On Saturday, scores of students, faculty and staff members, and local residents joined James E. Ryan, president of the University of Virginia, for what could be the very last “Run With Jim.” Only this time, it was branded as a “Run for Jim.”
Ryan, whose compelled resignation under pressure from the Department of Justice startled the higher-ed sector last week, had made recurring group jogs around campus his trademark. They helped cement his reputation among some as a president-of-the-people after taking office in 2018. Nearly seven years later, at the abrupt and emotional end of his presidency, Ryan addressed some of those people.
Though he’ll no longer be at UVa’s helm, he told the crowd of supporters: “I’m not going anywhere. I’m just returning to civilian life.”
Ryan’s ouster has turned UVa into an unexpected battlefield in the Trump administration’s political assault on colleges. For months, officials have wielded federal power to rebalance what they see as higher ed’s extreme leftward tilt and stamp out diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
Harvard and Columbia Universities were predictable targets, their fates now tied up in a handful of court cases. But the greatest concession to Trump thus far, as The New York Times suggested on Friday, may very well have come from Charlottesville. That UVa of all places was the site of such extraordinary scrutiny has left professors reeling. They wonder what’s in store for higher ed’s future if strong-arming presidential resignations is in the cards.
“There could have been a lawsuit against UVa, and this could have been worked out in the courts,” said Walter F. Heinecke, an associate professor in the School of Education and Human Development and the immediate past president of the UVa chapter of the American Association of University Professors. “But they chose to do this the Trumpian way, which was to go after President Ryan in an extralegal way.”
Harmeet K. Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, sees things differently. Ryan “has built his entire career on what was the academic vogue, which is DEI. Now, it isn’t,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper. “And so I think it is time for new leadership that’s willing to comply with federal law.”
Ryan’s departure from UVa stems from a central tenet of President Trump’s higher-education agenda: eliminating the DEI efforts that many colleges have embraced to try to create more welcoming campuses. Critics have asserted that they promote progressive orthodoxy and discrimination, and shortly after assuming office, Trump issued two executive orders saying as much. UVa’s Board of Visitors voted to shutter the central DEI office and move what it had deemed “legally permissible” programs to other divisions.
There could have been a lawsuit against UVa, and this could have been worked out in the courts. But they chose to do this the Trumpian way, which was to go after President Ryan in an extralegal way.
But in April, after an alumni group publicly complained, the Justice Department demanded proof that DEI had actually been eliminated. And in May, America First Legal, an advocacy group aligned with the Trump administration, called on officials to investigate UVa. The department soon confirmed it was looking into UVa’s compliance with the civil-rights law Title VI, which bars discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin.
On Thursday, the Times reported that pressure from the department had reached a new apex: It was pushing for Ryan’s resignation as a condition for helping to resolve the investigation.
Dhillon, who is also a graduate of UVa’s law school, told CNN’s Tapper that while she disagrees with the characterization that the department demanded Ryan step down, she did tell UVa leaders that “we significantly lacked confidence” that he would be “willing and able to preside over the dismantling of DEI,” given his public stances toward those efforts. Rather, she believes the university has used “a series of euphemisms to simply rebrand and repackage the exact same discriminatory programs that are illegal.”
On Friday, Ryan announced he’d be stepping aside, casting the decision as protecting the interests of students, faculty, and staff rather than fighting the federal government to keep his job.
Faculty members who spoke to The Chronicle this week had conflicting feelings about Ryan’s departure, and whether he could have resisted or if he had little room to maneuver.
William Hitchcock, a history professor, described Ryan as a “conciliatory person.” He’s “not someone who would have thought to transform this particular issue into some kind of national political debate.”
Clearly, Hitchcock said, Ryan had information that there would be “enormous consequences for the university if he tried to fight the Trump administration’s demand that he resign,” so he did what he thought was best for the institution.
In her interview with Tapper, Dhillon emphasized how much federal funding was on the line for UVa, saying the university had received more than $1.3 billion from 18 different federal agencies “in this last year.”
“These are very unpredictable times,” Hitchcock said, “and all I can say is I think Jim Ryan is the kind of person you would like to have in your university helping to navigate them.”
Other faculty members see Ryan’s decision as a submission to political actors who have no inclination or tendency to compromise. The professors wish that Ryan, or the university, had fought back.
Deborah McDowell, a professor of English, thinks Ryan should have forced the board to fire him.
“Capitulation is sometimes in order,” she said. “For this, I don’t think it was. This is spoken as someone who does not agree and would not represent myself as one in full agreement with the decisions Ryan has made throughout his presidency. I am not. But bullies cannot be placated. They are greedy.”
Writing for The New Republic, Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies, described Ryan as, among other things, “a university president who has spent his term allaying concerns of conservatives” and “dismantling programs that enhance diversity and equity.” By forcing his departure, “the Trump administration has made it clear that no capitulation will be sufficient.”
In his email to the university community, Ryan said he’d planned to step down at the end of the next academic year anyway. Jennifer Wagner Davis, UVa’s chief operating officer, was announced Monday as the acting president upon Ryan’s resignation.
As UVa’s campus community makes sense of the fallout, people are also questioning the role that the university’s Board of Visitors may have played in Ryan’s exit. The board is dominated by appointees of Virginia’s Republican governor, Glenn Youngkin.
