified a void in the community college sector and directed grant funds toward meeting the needs of immigrant students—particularly undocumented students. In the case of WPRU, rather than a single external actor, a small group of campus leaders led the way toward establishing and then growing a formalized office for Undocumented Student Services.

They undertook this effort during a time of severe budget constraints and encountered reluctance on the part of national foundations to invest in the project. Rather than direct institutional resources, state funding, or private foundation grants, informants to this study, along with other colleagues on campus and working for community organization partners, appealed to wealthy local individuals by sharing students’ stories. As students continued to advocate for more robust institutional supports and the USS model demonstrated success, a growing network of national funders approached WPRU to express and then fund their interests in proliferating comparable

106 undocumented student resource centers across other institutions and sectors in the broader field of higher education.

The origin story of WPRU’s USS places the former campus CEO as the critical institutional actor. A longtime advocate for increasing representation of women in the sciences and greater representation of racially and ethnically minoritized students, one informant noted,

“getting involved with undocumented students wasn’t a huge leap” for the CEO. In a time when undocumented students in the state remained ineligible for publicly-funded scholarships and financial aid, as well as for in-state tuition, undocumented students still attended WPRU.

Diversity and Equity staff members often served as mentors for these students, connecting them to essentially an underground network of support to secure housing and other needs. As the Great

Recession led the state to slash higher education funding, like many public institutions, WPRU dramatically raised tuition and fees. These increases further exacerbated the challenge for students who had graduated from in-state high schools but paid out-of-state tuition. During this time, according to the director of equity initiatives,

I was always being really consistent in naming how this was impacting the most

under-resourced students. Undocumented was always part of that narrative. In my

mind was always, how do we make this place better for undocumented students?

We got to the point of saying, it’s time for us to make a serious move towards

supporting undocumented students, and a couple of undocumented students had

dinner with [the CEO] at that time.

Even before the referenced dinner, the then-CEO (who remains a tenured professor on campus) had become aware of undocumented student issues over another meal. He told the story this way:

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I got to talking to this young woman who was a very charismatic person. She

started telling about her struggles, what they were. And in that conversation, she

told me that she was undocumented. I asked her to explain to me just exactly what

that means, and what are the challenges of being undocumented, okay? She was

just so personally compelling. I asked her about how many students there were

like her, and she said she thought about 40. And she told me about this

organization [for undocumented students]. The more I talked to her, and I talked

around a bit, and I discovered there was this whole phenomenon of students who

were undocumented.

The CEO learned about the “extreme poverty” faced by many students who “were forced to live in the shadows” at WPRU, “which is one of the most selective public institutions in the country, and that they were facing challenges that other students simply couldn’t imagine.” Learning their challenges and hearing their stories activated the CEO to pursue external funding that could support a formalized support system at WPRU, despite the challenges posed by severe budget constraints during the Great Recession.

To pursue this funding, the CEO “took two approaches” because, “One thing you learn in fundraising is that there is rarely a silver bullet. Thus, you are rarely doing anything sequentially; you are always doing them in parallel.” Despite WPRU’s prestige and reputation, the CEO’s initial efforts to secure private foundation grants for undocumented student support proved unsuccessful. As the CEO shared,

I first approached one of the major foundations…which I thought would be very

sympathetic to the undocumented student issue. That turned out to be a major

disappointment. The foundation staff was quite enthusiastic. Indeed, I had an oral

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agreement with a program officer that the foundation would give us a half-

million-dollar grant to jump-start the process. However, our proposal was

peremptorily turned down by the senior leadership of the foundation. I learned

later that the declination of our proposal was connected with them protecting their

tax-free status. I had a similar experience with another foundation. At that point, I

decided that our best strategy was to approach affluent individuals who had a

track record of philanthropy to the underserved. That turned out to be very

successful.” [Emphasis added]

This statement reveals the reluctance among leaders at one of the nation’s leading foundations to support efforts aimed toward services explicitly intended for undocumented students—even those attending one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions. After providing this background, the former CEO provided further details on the dinner other informants referenced:

I decided to host a dinner at the [CEO]’s residence, for a large number of

undocumented students. It would be a high-end dinner, which is not something

normal for students, undocumented or otherwise. But importantly, I also invited

several high-end donors who I thought would be sympathetic to these students. I

did not tell them the purpose of the dinner, other than the fact that they would get

to meet a number of our undocumented students who were otherwise a mystery to

them. I did not suggest there was going to be an ask at the end, and indeed, there

was not. I simply asked the students at the end of the dinner to get up and tell their

stories. It was a remarkable emotional experience for all of us. That launched our

campus undocumented student program. [...] This was the launch, but very

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quickly our donor base became much broader. It was absolutely inspiring—the

very best of Western Public.”

By finding a way to bring financial resources into the institution to provide enhanced support for this marginalized student population, the WPRU CEO at the time served in a critical role as the leading campus institutional entrepreneur for undocumented students. Other informants shared the need on campus quickly outpaced initial estimates of the undocumented student population.

Although originally estimated at 40, within a few academic years, USS provided services including academic advising, a lending library, and legal aid clinics to more than 400 students.

Initial funding from individual donors and a family foundation enabled USS to grow into a replicable model. Over time, USS representatives received a growing number of requests to present at institutions, conferences, and workshops across the state and across the country. This increased travel required additional funding. Foundations also made this field-building aspect of the program possible. The twin imperatives of building capacity at WPRU and broader capacity across the field have existed and remain in a certain tension. According to the USS director, “Our initial strategy was to say, ‘Alright, there’s not an infrastructure here at Western Public, so we’ll have to get our support from across the field to kind of start with that, and then fill out more broadly to the field.’” As the director and colleagues built the program, they found university development officers largely unengaged. Rather than rely on the university’s larger donors, then, they learned how to fundraise and write grants on their own to secure resources for the program.

Regarding the program at WPRU, the director stated bluntly, “Without external funding, the program would probably be nonexistent. That’s probably the reality of where higher education is. It’s becoming more reliant on donor-based and externally-based funding.” The director estimated 30% of USS funding came from the university, with the remaining 70%

110 coming from external sources. By taking on at least three roles—student services provider, de facto development officers, and then field agents sharing the model they were simultaneously co- creating—the director and a small number of close colleagues took on significant responsibilities and labor to build USS infrastructure. They also worked to place the program on stronger financial ground than the university itself could provide.

Even as USS has demonstrated positive effects on student well-being and graduation rates, campus-based informants shared their experiences with private foundations still vary.

Foundation funding makes possible WPRU staff traveling to share their comprehensive support model. In the current fraught political environment for immigration issues, however, some funders have expressed reluctance to become too closely aligned with undocumented student services. The former campus CEO shared,

We need a breakthrough. I recently went back to the two foundations that turned

us down a decade ago and tried again; sadly, I was turned down again, this time

even more peremptorily. This is an issue where leadership really matters; we need

leaders with both idealism and courage.

From early-career student affairs professionals to the CEO and vice president for diversity and equity at the time, interviews for this study revealed a core group of actors who elevated awareness of undocumented students and their challenges in navigating WPRU. Further, they worked to secure funding to develop a comprehensive set of resources to mitigate those challenges. This work required an entrepreneurial spirit and, in many cases, personal courage and sacrifice. As informants further revealed, their personal histories and professional values sustained them through the difficult work of institutional transformation.

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Individual Identity and Professional Values

Interviews with study informants revealed the power of personal backgrounds, identities, and professional values as guiding forces for the institutional actors who have secured the necessary means to make the USS possible at WPRU. The process of pursuing foundation funding and learning how to partner with funders has also shaped the professional identity and values of some informants. In this way, I find interaction with external funders on behalf of undocumented students has pushed their on-campus advocates to confront their personal and professional values, leverage those values in their positions at the institution, and share the USS model they have co-created to affect students well beyond the borders of WPRU. Further, several informants revealed the passion and dedication they demonstrated in the early days of forming

USS attracted the attention and impressed foundation program officers to such a degree they approached staff and institutional leaders with interest in providing financial support to both build up the program and expand the USS model across the field of higher education.

In my interview with the former WPRU CEO, this institutional leader related how the generosity of the priest in his family’s parish as an adolescent enabled him to pursue college education after becoming the first person in his low-income family to graduate from high school.

That education enabled him to eventually earn a Ph.D. and, later, become the leader of successive renowned universities. The priest’s largesse impressed upon him the value of opening opportunities for education to underserved and marginalized populations. This value manifested itself in the former CEO’s response to a question about how he made the decision to move forward with plans for expanding the Division of Diversity and Equity during a time of severe budget shortfall:

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It’s always about priorities. There’s never enough money, ever. So it’s always a

question of how you’re going to spend the money you have. I always felt that you

had to make choices, and in the end, I was going to make choices to ensure we

had an equitable institution. I think that was clear, but just to reiterate, when

people would say, ‘We just don’t have enough money,’ I just [didn’t] believe

them. They’re making a choice. When you’re in a senior leadership position,

you’re always making a choice, and it comes down to a question of what your

priorities are for the institution.

Through each interview conducted on campus, WPRU informants tied the possibility of an undocumented student services office on campus back to the early commitment of the CEO at the time. As an example, the former vice president for diversity and equity stated,

I have to give full credit to [the former CEO]. He really took [Undocumented

Student Services] as one of his priorities. [...] He was a brave guy with that issue,

with LGBT stuff. [...] With the undoc ed stuff, again, I think he got more hate

mail on that than anything else, actually. And he just didn’t care. So he went out

and raised money.

This institutional leader’s value for fostering a more equitable institution drove him to take on the cause of undocumented students and initiate the process of securing external funds to increase on-campus support services for them.

Other informants at WPRU brought up how their personal backgrounds shaped professional values. The director of Undocumented Student Services offered,

I grew up broke, so it was hard for me to ask for $20 from my parents. I knew that

was $20 we didn’t have. So to go from $20 to ask for $20,000 felt impossible.

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Plus not having the training and the background, it was a tremendous amount of

pressure, right? How do you do this? Because you are working for this

community you serve, and if you don’t bring home the bacon and, you know, for

the program you serve, you see the inequities—food insecurity, housing

insecurity, financial aid insecurity—it’s a lot of layers and a lot of pressure. I

think for me, it was hard to separate asking for myself from asking for the cause

because so much of my identity was intertwined with the work. I had to learn how

to tease and pull apart the two.

The executive director of the Division of Diversity and Equity shared the experience of being the only person with documentation and citizenship in the family growing up:

I have been fortunate to have both of my parents in my life to this point; I also

have three siblings: two sisters and an older brother. I am the only one who’s not

undocumented at this point, out of that group. So the undocumented experience,

while it’s not mine individually, it is that for my family. It wasn’t something that I

really understood until I became an adult and I grew up.

