Whose Coup?
Last week, we gave you the backstory on a lawsuit that’s making headlines across Texas. If you need to get caught up, go on and read this article.
To summarize briefly, history preservationist, Mr. J. P. Bryan, bailed out the Texas State Historical Association last year and was appointed Executive Director of that organization. The TSHA board availed itself of his generosity, but didn’t appreciate his performing the duties as Executive Director. When he pointed out ways in which academic members of the board flout the bylaws that govern the Association, the current president called an emergency meeting to fire him.
Another continuance was granted and the hearing date is now set for May 30. We shall see.
The outrage from the academics has fully blossomed in the last three weeks. From calling Mr. Bryan a thug to crafting emotion-laden petitions calling for him to drop the lawsuit, the professorial peacocks are on full display, with nary a fact in sight. Here are the highlights:
Let’s start with the GoFundMe campaign…
A TSHA board member (academic) was quick to create a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Ms. Jones’s legal defense.
Ms. Jones’s legal counsel was retained by the Directors & Officers insurance provider for the TSHA, but the fundraiser continues. In fourteen days, the professoriate has chipped in $20,000 for expenses covered by insurance.
That particular dollar amount triggers a certain nostalgia for those who worked with Ms. Jones at the TSHA thirty years ago. When the Handbook of Texas was being expanded in the early 1990s, Ms. Jones was among those hired to write articles for it. As the project wound down and funds were depleted, many writers were laid off, as expected.
In the papers of the time, Ms. Jones claimed she’d been fired because of her gender. Several of her former colleagues recall that Ms. Jones then sued the TSHA. Though she reportedly asked for much more, she settled for $20k. Fodder for thought, as barbs are being thrown over who has the best interests of the TSHA in mind.
FUN FACT: William Alan Tully, interim head of the U. T. History Department is among the donors to Ms. Jones’s legal fund. He’s pivotal in selecting the replacement for TSHA Chief Historian Walter Buenger, whose contract expired in 2022. Buenger continues to draw $180k a year from U.T. as if he was granted another term by TSHA. He wasn’t.
And then there’s the petiton…
There is a restraining order in place to prevent the TSHA board from acting until this gets in front of a judge. So you may imagine my surprise when I received an email from the East Texas Historical Association, telling me that “a meeting of TSHA members was called for on May 12.”
I’m a member. I wasn’t invited. I asked around and other members likewise had no knowledge of such a meeting. I inquired of the East Texas Historical Association where and when this meeting of the membership took place. I received no response.
The greater purpose of the email was to inform the reader that a select committee of TSHA members had drawn up a petition asking Mr. Bryan to drop his lawsuit. You can find it in its entirety here. Let’s explore:
The academic folks, after they availed themselves of Mr. Bryan’s financial assistance, decided he was not the Executive Director but the Interim Executive Director. But saying it doesn’t make it so. In Ms. Jones’s legal filings, it is explained that Mr. Bryan was expected to deliver them a big pile of money in a hurry, then get the hell outta town.
Please bear this in mind each time we see “interim” in the petition, which we’ll return to now.
“Established procedures,” is shorthand for “all the times we didn’t follow the bylaws but weren’t called out on it.” The petition then pivots away from the facts (the violation of the bylaws) to quotes plucked from recent media stories. Ready for some more out of context quotes from the petition?
Remember that time Walter Buenger said the Alamo was used to “commemorate whiteness”? Pretty divisive and racialized, no? That’s what Mr. Bryan was referencing in this cherry-picked quote. Folks of the Academy, if you’re going to petition a man to drop a lawsuit, I recommend not quoting him out of context.
Indeed, the unwise selection of Ms. O’Rear as a non-academic board member is at issue. There are definitions of each type of board member in the bylaws. The academics may not like those definitions, but they are provided by the governing documents. Dislike of them does not alter them anymore than disliking DUI laws will get you out of an arrest.
How can the TSHA function if it is run by academics who can’t raise money and require a bailout every few years? How can the TSHA function if Texans don’t see anything but narrow narratives represented year after year and refuse to support that with donations?
I hate to state the obvious here but Ms. Jones’s legal fees are doubly covered: once by Board insurance and twice by the funds being raised by her colleagues. Mr. Bryan is paying his own legal costs and has not sought to seat “his preferred candidates” or “foster his understandings of history.” To the contrary, he’s sought the board balance prescribed by the bylaws and has publicly said that he believes all viewpoints deserve a seat at the table.
