By: Oscar J. Martínez, PhD, Emeritus Professor, UTEP and the University of Arizona
Author’s note: The first in a series on UTEP, this article draws on my experience as a faculty member and administrator during a forty-year career at UTEP, the University of Arizona, and other educational institutions. The focus is on how Heather Wilson, a military and political figure (Republican), became UTEP president despite lacking the standard qualifications for the job. [1] I am currently a member of the Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP, which has suggested to Wilson that she consider stepping down from her position in 2025 after serving for six years, the average term for university presidents across the United States. Six years is reasonable and morally justifiable for the reasons given below. If you wish to add your name to the list of supporters of the six-year initiative, [2] please send an email to info@epsocialjustice.org with your name and preferred occupational title.
In 2019, the University of Texas Board of Regents cast aside convention and selected Dr. Heather Wilson as UTEP president. That decision shocked the campus and the community. While Wilson had an impressive military and military-related résumé, she was a controversial political figure with scant experience in higher education. She clearly lacked the qualifications to run a large, Carnegie Classified Research I university with a predominantly Mexican American student body.
Mexican American leaders were outraged that the Regents, seemingly influenced by politics and cronyism, had passed up yet another opportunity to name a fully qualified Mexican American educator to the UTEP presidency, choosing instead someone who did not belong in that position. What made it especially upsetting is that not a single Mexican American has held the presidency of UTEP since the institution’s founding in 1913 (then known as Texas State School of Mines and Metallurgy). This in a city where both the population of El Paso and the UTEP student body have long been overwhelmingly Mexican American.
Wilson’s Higher Education Experience Prior to Becoming UTEP President
After serving as a military officer, state government bureaucrat, member of the U.S. Congress, and business consultant, Wilson radically shifted gears following her defeat in 2012 for a U.S. Senate seat in New Mexico. She turned her sights on a university presidency—notwithstanding the fact that she totally lacked the training and experience to hold a high-level academic position. In 2013, she used her political capital to become president of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSMT), a small technical and science university. Ostensibly Wilson, as a former congresswoman, got the South Dakota job premised on expectations that she could be of benefit to SDSMT by using her contacts at the U.S. Defense Department and at private sector defense industries. That reasoning overcame doubts among some SDSMT officials regarding the glaring deficit in her academic qualifications.
Wilson’s audacious leap into higher education reveals a profound indifference for the extensive training and many years that it takes for an educator to go up the ranks and eventually become a president at a civilian university—years of hard work teaching, doing research, attending academic conferences, presenting papers, publishing regularly, serving on journal boards, serving on campus committees, earning tenure, and holding administrative positions at the department, college, and university level. Wilson did none of that. In short, she did not pay dues or earn stripes in her new field. Her privileged political situation allowed her to catapult to the top of a profession far removed from her previous career.
After four years at SDSMT, in 2017 Wilson accepted the position of Secretary of the Air Force in the Trump administration. Alas, a short two years later, she resigned her government position following a rocky relationship with top officials at the Department of Defense and tense interaction with President Donald Trump. Reportedly, Trump intended to fire her. Wilson needed to find another job and she turned her sights on higher education once again. She effectively used her stint at SDSMT as a springboard to ascend to UTEP.
Wilson’s Selection as UTEP President Sparks Protests
In August 2019 Wilson made her way to El Paso, parachuting into the UTEP presidency with the help of powerful El Paso businessmen who dominated the search committee. Those influentials, as well as the University of Texas Board of Regents (the ultimate “selectors” of university presidents) did not care that Wilson lacked the preparation and experience necessary to run a prominent Hispanic-serving institution. Her selection exemplified what was going on in other Republican-dominated states, especially Florida, where boards have installed conservative politicians in high positions in state universities. These politicians have no background in higher education administration but do have right-wing agendas.
In taking top positions in two civilian universities, positions Wilson had not earned, one wonders if she had guilt feelings over snatching jobs that properly belonged to others who had actually done the extensive work to get there. In the case of UTEP, did she stop to think that a Mexican American educator would be much better suited than her to hold that distinct job? Did she forget that particular code of honor emphasized in the Air Force— “Integrity first” and “Service before self”?
