Texas A&M University reaches $1 million settlement with Black journalism professor

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Texas A&M University reached a $1 million settlement Thursday with a Black journalism professor whose hiring was sabotaged by backlash over her past work promoting diversity.

The nation's largest public school agreed to pay Kathleen McElroy and apologized to her while admitting "mistakes were made during the hiring process."

Texas A&M, which is located in College Station, about 90 miles northwest of Houston, initially welcomed McElroy with great fanfare to revive its journalism department in June. A former New York Times editor and Texas A&M alum, McElroy had overseen the journalism school at A&M's rival — the more liberal University of Texas at Austin.

But McElroy told the Texas Tribune last month that soon after her hiring, she learned of emerging internal pushback from then-unidentified individuals over her past work to improve diversity and inclusion in newsrooms.

According to investigation documents released Thursday, those individuals included at least six board of regents members who began "asking questions and raising concerns about McElroy's hiring" after Texas Scorecard, a right-leaning website, highlighted her past diversity, equity and inclusion work.

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The website's article "generated numerous calls and emails to the President’s Office at TAMU" from current and former students "raising questions about why a DEI proponent would be hired to serve as director of the new journalism program," a summary of the school investigation said.

Shortly afterward, the university's president Katherine Banks and a school dean began discussing changes and reductions in