That dichotomy does exist in the rhetoric of this old debate, but it is chiefly propagated by professional historians who talk ceaselessly about “white conservatives” when they address the subject of how Texans view their history. I wonder if the dichotomy is still a false one when they draw it?
Yes, the petitioners just flaunted their “in-kind” financial and scholarly contributions, then said they don’t flaunt them. I ask that they point to evidence of how Mr. Bryan feels and evidence of his claims of ownership of TSHA or Texas history.
Are they “moneyed claims” because he’s paying his own legal bills?
The academic petitioners here illustrate the problem with TSHA as clearly as they possibly might. They view “the membership” as their peer group. They are wrong. The membership comprises them and the other 90% of dues-paying members who are not them—that is folks with no academic affiliations.
Did we not just read an entire paragraph about how Mr. Bryan feels he owns the TSHA and Texas history? Methinks the drafters of this petition project too much.
So, no, the organization is NOT made up mostly of historians, professional or otherwise. There are no DEI practices involved in recruiting the full membership. Any person interested in Texas history may join and have a vote, equal to that of any of the thirty-eight who drafted this petition who don’t happen to be board members.
I agree that it would be far pleasanter if this could be resolved by internal correspondence. If it could’ve been, we wouldn’t be talking about it. I’d be doing something else right now instead of writing this article.
Did the petitioners admonish Walter Buenger for diminishing the public trust and imperiling the TSHA with his politicized public comments? If not, then I wonder if their concern is for the well-being of the TSHA or merely the well-being of their shared view of Texas history?
Can a group of people claim genuine concern for the health of a nonprofit while simultaneously overlooking 90% of the dues-paying members?
Speaking of internal administrative issues, combativeness, and public trust, let’s touch on that May 1 meeting—the one that was prevented by Mr. Bryan’s lawsuit. On Ms. Jones’s agenda were three items:
A resolution to simply extend Walter Buenger’s expired contract, in direct contravention what the contract says must happen when it expires. Ms. Jones thought the board could just vote that contract away. Does Alan Tully, who has signed his name and donated to her legal fund, turn a blind eye to breach of contract?
A resolution to change the verbiage of the bylaws themselves. Ms. Jones thought this could be done by fiat of the board when, in fact, it would require a vote of 2/3 of the rest of us—the membership—at the annual meeting in 2024.
A resolution to immediately delete the position of Executive Director entirely, thereby deleting Mr. Bryan with it. A new leadership structure would then be constructed, in concert with the U.T. History Department, of which Alan Tully is presently the head. All of this without a change to the bylaws or approval of the membership.
So if we’re going to discuss who is imperiling what and who claims ownership of our history, we need to speak very frankly about the actions Ms. Jones and her majority-academic board were willing to take in violation of the bylaws of the Association. We need to talk about Alan Tully’s knowledge of and participation in that. And we need to laugh at academics who refer to Mr. Bryan’s actions as a “coup” when this was the program running in the background.
But back to the petition…
Do the petitioners recant their statements about Mr. Bryan politicizing, racializing, claiming ownership, etc? Or is he the “imposed division” and the unity call reserved for the peers of the petitioners? Selling a message of unity to the other 90% of the organization will be a tough hurdle to clear, since most Texans are aware that the petitioners traffic in segregated history that doesn’t unify us.
If you doubt what the academic petitioners consider most important to the survival of the TSHA, behold how they sign themselves.
If you’re not blinded by the hubris, there are a few noteworthy things about the signatures on the petition. The first, of course, is that Alan Tully signed it and Alan Tully (if you’ve forgotten) is critical to choosing the person who will replace No-Contract Buenger as Chief Historian.
Second, you may recall a recent Texas Observer article in which TSHA members wished to give anonymous comment for “fear of retaliation” and fear of losing their jobs if they speak up. There was talk of Mr. Bryan being a menacing bully. Yet, here are 258 names, places of employment, lists of awards, etc. Does the urge to flaunt credentials trump fear?
Be proud of your academic achievements, petitioners. There’s nothing wrong with that.
But know that your credentials don’t trump the bylaws or the vote of the 90% who aren’t you. Your expertise matters only to the extent that there’s a membership to receive it. The full membership may lack your credentials, but I suspect they can correctly answer “Whose coup?” if asked.