Clearly, the UTEP presidency required a career educator with distinguished academic and administrative credentials as well as significant personal familiarity with the people and the way of life along the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. A Mexican American educator with such a record would have been the ideal, logical choice for the job. Wilson had an impressive résumé, but not in higher education, and she lacked linguistic and cultural assets important in a border community. She simply did not belong as UTEP president.
Wilson’s UTEP appointment provoked a furor among many El Pasoans who not only pointed out her weak education administration experience, but also her ultra-conservative voting record in the U.S. Congress, anti-LGBTQ+ views, and questionable consulting business practices.
On- and off-campus critics blamed the powerful economic elites on the search committee for imposing an academically unqualified and controversial public figure on a large Hispanic-serving university whose student body was 83 percent Latino/a, including over 1,000 students from Mexico. These demographics were ignored in Wilson’s selection, as were recommendations by 28 recognized leaders in the Mexican American community. A statement submitted by that group specified basic qualifications, skills, and experience considered significant for the new UTEP president to have in order to successfully address the educational needs of a campus whose students were predominantly Mexican Americans.
Of the seven prominent businesspersons on the search committee, six were from El Paso—Paul Foster, Woody Hunt, Dee Margo, Renard Johnson, Sally Hurt-Deitch, and Edward Escudero—and one hailed from Houston (Mike Loya, who has ties to El Paso). Foster and Hunt (both Republicans) were current and former members respectively of the University of Texas Board of Regents, as well as long-time top donors to Texas Republican office holders, including Governor Greg Abbott. Moreover, Hunt apparently had made numerous contributions to Wilson’s congressional campaigns during the early 2000s. Others on the committee included Regents, presidents of other U.T. campuses, UTEP faculty and administrators, and a UTEP student and an alumnus. That lineup raised serious concerns that Foster, Hunt, and Margo (El Paso mayor, a Republican) would use their power and influence to steer the proceedings their way. The threesome strongly supported Wilson.
Wilson’s right-wing policy positions were of great concern to El Pasoans who embrace values such as equal treatment and opportunity for all. She was rated zero percent by the Human Rights Campaign for her staunch opposition to LGBTQ+ rights and only 13 percent by the ACLU because of her stance against civil rights legislation. She had also voted against funding for African American and Hispanic-serving educational institutions while in the U.S. Congress. Her history in the Congress and her ratings from mainstream education, civil rights, and environmental groups revealed a protracted record of ultra-conservative values that clashed sharply with the progressive interests of most UTEP students and most El Pasoans.
Regarding her business dealings and influence peddling in Washington, D.C., she had been called “the top illegal lobbyist” for her questionable consulting and billing practices on behalf of the Lockheed subsidiary Sandia Corporation. In 2007 the Committee on Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, rated her among the 22 most corrupt members of the U.S. Congress and, in 2017, CREW raised questions about her appointment as Secretary of the Air Force. Also, during the George W. Bush administration, Wilson played a key role in the 2007 Karl Rove-engineered political hit job against seven U.S. Attorneys, including David Iglesias of New Mexico. The scandalous, Wilson-assisted dismissal of Iglesias, in addition to the firing of the other U.S. Attorneys, unduly politicized the justice system and caused disgust throughout the country. [3]
After the naming of Wilson as the sole UTEP finalist, the El Paso County Democratic Party passed a no-confidence vote against her and the Texas Democratic Party asked that her name be withdrawn from consideration, while numerous Democratic legislators from El Paso and elsewhere questioned her qualifications for the UTEP job and criticized the search process.
The fact that Wilson had ties to President Trump made many people very uncomfortable, given that he had repeatedly disparaged Mexican immigrants, declaring that they were not the “best” people, had many “problems,” imported “crime,” and were “rapists.” How could someone who belonged to the same party as Trump and had worked for him, be installed as president of a university whose student body was made up mostly of multiple generations of Mexican immigrants? This was considered an affront to El Paso.
