COLLEGE STATION — 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.

If anything, Welsh suffered from not being political enough.

“Mark is pretty moderate,” said an influential A&M donor and alum who asked not to be named because of their continued relationship with the school. “I think that he was just like many of us in being naive about just how much the far-right was going to come after [DEI]. It wasn’t going to go away, until it was too late.”

Welsh dutifully implemented policy changes handed down by the regents, even if he disagreed with them. But he would at times express his reluctance to reactively change course based on public opinion, and would advocate for faculty to weigh in on decision making, according to thousands of pages of emails and interviews with more than four dozen current and former administrators, faculty, students and alumni, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk without fear of repercussions.

That approach put him at odds with some regents who started to believe he was relying too heavily on their intervention to resolve difficult issues. Many on the board wanted a more proactive leader who would shut down controversy, as they grew weary of the steady drumbeat of online posts accusing the university of embracing liberal ideology.

In a statement, Welsh refuted the idea that he needed board involvement to make difficult decisions. He declined to comment on other details in the story. Eight regents either declined to comment or did not respond to requests.

Texas Scorecard, run by conservative activist and Aggie alum Michael Quinn Sullivan, would publish more than 115 posts — more than one a week — about A&M during Welsh’s two-year presidency. The site often highlights courses, professors, and programs on campus that it presents as evidence of widespread liberal indoctrination. Many of those posts would be shared online by lawmakers like state Rep. Brian Harrison, also an A&M alum, who crusaded against DEI on campus.

Welsh’s departure punctuates a rapid-fire period of hyper-politicization in higher education as the Trump administration and Texas lawmakers placed more scrutiny on college campuses over DEI policies and discourse around LGBTQ+ identities. The controversy prompted multiple Texas university systems to conduct their own course audits to avoid the same attention Welsh and A&M endured.

“I definitely believe the overall climate is a contributing factor to why he was removed as president,” said B. Don Russell, an engineering professor at Texas A&M for more than half a century. “There was a loss of confidence in him as not being a strong enough or aggressive enough advocate of the kind of culture that the state leadership wants.”

The role of the regent

Welsh took the helm at A&M as the political winds were gusting to the right — and as university regents were emboldened by state officials to take more active roles on campuses.

Just three years prior, during the post-George Floyd racial reckoning, A&M’s Board of Regents dedicated $100 million toward scholarships to boost student diversity.

But the pendulum was swinging back. By 2023, Texas became the second state in the country to ban diversity, equity and inclusion offices and programs dedicated to retaining and graduating underrepresented students.

State leaders looked to regents to set a new tone on the campuses they oversaw. When Abbott appointed a new slate of regents to join university boards across the state in March 2023, Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick — then the face of DEI pushback — individually sat down with more than a dozen appointees before the Senate’s traditionally perfunctory confirmation vote, according to his calendar.

Patrick interviewed the regents about their views on DEI programs. He wanted them to take a stronger stand against what he viewed as liberal indoctrination on college campuses, according to two employees at separate university systems who were briefed on the conversations.

“He has publicly been very clear that there is no room for divisive and discriminatory DEI policies or the ‘woke’ agenda being pushed by liberal elites on campus,” Patrick’s spokesperson Steven Aranyi said to the Tribune, confirming the meetings. 

Every university system is overseen by its own nine-member board of regents, who are appointed by the governor for six-year terms. They hire system chancellors, football coaches, and university presidents, and ensure universities spend funds responsibly. State statute also says the governing boards are expected to defend a public university’s institutional independence.

“This board really doesn’t buy into that,” said one A&M System administrator who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly. “The board thinks they are the representatives of the people, funneled through the people’s top elected official: the governor.”

Abbott declined to answer a list of questions. Spokesperson Andrew Mahaleris told the Tribune Abbott expects regents to “ensure that our higher education campuses continue to focus on developing our students into the best and brightest in the world.”

Albritton acknowledged the board has to pay attention to the lawmakers who fund them. He added they’re not trying to micromanage, but the regents have a responsibility “to make sure things do not spin out of control.”

