The resignation of the University of Virginia’s president has brought into focus what appears to be a long-term strategy by the Trump administration: not just eliminating DEI programs, but making sure they don’t continue in another guise.
James E. Ryan, who has been president of the university Thomas Jefferson founded since 2018, said last week that he would step down this summer, saying in a statement, “I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job.”
He was referring to suggestions by the Justice Department that new leadership would be required for the University of Virginia to continue to receive federal funding.
While the Ivy League has gotten most of the attention, UVA is among public schools under investigation for their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, which the Trump administration sees as willful disregard of the 2023 Supreme Court ruling in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which ended racial preferences in college admissions.
In February, the Education Department announced that schools that consider race in admissions or hiring would be subject to investigation, defunding and “vigorous enforcement efforts.”
DEI at the University of Virginia
Under Ryan, UVA had been at the forefront of DEI efforts. In 2020, months after the death of George Floyd, a task force articulated a vision for the school that focused on equity and recommended, among other things, that UVA establish an endowment, prioritize hiring of minorities, establish a “reparative scholarship program” for descendants of enslaved people, and develop an “equity scorecard” that would be used in leadership’s performance evaluations.
Such programs have come under withering scrutiny within the past few years, and two months into the second Trump administration, schools like the University of Michigan were scaling back DEI programs and practices like diversity statements.
The University of Virginia had been more reticent, although in March it had closed its DEI office, and in April, the board of visitors rescinded some of its goals.
The Justice Department had given the university a deadline of May 2 to prove its compliance, and then, at the school’s request, granted an extension until the end of the month. On June 17, the department sent a letter saying, “Time is running short, and the department’s patience is wearing thin,” The New York Times reported.
The Justice Department’s ‘lack of confidence’
Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, told CNN’s Jake Tapper that the school’s unresponsiveness was just part of the problem.
“That’s one of the troubling aspects,” Dhillon said. She also said that she believed the school was attempting to “rebrand and repackage the exact same discriminatory programs that are illegal under federal law.”
Asked if the Justice Department asked for Ryan’s resignation, as many news outlets have reported, Dhillon said she would not characterize it that way.
“I did express to leaders at UVA that we significantly lacked confidence at the Department of Justice that Jim Ryan, given his public statements and his ongoing public statements, and his participation in groups talking about suing the Trump administration to avoid doing exactly what we are requiring them to do. ... I don’t have any confidence that he was going to be willing and able to preside over the dismantling of DEI.”
She noted that other schools had lost federal funding and said that “there’s a lot of money on the line here” for schools that don’t comply.
“It isn’t just Students for Fair Admissions, it’s Title VII, Title IX, it’s Title VI. We can’t be giving out billions of dollars to organizations and institutions that refuse to follow federal law. That’s irresponsible.”
What people are saying about Ryan’s resignation
Ryan’s resignation was described on the website Inside Higher Ed as “a dramatic escalation in the Trump administration’s war against higher ed” that “sends a chilling message to other university leaders.”
The Charlottesville website Cville Right Now noted that while many Democrats and academics expressed anger about what they see as a politically motivated ouster of a university president, most Republicans, including Gov. Glenn Youngkin, did not comment on the resignation.
An exception was former Virginia Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling, who wrote on Facebook that both Ryan and the Trump administration had done the right thing.
“UVA President Jim Ryan is a man of principle. I respect that, even if his principles are misguided. … Ryan did the right thing in resigning, and the Trump administration did the right thing in demanding a discontinuance of DEI programs that focused on race and gender at the expense of individual merit," Bolling wrote.
Bolling’s observation was unusual in acknowledging that both sides in this story are operating from deeply held values. While DEI broadly has become a front in the culture war, Americans remain divided on these initiatives, or appreciate some aspects of DEI and not others.
According to polling by The Associated Press and the NORC Center for Public Affairs Research last month, “about 4 in 10 Americans “strongly” or “somewhat” favor DEI programs in colleges and universities, while about 3 in 10 oppose those initiatives and about 3 in 10 are neutral."
Why did Jim Ryan resign?
It’s unclear from the statement why Ryan resigned and why he chose to at this particular time. In his statement, he said he had planned to retire at the end of the next academic year and that he was “heartbroken to be leaving this way.”
Staying in his position, he suggested, would likely cost the university its funding, and “To do so would not only be quixotic but appear selfish and self-centered to the hundreds of employees who would lose their jobs, the researchers who would lose their funding, and the hundreds of students who could lose financial aid or have their visas withheld.”
Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat, said Sunday on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” that the latest communication from the Justice Department to Ryan had been that if he did not resign by a certain day and time that the funding cuts were certain.
“This federal D.O.E. and Department of Justice should get their nose out of University of Virginia. They are doing damage to our flagship university. And if they can do it here, they’ll do it elsewhere,” Warner said, per CBS.
In April, Ryan was among more than 500 signers of an open letter protesting “unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education.”
“We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding,” the letter said.
It went on to describe colleges and universities as “centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.”
In her exchange with Tapper, however, Dhillon noted that diversity of thought had not always been welcome within academia. In fact, the leftward tilt of the American university is one reason for conservative animus toward higher ed and the reason that alternatives to traditional universities are emerging among widespread distrust.
Dhillon’s comments to Tapper about the “rebranding and repackaging” of DEI initiatives may offer insight about Trump’s strategy when it comes to higher ed: getting new people in place who will DEI-proof the academy (and the culture at large).
There have been other reports suggesting that some schools are going underground with their DEI ventures, carrying out the same work under another name. If that’s what’s happening, it could be a shallow victory.