Not surprisingly, a segment of the community did back Wilson’s selection. She had support among businesspersons and among politically conservative people. The local Republican Party endorsed her appointment, as did 700 people who signed a CitizenGo.org petition created by the Binational Pro-Family Pro-Life League of El Paso. Her biggest boosters in El Paso were Foster, Hunt, and Margo, with Foster and Margo making glowing statements about Wilson to the press upon her selection. Other members of the search committee, having signed non-disclosure agreements, apparently did not issue public statements.
Reaction to Wilson’s Appointment among UTEP Faculty and Students
UTEP professors, administrators, staff, and students were even more stunned than community people when the news broke that Wilson had been named the sole finalist. A few professors expressed their outrage publicly, but most, afraid of repercussions, quietly shared their dismay with colleagues and friends. A survey conducted by the UTEP Faculty Senate revealed that 52.3 percent of the faculty opposed Wilson’s appointment, 27.0 percent supported it, and 20.7 percent did not express an opinion.
Among many of the students, the Wilson announcement hit like a ton of bricks. The news ignited a furious movement, especially among LGBTQ+ students who knew about Wilson’s homophobic views. Students and community sympathizers immediately launched a change.org petition that called for the Regents to withdraw her candidacy. Simultaneously, activists held loud demonstrations on and off campus. Students employed social media quite effectively with an online group that had over 1,500 followers. In the UTEP Student Government Association annual elections, candidates’ positions on the presidential appointee became a key issue. Eventually over 10,000 people signed the student led “UTEP Deserves Better” online petition.
Despite the protests, Wilson assumed the UTEP presidency in August 2019 and has occupied the post since then.
Wilson–“I have no plans to leave UTEP.”
On March 7, 2024, the Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP asked Wilson in an email signed by over sixty El Pasoans when she intended to step down as UTEP president. Portions of the email follow:
Dear Dr. Wilson,
Now that you are well into your fifth year as president of UTEP, we, members of the Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP plus scores of other El Pasoans, wish to thank you for your work and take this opportunity to express our appreciation for your contributions to the university and our city. The purpose of this letter is to let you know of an intense interest in the Mexican American community regarding leadership at UTEP in the future.
Next year you will have completed six years at UTEP, and six years is precisely the average term of service for university presidents in the United States. Having looked at your recent employment record, our anticipation is that you will step down from your current position in 2025. You served as Secretary of the Air Force for two years and as president of the South Dakota School of Mines for four years. Further, as a former U.S. Air Force officer (1978-1989), you are familiar with the military policy of transferring service members from one assignment to another on the average every three years. If you were to decide to serve the full six-years as UTEP president, that would be longer than your term as Secretary of the Air Force, your stay as president of the South Dakota School of Mines, and the length of time usually allowed by the military to be stationed in one place.
We are persuaded that, given your personal history, you will not stay in your current position beyond 2025. We believe that, unlike your predecessor, who monopolized the UTEP presidency for 31 years, you support the policy that CEOs and other leaders should not overstay reasonable time periods in their positions, but rather move on to new assignments when the time is right. Our conviction is that in 2025, the time to leave the UTEP presidency will be right for you—and for the El Paso community. Your apt departure will create a much-needed vacancy.
That will give the University of Texas Board of Regents a new opportunity to appoint a non-partisan, academically well-qualified, and distinguished educator of Mexican American descent to assume the position. For decades the Mexican American community in El Paso has sought such an appointment. Unfortunately, we have been repeatedly ignored and left disappointed and frustrated.
It is common knowledge in El Paso that no Mexican American has held the UTEP presidency since the institution’s founding in 1913. That means that over the last 110 years Mexican Americans have been excluded from that office. That is profoundly unfair and blatantly disrespectful in a city where Mexican Americans have historically been the preponderant majority population, and at UTEP itself, where Mexican American students reached majority status around four decades ago and presently make up an estimated 83 percent of the student body. The depth of insensitivity is further illustrated by the fact that 95 percent of all students at UTEP are of minority background, and yet UTEP has never had an ethnic minority president.
Given your stated sense of fairness and awareness of ethnic identity issues, we are sure that you understand the importance of having a Mexican American educator as UTEP president. You have frequently expressed support for diversity and inclusion. Next year offers you a great opportunity to demonstrate that commitment and solidarity with the community by stepping down and making it possible for a Mexican American educator to be selected to head the university.