Abbott’s nearly 11 years as governor mean he’s appointed all of the regents on the state’s public university boards — and they are often some of his highest-dollar donors. Albritton, first appointed in 2015, has donated more than $2.9 million to Abbott. The three regents whom Abbott would appoint at A&M in 2023 — businessmen Sam Torn, David Baggett, and Bellinger — each donated between $400,000 and $1.7 million to Abbott. 

For much of the past decade, A&M regents were largely deferential to the politically savvy Chancellor John Sharp, who led the system for 14 years and retired this summer.

But in Sharp’s fall 2023 performance evaluation, the board made it clear they wanted to see some changes: They said stakeholders can feel “bowled over rather than full partners.” They directed Sharp to loop them in on any decisions that “might post significant reputational risk to any part of the system.”

That summer, A&M was roiled by two controversies revealing an unfamiliar level of political interference within the administration. First, a high-profile Black journalism professor rejected a job offer amid the regents’ pushback, after Texas Scorecard highlighted her prior efforts to increase faculty diversity.

Former A&M President M. Katherine Banks resigned amid criticism of the botched hiring process. Shortly after, the Tribune reported that A&M had placed another professor on leave after the lieutenant governor asked the system to investigate comments the instructor allegedly made about him during a lecture, further eroding trust among the rank and file.

“For most of us, it feels like part of A&M died this month, and I think we need to properly mourn,” former Faculty Senate Speaker Tracy Hammond said during a meeting at the time.

The fallout raised questions among regents about Sharp’s leadership. He announced his retirement the following year — but in an interview, Albritton said that while Sharp positively advanced the university, many board members “felt it was time for a change.” 

“I thank the support of Gov. Abbott, Lt. Gov. Patrick, and other state leaders, as well as a large majority of the Regents, for the success I enjoyed over almost 14 years,” Sharp said in an email. ”But I won’t comment on my opinion of Mr. Albritton as a board member.”

Banks, who was Sharp’s protege, had lost faculty trust by removing them from the conversation as she merged colleges and reorganized key offices. Welsh quickly reversed several of Banks’ controversial changes. He became known as a strong communicator who responded to concerned emails and would show face at student events. And he launched large-scale studies concerning the student experience and how the school was going to handle its massive growth, as enrollment was nearing 80,000 students.

He promised to stand up for the faculty and not to micromanage.

“If a regent calls me and says, ‘Hey, I really am worried about this,’ I’ll say, ‘Thank you for the call,’” Welsh told the Faculty Senate a few weeks after being named interim president. “But I’m not going to call the department head and tell them who to hire.”

That fall, he told The Washington Post that while the university would abide by the state’s new DEI ban, he did not believe it was “beneficial to where we are trying to go long-range as a society.”

Alumni groups like the Rudder Association — created in 2020 to push back against calls to remove the campus statue of former A&M president and Confederate general, Lawrence Sullivan Ross — bristled at Welsh’s comments.

“Is he a radical leftist?” Rudder Association President Matt Poling wrote in an email to two regents before Welsh was named permanent president. “I don’t think so. But that may simply mean that he intends to take Texas A&M in the same direction on a shallower glide path. What Texas A&M and higher education needs right now is a conservative leader.”

Closing Qatar

One of Welsh’s first major challenges at the helm involved A&M’s role in the Middle East amid boiling geopolitical tension.

Weeks after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel, Abbott traveled to the region and visited with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. When he returned, he told Sharp that A&M needed to close its school in Qatar, which has allowed Hamas to house a political bureau in its country for years.

Sharp delivered the directive to the board, according to four people with knowledge of the conversations.

Welsh saw no reason to abandon the campus, which was established in 2003 as an engineering-focused school located in an oil and gas hub. He would point out to regents the role the campus played in international relations, spreading American values and educating female engineers in the Middle East, according to four administrators.

But the political pressure mounted quickly. A pro-Israel nonprofit published a report in late November 2023 falsely alleging that terrorist groups had “unrestricted access” to sensitive research at the campus. Right-leaning websites amplified the claims, and it wasn’t long before regents began circulating the stories among themselves via email.

Welsh, who oversaw the campus in Qatar, pushed back. He issued a public statement debunking the allegations. He directed staff to compile a 21-page brief titled “Setting the Record Straight,” which was sent to the governor’s office, according to records.

It made no difference.

