Texas A&M University said Friday that the school’s principal resigned “immediately” following a dispute over the school’s passing of an offer to a candidate who appeared to be leading the school’s journalism school but ultimately turned down the position after facing opposition over her work promoting diversity.
The president, M. Katherine Banks, submitted a retirement letter late Thursday in which she said the negative attention to the press director, Kathleen McElroy, was a distraction to Texas A&M, one of the largest universities in the country.
Dr Banks’ resignation comes days after the rector who oversaw the university’s College of Arts and Sciences resigned and after a tense meeting between Dr Banks and the university’s faculty council on Wednesday.
During that meeting, Dr Banks, who had been principal for just over two years, said she was sorry that Dr McElroy would not be joining the university and said she felt embarrassed by the way the situation had been handled. But she also suggests that she knows little about the details that led to the proposed changes to Dr McElroy, a former New York Times editor and professor of journalism at the University of Texas.
That version of events was challenged on Friday by Hart Blanton, a professor who heads the university’s department of communications and journalism. He said that Dr Banks was really “irregularly and prematurely getting herself into this process” and that she misled the faculty panel about her role.
Dr Blanton said it appeared Dr McElroy’s hiring had come under more scrutiny because she was Black, adding that someone had altered the draft of the offer – changing the multi-year offer to one year – and sent it to Dr McElroy without his knowledge, even though it still had his signature. He said he shared documents regarding the failed recruitment with the university’s attorneys on Thursday and was pleased to see that Dr Banks had resigned.
The failure to appoint Dr. McElroy is the latest conflict at the intersection of higher education, diversity and politics. Governor Greg Abbott of Texas, Republican, signed a bill this year that would ban offices and programs at publicly funded colleges that promote “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”
And in Florida, in May, Republican Governor Ron DeSantis signed the law Most state colleges are prohibited from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion initiativesand bans teaching “identity politics” in some compulsory courses.
The dispute also follows the failure to appoint another Times-affiliated journalist, Nikole Hannah-Jones, in 2021 at the University of North Carolina. The university’s board of trustees refused to grant her term after she was appointed head of investigative and racing journalism. The denial followed criticism, largely from conservatives, of Ms Hannah-Jones’ involvement in Project 1619 of The Timesargues that 1619 — the year in which a group of enslaved Africans were brought to the United States — is as important to American history as 1776. Mrs. Hannah-Jones then become president of race and press at Howard University.
In the case of Texas A&M, Dr. McElroy said the university had promised her a five-year contract but she was ultimately offered a one-year deal after complaints from a group of alumni and a conservative publication about her work promoting diversity, including an opinion column she wrote in which she said it was important to hire more non-white instructors.
Dr McElroy has covered many topics throughout her decades of journalism – from sports to dining – and said in a previous interview with The Times that diversity efforts were a small part of her academic and journalistic career.
A 1981 A&M graduate, she said, Dr. McElroy eventually turned down a one-year contract with the school, and the episode became a full-blown crisis for the university after The Texas Tribune first report on the conflict. Dr McElroy described a series of conversations in which the dean of the A&M College of Arts and Sciences told her there was political obstruction to her appointment.
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’” Dr. McElroy recall her conversation with the dean, José Luis Bermúdez. “He said, ‘You’re a Black woman who used to work for The New York Times and for these people it’s like working for Pravda.’”
In a statement on Friday, Dr McElroy said she is “very grateful for the fundamental support I have received, particularly from Aggies of all majors, as well as my former and current students.” She added that she will comment further in the future. “There is much more I could say and will say about what happened,” she said.
The clash between academia and politics takes place at an institution at the heart of Texas identity and culture. With nearly 75,000 students, Texas A&M, at College Station, about 95 miles northwest of Houston, is the state’s other center of higher education — the more conservative, rural rival of the University of Texas at Austin. It is a university that is defined as one of the world-class research institutions while also being highly focused on its tradition and its beginnings as a school made up of students from farming towns who then sent them to the army.
The school is known for the fervent loyalty of its graduates. And even by Texas standards, it is defined by the state’s celebration of major and long-standing sports, especially Aggie football. Black students make up a disproportionately small percentage of both Texas A&M (2 percent) and the University of Texas at Austin (5 percent), when compared to the entire state (13.4 percent) or the cities where the universities are located.
What remained a mystery even after Dr. Banks’ resignation was precisely why the university changed its offer to Dr. McElroy. A conservative alumni group, the Rudder Association, emailed A&M leadership after her appointment was announced and said in a statement that A&M should avoid “divisive ideology about identity politics”. On Friday, the group’s president, Matt Poling, said he appreciated Dr Banks’ service to the university.
in faculty senate meeting on WednesdayProfessors have harshly criticized the university’s negligent appointment of Dr McElroy, with some saying that criticism of Dr McElroy’s work promoting diversity should not have been included in her hiring.
Tracy Anne Hammond, a professor of computer science and faculty panel speaker, said: “What is not OK is that the university allegedly rescinded the contract, and what is even more disturbing is the notion that the reason the original contract was not approved was not because of merit, but rather the opinion or demographics of the candidate,” said Tracy Anne Hammond, the panel’s professor of computer science and professor of computer science. “Right now, the faculty and the world have lost faith in Texas A&M University, and that’s a big deal,” she added.
Dr Banks described communication problems during her attempt to hire Dr McElroy but said the university accepted the offers they made to her.
“Based on what I understand, at all points in this process she comes here,” said Dr. Banks, adding that she still wants Dr. McElroy to join the university.
But she faced tough questions from faculty members, many of whom criticized what they said was political interference in the university’s recruitment process and an embarrassing chain of events.
“Obviously, no one knows who made the offers, no one knows how many offers were made, no one knows who signed which offers and no one knows who read or wrote those offers,” said Raymundo Arróyave, an engineering professor. “Honestly, we seem incompetent.”
NK Anand, vice president of departmental affairs, said at the meeting that the first invitation to Dr McElroy was for an already appointed position and the second – for a one-year director and three-year faculty role – was signed only by the dean. He said the university had not been able to find any five-year offer of admission.
The faculty’s senate passed a resolution to establish a fact-finding committee to review how Dr McElroy’s hiring was handled. University system officials said Friday that they are in the early stages of an investigation into what happened, “We are determined to get to the bottom of what happened and why, learn from mistakes and do better in the future,” a university system spokesman said in a statement.
In another statement on Friday, Prime Minister John Sharp said that Mark A. Welsh III, dean of the university’s department of government and school of public service, will temporarily assume the presidency.
Stephanie Saul And Rick Rojas contribution report.
