Former New York Times editor and DEI proponent Kathleen McElroy was appointed to be the head of the journalism program at Texas A&M University, but later had her contract reduced from five years to one year, after her woke history came to light. She has chosen not to take the position at all in a win against DEI insanity. The leader of a conservative alumni group said, “I think identity politics have done a lot of damage to our country, and the manifestation of that on campus, the D.E.I. ideology, has done damage to our culture at A&M.”
McElroy, who had recently served as the director of the University of Texas’ School of Journalism, was appointed to run a similar program at her alma mater, Texas A&M University, according to a report by the New York Times.
Texas A&M football crowd (Scott Halleran/Getty Images)
NEW YORK, USA – JUNE 29 : People enter the New York Times (NYT) building in New York, United States on June 29, 2017. NYT employees start a temporary strike against downsizing and dismissal plans of the NYT management. (Photo by Volkan Furuncu/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Last month, the school celebrated her new position with a signing ceremony and balloons. Not too long after that, however, McElroy said she was informed by the university’s interim dean of liberal arts, José Luis Bermúdez, that there was political pushback over her appointment.
McElroy told NYT that Bermúdez said the pushback was over her being “a black woman who was at the New York Times.”
“I said, ‘What’s wrong?’ He said, ‘You’re a black woman who was at the New York Times and, to these folks, that’s like working for Pravda,’” McElroy said.
Weeks later, the terms of McElroy’s employment had been revised from a five-year deal to a one-year contract that stipulated she could be dismissed “at will,” she said.
“It’s gut-wrenching,” McElroy told the New York Times. McElroy decided to return to her tenured position at the University of Texas, instead.
Meanwhile, Texas A&M says that McElroy and the school had mutually agreed that a nontenured position was more appropriate. The university added that it regretted any “misunderstanding,” and “wished McElroy well.”
While Bermúdez declined to be interviewed about what happened to cause this change, the New York Times reported that the conservative Texas A&M alumni group, the Rudder Association, said it had filed a complaint about McElroy’s appointment over her diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) advocacy.
“We felt she wasn’t a good fit from that,” Matthew Poling, the president of the group, said. “I think identity politics have done a lot of damage to our country, and the manifestation of that on campus, the D.E.I. ideology, has done damage to our culture at A&M.”
This is not the first micro win for conservatives in the higher education.
In 2021, New York Times writer and author of the divisive “1619 Project” Nikole Hannah-Jones was denied a tenured position at the University of North Carolina after the school’s board of trustees refused to approve her appointment. Similarly to McElroy’s case, conservatives risen up to defend themselves in the world of academia, resulting in a rare win.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Facebook and Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, and on Instagram.