The preponderant Mexican-origin population in El Paso, especially students, has long needed a prominent, highly visible local role model at the helm at UTEP. Having a Mexican-descent person in that position will foster inspiration, break stereotypes, and empower young Mexican Americans to pursue and achieve success in their chosen fields. Seeing someone in such a high office who looks like them and shares a similar cultural, linguistic, and ethnic background will instill pride and cultivate a positive identity, as well as motivate students to set ambitious goals and overcome challenges as they navigate their educational and professional journeys. A sitting Mexican American university president will have a similar impact throughout El Paso-Ciudad Juárez; she/he will strengthen the bonds between UTEP and the Mexican American citizenry and the area’s binational community.
We hope that after you leave the UTEP presidency, you will join us in supporting the appointment of a fully qualified, academically outstanding, and experienced career educator of Mexican American extraction as your replacement.
Sincerely,
Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP
Wilson’s answer:
I have no plans to leave UTEP (emphasis added). As you know, I serve at the pleasure of the Regents, and, so far, they seem to be pleased with what we are doing in El Paso. One of my mottos in life is, “Just don’t screw up today.” So every day is a new opportunity.
Wilson’s response makes clear that the most important thing for her is to please the Regents, whom we know care little about the sentiments of El Pasoans. Worse yet, she remains indifferent to that segment of our community—Mexican Americans—that is the source of more than four fifths of the UTEP student body.
Conclusion
The hope remains that Wilson will have an epiphany whereby she realizes that she needs to do the honorable thing and vacate her office in 2025, thus opening up an opportunity for UTEP to hire a fully qualified and authentic role model for its students. The greatest benefit for Wilson would be that it would allow her to clear her conscience, knowing that she is placing others ahead of herself, putting into practice that key virtue she says she learned while serving in the Air Force.
The bottom line is that Wilson has come out way ahead at UTEP. She managed to get appointed to the presidency despite lacking key qualifications, and she is already guaranteed to serve longer in that leadership position than even her former military colleagues who have led armed forces academies, where the average superintendent (presidential) term is four years. [4] Wilson needs to appreciate that those who opposed her UTEP appointment in 2019 have not interfered with her work as president, choosing to let her preside over the campus for a reasonable amount of time, which we determined would be six years.
But what if she says she deserves an indefinite amount of additional time, arguing that she has “accomplished great things” and needs to “finish ongoing major projects.” Anyone familiar with how public universities work would quickly discount those assertions. In my four decades working in various universities, I heard such claims repeated by functionaries who became entrenched in their positions. In truth, no university president is indispensable or irreplaceable. There are many talented and capable educators out there, and the job of university president is fairly clear-cut. Equally important, the possibilities for making singular advances in public universities are not driven by what presidents do, but rather by external forces over which presidents do not have control.
Historical evidence shows that substantial progress in universities occurs when social conditions emphatically demand it, when public funding is available to make it happen, and when favorable policies by the state are enacted. Frequently it is court decisions that play the largest role in mandating positive change at institutions of higher learning. These forces, rather than the efforts of any leader, were primarily responsible for bringing about the great transformation of UTEP during the 1990s and in the first two decades of the twenty-first century. That story will be told in a future article in this series.
Footnotes:
- See Oscar J. Martínez, Latinx El Paso: Odyssey of a Mexican American Community (2021), chapter 8, for an overview of how recent UTEP presidents have been selected, including some information about Wilson’s appointment in 2019. Latinx El Paso is available at https://www.amazon.com/Latinx-El-Paso-American-Community/dp/B09MYXSJQL.
- Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP (Principal advocates of the six-year term for Heather Wilson): Carmen Rodríguez; José Rodríguez; Aldo Mena; Alicia De Jong-Davis; Oscar Martínez. Other Supporters: Lily Limón; Arturo Moreno; Fermín Acosta; Virginia Martínez; Arturo Domínguez; Pedro Villagrana; Kathy Staudt; Manny Soto; Gloria Barragán; Dylan Corbett; Miguel Cheng-Guajardo; Analinda Moreno; Alicia Chacón; Corinne Chacón; EH Bouche; Miguel Levario; Lucinda Vargas; Michele Beckley; Victor Vázquez; Henry Drake; Kathleen Anderson; Gertrud Konings-Dudin; Benjamín Melgoza; Johnny Johnson; Dennis Bixler-Márquez; Claudia Ramírez;
Jane A. Nicholson; Arturo Huerta; Aurolyn Luykx; Vero Saenz; Patricia Radcliffe; Steven Schiller; Anna Alphonse; Lucretia Chew; Eddie Chew; Jamie Gover; Gabe Martínez; Dan Martínez; David Martínez; Andy Martínez; Dane Aguilar; Patricia Roybal Caballero; R. Carlos Caballero; Irma Camacho; Porfirio Alvarado; Alan Mena; Louie Alvarado; Roberto Perezdiaz; Ruth Daniels; Mary Beth Harper; Carlos Morton; O. David Rascón; Alberto Mesta; David Romo; Arturo Bañuelas; Susana Prieto Terra; Raúl Amaya; Carlos Callegjo; Luz María Méndez. - https://www.citizensforethics.org/press-release/crew-releases-third-annual-most-corrupt-members-of-congress-report/https://www.politico.com/story/2017/02/records-show-how-air-force-nominee-skirted-lobbying-restrictions-234780
https://www.forbes.com/sites/charlestiefer/2015/08/31/lockheed-fined-4-7-million-for-fraudulent-taxpayer-paid-lobbying-with-most-corrupt-ex-rep-wilson/?fbclid=IwAR3kJ4zjD45K6AZNt65J-McvJqmoZib56aefeG3Ip0Sga_H7jzN4JFm4C0I#6a0f586b46c0 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintendent_of_the_United_States_Air_Force_Academy;
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superintendent_of_the_United_States_Military_Academy
About the Author:
Dr. Oscar J. Martínez is a retired professor who taught at various universities, but primarily at UTEP and the University of Arizona. He is the author of numerous books and other publications on Mexico, Mexican Americans, and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands. His latest book is Latinx El Paso: Odyssey of a Mexican American/Hispanic Community (Amazon, 2021). He is a founder of the El Paso Social Justice Education Project, the Community First Coalition, and the Committee for Mexican American Leadership at UTEP.
El Paso News Submission Policy
El Paso News welcomes submissions of opinion and articles for publication online about local, regional, state, national and global issues directly related to El Paso. Please do not submit articles that have been published elsewhere either in print or online – that includes on a Blog.
All submissions must include the author’s first and last name and a brief biography, including affiliations with political parties, lobbying or special interest groups.
We do not have length guidelines, but we encourage authors to aim for less than 800 words. We generally do not edit editorials submitted to us. Submissions are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of our publication.
We do our best to read all articles sent to us promptly but please bear in mind that we receive many submissions. We will endeavor to respond quickly.
When submitting an article, it should be included in the body of the e-mail and/or in an attached Microsoft Word document (please, no PDFs). It should include a short headline and a tagline identifying the author(s). It should include contact information for the author(s), and at the bottom of the article a one-line bio for each author should be included. In the interest of transparency, the author must disclose any financial or lobbying relations he/she may have with the subjects raised. Please hyperlink all sourcing materials, such as facts, figures and quotations.
Please send your submissions to news@elpasonews.org
Editorial Note
The author’s perspective may not necessarily represent the views of El Paso News or its other contributors. El Paso News encourages the diversification of as many perspectives as possible to allow readers an opportunity to understand the issues from all sides.
We encourage readers to submit counterpoints or to add to the discussion with their own perspective.
Interested in your own column? El Paso News actively seeks out writers or content creators interested in being published in El Paso News. If it is hyper-local to El Paso, we will publish you. Let us know at news@elpasonews.org.
Political Candidates And Elected Officials Editorials
It is the policy of El Paso News to provide editorial space on our publication to any candidate seeking political office in El Paso or any elected official serving in an El Paso elected position. Submit your editorials to news@elpasonews.org. Our normal editorial policies apply to political editorials.
