UVA President James Ryan Resigns Amid Pressure From DOJ
“While there are very important principles at play here, I would at a very practical level be fighting to keep my job for one more year while knowingly and willingly sacrificing others in this community”
The DOJ was pressuring UVA to prove that they were complying with new anti-DEI policies, so Ryan quit. The left is really freaking out about this.
Inside Higher Ed reports:
Under Pressure From Trump, UVA President Resigns
The University of Virginia president James Ryan said Friday he was resigning after the Justice Department demanded he step down.
“To make a long story short, I am inclined to fight for what I believe in, and I believe deeply in this university,” Ryan wrote in a letter to the campus community. “But I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job. 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.”
The Justice Department has spent months quietly investigating whether the Virginia flagship complied with President Donald Trump’s order banning diversity, equity and inclusion programs. The Board of Visitors voted to dissolve the university’s DEI office in March, but multiple conservative alumni groups and legal entities complained that Ryan failed to eliminate DEI from all corners of campus. In many cases, critics argue that the university simply changed the names of programs but maintained their core function.
The New York Times first reported on the resignation and the Justice Department’s demand Thursday evening.
Ryan wrote that he had planned to step down next spring for reasons separate from the investigation; he didn’t say when his resignation would take effect.
“While there are very important principles at play here, I would at a very practical level be fighting to keep my job for one more year while knowingly and willingly sacrificing others in this community,” he wrote.
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Comments
So he admits he was hiding DEI to preserve it, his “very important principle”.
So he’s quitting to unburden his co-conspirators, while painting them as hostages.
It is pointless and unproductive to discuss anything while using the label “DEI”, as there is no widespread agreement as to what it refers.
It is a label that has been used as a rubric for a large variety of policies, procedures, biases, etc. many of which are legal and unobjectionable and a smaller number of which are illegal and unethical. A contributor to discussions “full of sound and fury and signifying nothing.”
Make it a LI-led project to restore clarity and intelligence, by massively flooding comment sections with this correction.