The director of equity initiatives brought personal experience to the work, as well:

I come from a mixed-status family background, and that’s something that I shared

for the first time when I got to WPRU [as an undergraduate], even though I grew

up in a border town. I shared that during the [summer orientation] program

because I heard for the first time, that being named. [...] I said, ‘Well, I come from

the border. We don’t talk about it, because we just know that that’s the reality. My

mom’s undocumented.’ And that’s the first time I had ever said that. Then other

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people started sharing. Because of that, a lot of undocumented students and I

started building that kind of bond.

Through these examples, I found campus personnel involved with USS brought deeply personal convictions and experiences to their work. This kind of connection has led to extraordinary efforts to make the dream of an undocumented student services center on campus become a reality. In turn, they co-created a model that became a model for institutions across the field.

The concept of “hustle” ran through interviews with informants who were in the early years of their careers at the origin of USS. As the USS director described it,

Initially, it was all about hustle. What I mean by hustle is, we didn’t have the

budget to travel, we didn’t have the budget to speak at other universities. So we

funded it ourselves. We would take road trips, we would sleep in friends’

homes.... We’d do it on our own time and with our own resources. We’d go out

there and say, ‘Hey, we’d love for you to come because we’re really passionate

about it and our work identity is tied to it as much as our personal identity.’ [...]

We were doing that for a while, to the point where it wasn’t really sustainable.

We had to find a more personally and financially stable way of doing this. And I

actually didn’t know you could get a budget for this. We reached out to private

foundations about what we called delivering the model or sharing the model.

They were like, astonished that we were so committed to use our own personal

time and allotment to try to replicate the work we were doing that they gave us the

initial funding to try to expand what we were doing and provide resources for

flights, travel, lodging, curriculum creation, website presence. Initially, it was just

kind of what we learned to do in the community—hustle and kind of making

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miracles happen on no budget, on shoestring budgets. And then it was just taking

that and elevating it and saying, ‘Hey, help us sustain us; sustain the work.’

Based on this telling, the hustle defined by “making miracles happen on no budget” prompted private foundations to become involved in providing financial support to stabilize the program and the people leading it. This funding contributed to sustaining the work and the people doing it, as well as enabling personnel affiliated with the WPRU USS to continue spreading awareness of the model they were building to support undocumented students at their institution. For them, this work was equal parts personal and professional, but findings showed the personal was also political in maintaining commitment to undocumented students.

Political and Legal Environment

Informants invariably discussed their work with the USS and private foundations in the context of the current fraught political and legal environment for immigration issues—and for undocumented immigrants, in particular. Overall, informants observed increased support for the institution’s undocumented population in response to perceived threats—especially potential deportation of students or their family members—from the external environment. As President

Trump took office, the executive director at WPRU overseeing equity programs including USS observed, “The need got greater, and so far the donors have stepped up. They see the need is greater.” Individual donors had, in the words of the USS director, increased levels of “angry giving” to the USS. Foundations have continued to support the program, but with an eye to the political and legal dynamics of doing so. The director of USS shared,

I think for a lot of folks in philanthropy, this issue of immigrant rights is so new,

and there’s this cooling off because it’s so new. I think, the resources don’t really

match the words. I wonder how we could have philanthropy embed and integrate

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immigration into their core priorities. [...] I think foundations are interested in

making big splashes in the field. I don’t think philanthropy does a good enough

job of sharing what they’ve learned with their grantees.

Here, the person most directly involved with undocumented students at WPRU revealed a level of skepticism about the institutional commitment of foundation supporters during a time of critical need for the program and community it serves. The director also indicated a desire to see foundations serve as stronger facilitators of best-practice sharing and trans-institutional learning.

In this informant’s view, foundations could play a larger role in field construction than their current engagement allows.

For every informant, President Obama’s executive order establishing DACA in 2012 represents a milestone in the movement to formalize support for undocumented students, both on campus and more broadly across the field of higher education. In the words of the former campus CEO, “As a practical matter for the students, it was a tremendous advance because it gave them the possibility of going to graduate school and getting jobs. For many of us, it was viewed as a first step toward the DREAM Act.” By opening more employment opportunities for students, DACA enabled many to gain surer financial footing. However, campus administrators admitted concerns about protecting the identity of students and their families. As the former vice president for diversity and equity noted, “I remember [we sat] around asking ourselves, ‘Should we actually ask our students to sign up for this? What if the [national] administration changes and they start using it against them? That seemed like a real danger at the time, and [now] here we are.” The former CEO corroborated this view, sharing,

I cautioned some of the students about it, saying, ‘It’s good that you’re doing this,

but be cautious about the amount of information you are providing the

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government—not just about yourself, but about your entire family. Of course,

with the current demonization of undocumented immigrants by the

administration, that nervousness is heightened for us.

In the view of WPRU administrators, DACA helped legitimize the work of supporting undocumented students, as it opened a clearer path to job opportunities and broader participation in civic life. Foundations also approached the institution with deeper interest in providing funds to the USS to spread the WPRU model of comprehensive support across other institutions, systems, and states. But informants also felt some of their reservations about the personal and family information required to apply for DACA were validated by the rise in anti-immigrant sentiment they viewed as fuel for the Trump campaign and administration.

By multiple accounts, DACA changed the nature of how potential funders viewed opportunities to invest in the undocumented student movement. The executive director of a local immigrant advocacy organization that frequently partners with WPRU stated bluntly,

DACA happened, and a lot of foundations who had never been supporting

undocumented students suddenly had what they felt was a legal opening to do so.

[...] The other thing is—and we were just starting to become totally hip and

fashionable for funders. And I’ll have to say, I think funders generally follow the

herd, and they kind of do things—like many organizations or people—in trends.

This nonprofit leader also shared that increased foundation funding “could sort of build our legitimacy and reputation in certain areas...they came in later, though” than individual donors who had already supported the organization’s scholarship and other support funds. This perspective reveals a sense that personnel at private foundations were interested in funding projects directed toward supporting undocumented students before DACA, but held out on

118 making significant investments until the political and legal cover of the program freed space for them to do so. Even then, foundation support could be slow in coming, which frustrated some of the informants doing direct service work who needed external financial support for their programs. In addition, in an academic culture where external funding confers increased legitimacy, on-campus informants shared some faculty members continued to express reluctance and resistance about the USS out of fear its rise in prominence would turn away potential funders, including both foundations and federal government agencies.

Foundation program officers offered different perspectives on the shifting context for giving that DACA may have created. This exchange with a program officer from a national foundation with significant investments in immigrant integration serves as one example:

Q: Do you think that, though, DACA provided more of a ‘legitimate’ avenue for

funders to step into the space where they may have been reluctant to beforehand?

I: No. I mean, I don’t think so. Most of the donors who have been funding...the

Dreamers have been funding the immigration movement. I think where it’s

brought more people in is from more of the elites. I think higher education has

become much more of an advocate, frankly. And you saw this in the last round of

the fight; they have taken it on themselves. They want to protect these young

students who are part of their campuses.

By “elites,” this informant meant both higher education leaders and wealthy individuals who have established or publicly supported scholarship funds intended for undocumented and

DACAmented students. Within the current political and legal environment, a program officer at another national foundation cautioned that “sometimes direct service is the answer...but sometimes advocacy and supporting groups is an even more effective way” to advance the cause

119 of this student population. For that informant, directing foundation funds to legal defense funds serving immigrant communities provided an attractive area to support. Rather than serve as a

“retailer” of support to immigrant students and their families (i.e., providing direct services such as scholarships), this program officer saw the best role for the foundation as one of a

“wholesaler” that provided resources to people with closer connections to the targeted communities. Those service providers, in turn, can use those resources as they best see fit.

Resources can support activities from assisting DACA-eligible youth in the deferred action application process to legal aid for students or families in deportation proceedings. For the time being, as DACA remains operational following a series of court orders, leaders at national foundations who participated in this study appear committed to maintaining investments in intermediary organizations and policy advocacy efforts, while remaining reluctant to become involved in more direct service support to individual students and their families.

Whether situated at national foundations, an area community-based organization, or on campus at WPRU, informants acknowledged the challenges of navigating the politics of immigration while working to facilitate higher education for undocumented and DACAmented students. On-campus informants consistently noted what they perceived as diminished resistance to Undocumented Student Services and greater concern for protecting students WPRU enrolls from threats of anti-immigrant violence posted on social media platforms and deportation raids that affect students and their families. As senior campus administrators and student affairs professionals in WPRU’s Division of Diversity and Equity have sought ways to mitigate the effects of a negative external political climate for students who are undocumented or

DACAmented, they have observed stronger activism by faculty on behalf of this student population, coupled with diminished resistance by long-standing skeptics or opponents. Faculty

120 support contributes toward a changing campus climate for undocumented students at an institution with a tradition of strong shared governance.

Shared Governance

Several informants referenced the strength of shared governance at WPRU as a Research

I institution. The director of Undocumented Student Services shared, “...when I look at the university, I think there are two power leverages. One is tenured faculty, and the other is students. [Student affairs professionals] could say the same thing as faculty say, but they (i.e., faculty) have a certain level of reverence at the university and a certain level of influence. So when they say it, it carries a lot more weight.” The thread of growing faculty support and sustained student activism ran throughout on-campus interviews informing this study. By the account of informants to this study, the external funding support generated by public institutional commitments to undocumented students has played an important role in mitigating faculty opposition and increasing the number of faculty allies. For their part, student leaders have raised their voices and attracted the attention of potential foundation funders to enable USS to develop into the comprehensive model it has become, providing a model for other institutions across the field of higher education.

The economic crisis for public higher education posed by the Great Recession, according to informants at WPRU, led to historic tuition hikes and placed the public institution at even farther reach than before for undocumented students. Many of these students come from low- income families. When asked about the balance of institutional funds and external funding support for the USS, the then-vice president for diversity and equity replied, “Well, the problem with internal dollars was we didn’t have any.” During a time of dramatic public disinvestment from WPRU’s state government, the decisions to develop a campus-wide equity plan and

121 establish a formal resource center for undocumented students led to significant faculty pushback.

As the former vice president went on to say,

Starting new things really benefited greatly from outside money. Actually,

when...we announced the [foundation] grant and what we were going to be doing,

a bunch of faculty sort of missed the point that actually that this all brings outside

funding. And they came after [the CEO]. They were like, ‘Are you kidding? With

all our budget problems, you're going to spend [millions of dollars] on equity and

inclusion. What are you, crazy?’ And he was like, ‘Well, well, no. I think you

didn't read it carefully. I'm not going to spend [those millions]. This foundation's

going to spend [those millions]. I'm not.’ And then they were like, ‘Oh. Well,

okay [laughter]. Never mind.’

