The University of Virginia’s president, James Ryan, resigned today under pressure from the Trump administration. In a statement, Ryan explained he couldn’t fight for his job at the expense of federal funding.
James E. Ryan convened a meeting with his senior leadership on Friday and announced that he would be stepping down, according to a source who attended the UVA Board of Visitors meeting…
In a letter to the university community on Friday, Ryan said, “I am writing, with a very heavy heart, to let you know that I have submitted my resignation as President of the University of Virginia.”
“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. “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.”
Ryan was not wrong about what was at stake. The NY Times reported yesterday that the Trump administration was demanding he resign or else.
The Trump administration has privately demanded that the University of Virginia oust its president to help resolve a Justice Department investigation into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter…
Justice Department officials have told University of Virginia officials that hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funding are at risk because of what the department says is the school’s disregard for civil rights law over its diversity practices, according to two of the people.
As mentioned, the underlying issue here was UVA’s DEI programs. Ryan has a long history as a promoter of these programs, going back to his time at Harvard.
Mr. Ryan, hired in 2018 as the university’s ninth president, has leaned into issues like making the school more diverse, increasing the number of first-generation students and encouraging students to do community service. But his approach, which he says will make the university “both great and good,” has rankled conservative alumni and Republican board members who accuse him of wanting to impose his values on students and claim he is “too woke.”
Before becoming the University of Virginia’s president, Mr. Ryan served as the dean of the Harvard Graduate School of Education, where he was praised for his commitment to D.E.I. programs. Harvard has been one of the Trump administration’s chief targets since it began its assault on higher education.
UVA did take some public steps to put the school in line with Trump’s executive orders on DEI, but critics, including Steven Miller, said the school was merely rebranding the same old jobs and departments. This comes from a letter sent last month by Miller’s group America First Legal:
In accordance with these Executive Orders and controlling federal civil rights law, UVA’s Board of Visitors unanimously adopted a resolution on March 7, 2025, directing the University to immediately dismantle its DEI infrastructure.8 The resolution dissolved the University’s Office of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Community Partnerships and required UVA to “ensure” that all of its “programs, policies, practices, and actions in every regard comply with the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and other federal civil rights laws.”9 It also expressly prohibited the use of racial proxies, strategic relabeling, or other indirect methods to “circumvent” anti-discrimination mandates—and barred the reclassification of DEI initiatives as “permissible” where they continue to rely on race, sex, and other identity-based distinctions. The resolution further obligated the University to report back to the Board within 30 days with a detailed accounting of its compliance efforts…
Rather than comply with its legal obligations, UVA appears to have deliberately rebranded its discriminatory DEI infrastructure to evade accountability. Terms such as Excellence,”16 “Advocacy and Opportunity,”17 “Community Engagement,”18 “Strategic Wellness and Opportunity,”19 “Inclusion and Belonging,” and “Viewpoint Diversity”20—some of which were already embedded within its DEI framework—now serve as euphemistic labels across the University’s schools, departments, administrative divisions, and official communications. What is unfolding is not bureaucratic oversight but a deliberate strategy to rebrand, relabel, and obscure DEI infrastructure, preserving its unlawful substance while shielding it from legal scrutiny.
The letter offer several pages of examples of this rebranding exercise. Just to pick one example at random:
The UVA Library,69 School of Nursing,70 and Graduate School of Arts & Sciences71 all continue to operate “Inclusive Excellence” or IDEA (“Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility”) frameworks. The UVA Library, for example, maintains a race-focused “Inclusive Excellence Plan” built around “anti-racist practice and pedagogy,” “diversity dashboards,” and a mandate to “prioritize equity in all [Library] decisionmaking.”72 None of these programs show any indication of having been dismantled. There is no indication that UVA has identified these programs as violating federal law and recent executive orders requiring them to be disclosed and dismantled.
Colleges have been using these tricks for to evade state bans on DEI for more than a year. We’ve even seen undercover video from some UNC campuses of DEI administrators they were carrying on the same work, just covertly.
She says explicit “DEI positions” don’t exist, but that there are ways to do “work that is covert.” pic.twitter.com/bOaGbWMqBN
— Corey A. DeAngelis, school choice evangelist (@DeAngelisCorey) May 28, 2025
So there’s every reason to think this is what has been happening at UVA under president Ryan. I have no proof he was aware this was happening but my own belief is that all of this was being done with his tacit approval. Either that or he was a terrible administrator. Hopefully his resignation will send a strong signal to other school presidents that this rebranding trick isn’t fooling anyone.