Abbott wanted A&M out of Qatar. Regents knew the consequence of defying state leadership meant risking the university’s bottom line during the next legislative session.

In February 2024, with no public discussion, the regents voted 7-1 to wind down operations in Qatar, citing “heightened instability in the Middle East.” Just one regent, Michael Plank, dissented. Abbott replaced Plank with a new regent the next year. Plank declined to comment.

Welsh accepted the board’s decision. When he met with Qatari faculty a few days later via Zoom, he acknowledged the decision was a surprise.

“I’ll be honest, although the discussions with the A&M System and the Board of Regents have been ongoing for several months, I think all of us here are also still processing the events of the last couple of days,” Welsh said, according to a transcript of the meeting.

Just a couple of months into his new job, as Welsh found himself batting down misinformation about the Qatar campus, he received a friendly email.

Former A&M President Michael Young — who’d been watching the heated discourse from the sidelines — emailed him about one of the false reports, calling it “nonsense.”

He ended the email on a prescient note: “Are you absolutely positive you want to take this job??”

The spirit of the Corps

Before Welsh set foot in the president’s office, a storm was brewing involving one of the university’s most sacred cows: the Corps of Cadets, the largest uniformed student body outside the country’s service academies.

Years prior, a cadet came out as a transgender woman and argued A&M was violating her civil rights by denying access to restrooms in the dorms that matched her gender identity.

At the time, the federal and state governments were at loggerheads. The Biden administration had proposed new rules that would have increased protections for transgender students on college campuses. Meanwhile, the state was pushing for laws that moved in the opposite direction, and in June 2023, Attorney General Ken Paxton had sued the federal government to stop the new protections.

Before Welsh took office, university leaders told the student that by her senior year, one gender-neutral restroom would be ready for use. But by fall 2023, its expected completion date, it still wasn’t ready. Now, the student was threatening to report the university to the Biden administration, Kevin McGinnis, the university’s now-retired chief compliance officer, told the Tribune.

That December, regents met with Welsh and the Corps’ top official, Commandant Patrick Michaelis, to sort out a resolution. The regents were skeptical about the concept of gender-neutral restrooms in the Corps. But they arrived at a consensus: Rather than renovate all dorms across the Corps, the administration would commit to building a gender-neutral restroom in four of the Corps’ 12 dorms.

The effort had continued unhindered throughout spring, with a cost of about $3 million. But as that price tag continued to rise, news of the renovations started to spread.

In May 2024, the Rudder Association posted on its website claiming A&M would spend upward of $72 million on renovating every restroom in the Corps, adding that it had come about because of “a senior male cadet who had appropriated the female gender” and it was likely the regents hadn’t “been fully advised of this scheme or approved of it.”

Except the regents had discussed it — and OK’d the plans months prior.

“What has been done to set the record straight on this?” Plank wrote to Welsh after the post went live. “Where have we published our response to these false allegations? Have we formally requested a retraction from The Rudder Association?”

Outrage poured in. “This kind of crap makes me despise the university that I used to love,” wrote one alum.

But Welsh, those close to him said, was steadfast in private conversations: This was the federal guidance, and A&M had to follow it.

Regents were already fielding angry calls over Michaelis’ proposals to try to crack down on hazing and the perception he allowed too many female Corps leaders. Alumni complained he was disrupting the organization’s storied traditions.

“The board had let the chancellor know their frustration that things were going on that just isn’t in the spirit of the Corps,” Albritton said.

But Welsh stood by his commandant throughout, two people close to the president told the Tribune, and situated himself as a barrier between university officials and regents. In August 2024, the regents told Sharp that they wanted Michaelis out. Sharp relayed the message to Welsh, and days later, in a one-on-one meeting in the president’s office, Welsh fired Michaelis. Michaelis declined to be interviewed for this story.

Even though Welsh did what the regents wanted, they were frustrated it took him so long and that it required their involvement.

“It just got to a level of frustration that Mark always wanted to have a board action in order to make decisions that the board felt should be made at the presidential level, without board involvement,” Albritton said.

Welsh defended himself in an email.

“I have a pretty long track record of professional decision making, which I’m very comfortable standing behind, including decisions made as president of A&M. I made hundreds of decisions in that job, both easy and hard. Every decision I made was in the best interest of the university. I think the real issue was in a very small number of cases, the board felt a different decision would have better served the university,” he said.