WPRU’s strong faculty governance model compelled senior campus administrators to address faculty concerns about investments in equity programs like USS. “At the first inkling that campus money would be going to stuff like this, you ran into a lot of resistance. And so, yeah, outside money was quite important” in making USS possible, according to the former vice president. Further, according to this informant, “You can jam stuff up in a hurry if you don’t get the bureaucracy to grease the skids on these things.” As an institutional vice president, this informant used the position to bring together institution- and system-wide faculty task forces to draft and issue statements of support for undocumented students. These statements, then, could become reference points to support the USS and demonstrate faculty input.

Because faculty exert strong influence on institutional decision-making at WPRU, diversity and equity personnel at lower levels than the vice president also have worked to build relationships and understanding among faculty. At various points, the assistant vice president,

122 executive director, and director of equity initiatives within the Division of Diversity and Equity addressed faculty members resisting the university’s embrace of undocumented students.

According to the director of equity initiatives,

In those cases, we have to say, ‘You’re not going to be an ally, but at least help us

work with you so you stop getting in the way. You can have your ideological

beliefs, but you don’t need to be showing up to every single committee. You don’t

need to be out actively against these students. How do we get you there?’

Comparable to the CEO’s point of pushing forward parallel efforts to secure resources for the

USS, informants in the Division of Diversity and Equity moved across several fronts to both mitigate the resistance of faculty and some staff who opposed their efforts and to continue building allies among more sympathetic individuals on campus. Through individual meetings, outreach to faculty task forces, committees, and other representative bodies, and periodic undocumented student ally trainings, Diversity and Equity personnel have engaged faculty to cultivate a more welcoming campus climate for undocumented and DACAmented students, as well as for their own work to support these students’ educational journeys. Foundation funding to support the program during a time of significant budget constraint, in the estimation of several informants from this division, contributed substantially toward that effort.

As much as any factor, the Trump administration’s move to rescind DACA motivated faculty to express support for the undocumented/DACAmented community. In the fall 2017 term, various faculty groups published open letters of support for potentially affected students and their families. The Board of the campus faculty association released a letter to the WPRU undocumented student community within days of Attorney General Sessions’s announcement.

The letter expressed the faculty representatives’ “unequivocal opposition to the Trump

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Administration’s decision to rescind the DACA program.” They also “denounce[d] the

Administration’s stated reasons for ending the program and the decision’s unspoken but unmistakable racism.” The Latinx faculty association, Psychology department, and other faculty groups issued similar condemnations, coupled with expressions of support for the CEO’s expressed support for undocumented students. According to informants, these letters contributed toward a sense of solidarity on campus and activated some faculty members who had previously opposed or had reservations about the institution’s public support of undocumented students.

Although faculty have certain power in the university’s decision-making processes, students, too, have a high level of agency in shaping institutional decisions and structures.

Several informants spoke of successive phases of student activism at WPRU. State and federal political and legal contexts have provided much of the context for these phases. First, undocumented students navigated WPRU in a kind of underground, invisible to all but a few trusted student affairs professionals and faculty. Second, advocacy for the DREAM Act precipitated a growing sense of agency, leading to the third phase: the Undocumented and

Unafraid movement. According to informants for this study, the sense of solidarity among undocumented students on campus fractured as some students attained DACA protections and others either did not pursue DACA or did not meet eligibility qualifications. Throughout these public phases, students have pushed for greater levels of support from the institution during a time of severe resource constraints. Student advocacy has drawn the attention of private foundations and individual donors alike to help WPRU meet evolving student needs. Now, the federal administration’s perceived hostility toward the undocumented population has diminished the fissures separating DACAmented and undocumented students.

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According to on-campus and community-based informants, what many students see as an existential threat posed by the Trump administration has led to a reunification of efforts. The assistant vice president of the Division of Diversity and Equity noted the rising power of students by observing,

I would say the power of students also changed, as well. And so they’re no longer

asking for access and equity. They’re demanding access and equity. [...] They’re

no longer saying, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you,’ and ‘We’re so grateful for this.’

They’re understanding that this is part of what equity is for them. And now, they

move the goalposts. They’ll say, ‘We need to also advocate for our families and

our parents and the immigrant community.’ So I think what we have here now is a

given to them.

In response, funders have invested in USS at WPRU and provided resources for WPRU representatives to continue developing the program’s model while also sharing the model through presentations and networking opportunities across the field of higher education in the

United States. Investing in an entity like USS also may appeal to foundations more interested in constructing the field of undocumented student support services than getting involved with more direct engagement with students like granting individual scholarships.

The shared governance dynamics of WPRU provide important context for understanding the role of private foundation involvement with the institution’s Undocumented Student

Services, just as the external dynamics of the political and legal landscape. As one informant contended, WPRU “is just a microcosm of everywhere.” Campus personnel consistently relied on their personal identity and professional values to sustain their commitment to serving undocumented and DACAmented students—and to the challenging work of securing financial

125 resources needed to meet these students’ needs. Their ongoing work provides an example of institutional entrepreneurship that continues to shape institutional structures, policies, and climate. In the following section, I provide an analysis of these findings before moving to implications for further research, institutional practice, and theory.

Discussion

Findings from this study yield several insights into the role private foundations have played in the development of an undocumented student services program at a flagship public institution. Perhaps most striking, large national foundations proved reluctant to invest in this on- campus effort, presumably because of perceived political and legal risks associated with publicly supporting students without legal residency in the United States. Although major funders denied funding to start USS, a smaller local foundation made the program possible, especially in a time of severe budget shortfalls tied to the Great Recession at the close of the 2000s and early years of the 2010s. Within the institution, multiple informants credited the chief executive officer at the time with galvanizing support for undocumented students and making their cause his own.

According to the people who worked most closely with and on behalf of WPRU’s undocumented student population, the CEO’s deep involvement enabled them to gain audiences with prospective donors who invested in the concept of USS, then made additional contributions to build USS into a comprehensive model of student and family support. This kind of meeting of institutional entrepreneurship from lower- to mid-level campus professionals and senior administration complements prior scholarship on common preconditions for institutional transformation (Kezar, 2007, 2010; Kezar & Eckel, 2008). Findings from this study make clear that campus allies outside senior administration roles facilitated access to a campus leader they believed would be sympathetic to undocumented students’ cause, and they were right. That

126 sympathy alone, however, could not meet those students’ needs. For that, the CEO’s leadership and pursuit of external funding proved critical.

Several of the key staff members who took on the project of building an undocumented student support program at WPRU spoke of their “hustle” in the early days to both grow the program to meet on-campus need and spread awareness of the work they were doing. Often using their own funds, they traveled to other institutions and shared what they were learning through the process of developing the program. As the full scope of WPRU’s undocumented student population became increasingly apparent—eventually serving more than 400 students— several national foundations took note. By acting on their personal and professional values and demonstrating their commitment to their work with and on behalf of undocumented students, these staff members gained the confidence of senior administrators and drew the attention of program officers at foundations. Program officers interested in finding sites where they could invest in supporting undocumented students without providing direct scholarship support or sponsoring overt political action found a promising site in the USS office at WPRU. These investments only came, however, after foundations received the legal cover of DACA and the program became a “hip and fashionable” cause.

Consistent with Tompkins-Stange’s (2016) characterization of foundations’ reluctance to become too closely associated with contentious political issues or provide direct service support, national funders have provided support for strategic planning, travel to conferences, improving the USS website, participating in regional and national associations, and other activities more oriented toward contributing to the field of higher education and policy advocacy than the on- campus services USS provides. Foundation involvement also has reflected a field-oriented approach by funders preferring to invest in what Tompkins-Stange characterizes as “problems

127 that are complex and multifaceted with less clear solutions” (p. 55). The intersection of undocumented immigration and higher education policy presents such a problem.

Consistent with prior research, bureaucratic insiders at WPRU, including those with prior experience as student agitators and activists, were well-positioned to garner resources for a marginalized student population (Binder, 2000; Kezar, 2010; Rojas, 2006). Key figures in catalyzing the institution’s attention to undocumented students worked in diversity and equity roles, had personal identities tied to immigrant experiences, and had attended WPRU themselves.

They each viewed WPRU as an institution that could legitimize and elevate awareness of work supporting undocumented students on campus. They viewed this effort as consistent with the institution’s mission as a public university, coupled with a social justice framework for their professional responsibilities. These informants to the present study had what Rojas (2006) called

“knowledge of the daily workings of a bureaucracy” that equipped them with “a good understanding of [the] organization’s culture and wider political context” (p. 2161). This insider identity, coupled with personal identities and professional values, provided the institutional entrepreneurs most responsible for the USS with a reservoir of institutional and system knowledge. This knowledge enabled them to effectively advocate for undocumented students and support student advocates as they sought greater recognition from WPRU.

As student voices became louder, potential funders took greater interest in supporting

USS. Despite repeated rejection by some funders of requests for support from WPRU’s CEO, each informant for this case study noted the importance of successive waves of student advocates sharing their stories and demanding support from their university—at first for themselves, and then for their families and broader immigrant communities. By having a larger agenda than, for example, direct scholarship funds to cover their tuition and fees, these student advocates

128 broadened the possible activities external funders could support through grant-making. A program officer at a foundation who saw direct student financial support as outside the foundation’s scope, for example, could make a grant to an immigration law clinic providing services to students and their families.

WPRU’s unique history and culture provide context necessary for understanding this case study. The institution’s history and culture of activism have provided a sense of empowerment to students and their staff allies. According to informants who work closest with undocumented students, WPRU faculty initially either challenged the development of Undocumented Student

Services or, at best, simply did not engage the issue. Without making any causal claims, informants noted decreasing levels of resistance and greater public support for undocumented students over recent years—beginning with the availability of DACA and amplified with the election of the current president. Several informants discussed the work they have done to encourage faculty to see the USS as a potential aspect of campus to draw external funding to the university. In the context of a research institution, these informants believe an important aspect of building faculty support on a campus with a strong system of shared governance has been changing mindsets from seeing the USS as a financial drain to a differentiator that can attract foundation grants and bolster the university’s reputation.

Chapter Conclusion

Whether talking with people employed by the university or just walking across the campus, an observer at Western Public Research University quickly appreciates the institution’s culture of embracing an identity at the leading edge of higher education and social activism.

Informants to this study revealed the tension an institutional preoccupation with institutional prestige can create in seeking to enhance support services for marginalized student populations.

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In this case, I sought to understand how WPRU had developed an on-campus comprehensive services center explicitly for undocumented students. According to all on-campus informants, funding external to the university made the program possible. Rather than receive a grant from one of the large national foundations that often support research and other activities at WPRU, however, Undocumented Student Services began because an individual philanthropist who sat on the board of a family foundation took an immediate interest in supporting undocumented students after hearing their stories of struggling to first access and then progress through the academic rigors of WPRU. By convening wealthy supporters of the university and undocumented students over dinner, the chief executive officer of the university catalyzed action to make Undocumented Student Services possible. The CEO’s actions, however, only followed years of quiet work by allies of the institution’s undocumented students—present on campus, but with their citizenship status invisible to nearly everyone they encountered—to enable students to navigate the complexities of academic and social life.

