Texas A&M University

The Texas A&M University System has announced that it will no longer require DEI statements by any future applicant for admissions or for hiring.

On June 11, 2020, the Office of the President issued a statement in response to reports of racism experienced by the students of Texas A&M University. Then-President Michael K. Young stated, "Among many actions that are necessary, Texas A&M will launch a bystander intervention training in development, updating it with the latest information and resources, in time for the fall semester. This training specifically addresses the real issue of racism and our campus. Of course, we know that more actions are required."

As part of TAMU's 2023-2024 Undergraduate Catalog, the Department of Communication and Journalism offers the "Communication, Diversity, and Social Justice Certificate" which is "grounded in a larger concern with social justice issues, with coursework emphasizing issues of power, privilege, and difference."

As part of TAMU's 2023-2024 Undergraduate Catalog, the university has "International and Cultural Diversity Requirements" and states, "Students are required to complete three (3) semester credit hours from the courses listed."

Texas A&M University has recently been accused of discrimination within its new faculty fellowship program – Accountability, Climate, Equity and Scholarship Faculty Fellows Program (ACES) – was “designed to increase diversity at the flagship university in College Station…” Richard Lowery, professor of finance at the University of Texas at Austin, has filed a lawsuit against the ACES claiming that it discriminates against the hiring of White and Asian males which is in direct violation with “Title VI and Title IX of the federal Civil Rights Act [and] the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.” The ACES focuses on the hiring of underrepresented minority groups which A&M has defined as “African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives and Native Hawaiians.” A&M’s desire to hire underrepresented groups is a demonstration of their effort to “establish a faculty whose racial composition attains ‘parity with that of the state of Texas,’ [which] seeks to achieve racial balancing.” In other words, their goal to align themselves with the ‘parity of the state of Texas’ is “flatly illegal under Title VI and the binding precedent of the Supreme Court,” according to the lawsuit.

The school has a page titled "Stop Hate" where students can fill out a "Hate/Bias Report Form."

On February 10, 2022, the school's Academic Affairs Climate & Diversity Committee published its "2021 Diversity Plan Accountability Report" and states (under the "Campus Climate" section) that "Academic Affairs continues its diversity training requirement and will offer various trainings throughout the year for staff."

On June 23, 2020, the school's Office for Diversity published its "2020 State of Diversity Report" which outlines several faculty and staff training initiatives. Pg. 8 of the report states, "Texas A&M has made substantial commitments to student, faculty, and staff development by providing training to reduce implicit bias in hiring" and Pg. 37 states, "The Strategies and Tactics for Recruiting to Improve Diversity and Excellence (STRIDE) Program provides search committee members with specific strategies intended to reduce implicit bias during faculty searches" and "Beginning in 2019, STRIDE workshops are required for all faculty search committee members."

The CARE initiative has a "CLA Internship Program" where interns are "building a culture of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accountability."

The College of Liberal Arts has a "Race and Ethnic Studies Institute" that aims to, "Provide intellectual leadership in advancing interdisciplinary partnerships that pursue research aimed at understanding the salience of race and ethnicity for local and national cultures, public policy, and public discourse, both nationally and globally."

Texas A&M University’s new data science lab "Code^Shift" has been designed to “eliminate the bias from technology” that is often replicated from the “harmful social biases of the engineers who build them.” The idea behind "Code^Shift" is to help “shift our thinking about the world of code or coding in terms of how we can be thinking of data more broadly in terms of equity, social healing, inclusive futures and transformation.”

The school's Office For Diversity announced its "Accountability, Climate, Equity, and Scholarship Faculty Fellows Program (ACES)" which "promotes the research, teaching, and scholarship of early career scholars who embrace the belief that diversity is an indispensable component of academic excellence."

Anti-racist advocate, Jane Elliott, was invited by the university to deliver the keynote address at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day breakfast.

The university's library offers an "Anti-Racism" research guide, which features an interview with Ibram X. Kendi on his book "How to Be an Antiracist."

The Office for Diversity offered "Reading for Racial Justice: An Open Access Collection." The office said, "The University of Minnesota Press is sharing this collection of titles from the past twenty years to promote understanding and action for change. In collaboration with authors, this collection of antiracist books is available to all to read online for free through August 31, 2020."

The Asian American Studies Task Force within the Department of History at Texas A&M University hosted a symposium entitled Standing in Solidarity Against Anti-AAPI Racism: A Symposium. Discussion topics include some of the following: “Building AAPI Studies Programs, Asian American Pedagogies, and more.”

Texas A&M University libraries has published a list of resources to aid in combating Asian Pacific Islander Desi American racism. Through education and awareness, they are hopeful that we can begin to fight the dramatic increase of anti-Asian violence and harassment since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.