“In those situations, the board had every right and authority to overturn my decision or direct specific action. All I asked is that they do so formally and be accountable for their action. I believe that’s a fairly routine standard of practice for corporate governance in our country.”

Fraying relationships

The pressure Welsh faced over LGBTQ+ issues was relentless.

In January 2024, as Texas Scorecard was repeatedly writing about the teaching of gender identity on campus, Regent Michael Hernandez sent an angry email to Welsh after he was contacted by the website for comment about various LGBTQ+ events and courses on campus the site was preparing to write about.

“When does our administration’s obsession with student sexual preferences and lifestyles finally stop?” he wrote. “Why do we allow the administration to continue to promote these liberal agendas that are clearly against the Texas Legislature and the vast majority of Texas taxpayers?”

The university’s LGBTQ minor was particularly in the crosshairs.

Texas Scorecard highlighted the university’s new LGBTQ studies minor in 2023, and shortly after, the provost’s office launched a broad review that found dozens of low-enrolled programs, including the LGBTQ studies minor, and recommended them for removal. By that point, Harrison, the state representative, was whipping up outrage among his followers on X.

The Faculty Senate saw any action without their input as another attack on academic freedom, the longstanding academic tradition that protects instruction and research from political interference.

Welsh proposed a compromise: start the review process over with more faculty input. But the regents, frustrated by his resistance, rejected his pitch.

In November, they unanimously voted to get rid of the LGBTQ minor, along with 51 other minors and certificates.

By this point, Texas Scorecard was publishing critical A&M posts nearly every week.

Publicly, Welsh would brush aside the website.

“Virtually every article they publish is not fully factual, sometimes not even close to factual,” he told the student newspaper in November 2024. “They have never printed a retraction when we provided them the facts, and so I don’t worry about them too much.”

But it was consuming communication staffers who struggled to manage and respond to the criticism. Government relations officials warned Welsh that lawmakers would bring up Scorecard in conversations, records show.

In December 2024, an alum emailed Welsh, citing a Texas Scorecard post, and accused him of leading the university down a “WOKE path.”

“You clearly don’t know me at all,” Welsh wrote back. “I have no idea what ‘WOKE path’ even means, and I’m certainly not leading anyone down one.”

But the tensions occasionally veered outside culture war issues. In 2024, when baseball coach Jim Schlossnagle left to coach UT-Austin hours after his A&M team lost in the national championship, Hernandez shot an email off to Welsh.

“We had better not lose our baseball coach,” Hernandez wrote.

“Okay, let’s be straight,” Welsh replied. “He’s gone. We didn’t lose him … he left. … Not sure what you’re expecting here or what you hope to accomplish with threats.”

Hernandez retorted: “You are in way over your head.”

Welsh takes heed

In early 2025, internal emails began circulating on X that showed A&M inviting faculty and graduate students to attend a national professional development conference intended to increase diversity among faculty. It specified that applicants must be Black, Hispanic, or Native American. The governor quickly weighed in that attending the conference violated the state’s DEI ban.

“It will be fixed immediately or the president will soon be gone,” Abbott wrote on X.

Welsh subsequently directed the business school’s dean to cut ties with the organization. In an email to administrators, he said that whether or not the conference violates the state’s DEI ban, “I just don’t believe it meets the intent and is therefore not a good business decision for us.”

With the Legislature underway, A&M officials were trying not to rock the boat as hundreds of millions of dollars in state funding for the flagship hung in the balance.

Patrick was already making threats to withhold vital funding. In one early 2025 email, government relations official Julie Kopycinski wrote to Welsh that Patrick would soon try to get the attention of institutions of higher education by threatening tens of millions in funding for public universities.

“Julie — what part of our ‘attention’ is he trying to get?”

“That we have collectively lost our core mission,” Kopycinski wrote back, “and are still too dei and leftist focused.”

Welsh appeared to take heed. A few weeks after Kopycinski’s email, he vetoed a Faculty Senate decision to add a course called “Introduction to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Studies” to the university’s core curriculum.

At a town hall three months later, faculty asked why he rejected the class.

“It was a business decision,” Welsh said, according to a faculty member in attendance.