By taking on the risk of sharing their stories, students compelled institutional leaders and donors to aid their cause, but student affairs professionals who took up the students’ cause as their own played critical roles securing the resources for USS. This work for those on-campus professionals stemmed from their personal experiences and professional values, which combined to provide the passion necessary to see this institutional transformation project through. In turn, their success in hustling their way to realizing the dream of a comprehensive set of support services for students and their families attracted the interest of additional funders. Rather than grant funds toward direct services for students, these private foundations have provided funding to spread awareness of the model at WPRU across the field of higher education. In this way, foundations have found ways to shape the field, contribute toward efforts to support

130 undocumented immigrant communities at an arm’s length distance, and bring a sense of sounder financial footing to the USS program. Even as WPRU professionals continue to share the model they have co-created with successive groups of student activists more broadly across the country, their primary focus remains on serving the students their own institution enrolls. According to informants at WPRU, the current fraught political and legal context for serving undocumented students only deepens their commitment. As WPRU’s director of equity initiatives contended,

Moving forward, the moral high ground is on the side of the students. Moving

forward, I think the university must make itself responsible to making sure that,

regardless of what the political landscape is, that we have the resources and the

space, and we have the culture on campus to make sure that the undocumented

student population will be able to come into the university, have a healthy

experience while they are in the university, graduate at their best, and go on to

help build the better world that we desperately need.

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CHAPTER V

Implications for Theory, Practice, and Research

Findings from the two case studies preceding this chapter should interest practitioners in both higher education and philanthropy, as well as scholars seeking to broaden application of the concepts including strategic action fields theory (Fligstein and McAdam, 2012), institutional entrepreneurship (Garud, Hardy, & Maguire, 2007; Maguie, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004; Tracey,

Phillips, & Jarvis, 2011), and institutional empowerment agents (Stanton-Salazar, 2011). By selecting cases in two distinct sectors of higher education, I followed Eisenhardt’s (1989) contention such comparative work “forces researchers to look for the subtle similarities and differences between cases.” An investigator’s “search for similarity in a seemingly different pair can lead to more sophisticated understanding” of theoretical concepts (Eisenhardt, 1989, pp. 540-

541). Comparing findings and implications from the community college sector and a prestigious public flagship research university provides an opportunity to posit potential questions for further investigation. These findings also point toward aspects of the relationship between higher education and philanthropy in this emerging field that should challenge leaders in both sectors, as well as scholars of higher education, organizations, and social movements. Initial guiding theoretical concepts provided helpful tools for understanding the primary phenomenon of interest. Future work could deepen understanding of how these concepts related to the field of higher education and the undocumented student movement in the United States. As actors in a social movement, undocumented students have elevated the challenges they face in pursuing

132 higher education on the agenda of policymakers at the institutional, system, state, and national levels.

Coupled with the efforts of institutional agents acting with students and on their behalf, the efforts of student activists have contributed toward the construction of a new field within higher education that seeks explicitly to support their progress toward degree completion. As philanthropy has seeded and, in some ways, enabled the growth of undocumented student services across higher education, real changes have occurred at the levels of state and institutional policy. Without the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that would normalize immigration status and lift the cloud of potential deportation for many students and their families, however, educational equity will remain an elusive goal. In this chapter, I explore implications from this study’s findings for theoretical work at the intersection of immigration policy advocacy and strategic action field construction within higher education, as well as implications for practice in higher education and philanthropy. I close by offering potential directions for further research.

Implications for Theory

As noted at the outset of this paper, private foundations have played a uniquely consequential role in the history and development of the field of higher education in the United

States (Barnhardt, 2017; Cheit & Lobman, 1979; Clotfelter, 2007; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018;

Thelin & Trollinger, 2014). Scholars and observers of higher education, however, have offered critiques of the influence of wealthy actors with shifting priorities that have little in the way of formal accountability to the broad public (Barnhardt, 2017; Callahan, 2017; Clotfelter, 2007;

Hadddad & Reckhow, 2018; Rogers, 2011, 2015). As findings from this study indicate, private foundations can serve as drivers, partners, or catalysts (Fleishman, 2007) in creating new

133 organizational fields in response to student social movements, but their patronage may be sporadic, motivated by values not aligned with people leading the movement, and lagging behind the real needs of people affected by inequitable systems and policies. Findings from case studies from two different corners of the broad field of higher education—a network of community colleges spread across the country and a public flagship research university—provide an opportunity to examine the utility and limitations of theoretical concepts rooted in social movements and organizational theory.

According to informants from CNEE and WPRU, foundation funding made possible both efforts to promote a field and legitimize work associated with the undocumented student movement in higher education. Where a single program officer did the work of conceiving, searching for a host, and maintaining deep engagement in the early years of CNEE, the story of

WPRU’s Undocumented Student Services shows how a series of chance encounters and personal commitments sparked the effort, despite a lack of resources, until the promise of their effort drew foundation attention. In Fleishman’s (2007) conception of foundation roles, CNEE’s experience aligns closely with a driver. Foundations have played more of a limited partner role in the case of WPRU. In the latter case, a wealthy patron of the university took an interest in improving support for undocumented students on campus and remains in regular contact with personnel working with and on behalf of this student population. Program officers from foundations that have followed also remain in regular communication and have enabled WPRU practitioners to spread awareness and understanding of their model across the state and country. However, they do not have the kind of direct, intense involvement as CNEE’s first program officer, whose vision remains salient years after departing that role.

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Program officers spoke of the role of foundations as having a step removed from direct service—a “wholesaler” in the word of one informant. Such a view aligns with what an informant to Tompkins-Stange (2016) described as a “consultant mentality” among larger foundations, “explaining that many high-level officials at these foundations had come to the foundations from ‘strategic planning [and] consulting shops” (p. 121). This mindset privileges evidence-based practice and scaling up models that seem to provide promising models to support student success. Grants from private foundations can confer a sense of legitimacy to contested and emerging fields, and as Edelman (1992) noted, as a type of work is increasingly done, its legitimacy (and legality) can be self-affirming. Still, these case studies belie a stark asymmetry of power separating well-endowed foundations sponsoring CNEE and USS and the campus- based practitioners doing the daily work of supporting their undocumented and DACAmented students. Fligstein and McAdam (2012) address this kind of asymmetry by contending

“cooperation and hierarchy are both present in emerging fields.” They “view fields as a continuum with those exhibiting high levels of consensus, coalition, and cooperation at one end and those based on stark hierarchy at the other” (p. 90).

As the undocumented student services field has emerged within higher education, it has done so in the context of a highly contentious and constantly evolving legal and political environment. By funding intermediary actors such as the Four Freedoms Fund, undocumented student resource centers, and professional networks, private foundations have exercised their power to seed and grow new fields. As this field has developed, sure policy changes have come to a select group of states and institutions, opening access and opportunity for qualifying undocumented and DACAmented students. Here, the cases show a sense of convergence or consensus among progressive foundations (Barnhardt, 2017; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018; Quinn,

135 et al., 2014) about where to direct funds to advance the field. Without comparable investments to spur federal policy change, however, the fundamental threat of deportation and inability to access federally funded financial aid programs remain. Further, the kind of institutionalization of activism previous scholars have found to follow foundation patronage (Jenkins & Eckert, 1986;

Rojas, 2007) may benefit students in intermittent ways in select locations at the cost of direct action campaigns that are often needed to achieve comprehensive movement aims (Jenkins &

Eckert, 1986). Progressive foundations funding some aspects of the undocumented student movement may bring a genuine commitment to advancing equitable access and opportunity but to date their commitment appears to have been tempered by the legal and political environment, along with an educational period about the nature and extent of the barriers faced by the undocumented student population.

Throughout data collection for this project, the centrality of student activism recurred as the critical factor in private foundations directing financial support toward undocumented students’ cause. As Jenkins and Eckert (1986) found more than 30 years ago, foundation investments tend to lag movement activity. As institutionally conservative organizations, even according to program officers, private foundations have been reluctant to take places at the vanguard of the undocumented student movement or of immigrant integration more broadly.

Program officers, national higher education association representative, and executive leaders of higher education institutions may be lauded for following the lead of student activists, but their determination to lead from behind may mitigate the influence of their power to create more systemic change. Application of organizational and social movement theory on this issue therefore must account for the way elite actors such as those who informed this study exercise their power or reflect a wait-and-see attitude as political conditions shift. After all, as Fleishman

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(2007) notes, “any institution charged with an obligation to reform the status quo and redistribute opportunity and power in society are bound to be caught in controversy from time to time” (p.

251).

Beyond the implications of powerful social actors following the lead of student activists for policy change, maintaining this orientation continues to demand the emotional labor and personal vulnerability that comes with students and their families stepping out of the shadows of undocumented status to demand equitable treatment. Multiple informants discussed the rise in power of Undocumented and Unafraid activists, often at great risk to themselves and members of their families. Scholars from public health (Humphrys, et al., 2018; Lopez, et al., 2016) and higher education (Gonzalez, 2011; Muñoz, & Espino, 2017; Nienhusser, Vega, & Saavedra

Carquin, 2016; Perez, Cortes, Ramos, & Coronado, 2010; Suarez-Orozco, Yoshikawa, Teranishi,

& Suarez-Orozco, 2011; Suro, Suarez-Orozco, & Canizales, 2015) alike have detailed the trauma and risk associated with acknowledging undocumented immigration status. The combined privilege of citizenship and access to financial, political, and social capital empower private foundation representatives to leverage this privilege to further legitimize undocumented student access and services but also transformed policies. In a society that places great value on philanthropy and its ability to advance society, foundations that are not subject to a fractured electorate can act in more direct and sustained ways to move a social movement forward than politicians or institutional leaders may prove able to do.

Strategic Action Field Theory. Concepts from strategic action fields theory are useful in understanding contested arenas of policy and practice as competing stakeholders vie for primacy in determining what shape policy will take and how practitioners may respond to policy. In this section, I discuss the utility of strategic action field theory for understanding the phenomenon of

137 interest for my dissertation study. Based on case study findings, I have selected and adapted a subset of concepts that constitute foundational aspects of the full framework explicated by

Fligstein and McAdam (2012). Further case studies should find the strategic action fields framework fruitful for deeper understanding of the ways in which private foundations have influenced the proliferation of undocumented student supports across higher education.

