A conversation with Cameron Samuels of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas

Editor’s Note: Each issue, Assistant Editor Liz Hayes is interviewing people in the church-state separation movement. She sat down with Cameron Samuels, co-founder and executive director of Students Engaged in Advancing Texas (SEAT). The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: Tell us about SEAT’s origin story — how and why you formed?

Samuels: I started SEAT from organizing against book bans and censorship in my school district just outside of Houston. I was speaking at these school board meetings and I really wanted to engage my peers, my classmates, others who I knew have powerful stories, who were impacted by these policies, who might be a little scared or intimidated to show up to a place like this. But the fact that we showed up together meant we could give a glimpse into our realities. Because otherwise, who was gonna show up? If not us, then who?

We built relationships with these school board officials. We got a lot of national media attention. We built coalitions with other organizations and local bookstores and educators. We got books back on shelves. We took legal action. We were widely successful and it was proving that students really can do this work, that students are not just leaders of tomorrow, but changemakers today. That we are powerful, that we are the experts of our lived experiences. We’re also the primary stakeholders in education.

It wasn’t just about books, because book bans were just one means to erase and silence the voices of vulnerable and marginalized people. And so many people were doing that in the name of their faith, where they were using this as an excuse to pull books off shelves, to silence and erase LGBTQ youth like myself, to just rub dirt on our Constitution and our rights that it guarantees us. And I wanted to make sure that we wouldn’t let them do it.

We saw ourselves at a larger scale; it wasn’t just the one small school district — it was across Texas and the nation. We created SEAT as a movement that was unified by this one message of students having a seat at the table when decisions are made about us and our futures.

We’ve grown tremendously as this peer-mentor network with hundreds of students across the state who are writing op-eds and testifying, not only at school boards, but the state legislature and Congress. We’re filing lawsuits. We’re understanding our rights. We’re gaining a higher conscience and understanding how we fit into policymaking. I’m learning just as much from these students and from this experience as I am in the classroom.

SEAT was awarded AU’s 2026 David Norr Youth Activist Award due to your commitment to advocating for church-state separation and religious freedom in public education. Can you talk about some of the church-state issues that SEAT has been involved in?

Samuels: Absolutely. It means so much to receive this recognition from Americans United. Having the support, especially on the ground, in this working partnership [shows] AU truly does believe in having youth at the table.

Church-state separation is something that’s really critical to us at SEAT. It goes back to how we originally got started — with book bans and censorship, which also included LGBTQ websites. Faith has sometimes driven people to push this censorship and these attacks on marginalized people.

That these issues come to our schoolhouse gates is really unfortunate, especially with the Ten Commandments in our schools, that’s something that is now mandated in Texas, imposed upon students. We had testified against this at the state Legislature. [SEAT Co-founder] Hayden [Cohen] had been there at the committee hearing and testified at 5 in the morning, which was 20 hours after the hearing began the day before. Waiting that long to ensure that students have a voice, because without Hayden’s voice, there wasn’t any other student there.

[SEAT] filed an amicus brief in the Nathan vs. Alamo Heights [Texas Ten Commandments] case, where AU is [co-counsel]. We were able to provide a student voice. The amicus brief that we worked on with other organizations like the IDRA [Intercultural Development Research Association] and Texas Freedom Network outlined how the Ten Commandments in schools was targeting impressionable minds … especially in classrooms when it’s the state imposing this on a huge proportion of the public — we have 5.5 million students in Texas.

Working with lawyers has been an incredible experience that not too many students have had the opportunity to do. This is really outlined in Mahmoud v. Taylor, which made it to the Supreme Court, with Montgomery County Public Schools [in Maryland] defending its decision to have LGBTQ books in schools. Religious parents wanted to use religion as an excuse to ban books, to opt their children out.

This case was about whether the state or the school had the right to decide what students read, or if it was the parents who got to decide. What is missing from that conversation is the students. The students, in our belief, should have the right to decide what we learn in our classrooms and what books we can read. And that’s exactly what we brought to the Supreme Court docket with our amicus brief … the only student voice that these Supreme Court justices would hear in this case.

Why is church-state separation important to you personally?

Samuels: I remember in middle and high school, I was one of the few Jewish students in my school of over 4,000 people. There were people who didn’t understand what that meant. And so microaggressions, or even deliberate comments, pranks, jokes, defined my experience for a number of years. And it was just like having a target on my back, being labeled with the Jude star.

This was something Jews across America feel and experience, and I can’t help but think that that’s also the common experience for so many other people of minority faith backgrounds that don’t conform to the Christian Nationalist vision that some of the people in power have and are pushing for. When they create this culture of Christian Nationalism, it harms people across the board. It harms our ability to create a multicultural and pluralistic democracy.

Now with Texas teaching religious doctrine, blurring the lines between church and state separation, we are heading in a dangerous direction for the future of our democracy. Because our democracy depends on church-state separation. And our democracy also depends on the youth today, and how we are bringing up this generation. The experiences that I have faced in school have defined how I advocate, not only for myself, but for others.

This is a dark time right now for a lot of people. What brings you joy?

Samuels: What brings me joy is all of the students that I get to work with on a daily basis, who just inspire me, who give me warmth, who fill my bucket, who I learn so much from, and who I just question how they can even do it, knowing that I do the same.

There’s always these issues and problems facing every generation, and so now it’s our turn to take leadership, to advance the status quo, to not give up. We are creating change. … We don’t have to think of one colossal problem and fixing everything in the snap of a finger. But everything that we’re doing is moving our lines forward.