Welsh Resigns

I wasn’t following closely and I’ll confess to being a touch surprised.

 Texas A&M University President Mark Welsh is stepping down from his role, effective this Friday at 5 p.m.

Chancellor Glenn Hegar and the Texas A&M University System Board of Regents announced Welsh’s departure on Thursday evening following a Board of Regents meeting that lasted nearly 2 hours, but ended without action on Welsh.

Welsh had faced renewed calls for his resignation or firing from some conservative Texans after a viral controversy over video of a classroom disagreement that ended in the termination of a professor.

In a statement distributed to the media, Hegar and Board Chairman Robert Albritton thanked Welsh for his service to the university and the country.

“President Welsh is a man of honor who has led Texas A&M with selfless dedication,” said Chancellor Hegar. “We are grateful for his service and contributions. At the same time, we agree that now is the right moment to make a change and to position Texas A&M for continued excellence in the years ahead.”

Somebody like Dan Patrick feels this way about you, you gotta be doing something right.

I am really curious about the details here. In my view Welsh should have resigned before caving to pressure to fire the instructor in the children’s lit class. The mechanics of situations like this can be really complicated; it’s possible that Welsh effectively resigned at the time of the event and they simply didn’t announce until now. It’s also possible that Welsh paid the ransom (firing the instructor) and the kidnappers murdered the hostage anyway. The implications of the latter are fucking bleak; university presidents feeling that they need to comply in advance because they’ll be fired if they wait to be asked could do enormous damage in their struggle to survive.