Strategic action fields. Fligstein and McAdam contend strategic action fields are fluid in nature because their socially constructed nature is contingent upon “shifting collections of actors” that “define new issues and concerns as salient” (p. 10). In higher education, the authors note colleges and universities “do not, ordinarily, constitute a single strategic action field. Instead subsets of these schools have come to regard themselves as comparator institutions” (Fligstein &

McAdam, 2012, p. 10). This aspect of strategic action fields theory manifested in the focus across the College Network for Educational Equity on field construction specifically targeted toward increasing support for undocumented students within the community college sector.

Informants at WPRU held their institution in a different light.

While they certainly all hold Western Public as a member of the short list of the most prestigious institutions nationally, data imply informants also cast WPRU’s influence in a broader sense as a bellwether for the entire field of higher education. Informants at WPRU amplified the importance of the work by seeing their institution as a place that had the power to set norms for the field, thereby helping to legitimize ambitious on-campus efforts directed toward undocumented students’ success. Additional research should place more explicit focus on the degree to which institutions in a common comparison group to Western Public (i.e., highly- selective public flagship and private institutions) emulate the USS model and the funding approach taken by WPRU to support their own undocumented student resource centers. This

138 work should also examine whether and how institutions occupying differing Carnegie classifications or other designations incorporate elements of the WPRU model when instituting undocumented student programs. For example, Hispanic-serving institutions and historically

Black colleges and universities may look to one another for guidance on undocumented student issues.

Incumbents and challengers. Rooted in social movement theory, the notion of incumbents and challengers has some utility for understanding the influence of private foundations on the undocumented student movement, with notable limitations. Although student activists have pushed for institutional, system, state, and policy changes, in both case studies here, incumbents (e.g., administrative decision-makers) largely agreed with students’ aims and sought to address them by acquiring resources—whatever the source—to do so. This kind of alliance does not mean students and campus officials always share tactics and goals. However, a prevailing sense of cooperation and ally identity characterized the CNEE and WPRU case studies. Given the resistance some informants have encountered, however, case studies in states with differing political environments or on more conservative campuses may show starker divisions between students demanding recognition and support and campus officials either unsure of how to more forward or reluctant to do so.

Internal governance units. Fligstein and McAdam define internal governance units

(IGUs) as “organizations within the field whose sole job is to ensure the routine stability and order of the strategic action field.” IGUs “have one foot in the field and the other outside” (p.

77). These outwardly-focused organizations provide information to member organizations, establish common practices and standards of organizational behavior, lobby government agencies, and provide some administrative services to the field, among other functions. IGUs

139 function as “conservative institutions, promoting the routine reproduction of the field and, by extension, the advancement of incumbent interests” (p. 78). Based on findings from the CNEE case study, the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) serves as an IGU within the field of higher education.

As the primary voice on federal policy of sectors of higher education (Cook, 1998), associations have a distinct role advocating on behalf of the policy agendas of approximately

3,600 colleges and universities nationwide. Ortega (2011) found that by 2009, all the Big Six higher education associations had formally endorsed the DREAM Act. Despite these endorsements from the higher education community, as findings from this study show, associations must navigate changing political climates and adjust policy priorities to advance issues with the best perceived prospects at a given time. Although endorsements by AACC and member institutions strengthen the legitimacy of work on behalf of undocumented students enrolled by community colleges, strategic action field theory suggests a network like CNEE, positioned at an organizational level closer to the students themselves, occupies a space with greater potential to institutionalize transformational practices.

Exogenous shocks and episodes of contention. Institutional theory provides scholars with important starting points for understanding organizational structures and fields (DiMaggio

& Powell, 1983; Meyer & Rowan, 1977). Scholars building on foundational concepts from institutional theory sought to address the theory’s perceived lack of ability to explain not just how organizations in a shared field come to resemble each other but how changes in fields and entirely new fields emerge (Fligstein & McAdam, 2012). Institutional entrepreneurship, discussed below, serves as one mechanism for field change and emergence (DiMaggio, 1988;

Fligstein & McAdam, 2012; Maguire, Hardy, & Lawrence, 2004). Within strategic action field

140 theory, however, exogenous shocks such as a sudden policy change can follow intensive periods or “episodes of contention” that force people in power to make systematic changes. McAdam

(2007) notes two key elements of these episodes: “…a generalized sense of uncertainty within the field and a shared motivation to engage in innovative contentious action to advance or protect group interests” (p. 253). Following sustained and intensive student activism, as well as a series of legislative failures to pass the DREAM Act, President Obama’s executive order in June 2012 announcing the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program provided a jolt of energy to a weary movement.

By establishing a pathway for young people who were undocumented to attain a legally recognized residency status and a work permit on the tax rolls, DACA—by several accounts in this study—significantly changed both the dynamics of the undocumented student movement and the context for philanthropy’s involvement. Although not universally shared across informants for this study, data show broad agreement that DACA remains a milestone moment for the movement. Strategic action field theory posits that such an exogenous shock and episode of contention should be followed by a period of settlement. To the contrary, however, DACA’s future—and along with it, the futures of 800,000 DACAmented young adults—remains the subject of intensive legal and political contest. However this contest may ultimately be resolved, the following settlement period will add a new element to any model for understanding the trajectory of the undocumented student movement and philanthropy’s role in it.

Institutional entrepreneurs and agents. Data collected for this study ultimately tell a story that is about people acting within the institutions that employ them and the political realities that can expand or restrict their opportunities. Throughout both studies, data reveal institutional actors working to identify and secure resources needed to support undocumented

141 students toward achieving their higher education goals. Garud, Hardy, and Maguire (2007) note,

“Institutional entrepreneurship…reintroduces agency, interests, and power into institutional analyses of organizations” (p. 957). Notably, an informant at a CNEE member community college discussed efforts she led there that resulted in the college’s board approving $600,000 from the institution’s budget toward undocumented student services. In the case of WPRU, a nationally recognized flagship institution “didn’t have any” internal dollars for this work when it began; the institution’s chief executive officer elevated student experiences in a way that compelled an initial grant investment to make Undocumented Student Services possible. Each of these institutions, with widely different reputations and resources at first glance, have pursued and are pursuing multiple funding strategies simultaneously. Senior level administrators at both institutions made amplifying support for undocumented students an institutional priority.

Institutional entrepreneurship has not only shaped how individual institutions have addressed undocumented student issues. As the CNEE case study reveals, a single program officer at a national foundation identified the need for a network of community colleges sharing practices, research, and advocacy strategies, and then directed funds and provided ongoing thought partnership to make that network a reality. Without diminishing the essential work of agents at CNEE’s host institution and member institutions, in the community college case study, an actor from philanthropy played a leading role in building the field. In contrast, the case study of a four-year institution identified a set of on-campus institutional entrepreneurs who brought their personal identities and professional values to bear to establish an undocumented student resource center at WPRU. Without a willing national foundation partner, they “hustled” their way toward building a comprehensive model that larger foundations eventually sought out as a potential grant recipient.

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Beyond the role of institutional entrepreneurs and institutional empowerment agents

(Stanton-Salazar, 2011) as resource procurers acting with and on behalf of marginalized students,

Nienhusser (2014; 2018) encourages conceptualizing institutional agents as policy implementers.

Researchers from the National Forum on Higher Education for the Public Good (2012) have examined the role of admissions, financial aid, and diversity officers as facilitators of college access and affordability in varying state policy contexts. Building on their work, Nienhusser

(2014) studied implementation of policies in the City University of New York (CUNY) system.

Institutional agents interpreted system policies toward undocumented students in varying ways, leading to different approaches from campus to campus. Earlier, Contreras (2009) found wide disparities in the ways administrators carried out Washington State’s undocumented student admissions and financial aid policies. According to Nienhusser (2018), “…vagueness allows policy implementers the latitude to create mandates and rules that meet objectives” (p. 427).

Although they may feel conflicting allegiances between meeting the letter of policies and maximizing students’ postsecondary opportunities, “higher education institutional agents should embrace vagueness and ambiguity as a reality in their everyday implementation of policy”

(Nienhusser, 2018, p. 447). Scholars examining the role of institutional entrepreneurs and agents in studies at the intersection philanthropy and the undocumented student movement should conceptualize the role across a spectrum involving ally behavior, resource acquisition, and policy implementation in the context of a contested political and legal environment.

Legal ambiguity / liminal legality. Findings from this study resonate with the concepts of legal ambiguity (Edelman, 1992) and liminal legality (Gámez, Lopez, & Overton, 2017;

Menjívar, 2006). Edelman (1992) contended, “Laws that contain vague or controversial language, laws that regulate organizational procedures more than the substantive results of those

143 procedures, and laws that provide weak enforcement mechanisms leave more room for organizational mediation than laws that are more specific, substantive, and backed by strong enforcement” (p. 1532). Given the ongoing legal and political contests over appropriate enforcement of immigration laws, the ongoing inability of Congress to address comprehensive immigration reform, extensive participation in the workforce by people who are undocumented, and Supreme Court precedent establishing the right at least to a K-12 education regardless of immigration status, I contend access to higher education and associated benefits constitutes an area of legal ambiguity in contemporary U.S. society. In such areas of law, according to

Edelman, institutions essentially make laws by the ways they choose to implement them through organizational practices and structures. Those practices and structures over time become normalized across fields as organizations look to each other for guidance on appropriate action.

For institutions of higher education and private foundations invested in more equitable educational opportunities for undocumented students, the collective effort to construct a field of support systems for undocumented students effectively legitimized this work. Especially for influential, highly prestigious institutions like WPRU, higher education leaders can test and innovate ways to address the needs of their undocumented students and their families. Legal ambiguity thus provides a useful theoretical lens through which to view this field development.

According to Menjívar (2006), “Liminal legality is characterized by its ambiguity, as it is neither an undocumented status nor a documented one, but may have the characteristics of both”

(p. 108). Gámez, Lopez, and Overton (2017) employed a liminal positioning framework to understand the educational journeys of DACAmented students. The patchwork of programs for which DACAmented students are eligible “keep[s] them in a liminal state—good enough to enroll, even to obtain internships in some cases, but not legal enough to qualify for in-state

144 tuition and state or federal financial assistance” (Gámez, Lopez, & Overton, 2017). The liminal legality of DACAmented status appears, at least to some extent, to have motivated increased involvement among private foundations in the undocumented student movement, broadly construed. Several informants spoke of the willingness of funders to invest in support programs following the DACA executive order in 2012, and most discussed ongoing legal efforts to protect DACA from termination by the current administration. Liminal legality may provide a useful concept for future theorizing about the motivations for philanthropy’s intervention on behalf of populations experiencing marginalization as a result of contested policies. Legal ambiguity leaves broad interpretation to confer legitimacy on institutional norms and professional practices.

Implications for Practice

Informants for this study have made real contributions toward the field of undocumented student support in higher education, but the reliance of these contributions on external funding implies they may remain ad hoc and individual-dependent. Practitioners should be aware of the limitations of relying on external funding by foundations that may shift priorities and community partners that may come and go, even as this marginalized student population remains. Findings from this study show a healthy respect for campus-based professionals as experts in this field, and they can look for opportunities to leverage that respect on behalf of the students they seek to serve.

