‘Et Tu, Teresa?’: How Pressure Built for U. of Virginia to Condemn Racists

Chronicle photo by Julia Schmalz

Two days after a throng of white supremacists marched with flaming torches across the University of Virginia’s Lawn, stunned professors and administrators were still waiting. When would Teresa A. Sullivan, the university’s president, call out these bigots?

By the morning of Sunday, August 13, the university had issued five official statements, three of them attributed to Ms. Sullivan. But the president, a sociologist with a preference for measured rhetoric, had not delivered the sort of forceful condemnation that some believed was warranted.

“We have to call this what it is and stop being vague,” Susan M. Kools, a nursing professor and associate dean of diversity and inclusion, wrote in an email to an administrator.

Ms. Sullivan was “disturbed,” she had said in her initial statement, “by the hateful behavior displayed by torch-bearing protesters.” Later, Ms. Sullivan would say, she was “profoundly concerned and disturbed” by “alt-right protesters.” But the words “white supremacist” and “racist” eluded her.

In the days that followed the Friday night march, which culminated in a violent melee at the base of a statue of Thomas Jefferson, some professors publicly criticized Ms. Sullivan’s early missives as weak-kneed. There were private criticisms, too, both within the university and from donors, alumni, and parents. A review of more than 3,000 pages of emails exchanged among Virginia administrators, board members, and professors sheds greater light on how tensions mounted within the university’s ranks over the nature of the president’s public response.

The Chronicle obtained the correspondence through a public-records request. The communications reveal a university laboring to articulate its values at a visceral moment: As much of the world craved blunt, tough words, the leader of one the nation’s top public universities instead appeared to equivocate.

Throughout the crisis, Louis P. Nelson, Virginia’s associate provost for outreach, became a repository for complaints about the university’s approach. Mr. Nelson had been the point person for what the university hoped would be effective counterprogramming to the Unite the Right rally in downtown Charlottesville that weekend. He had labored for weeks to pull together a slate of speakers and to commission film screenings about race, only to see those events canceled when Virginia’s governor, Terry McAuliffe, declared a state of emergency on Saturday, August 12, and the university scrapped all programming.

Just before noon on Sunday, August 13, Mr. Nelson received an email from Alexandra A. Rebhorn, communications manager in the provost’s office, with a telling subject line: “et tu, Teresa?”

The email contained a link to an article published in The Chronicle the previous day, “When White Supremacists Descend, What Can a College President Do?”

Ms. Rebhorn highlighted a single quote from Patricia A. McGuire, president of Trinity Washington University: “It’s wrong for presidents to be timid. It betrays the leadership we are called to exert. I think the right-wing element is poking for the soft underbelly of the academy and sees silence as weakness.”

By this time, Mr. Nelson had already alerted university leaders to growing discontent about the president’s response. He assured an associate dean, for example, that he had promptly forwarded to administrators a critical column in the Los Angeles Times titled, “What UVA did wrong when white supremacists came to campus.” In the column, two professors from the University of Southern California pointed out that Ms. Sullivan had “failed to explicitly name white supremacy as the motive of the protesters and made no mention of race.”

“I sent the LA piece to University leaders within an hour of his publication,” Mr. Nelson wrote to Ms. Kools, the associate dean of diversity and inclusion. “They’ve all seen this.”

In the first days of the crisis, when asked about this sort of criticism, Ms. Sullivan told The Chronicle that “there were underlying themes that are more important than the labels given to those groups.”

The president provided no additional comment for this article.

A Mother’s Lament

Email exchanges between administrators were often terse, suggesting a keen awareness that their communications were subject to public disclosure. Key players often said little or merely forwarded each other links without commentary. Much of what Ms. Sullivan may have communicated is unknown, because the university exercised a broad exemption in Virginia’s open-records law that allows public university presidents to correspond privately.

Still, it is clear that administrators heard plenty from students, parents, and alumni, who were dismayed by what they perceived as Ms. Sullivan’s aversion to a full-throated condemnation of neo-Nazis. These critiques came amid a larger wave of national criticism against President Trump, who suggested that “many sides” were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville.

Gregory W. Roberts, the university’s dean of admission, was particularly troubled by an email he had received from the African-American mother of a prospective student, for whom the University of Virginia was a top choice. Now the family was having “serious doubts” about sending their son to UVa, she wrote, because the university’s response had been so tepid.

