How the political tide turned on Mark Welsh, the four-star general ousted as Texas A&M president

The continuing saga….

By Kate McGee and Nicholas Gutteridge | The Texas Tribune

At first glance, Mark Welsh III’s credentials appeared unimpeachable.

An Air Force Academy graduate turned four-star general who served as the military branch’s highest-ranking officer. Dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M for seven years. Aggie blood ran through him — his father, siblings, and four children all graduated from the College Station university.

But almost immediately after he was named interim president in mid-2023, some members of the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents, who oversee the university, were raising concerns.

“We really need to vet this guy,” John Bellinger, a university regent appointed earlier that year, wrote to then-Vice Chair Robert Albritton. “From what I have heard along with this and other articles, I have many questions.”

Bellinger shared a link to a post from Texas Scorecard, a conservative website read by many of the state’s Republican elected leaders. The post highlighted Welsh’s public statements advocating for boosting women in the military and diversity in the workforce.

Just weeks earlier, the same website emphasized that it was former President Barack Obama who appointed Welsh to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, overseeing 660,000 service members of the U.S. Air Force.

The regents weren’t the only ones who were apparently bothered.

A day after Bellinger sent that email, Albritton took Welsh to Austin to meet Gov. Greg Abbott. In an interview, Albritton told The Texas Tribune he wanted to show the governor Welsh was the right man for the job as regents considered making him the permanent president.

But it didn’t go as planned.

During the short meeting at the Capitol, Abbott peppered Welsh with questions about the comments Texas Scorecard had dug up, and about Welsh’s views on diversity, equity, and inclusion policies. Abbott was apparently unsatisfied with Welsh’s answers, according to five people briefed on the encounter.

“There’s no doubt the governor was looking for somebody that was conservative in nature, and I think that he felt that maybe Mark was not as conservative as he was hoping he would be,” Albritton said.

But the regents felt Welsh was the right leader for the moment. They wanted a steady leader who could calm the waters after a tumultuous summer of back-to-back personnel scandals that led Welsh’s predecessor to resign.

Over the next two years, Welsh repaired relationships with many students, faculty, and alumni. But the skepticism about the “Obama appointee” and his conservative bonafides never went away.

This September, a video was posted on social media of a student confronting a professor over the teaching of gender identity at A&M. Welsh defended the professor privately to the student, which was also caught on video, setting off right-wing outrage. Soon after, Albritton, who is now chair of the regents, called Welsh to tell him he could either resign or be fired.

But Welsh wasn’t pushed out over that incident alone. He was in many ways a victim of circumstance — a rapidly changing political tide, an increasingly watchful board of regents working in lockstep with state leaders, and expectations that seemingly changed overnight about the role of higher education leadership and academic freedom. . . . (read the rest of the in-depth article)