The experiences of professionals involved with conceiving, establishing, and growing both USS at WPRU and CNEE show the power of individuals committed to leveraging the resources at their disposal to have a meaningful impact on the field of higher education. The identification through my data collection of individuals acting as institutional entrepreneurs

145 should serve as examples to higher education leaders and program officers about the impact that funding projects that may stretch their traditional portfolios can have in building support for historically marginalized student populations. Higher education professionals could also see in findings from the CNEE case study the power they have as advocates for their students and the ability they have to pair external and internal resources to meet student needs. They may also take heart from the response to the contemporary “toxic” political and legal environment for people living without documentation in the United States.

Findings also present readily apparent implications for faculty and student affairs professionals at four-year institutions. Faculty allies—especially those with tenure—can leverage shared governance structures, including faculty senates, committees, and task forces to advocate for direct support structures for undocumented communities. Although student affairs professionals may feel “stuck in the middle” of competing mandates to preserve order on campus and encourage student development (Linder, 2019, p. 21), findings from both case studies show their ability to institutionalize more supportive structures and practices for undocumented students. As Linder (2019) notes, however, “university structures are not set up to support all student activists equitably” (p. 21). Although institutional budget line items may fund student leadership development, service-learning, and community voluntarism, external funds may be required to facilitate supportive spaces that encourage activism like that seen in the undocumented student movement. Even a prestigious university strongly identified with campus activism and led by a sympathetic chief executive officer like WPRU provides an estimated 30% of funds to its Undocumented Student Services, with the remaining 70% coming from external philanthropic funds.

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Community colleges typically have more restrained resources and less capacity to seek external funding but are the most likely point of postsecondary opportunity for undocumented students (Flores & Oseguera, 2009; Nienhusser, 2014; Szelenyi & Chang, 2002; Teranishi,

Suárez-Orozco, & Suárez-Orozco, 2011). Although Lakeside Community College benefits from a strong culture of philanthropy among local residents and alumni, in 2017 only 1.5% of the

$43.6 billion in private giving went to community colleges nationwide (Council for

Advancement and Support of Education, 2019). This low level of support came despite open- access institutions serving as the gateway to postsecondary credentials and economic prosperity for many socioeconomically and politically marginalized student populations, including students who are undocumented or DACAmented. Foundation funding moving forward could be beneficial to build community colleges’ infrastructure for developing external revenue streams, then investing increasing percentages of overall giving in open-access institutions that serve the majority of undergraduates—especially those for whom attending selective institutions is not an option.

For both higher education professionals and foundation leaders, findings from this study show the value of personal and professional courage to advance equitable educational opportunities for undocumented students. The former CEO of WPRU stated, “we need leaders with both idealism and courage.” Findings from both case studies indicate the critical role private foundations have played in building a field of support for undocumented students within higher education. That field includes policy advocacy organizations, on-campus support centers, research programs, professional development and ally training for faculty and student affairs professionals, and community-based organizations focused on serving immigrant communities regardless of citizenship status. In an uncertain legal and hostile national political environment,

147 however, public support for undocumented students pursuing higher education remains contested and controversial. As on-campus programs like USS and national networks including CNEE continue to develop—enabled by a mix of both institutional and philanthropic funds—however, the legitimacy of working to facilitate higher education for undocumented students becomes increasingly institutionalized. From senior campus and system administrators to faculty and frontline staff in student affairs, admissions, financial aid, and other units, institutional agents across a wide range of institutional roles can point to mission statements, professional association advocacy, and in some cases state policy as sources of legitimacy for their work on behalf of undocumented students. Decision-makers in private foundations can also summon both idealism and courage to invest in on-campus support systems and broader projects to strengthen the field across higher education.

Practitioners across the field can take from this study the need to foster opportunities for students to remained central to the movement without requiring as high a level of risk and self- disclosure as has been required to date. For example, foundation program officers and a national association lobbyist spoke of not wanting to get out ahead of student activist groups like United

We Dream. On campuses and in the halls of legislatures, however, individual students continue to raise their voices as Undocumented and Unafraid. Being unafraid, however, implies a recognition of risk that could be mitigated. Advisory councils of undocumented students could inform and evaluate grant proposals and direct program officers toward emerging initiatives in need of resources. Acting under the auspices and with the protection of confidentiality, student advisors could work in concert with foundations to direct resources to advance the field.

To address the full range of undocumented students’ needs, the USS model and various activities of CNEE member institutions show dedicating resources to meet certain aspects of

148 need remains necessary but insufficient. Comprehensive approaches to student services include academic advising, counseling, financial aid, career counseling, transfer services, legal services, undocu-ally training for faculty, staff, and students, lending libraries/book vouchers, lending technology, food pantry/meal vouchers, parking permits/bus passes, scholarships, work study, internship placement, and mentoring (Cisneros & Valdivia, 2018). One informant to the CNEE case study discussed the successful effort on the informant’s campus to secure $600,000 in the institution’s budget to support undocumented students. Even the most supportive institutions, however, almost invariably encounter resource constraints in seeking to meet newfound needs across student populations. For the marginalized student population of focus for this dissertation study, philanthropic funding will remain a critical element of building this field of support services across institutions and systems of higher education.

Implications from this study arise for professionals working in the broad fields of higher education and philanthropy. Together with partner agents in community-based organizations, the policy and advocacy sector, and higher education professional associations, I contend this diverse set of actors effectively have constituted a strategic action field (Fligstein & McAdam,

2012) within higher education. This strategic action field has arisen largely in response to an increasingly vocal, active, and sophisticated undocumented student movement. Successive waves of activism have added new dimensions and nuances to the movement’s dynamics and activists’ goals. This social movement and the institutional responses it has catalyzed present rich opportunities for further research. In the following section, I explore questions for future scholarship in this area.

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Implications for Research

Findings from this study represent first steps toward understanding how private foundations have contributed toward building a field of undocumented student support within the community college sector of the broad field of higher education. Additional case studies, including from four-year private institutions, should illuminate additional perspectives on the rise of campus support centers, professional networks, and research agendas concerned with undocumented and DACAmented students that private foundation support has made possible.

Contreras (2009) found students at residential four-year institutions reported higher levels of fear related to their undocumented status being revealed than students “who had more of a commuter relationship to their schools and spent less time absorbed in student life” (p. 620). Although in this study I include perceived feelings of students about such vulnerability across the four- and two-year sectors, future research could incorporate student voices in studies of philanthropic investments in the field to advance undocumented student causes. Such work may identify, in an empirical way, the potential influence of students sharing in public forums their fears about revelation of their undocumented status on priority-setting and funding decisions within private foundations.

Given the importance of both peer mentors and faculty and staff advocates to foster supportive campus environments for undocumented students across differing state and local political contexts (Barnhardt, Reyes, Vidal Rodriguez, & Ramos, 2018; Chuan-Ru Chen &

Rhoads, 2016; Contreras, 2009; Gonzales, 2011; Kezar, 2010; Muñoz, 2015; Negron-Gonzales,

2013; Nienhusser, Vega, & Saavedra Carquin, 2016; Southern, 2016), further research is needed to identify how philanthropic investments have contributed toward student and personnel ally training programs. Such programs are prevalent at CNEE institutions and well-known at WPRU.

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Research on the impact of campus ally training could inform grantmaking among foundations investing in the undocumented student movement. Questions to pursue could include,

• What are high-impact practices in faculty/staff undocumented student ally training?

• What are high-impact practices in student peer mentor training for supporting

undocumented students?

• How have private foundations enabled campuses to offer faculty/staff and student ally

training designed to support undocumented student success?

Both qualitative and quantitative data could be brought to bear to address these and other related questions.

Faculty and staff allies who served as informants for this study consistently referenced student activism as a driving factor in attracting external financial support for institutional support directed toward undocumented and DACAmented students. Further, several informants discussed successive waves of activism and the evolving demands of student activists to broaden and deepen campus-level commitments to their undocumented students. Given institutional resource constraints, coupled with potential faculty backlash, meeting these demands tended to require institutional agents to pursue grant funding. Future research should examine the potential relationship between student activists’ tactics and the probability of their institutions receiving foundation grant support.

As noted by Barnhardt (2014), “the choice of tactics that student activists adopt is partially influenced by external factors. Federated interest-based or ideological organizations, as well as philanthropic foundations, have long provided organizational advice to campus movement groups” (p. 48). In studying the Ford Foundation’s sponsorship of Black Studies programs, Rojas (2007) found “grant submission [was] not correlated with campus protest” and

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“no statistically significant link between protest and grant-making” (pp. 158-159). Findings from this dissertation study imply researchers should find fertile ground to further investigate how both the number and tactics of campus activist movements have pushed institutions to pursue— and foundations to award—grants directed toward supporting undocumented students. Bearing in mind the prevalence of institutional mission and values as a theme across settings for this study, previous work on institutionalizing undocumented student services (Southern, 2016), and in

Barnhardt’s (2014) study of anti-sweatshop student activists in the late 1990s and early 2000s, researchers should give focused attention to the effectiveness of undocumented student activists at tying their cause to missions and values statements articulated by their institutions. Questions to pursue could include,

• How have foundations provided guidance to undocumented student activists on tactics to

pursue their goals for institutional support?

• How do disruptive tactics (i.e., sit-ins, riots, vandalism, riots and other tactics aimed at

preventing an organization from achieving its goals), affect the probability of an

institution establishing undocumented student support services?

o How do such tactics affect the probability of a private foundation making a grant

to support such services on campuses with disruptive student protests?

Findings from studies pursuing these and related questions should account for varying institutional types, as well as state and local political contexts.

Rojas (2006) observed “it is not the constituency that matters, but whether the constituency is organized and mobilized,” noting the presence of Black Student Unions (BSUs) on campuses provided communal spaces for older students to hand down insights, strategies, and tactics for campus protest to student activists who followed (p. 2162). BSUs, Rojas contended,

152 therefore served as effective training grounds for student activists who could leverage their insider status and the wisdom gained from activists who preceded them. In turn, they picked up the torch of pursuing greater recognition and support from their institutions. Units such as

Undocumented Student Services at Western Public Research University and the undocumented student-staffed campus office at a CNEE member community college profiled in this study may serve comparable roles in sustaining student activist organization and mobilization. Future work, including participatory action research, should profile ways the growing number of what

Cisneros and Valdivia (2018) term Undocumented Student Resource Centers function not only as mechanisms for institutions to deliver student services and support, but as community spaces for student activist empowerment and social movement training, as well.