On August 19, 2021, the school's College of Arts and Sciences announced an event entitled, "Critical Race Theory: Reality or Myth?" The event was hosted by "Confronting Our Racism Group" and featured Troy Harden, one of the two keynote speakers and faculty member from the Department of Sociology who stated, "I hope to simply share what CRT is really about, the problem that some seem to have with it, and how each time we appear to have serious and progressive movements toward equity in our country, there is a backlash from predominantly white groups towards people of color, impacting policies that support equity for all."

On July 14, 2021, the school's College of Arts and Sciences published an article titled "Texas Lawmakers Attempt To Redefine History By Banning Critical Race Theory." According to Samuel Cohn, Sociology Professor at Texas A&M University, "We should give students scientifically correct and fair minded information. They will do with this information as they please, but at least they will know the correct information.”

On February 22, 2022, the online publication "Texas Scorecard" published an article titled "Texas A&M Faculty Stands With UT Austin Against Proposal to Slash Tenure" and discusses Texas A&M University’s faculty senate passing of a resolution "similar to one passed by the University of Texas at Austin’s faculty senate, proclaiming the “academic freedom” to teach CRT."

On June 23, 2020, the school's Office for Diversity published its "2020 State of Diversity Report." Pg. 36 states that "In 2017, a student-led group called TAMU Anti-Racism asked the institution to offer anti-racism classes. Texas A&M developed 3-hour Cultural Discourse (CD) classes to be implemented in the Fall of 2019 (Snell, 2017). The goals of these classes included: holding respectful discussions on difficult topics; understanding self, including personal bias and prejudices; and understanding how to function effectively in a multicultural and global society."

On August 29, 2022, the school's Department of Sociology announced a zoom talk titled, "Critical Race Theory: The Theory and The Politics" and features Dr. Wendy Moore of Texas A&M University. Dr. Moore stated, "In this talk I discuss the theory and politics of Critical Race Theory, as well as some key tenets of CRT that offer important interventions for sociology and other social sciences."

The school's Office For Diversity "Diversity Plan" page outlines its many councils and committees including the Student Diversity Advisory Council (SDAC) which is described as a "standing university-wide council that serves as a student advisory board to the Office for Diversity." The SDAC "gathers student representatives from colleges across the university to assist with the implementation of diversity, campus climate, equity, and accountability policies and practices."

The Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life published a report titled "How Texas A&M Went Woke," which discusses how the university has used DEI for "transforming universities into institutions dedicated to political activism and to indoctrinating students into a hateful and destructive ideology." The report goes into detail as to how this objective is taking place through the university's various programs and initiatives.

On February 27, 2023, the Claremont Institute Center for the American Way of Life published an article titled "At Texas A&M, a Different Kind of 'Climate Change'," which discusses how the university has addressed its DEI climate. The article reported the following analysis: "Interestingly enough, however, efforts to cultivate a more welcoming climate backfired. According to TAMU’s own measures, the campus climate was worse in 2020 than it was in earlier years. As the following chart shows, fewer whites, blacks and Hispanics felt like Aggies in 2020 than they did in 2015 or 2017..."

On March 1, 2023, the TAMU Department of Sociology hosted a Sociology Colloquium titled "You Don't Look Like a Lawyer" which highlighted the "often-hidden mechanisms elite law firms utilize to perpetuate and maintain a dominant white male system" and "[by] weaving the narratives with a critical race analysis, it exposes this exclusive elite environment, demonstrating the rawness and reality of Black women’s experiences in white spaces."

Several of the Faculty Affiliates listed for the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute list "critical race" as one of their research interests.

On September 7, 2023, TAMU's Interim President provided an update regarding the university's compliance with Texas law SB-17, which "prohibit[s] diversity, equity and inclusion offices and initiatives at public universities, effective Jan. 1, 2024." The update states, "Staff members previously supporting the Office for Diversity have been reassigned, and this office is closed."

On September 27, 2023, TAMU News published an article titled "Students react to SB 17 implementation" which discusses the effects of the Texas law that bans diversity offices from public universities. The article states, "Some minority students say that taking university resources away from these programs undermines their communities and makes them feel unwelcome." The article goes on to quote several students who believe the new law will have negative implications for the university.

Department of Communication and Journalism Assistant Professor Bryce Henson "focuses on the intersection between anti-Black racism and Black lived, expressive, and mediated cultures of political resistance and possibility in the Americas." 

The College of Liberal Arts launched its "Deans Committed to Anti-Racism Efforts" initiative or CARE initiative.

The Department of Communication and Journalism issued an "Inclusive Excellence" statement which reads in part as follows: "[We] must seek to critically engage and systematically challenge the everyday communicative expressions that enable varied forms of social exclusion, inequality, and injustice...Moreover, we affirm the importance of diversity and recognize the necessity of including the voices of members of historically marginalized communities in our research, teaching, and service."