We Refuse to Disappear
Resistance Amid Anti-Trans Education Policy
We Refuse to Disappear: Resistance Amid Anti-Trans Education Policy (Harvard Education Press), offers the first comprehensive account of how the current wave of anti-trans legislation is reshaping classrooms across the United States.
Grounded in my long-standing scholarship on a Pedagogy of Refusal, the book positions educators as ethical protectors who sustain student safety and affirmation within increasingly constrained legal environments. With publication scheduled just ahead of the November midterms, the book enters a national moment in which education policy, civil rights, and electoral politics converge with particular urgency.
Based on a comprehensive national policy analysis of state statutes, regulatory guidance, and enforcement patterns, the project identifies The Ten That Target, the most consequential policy areas shaping the educational terrain for trans*+ students and those who teach them. These policies reach into every dimension of school life, including curriculum, pronouns, athletics, teacher speech, bathroom access, and the growing professional risks educators now navigate each day.
Each chapter centers one statute, translates it into accessible language, and pairs it with layered vignettes drawn from field experience across elementary, middle, high school, and postsecondary settings. These chapters move beyond diagnosis to delineate how refusal is enacted, sustained, and developed across educational contexts, examining both the de jure and de facto effects of the law.
Rather than stopping at critique, the book articulates viable modes of resistance within legally constrained classrooms, showing how educators identify the narrow spaces that remain and act within them to preserve student dignity. Each chapter concludes with a developmental analysis of refusal across grade bands.
The book includes a curated toolkit of resources, including key readings, open-access curricula, podcasts, litigation reports, anti-trans policy trackers, advocacy organizations, and films and documentaries.
We Refuse to Disappear speaks directly to the political and educational moment we are living in. It offers clarity about how these laws function, what they mean in practice, and how refusal continues to operate as an ethical and pedagogical stance despite them.
I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this work with any of your audiences at this critical juncture. More information about my background, teaching philosophy, and publications are available on this website.
Contact: For press-related inquiries, contact Anna Urrea at an*********@***il.com.
Book Features
- Designed to support trans and gender-expansive youth and safeguard their dignity, safety, and self-determination through a Pedagogy of Refusal.
- Bridges scholarship and practice by providing classroom-ready strategies and scenarios for K–16 educators across subject areas.
- Built for K–12 and postsecondary educators, administrators, and staff, including teacher preparation programs, makers, parents, and allies.
- Highlights how statutory law shapes what teachers are permitted to say and do (De Jure), and what they actually do (De Facto) through a critical analysis of laws in Republican-majority led states.
- Includes a glossary of definitions, a curated toolkit of resources, including key readings, open-access curricula, podcasts, litigation reports, anti-trans policy trackers, advocacy organizations, and films and documentaries.
IN THE MEDIA
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December 17, 2025
Selected as one of Santa Fe’s 2025 cultural highlights
Santa Fe professor to pen book about impact of anti-trans legislation on education
Dec 6, 2025
I’m presenting at SXSW in Austin on Monday, March 9th! Check it out!