Scholars could also apply frameworks informed by varying branches of critical race theory (CRT) to examine the reluctance or inability of campus and system leaders to devote more institutional resources to advance undocumented students’ postsecondary prospects rather than rely on external funding from private foundations and donors to support this work. In education, scholars use CRT as a framework to examine “the ways People of Color experience and resist racism and structural oppression within and beyond educational institutions” (Gomez

& Pérez Huber, 2019, p. 4). Latinx Critical Theory (LatCrit) applies such a perspective to Latinx communities in educational settings. Scholars should recognize, however, the diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds of undocumented students. According to Museus and Iftikar (2013),

AsianCrit frameworks can “inform development of programs and practices that are specifically designed to serve” Asian American students (p. 28). Researchers using these and other CRT- based frameworks would place oppressive systems, policies, and practices at the center of empirical and theoretical examinations of experiences and supports available or denied to

153 undocumented and DACAmented students. Such scholarship could offer compelling critiques of persistent reliance on external funding as a form of institutional oppression, given higher education’s historic role in perpetuating inequities across racial and ethnic lines.

Undocumented students are vulnerable to microaggressions and oppressive experiences across the K-12 to higher education spectrum, not only because of their immigration status

(which can be obscured or undetected), but because of other aspects of their identity, as well

(Muñoz, 2015; Muñoz & Vigil, 2018, Nienhusser, et al., 2016). In a seminal article on intersectional theory, Crenshaw (1991) discusses ways early 1990s federal immigration policy measures led many immigrant women to remain in abusive relationships after marriage out of fear of losing their citizenship status. Although a growing area of undocumented student-focused research employs intersectional frames—especially in studies at the intersections of undocumented and queer identity (Cisneros, 2019; Cisneros & Gutierrez, 2018)—further research should explore interactions of race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class, physical

(dis)ability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and other key aspects of identity as manifested in the undocumented student movement. Multiple informants referenced long-standing interest among socially progressive major foundations in advancing LGBTQ+ rights. Particularly relevant research building from this study, therefore, could examine ways grant-makers interpret intersectional identities within the undocumented student movement and the potential role of their interpretation in making funding decisions. An example research question to pursue could be, How do foundation program officers account for undocumented students’ intersectional identities in making grant decisions? Findings from a study investigating this question could identify a broader range of lenses through which program officers might view the undocumented student movement than immigration status alone.

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As Barnhardt (2017) noted, scholarship on foundations skews toward those aligned with progressive causes. This study is not an exception. However, philanthropic dollars have in recent years financed advocacy efforts seeking to curtail immigration and sway public opinion toward embracing more restrictive immigration policies (Reilly, 2019). The Pennsylvania-based Colcom

Foundation, for example, in 2016 distributed grants totaling nearly $18 million—60 percent of the foundation’s total giving—to groups advocating for more restrictive immigration (Reilly,

2019). The Scaife Family and Weeden foundations join Colcom among the most prolific funders of efforts to curtail immigration (Reilly, 2019). Groups advocating for less immigration and the foundations supporting them should not be categorically labeled anti-immigrant, or even anti- undocumented immigrant. Future research should illuminate motivation and priorities of what could be broadly labeled foundations with conservative orientations on immigration issues and examine the potential influence they have had on restricting access to higher education and educational benefits. Researchers could also investigate the degree to which funding priority agendas have converged or diverged as political contexts have shifted over recent years (Haddad

& Reckhow, 2018). These foundations’ agendas could shape institutional approaches to setting policies and enacting practices that affect the ability of undocumented students to pursue and receive support toward completing higher education credentials and are thus worthy of empirical inquiry.

Chapter Conclusion

Findings from the CNEE and WPRU case studies provide a rich set of implications for theory, organizational practice, and future research. By taking a grounded theory approach to this dissertation project, I identified a select group of theoretical constructs that informed my interview protocol development and data analysis. These concepts proved useful in

155 understanding the complex relationship between institutions, individual actors within those institutions, and the role of philanthropy in the undocumented student movement across two cases. This initial inquiry enabled me to identify a set of questions for further research, and professionals in higher education and private foundations alike should find insights here to inform action in their respective organizations.

Broadly, strategic action field theory provides a useful framework for interpreting the role of foundations in the undocumented student movement, especially as concepts in the framework relate to issues of emerging field construction, contested issues, external shocks from policy shifts, and ongoing interaction across existing fields. Although their integrated framework is relatively new, Fligstein and McAdam (2012) synthesize concepts with deep roots in both social movement and organizational theory. The undocumented student movement in higher education provides a readily apparent testing ground for this framework, but work remains to strengthen the theory’s guideposts for understanding an unsettled social movement playing out in a contemporary, rather than retrospective context.

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CONCLUSION

The poet T.S. Eliot wrote, “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” After presenting a brief history of immigration policy and philanthropy’s involvement in higher education, two case studies, and implications drawn from those case studies, I return to the overall research question, What role have private foundations played in creating a field supporting undocumented students’ pursuit of higher education? This question presents the natural place to return in the conclusion of this dissertation, but the findings leave little doubt about the need for continued exploration.

In a case study of a national network of community colleges dedicated to enabling immigrant students, and especially undocumented students, to pursue and complete postsecondary programs and study, philanthropy played the key role from concept through early- stage development. Although open-access institutions provide the most likely common access point for undocumented students, a foundation program officer with a funding portfolio devoted to immigrant social integration surveyed the community college landscape and discovered a dearth of available networking, research, and advocacy resources. To address this void, the program officer identified a host institution for what became the College Network for

Educational Equity, participated as a partner in the network’s launch, and continued making grants to establish the network’s viability.

Without this program officer as a ready advocate at the foundation, however, CNEE has continued to push forward in a challenging political environment for immigrant advocacy.

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Locating the headquarters of CNEE at even an unusually well-resourced community college with full support of senior leaders may limit the capacity of the network to broaden across more institutions and deepen ongoing areas of work. This capacity challenge, familiar to many scholars of and practitioners within community colleges, presents real questions about the sustainability of the network. Findings from this study show the power of individuals to bring large visions into reality with limited resources, however, so leaders of the network should not be discounted. An outside observer would expect for the next phase of CNEE’s development to depend on significant investment from an external source rather than draw from already limited institutional funds.

The chief executive officer at Western Public Research University searched in vain for an initial sponsor of that institution’s undocumented student services. Disappointed at the lack of will among well-known national foundations to get involved with campus efforts supporting undocumented students, the CEO worked with on-campus and community-based colleagues to make a space for students to share their stories with wealthy patrons of the university. This strategy led to a donor taking on undocumented student services as a point of passion. An initial investment made USS possible, thus demonstrating the power of student voices to inspire philanthropy. Even as political conditions at the state level have trended toward more inclusion of undocumented students at WPRU, national politics have trended toward stigmatization of undocumented immigrants, raising fears of deportation and disruption among many students and their families. This sense of external threat has led to stronger support among previously skeptical faculty and staff at WPRU, as well as a quieter opposition to USS on campus.

In this environment, the work USS does to support and empower undocumented students has gained notice for its comprehensive approach to serving students and their families.

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Foundation dollars enable USS staff and affiliated colleagues to travel widely to share the model—one initially built on their hustle and personal investment, as well as the courage of students to come forward and articulate their demands for more equitable treatment. As in the

CNEE case, however, foundation grants have supported field development through best-practice sharing and financing advocacy but remained at least one step removed from direct student support (e.g., individual scholarships, DACA application fee vouchers, etc.). Informants from the national foundations who participated in this study indicated a greater level of comfort funding intermediary organizations such as the Four Freedoms Fund, which in turn serve as mechanisms to deploy those funds in a more rapid-response manner than institutionally conservative foundations could. They also mentioned high-profile scholarship funds including TheDream.US established by wealthy elites as better positioned to provide direct financial assistance to qualifying undocumented students.

Researchers have noted a growing interest among private foundations in advancing policy outcomes (Haddad & Reckhow, 2018; Thompkins-Stange, 2016), coupled with their long- standing function as partners in organizational field construction (Barnhardt, 2017; Binder &

Wood, 2013; DiMaggio & Powell, 1991). The rise of an age of philanthropy guided by a class of super-rich business leaders reminds some observers of the Gilded Age and the Gospel of Wealth; this concentration of agenda-setting power concerns many of those same observers, as well as scholars of philanthropy’s influence on public education (Barnhardt, 2017; Callahan, 2017;

Clotfelter, 2007; Haddad & Reckhow, 2018; Rogers 2011, 2015; Thompkins-Stange, 2016). By funding advocacy and intermediary organizations to advance causes of marginalized populations, foundations remain a level removed from direct political involvement, which could violate federal law and lead to significant negative consequences. As institutional agents within higher

159 education and philanthropy in case studies here demonstrate, however, broader room for interpretation and action may exist that some funders have taken on.

For both a prestigious public flagship institution and a set of undocumented student-allied community colleges, private foundations have been critical partners in seeding and growing a field of supportive systems, policy advocates, and community-based partners. The inherently opaque processes of foundation decision-making and priority-setting, however, have vexed some institutional leaders seeking to advance the field. In a time when political institutions appear unable to address the ongoing needs of undocumented students, the former chief executive officer of Western Public Research University’s demand for leadership with both idealism and courage may serve as a clarion call for committed professionals at the intersections of philanthropy and higher education.

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APPENDICES

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APPENDIX A

Definitions of Terms

Big Six: Refers to six influential higher education association leaders: American Council on Education; the Association of American Universities (AAU); the National Association of State Universities and Land-Grant Colleges (NASULGC); the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities (NAICU); the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU); and the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC).

DACAmented: Refers to U.S. residents whose approved applications to the federal government under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program enabled them to receive a work permit and gain legally recognized residency status, opening some public benefits such as admission to public institutions of higher education.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA): As defined by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, “On June 15, 2012, the Secretary of Homeland Security announced that certain people who came to the United States as children and meet several guidelines may request consideration of deferred action for a period of two years, subject to renewal. They are also eligible for work authorization. Deferred action is a use of prosecutorial discretion to defer removal action against an individual for a certain period of time. Deferred action does not provide lawful status.” On September 5, 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration was discontinuing this policy over a six-month wind-down period.

Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act: According to the National Immigration Law Center, the DRAM Act “is a piece of [federal] legislation that would give undocumented immigrants who came to the U.S. as children a path toward legal status if they attend college or serve in the military.” Students who would qualify for a path to legal status under the DREAM Act are often referred to in public discourse as DREAMers or Dreamers. Some state policies that have conferred eligibility for in-state tuition or state-funded financial aid programs are also referred to as state-level DREAM Acts.

Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996: Sweeping immigration policy legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Among many provision, Section 505 states undocumented immigrants “shall not be eligible on the basis of residence within a State for any postsecondary education benefit unless a citizen or national of the United States is eligible for such a benefit without regard to whether the citizen or national is such a resident.” This provision has been interpreted in varying ways as states have set eligibility criteria for in-state tuition and state-funded financial aid programs.

