Texas A&M University said this week it’s no longer sending representatives to a conference aimed at recruiting prospective minority doctoral students after online accusations and threats—including from the governor.
First, Christopher Rufo, an anti–diversity, equity and inclusion activist and senior fellow at the conservative Manhattan Institute, alleged on social media that sponsoring a trip to the conference violated a state law banning DEI programs at public colleges. Then the state’s Republican governor, Greg Abbott, piled on, writing that “it will be fixed immediately or the president will soon be gone.”
The fallout may have spread beyond Texas A&M. The Texas Tribune reported that the PhD Project, the host of the March conference in Chicago, had listed on its website “at least eight other Texas public universities that have participated in the conference … but most were removed sometime Tuesday afternoon.”
A spokeswoman for the University of Texas system, which includes most of the universities the Tribune said were listed, told Inside Higher Ed in an email that the UT system recommended Tuesday “to five UT academic institutions that had participated in The PhD Project to withdraw membership. It did not receive a directive from the governor’s office.” She didn’t specify why the UT system made that recommendation.
A Texas Tech University spokeswoman told Inside Higher Ed that Texas Tech “was previously a partner of the PhD Project to support the development of doctoral students and faculty in academia. We are no longer affiliated with the organization.” But she didn’t specify when the affiliation ended.
A University of North Texas spokesperson said it “discontinued its affiliation with the PhD Project in early 2024. The university is working with them to remove our name from the list of partners.” The University of Houston didn’t comment.
The incident continues the debate over how broadly Texas’s Senate Bill 17, a 2023 law that banned DEI programs at public universities, should be interpreted—and how broadly anti-DEI laws elsewhere should be.
“There is no requirement in SB 17 that bans attending conferences that are restricted on the basis of race or identity,” said Jeremy Young, director of state and higher education policy at PEN America, a free speech and academic freedom advocacy group. But Young said the vagueness of this and other anti-DEI legislation “opens these laws to the exact thing that Rufo and Governor Abbott have done here.”
“I think the governor and Rufo are wrong, but I think that we’re even having this conversation is evidence that the law is deeply broken and potentially unconstitutional,” Young said.
Rufo kicked off the deluge of online criticism Monday, posting on X that he had an “EXCLUSIVE.”
“Texas A&M [University] is sponsoring a trip to a DEI conference that prohibits whites and Asians from attending,” Rufo wrote.
He included what appeared to be screenshots from the application for the PhD Project’s upcoming annual conference, showing that prospective doctoral students must identify as Black, African American, Latino, Hispanic American, Native American or Canadian Indigenous if they wished to attend. The PhD Project, which didn’t return requests for comment Wednesday, aims to diversify business schools by encouraging minorities to pursue doctorates, according to its website.
Rufo also attached screenshots of a Texas A&M employee email inviting faculty and advanced Ph.D. students to attend the conference to help recruit students. The university confirmed the email’s authenticity.
“The university falsely claims that this use of taxpayer funds does not violate the state’s DEI ban,” Rufo wrote. “@TAMU is supporting racial segregation and breaking the law.”
Kurt Schlichter, a conservative author, shared Rufo’s post to his own followers and tagged Greg Abbott, Texas’s Republican governor. Schlichter wrote, “Is my newly adopted state gonna put up with this crap? Because I came from California, and it leads to thousands of houses getting burned down.”
Abbott responded to that by threatening to somehow oust the university’s president, Mark A. Welsh III.
“Hell, no,” Abbott posted. “It’s against Texas law and violates the U.S. Constitution.”
Firing the president is up to the Texas A&M Board of Regents, though the governor could apply pressure.
On Monday, Welsh, who didn’t provide an interview, released a statement saying, “Texas A&M does not support any organization, conference, process or activity that excludes people based on race, creed, gender, age or any other discriminating factor. The intent of SB 17 is very clear in that regard. We will continue to honor both the letter and the intent of the law.”
According to the screenshots Rufo provided from a partial email, a university employee wrote that the A&M general counsel’s office had concluded that “supporting The PhD Project is permissible under recruitment exemptions in SB 17.”
Later, Welsh sent a statement to employees in the university’s Mays Business School saying that “while the proper process for reviewing and approving attendance at such events was followed, I don’t believe we fully considered the spirit of our state law in making the initial decision to participate.” For future conferences and events, he said, “We need to be sure that attendance at those events is aligned with the very clear guidance we’ve been given by our governing bodies.”
Young said it’s “deeply troubling” that the Texas A&M president is saying he’s complying with the spirit rather than the letter of the law.
“Complying with the spirit of the law in this case means complying with the wishes of politicians,” he said. “That is a classic example of jawboning—his job is on the line.”