The Times, citing an unnamed source, reported that board members were “anxious to demonstrate to the Trump administration that Mr. Ryan would indeed step aside” after learning that is what Justice Department officials wanted. Members had also been concerned that Ryan had not “properly dismantled” the institution’s DEI programs, according to the news outlet.
In a Times opinion essay, Timothy J. Heaphy, who served as UVa’s university counsel between 2018 and 2022, took the board to task for waving “the white flag of surrender.”
“Had I been university counsel last week,” Heaphy wrote, “I would have advised my client to challenge what I believe to be a false allegation that the university’s policies are unlawful.”
Heinecke, the education professor, voiced frustration at the board for, in his view, not resisting the federal government’s intrusion. He said he was hoping for Ryan to follow the path of Teresa A. Sullivan, Ryan’s predecessor. Thirteen years ago, Sullivan was ousted in the summer after a dramatic tiff with the rector of the board over moving the university into the digital era. But professors and students rallied around the deposed leader, and she was quickly reinstated.
It seems unlikely such a thing will happen now. “That was a much less complicated situation,” said Jeri K. Seidman, an associate professor in the School of Commerce and chair-elect of the Faculty Senate. “In this situation, we don’t know what the BOV intended to do versus what was accidental versus what was not the BOV’s doing and was directly DOJ’s doing, or if there were other forces involved in state or federal government.”
In an update sent to the university community on Monday, the outgoing and incoming rectors, or chairs, of the board said little about the circumstances of Ryan’s resignation. The message did not mention the Justice Department. Rather, it said that preserving “the autonomy of higher education” is vital, but noted that the university must “maintain our partnership” with the state and federal government.
The board leaders also praised Ryan’s presidency, writing that “it should come as no surprise that one of Jim’s last acts in office put the needs of the university ahead of his own.”
In a Monday email, The Chronicle asked the outgoing and incoming rector and vice rector to respond to Heaphy’s criticism and provide clarity on the board’s role in Ryan’s departure. They did not reply.
The targeting of UVa may seem somewhat arbitrary, the result of a random commonality in the curricula vitae of two of the nation’s top civil-rights officials. In May, The Chronicle reported a story teasing out the connections between Dhillon; her deputy, Gregory Brown, who attended UVa as an undergraduate and has sued the institution in the past over a civil-rights issue; the Jefferson Council, the conservative alumni group that has been calling on Ryan to resign for months; and the Board of Visitors.
Perhaps Ryan, a champion of diversity efforts serving under board members appointed by a governor who opposes DEI, was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Still, there are implications for the broader sector, and those implications vary widely depending on whom you ask.
Dhillon told CNN that “there’s a lot of money on the line here,” noting that other colleges had already lost funding. “We can’t be giving out billions of dollars to organizations and institutions that refuse to follow federal law,” she said. “That’s irresponsible.” She said she believes that most colleges in the country are out of compliance with the 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case ruling race-conscious admissions unconstitutional, which the Trump administration has interpreted to apply beyond the realm of admissions, barring a host of preferences and programs aimed at certain identity groups. (Many colleges have such programs, though the vast majority didn’t consider race in admissions to begin with.)
Dominique J. Baker, an associate professor of education and public policy at the University of Delaware, and an alumna of UVa, views the Trump administration’s actions as a “naked power grab” to force institutions to conform to their ideals. She’s skeptical that, in the face of such a move, rolling over is the right approach. Columbia University, Baker said, had bent over backwards and still not gotten its grants back. Instead, it’s been reported to its accreditor.
To Hitchcock, the UVa history professor, the past several days indicate that “any university is vulnerable to this kind of, what I could call, extortion. I would use that word. I think it’s a fair word. They basically demanded the resignation of the president, or else they wouldn’t approve research funds for the university. So, I don’t know how else to describe that.”
John C. Jeffries Jr., a law professor and former senior vice president for advancement under Ryan, praised Ryan as the best president in Jeffries’ five decades at the university. He said he is doubtful that the board will be able to “attract a person of the first rank” to lead UVa in the future, given what’s happened.
Even those who were not fans of Ryan acknowledge the job just became less desirable. James A. Bacon, former executive director of the Jefferson Council, the alumni advocacy group, wrote on his blog that the “battle for UVa’s soul” had become “a hyper-partisan fracas,” nodding to the Trump’s administration’s investigation as well as comments made by the State Senate’s majority leader, a Democrat, at a Saturday news conference. The lawmaker reportedly warned UVa’s board to not select Ryan’s successor “anytime soon,” noting the November gubernatorial election that could swing in Democrats’ favor.
“To say that any new UVa president would be walking into a hornet’s nest would be an understatement,” Bacon wrote on his blog. “A nest of angry, killer hornets, perhaps. Killer hornets that suck your blood and leave your corpse a desiccated husk.”
To the Jefferson Council, Ryan’s departure was a long time coming. Formed in 2020, it pushes for intellectual diversity and civil discourse, is critical of entrenched progressivism on campus, and views Ryan as negligent in responding to those concerns.
In a statement, Joel Gardner, the council’s president, said Ryan’s resignation “signals a turning point for the university.” Among other things, UVa “must now depoliticize its academic environment.”