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Inclusive Policy: State policy explicitly extends the provision of in-state residency tuition and admit undocumented students to public and/or private institutions.

Legal Ambiguity: As proposed by Edelman (1992), refers to the process by which organizations interpret, make meaning, and establish policies and practices organizational leaders believe comply with the law while also serving organizational goals. Through their interpretation and actions based on interpretations of the law, organizations—including institutions of higher education—“construct the meaning of compliance and thus mediate the impact of law on society” (emphasis in original text; Edelman, 1992, p. 1532).

Plyler v. Doe: 1982 Supreme Court case in which the Court ruled all students have a right to a K- 12 education at the public’s expense, without regard to students’ immigration status. The case did not address access to or affordability of higher education.

Restrictive Policy: State policy either explicitly prohibits undocumented students from gaining admission to public or private institutions and/or bars the provision of in-state residency tuition to undocumented students.

Undocumented and Unafraid: Refers to the movement by students who identify publicly as undocumented to advocate for educational rights and civil protections.

Unstipulated Policy: No current state legislation or policies that explicitly prohibit undocumented students from gaining admission to public or private institutions and/or provide in-state residency tuition to undocumented students.

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APPENDIX B

Study Informants

Table B1. CNEE Case Study Informants

Position Affiliation In-Person/Phone

Director CNEE In-Person

Program Officer National Foundation Phone

Lobbyist American Association of Phone Community Colleges

Student Services Director CNEE Member Community In-Person College

Program Coordinator and Immigrant Advocacy Group In-Person Former Financial Aid Director, CNEE Member Community College

Executive Director Community College Phone Foundation

Program Director National Foundation Phone

Nonprofit Consultant and Independent Consultant Phone Former Program Director, National Foundation

Program Director National Foundation Phone

Student Services Coordinator CNEE Member Community Phone College

Board Member Community College Phone Foundation

Vice President of Workforce CNEE Member Institution In-Person Development

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Table B2. WPRU Case Study Informants

Position Affiliation In-Person/Phone

Director Undocumented Student In-Person Services

Director of Equity Initiatives Division of Diversity & In-Person Equity

Executive Director Division of Diversity & In-Person Equity

Assistant Vice President Division of Diversity & In-Person Equity

Vice President (Emeritus) Division of Diversity & In-Person Equity

Chief Executive Officer Western Public Research In-Person (Emeritus) University

Director of Higher Education Immigrant Advocacy Partner In-Person Initiatives Organization

Executive Director Immigrant Advocacy Partner In-Person Organization

Program Officer National Foundation Phone

Program Analyst National Foundation Phone

Program Officer National Foundation Phone

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APPENDIX C

Sample Interview Protocols

CNEE Executive Director

1. Tell me about the community and how this institution serves it.

2. Tell me about the start and growth of CNEE.

3. [IF MENTIONED]: You talked a bit about external funding for the initiative. Why was external funding needed?

[IF NOT MENTIONED]: As you talked about the development of the network, I wondered if funding for all that work came from the institution, or how you and others were getting the resources to keep the work moving forward. Could you talk about that?

4. How have foundations been involved beyond what you have already described?

5. How have you built relationships with program officers over the course of working with them to secure funding support for CNEE?

6. How did you describe to prospective funders the work grants you sought for CNEE would support?

7. You had consistent support from [one foundation] for the early years of CNEE’s growth. How would you say the [national foundation] grant has changed the way you do this work?

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8. How has [Lakeside Community College] responded to the growth of the network in its campus programs or level of funding support?

9. How did DACA affect your work and funding that supported it?

10. Thinking back to when this initiative began to today, how would you compare the level of acceptance among faculty and staff on this campus and across the network’s member institutions for work providing direct support to undocumented students?

11. What do you see as the broader role for philanthropy in supporting undocumented students across the CNEE network?

12. Any other thoughts you would add?

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Student Services Coordinator CNEE Member Community College

1. Tell me about the work you do at [this college].

2. How would you describe the overall student population that the institution serves?

3. How did [the college] first get involved with CNEE?

4. How are you involved with the network now?

5. What has been your perception of how CNEE has grown and changed over time?

6. What resources from or aspects of being involved with CNEE have you found most helpful in working with undocumented and DACAmented students?

7. What resistance have you encountered, and how have you overcome that resistance?

8. Follow up re: Role of DACA

9. Any other thoughts you would add?

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WPRU Undocumented Student Services Director

1. Tell me about the start and growth of [the Undocumented Student Services program].

2. Why is it important for this work to be happening at [WPRU]?

3. You talked a bit about external funding for the initiative. Why was external funding needed?

4. How have foundations been involved beyond what you have already described?

5. How have you built relationships with program officers over the course of working with them to secure funding support for USS?

6. How did you describe the work to prospective funders that grants you sought for USS would support?

7. How did DACA affect your work and funding that supported it?

8. What do you see as the broader role for philanthropy in supporting undocumented students?

9. Thinking back to when this initiative began to today, how would you compare the level of acceptance among faculty and staff on this campus and across the campus for work providing direct support to undocumented students? What about across the [state university] system more broadly?

10. Anything else you would add?

169

WPRU Former Vice President of Diversity and Equity

1. Tell me about the Division of [Diversity & Equity]. How did the university move to establish that division, and what was your founding vision for leading the work?

2. Why is it important for WPRU to do this work?

3. Where does WPRU look for lessons on working with equity populations in more effective ways?

4. How did work explicitly targeted toward serving undocumented students become part of that work?

5. How did you or colleagues seek the financial support something like [Undocumented Student Services] would need to launch successfully?

6. What was the thinking among senior administrative leaders on a balance between institutional or operating funds and external gifts or philanthropic investments going toward USS?

7. Resistance vs. Legitimation

8. How would you describe the evolution of USS since its inception?

9. How do you see the current legal and political environment affecting equity and inclusion efforts in higher education?

10. Anything else you would add?

170

Community-Based Organization Executive Director

1. Tell me about how [the organization] came into being

2. How has [your] work evolved since the beginning, and how has that evolution been influenced by or enabled by funders?

3. What are [the organization’s] current activities?

4. What does that work look like at the institutional and policy levels?

5. Who have been your key partners in this work?

6. How has student activism shaped the landscape and [the organization’s] work?

7. How does your location [geographically] affect your work and partnerships?

8. To whom do you all look for guidance or ideas in shaping how you do the work here?

9. What has been your relationship with institutions of higher education in [the state]?

10. How have private foundations played a role in facilitating your work?

11. How did DACA affect the landscape for securing foundation support?

12. What would be your ideal relationship with foundations, and what would need to be in place to realize this ideal?

13. Where is this work heading over the coming year? Over the coming 3 years?

14. Anything else you would add?

171

National Foundation Program Officer

1. Tell me about the [foundation’s] education work and how you set priorities for investing the foundation’s resources in this area.

2. How did [the foundation] become involved with funding projects affecting immigrant and undocumented student integration?

3. How did DACA shape the landscape for philanthropy to invest in initiatives aimed toward serving undocumented students?

4. To the extent you can discuss a specific grant-funded project, how did you and your team come to be interested in the [College Network for Educational Equity]?

5. What do you see as the biggest benefits of having a consortium like CNEE available for community colleges and organizations to join?

6. How would you describe the best role for foundations like [yours] to play on this issue?

7. How does the current legal and political environment inform thinking among major funders about next steps on undocumented / DACAmented student issues?

8. Anything else you would add?

172

APPENDIX D

Codebooks

Table D1. Codebook for CNEE Case Study

Final Code Abbreviation Sample Associated Open Source Codes

Serving as Institutional ENTREP Institutional Entrepreneur Entrepreneur Identifying a Void Disrupting Foundation Silos

Building the field FIELD Field Construction Cross-Sector Collaboration Growth of the Network

Asserting institutional identity IDENT Community College Mission Institutional Leadership Leading Institution

Accounting for legal and POLENV DACA Opening the political environment Conversation Trump Policy Emboldens DACA as Legitimizing the Work

Performing functions of FUNCPHIL Foundation as Partner philanthropy Capacity Building Rapid Response Mechanisms

Serving as a professional PROFNET Professional Association network Recognized for Expertise Professional Networking

Supporting the work with INSTSUP Institutional Fundraising institutional resources Sustained Commitment Institutional Empowerment Agents Evolving approaches to EVOL Meeting Students Where

173

meeting student needs They Are Learning Community Holistic Support

Working through resistance RESIST Working through Resistance Resilience Funding Model

Recognizing demographic DEMOG ESL transitions Foreign-born Student Population Growth of Immigrant Population

Engaging community partners PARTNER Community Partnership Advocacy through Partnerships Community Awareness

Encouraging reflexive REFLEX Need for Nuance philanthropy Need for Reflection Culturally Responsive Grantmaking

Setting the agenda AGENDA ISRT Policy Policy Advocacy Pathway to Citizenship

Strategizing student STUSTRAT Out of the Shadows movement Students as Catalysts Following Student Advocates’ Lead

Sustaining the work SUSTAIN Relationship Building Prospects for Institutional Investment Financial Sustainability

Respecting practitioners PRACTI Respect for Practitioners Underappreciated Institutions

Table D2. Codebook for WRPU Case Study

174

Final Code Abbreviation Select Associated Open Source Codes

Serving as Institutional ENTREP Legitimizing Diversity Work Entrepreneur Attention as Institutional Pioneer Institutional Change

Building the field FIELD Vertical vs. Horizontal Growth Learning from Other Institutions Legislative Change Asserting institutional identity IDENT Prestige as Legitimacy Innovation Rivalry Institutional Reputation

Accounting for legal and POLENV Angry Giving political environment Responding to Trump Threat DACA Opened Opportunity Politics of DREAM Act

Performing functions of FUNCPHIL Protected by Philanthropy philanthropy Philanthropy Makes it Possible Need to Share Learning Supporting the work with INSTSUP Limited Institutional institutional resources Resources Communicating External Funding Limits of Staff for Grantseeking

Evolving approaches to EVOL Tiered Approach to Serving meeting student needs Students Pre-DACA/Dreamer Experience Expanding Understanding of Undocumented Intersectional Identities

Working through resistance RESIST On-Campus Resistance Faculty Indifference

175

Need for Courage and Resistance

Recognizing demographic DEMOG Population Demographics transitions

Strategizing student STUSTRAT Student Activism movement Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Sustaining the work SUSTAIN Exhausting personal resources

Navigating shared governance SHAREGOV Faculty Activism Faculty Power Institutional Politics

Receiving executive INSTLEAD Institutional Leadership leadership support

Honoring personal identity PERSONID Personal Background Professional Identity Paying It Forward

Approaching funders APPFUND Need for Fundraising Fundraising as Relationship Seeking Resources Asking for Change

176

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