• Texas A&M board members despatched textual content messages about wanting a journalism faculty that might churn out conservatives.
• Jay Graham stated in a textual content that he needed college students to “assist direct our message” after commencement.
• TAMU reached a $1 million settlement with Kathleen McElroy after she says the varsity dismissed her attributable to “DEI hysteria.”

Some members of Texas A&M College’s Board of Regents reportedly need the varsity’s journalism program to churn out conservatives.

Jay Graham, one of many Texas A&M board members who ousted a journalist after she accepted the job as the varsity’s journalism director, talked about desirous to have a program that might produce “high-quality conservative Aggie journalists into the market,” based on textual content messages seen by KBTX and the Texas Tribune.

“We have been going to start out a journalism division to get high-quality conservative Aggie college students into the journalism world to assist direct our message,” Graham stated in a textual content message to fellow board member David Baggett obtained by KBTX.

Graham didn’t instantly reply to a number of requests for remark despatched to him and his firm. TAMU additionally didn’t instantly reply to Insider’s request for remark.

The TAMU Board of Regents ousted Kathleen McElroy in July after she accepted the job as the varsity’s director of journalism pending board approval. 

McElroy, who’s Black, is a former New York Occasions editor. She additionally beforehand oversaw the journalism program on the College of Texas, and researched range, fairness, and inclusion in media, based on The Related Press. 

McElroy instructed The Texas Tribune that Texas A&M rescinded its job provide to her after “DEI hysteria” amongst Texas college leaders.

Within the textual content messages, Graham known as McElroy’s hiring “unacceptable” and says the board “cannot enable it to occur,” based on KBTX.

“I really feel broken by this complete course of,” McElroy, who’s a graduate of Texas A&M, instructed the outlet. “I am being judged by race, possibly gender. And I do not assume people would face the identical bars or challenges. And it appears that evidently my being an Aggie, wanting to steer an Aggie program to what I believed could be prosperity, wasn’t sufficient.”

On Thursday, Texas A&M reached a settlement with McElroy for $1 million and admitted that “errors have been made through the hiring course of.”

Emails obtained by the TAMU scholar paper The Battalion confirmed that Hart Blanton, the varsity’s head of the Division of Communication and Journalism accused President President M. Katherine Banks of being dishonest throughout McElroy’s hiring course of. Blanton claimed that his signature was solid on the second provide despatched to McElroy, which was watered down.

Banks later resigned within the fallout of McElroy’s botched hiring.