The ultimatum

A few weeks into Welsh’s third fall semester as president, he got a call from Tyson Voelkel, the president and CEO of the Texas A&M Foundation, the main fundraising arm for the university that manages a $3 billion endowment.

Voelkel told Welsh he’d just heard from the regents chair, Albritton, who had asked whether he’d be interested in the job as interim president, four people familiar with the call said.

But Welsh hadn’t been fired.

A few days prior, Harrison, the state representative, had posted a series of videos on X, including one showing a student confronting an A&M professor over teaching gender in a children’s literature course, and another of Welsh telling the student he wouldn’t fire the professor.

“That’s not happening,” Welsh told the student. (He ultimately fired the lecturer.)

Albritton said some regents were upset by that comment, calling it bad judgment to state that she would not be fired before knowing all of the facts.

The fallout from the videos was immediate and fierce. For some, it was a tipping point.

Calls to fire Welsh poured into the chancellor and regents’ inboxes. Records show the system’s top government relations official spoke to the offices of nine state lawmakers in the days after the video went viral.

Albritton got on the phone with Abbott.

“The governor told me it’s a board decision, but he thinks it’s probably time for a change,” Albritton told the Tribune.

Without Welsh’s knowledge, regents had started looking for options to replace him. Voelkel ultimately rejected the offer in a text message, calling it a “mistake” to push out the current president, according to an administrator who reviewed the message. Weeks later, Voelkel abruptly announced his resignation from the foundation. Voelkel did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The day after Voelkel rejected Albritton’s pitch, Chancellor Glenn Hegar — whom the board selected to succeed Sharp — made the same ask to former Texas Sen. Tommy Williams. 

He accepted — days before Welsh resigned.

Williams had little experience in academia, but is a known quantity in the Capitol as a lobbyist, former lawmaker for 16 years, and former adviser to Abbott. He once authored a bill that would make it more difficult for trans people to get married, stating at the time that “the Texas Constitution clearly defines marriage between one man and one woman.” Williams did not respond to a request for comment.

With a replacement lined up, Albritton called Welsh on Monday, Sept. 15, to deliver an ultimatum: resign or be fired.

“I felt a strong loyalty to him, and it was a very hard conversation,” Albritton said. “But it was a conversation that had to be had.”

As rumors spread that Welsh was being ousted, supporters campaigned urgently to save him.

More than 100 current and former student leaders signed a letter supporting Welsh. Wayne Roberts, a top university donor, wrote to Hegar that Welsh “is the best president we’ve had in my lifetime.” He added, “We desperately need stability in our leadership, something we’ve not enjoyed over the last few decades.”

Neil Bush, the son of former President George H. W. Bush told the regents that “Texas, and Texas A&M, are too often distracted by narrow political agendas, sensationalized cultural conflicts.”

“The work is serious,” Bush wrote. “It demands integrity, steadfast leadership, and a vision larger than any temporary partisan moment.”

Hegar would give Welsh the same ultimatum in the following days, and Welsh submitted his resignation on Sept. 18, the day of the next board meeting.

The Rudder Association published an open letter celebrating his departure.

“Nearly two years ago we publicly questioned the appointment of then interim President Welsh to the permanent presidency,” the letter read. “We were troubled by a pattern of actions and statements which were typical of a DEI ideology.”

Harrison, who sparked the final controversy by posting the video online, took a victory lap, posting, “WE DID IT! TEXAS A&M PRESIDENT IS OUT!!”

Back on campus, hundreds of students, staff and faculty amassed at the administration building to cheer Welsh and his wife as they walked out for the final time, a rare showing for a university that has seen a dozen people in the president’s office since the turn of the millennium.

Publicly, system officials praised Welsh for his service and dodged questions about whether Welsh had been forced out.

But in an email to top administrators the day after Welsh resigned, the chancellor relayed his thoughts more candidly.

“I have learned that major events are often a cumulation of small things that build up over time and that cumulation is rarely seen or heard,” Hegar wrote. “Most events do not happen in a vacuum, which means an easy answer does not bring the clarity we seek.”

Jessica Priest and Carla Astudillo contributed to this report.

Disclosure: Texas A&M Foundation and Texas A&M University have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete list of them here.

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