On Friday, the president of the University of Virginia resigned under intense pressure from the Trump administration, as part of an ongoing process to enforce U.S. civil rights laws, and sweep away decades of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) policies and antisemitism at the institution of higher education.
The enforcement here is under the auspices of the Trump administration’s DOJ Civil Rights division, headed by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon whose team’s yeoman’s work since President Trump returned to office has been focused on cleaning things up where some of Americans’ most cherished rights are concerned. Earlier this week, I wrote about their work on setting aright the nation’s badly mismanaged voter rolls.
On Thursday morning, there were reports that the DOJ was quietly seeking to push President James E. Ryan out as the head of UVA:
The Trump administration has privately urged the University of Virginia to remove its president to help resolve a Justice Department probe into the institution’s diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, according to a report.
The Justice Department has argued that the university’s president, James E. Ryan, has not dismantled its diversity, equity and inclusion programs and misrepresented the steps taken to eliminate them, amid the administration’s efforts to root out DEI in higher education, The New York Times reported, citing people familiar with the matter.
The report continued:
The federal government’s moves targeting higher education include pulling billions of dollars from elite universities such as Harvard, which has been the subject of investigations by at least six different federal agencies over issues such as DEI initiatives, admissions practices and alleged antisemitism on campus.
But this would be the first time the administration has pressured a university to remove its president.