Texas A&M University has reached a $1 million settlement with a black journalism professor and former New York Times editor whose hiring was made complicated because of backlash over her radical leftist views.
The Associated Press reports that Texas A&M “initially welcomed [Kathleen] McElroy with great fanfare to revive its journalism department in June.”
But soon after she got hired, she “learned of emerging internal pushback from then-unidentified individuals over her past work to improve diversity and inclusion in newsrooms.”
These individuals reportedly included at least six board of regents members who began “asking questions and raising concerns about McElroy’s hiring” after the conservative news publisher Texas Scorecard ran a report about her work promoting DEI, which is short for diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Texas Scorecard reported in June that McElroy had previously worked as the director of journalism at the University of Texas Austin.
✍️Texas A&M has hired former New York Times Senior Editor and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion proponent Kathleen McElroy to direct their journalism program.
To read more, click herehttps://t.co/SFCdP3s38e
— Texas Scorecard (@TexasScorecard) June 18, 2023
“During her time there, she was part of the Council for Racial and Ethnic Equity and Diversity (CREED). According to their website, CREED advocates for equity-based hiring practices and distributes anti-racism ‘resources,'” the site notes.
“In an op-ed McElroy wrote for The Daily Texan, UT Austin’s official newspaper, she advocated for diversity measures and keeping track of faculty demographics to make the university more welcoming to those who are not ‘cisgender straight White men,'” according to Texas Scorecard.
As previously reported, so-called “anti-racism” is more often than not racism itself, in that so-called “anti-racists” believe modern discrimination needs to be applied to remedy the effects of past historical discrimination.
Take for instance affirmative action, which McElroy appears to support. Those who believe in it argue that whites and Asians should be discriminated against in college admissions to make room for more black and Hispanic students/faculty.
McElroy, a journalism professor, is evidently also against actual journalism.
“We can’t just give people a set of facts anymore. I think we know that and we have to tell our students that. This is not about getting two sides of a story or 3 sides of a story, if one side is illegitimate,” she told NPR in 2021.
“I think now you cannot cover education, you cannot cover criminal justice, you can’t cover all of these institutions without recognizing how all these institutions were built,” she added.
In other words, facts that aren’t conducive to whatever narrative she wants to sell shouldn’t be included in stories.
This is insane. I’m sure it was unpleasant for #KathleenMcElroy to be hired and then unhired, but her radical politics made her a bad fit to teach journalism. Where is the basis for her to turn this into a lottery ticket? https://t.co/To3aT5pCFy
— Mark Davis (@MarkDavis) August 3, 2023
According to investigation documents obtained by the AP, Texas Scorecard’s accurate report “generated numerous calls and emails to the President’s Office at TAMU” from current/former students “raising questions about why a DEI proponent would be hired to serve as director of the new journalism program.”
After the report dropped, university president Katherine Banks began essentially downgrading McElroy’s job offer.
“McElroy [said] that the initial offer of a tenure-track position was reduced to a five-year post and then reduced again to a one-year position from which she could be fired at any time. She ultimately rejected the offer and withdrew her resignation from UT-Austin as a journalism professor,” the AP notes.
“Shortly after events around her hiring became public, Banks resigned and the university began an investigation into the matter. The school’s board of regents later approved negotiating a settlement with McElroy,” according to the AP.
Dovetailing back to the present, the university responded to the settlement by issuing a statement vowing that it “has learned from its mistakes and will strive to ensure similar mistakes are not repeated in the future.”
McElroy has for her part called the matter “settled.”
“I hope the resolution of my matter will reinforce A&M’s allegiance to excellence in higher education and its commitment to academic freedom and journalism,” she said.
Meanwhile, A&M chancellor John Sharp wrote an email this week to all A&M-affiliated accounts acknowledging that the school had evidently screwed up.
“It is time to come together, put our house back in order and vow to never let this happen again. We all must re-dedicate ourselves to the Aggie values that define us and bind us. To begin with, I want to apologize publicly to Dr. McElroy and [I] fervently hope we can eventually heal with our mutual love for Texas A&M,” he said.
Writers and editors can be contacted at [email protected] with feedback, tips, or corrections.
V. Saxena is a staff writer with a decade of experience as a professional writer, and a lifetime of experience as an avid news junkie. He holds a degree in computer technology from Purdue University. Saxena also contributes to BizPac Review.
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