The president of Texas A&M University quit following an uproar over the hiring of a prominent Black professor to run its journalism program.
(Bloomberg) — The president of Texas A&M University quit following an uproar over the hiring of a prominent Black professor to run its journalism program.
Katherine Banks’s resignation extends weeks of controversy after the school, one of the largest public universities in the US with almost 75,000 students, announced the hiring of former New York Times journalist Kathleen McElroy and then repeatedly worsened the terms of her job offer.
McElroy, a journalism professor at the University of Texas at Austin, ultimately rejected A&M’s one-year contract after being told by an interim dean that he couldn’t protect her from “DEI hysteria” surrounding her appointment, the Texas Tribune reported this month.
The state’s Republican-led legislature eliminated public universities’ offices of diversity, equity and inclusion this year amid mounting conservative backlash to the programs. The session also saw bills that limited treatment options for transgender children and put restrictions on what books can be offered in school libraries, policies that play well with the hard-right GOP base in Texas.
Texas A&M had been seeking to revive its journalism program, and McElroy — who graduated from the university in 1981 — was viewed as a marquee hire, with an unusual public signing ceremony when her appointment was announced. The school is known for having a large and fervent alumni base, and is widely considered to be a conservative counterpoint to UT Austin. More than half a million former A&M students live in Texas.
“President Banks denied knowing about the changes in the job offer but took responsibility for a flawed hiring process after a wave of national publicity suggesting (Kathleen) McElroy, who has done research on diversity and inclusion, was a victim of ‘anti-woke’ hysteria and outside interference in the faculty hiring process,” the College Station-based school said in a statement Friday.
Mark Welsh, dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service, will serve as acting president, according to the statement.
“I’m deeply grateful for the groundswell of support I’ve received, especially from Aggies of all majors, and my former and current students,” McElroy said, referring to the nickname of the school’s student body.
Banks is the second high-profile university president to step down this week. Stanford University’s Marc Tessier-Lavigne announced his resignation amid scrutiny over his research.
–With assistance from Edward Dufner and Alan Goldstein.
(Updates with McElroy statement in penultimate paragraph.)
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