“I know he will encounter hateful racists sometime in his life,” the mother said of her son. “But I want him at a university that clearly denounces these hate groups and ideas without hesitation. And right now ... I’m not seeing it there. I think you missed an opportunity to embrace love and acceptance and diversity and denounce hate.”

In his response on the afternoon of Sunday, August 13, Mr. Roberts wrote, “I do share your concern and frustration.” He went on to assure the mother that “we strongly condemn these racist and bigoted groups,” employing language that the president herself had yet to use.

The mother thanked him, saying she was heartened by a voicemail that he had left with her. She had shared it with her son. But she could not get past the notion that the university’s leaders seemed reluctant to call out racism by name.

“What is unfortunately still alarming to me is how condemning these groups is not an automatic response,” she wrote. “I’m not sure why we need to think on it. And take a few days to respond to it? It should be natural automatic ... ‘NO... We don’t want your hate here’!!”

In an email to Ms. Sullivan’s chief of staff, the provost, and university communications officials, Mr. Roberts described the mother’s sentiments as “concerning.”

“I expect she feels the way others do too,” he wrote, “which is unfortunate and disappointing.”

‘Shameful’ Omission

Up and down the administrative ladder, Virginia officials fielded criticism about the president’s response.

Ms. Sullivan did eventually ratchet up her rhetoric. On August 13 at 5:11 p.m., the university posted on its website a message from Ms. Sullivan, who acknowledged for the first time in an official communication that “there were racist, anti-immigrant, homophobic and misogynistic chants.” But this too rang hollow in some quarters.

“And what about the anti-Semitic messages and rhetoric that you failed to include in your list,” Stephen Sacks, an alumnus and executive director at EY, the accounting firm, replied when the message was sent in an email to alumni. “My wife found the omission shameful.”

Among the marchers’ many audible chants, one in particular was unmistakable: “Jews will not replace us.”

Over the course of three days, Mr. Sacks elevated his grievances, threatening to “escalate” his communications to board members and beyond. As a member of the Rotunda Society, a class of donors who contribute a minimum of $2,500 per year to the university, Mr. Sacks had expected more.

“At some point the failure to promptly rectify raises issues as to whether President Sullivan’s omission was merely that or a larger insensitivity to this issue,” Mr. Sacks wrote to Carl P. Zeithaml, dean of the McIntire School of Commerce.

Unable to placate the donor, Mr. Zeithaml pleaded with communications officials to arrange “some sort of direct response from the President’s Office, or he will escalate further.”

“I tried to deal with it,” Mr. Zeithaml wrote, “but he will not let it go.”

‘Inflection Point’

As administrators exchanged draft talking points labeled “confidential,” the criticisms continued. Some within the university expressed confusion about how to reassure students and families that this elite public university, founded by Thomas Jefferson, was still a safe place to send young people for an education.

Craig Littlepage, the university’s athletics director, implored Ms. Sullivan and other top administrators to tell him how to reassure prospective recruits that the university was not dangerous. There was “a feeling of great urgency,” he wrote, “that we get help from you to be able to begin to turn the momentum around.”

“There are decisions being made by prospective student-athletes to reconsider whether they’ll visit grounds this fall or not,” Mr. Littlepage continued. “Families of current athletes that are already here want answers from us about what is being done to ensure the safety of their students.”

On August 13, Frank M. (Rusty) Conner III stepped into the void. Mr. Conner, the board’s rector, told his fellow board members of his plans to issue a personal statement that evening.

“I do think that we are at an inflection point on the issue of race in this country and on Grounds,” he wrote that afternoon. “I feel we need to be very clear and hard hitting on the issue so I drafted the attached message to the community which will be issued later today. I believe (and hope) you will agree with the message.”

Mr. Conner’s message was full of the sort of forceful language that people had demanded. The university, he wrote, “condemns the vile view of humanity that invaded the Charlottesville community and our grounds this past weekend.”

“The actions of those who visited evil upon us,” Mr. Conner continued, “are nothing short of white nationalist and white supremacist terrorism intended to intimidate our community. They will not succeed. We will not surrender.”

Within the hour, Mr. Nelson, the associate provost, had forwarded the statement to his colleagues. He wrote just one sentence: “Now this is leadership.”

Asked this week about the email, Mr. Nelson wrote The Chronicle, it was “intended as an affirmation of the leadership strength of our rector and nothing more. You do not have my permission to infer any other meaning.”

Jack Stripling covers college leadership, particularly presidents and governing boards. Follow him on Twitter @jackstripling, or email him at jack.stripling@chronicle.com.