The president of the University of Virginia (UVA) has resigned from his position after coming under pressure from the Trump administration over diversity efforts.
James Ryan was facing political pressure from Washington to step aside in order to resolve a justice department investigation into UVA’s diversity, equity and inclusion policies, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing three people briefed on the matter.
Ryan had a reputation for trying to make the UVA campus more diverse and encouraging students to perform community service.
“I cannot make a unilateral decision to fight the federal government in order to save my own job,” Ryan said in a message to the university reviewed by the Guardian.
He added: “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.
“This was an excruciatingly difficult decision, and I am heartbroken to be leaving this way.”
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The apparent campaign against a prominent public sector university in the US follows Donald Trump’s agenda since returning to the White House to cancel programs and policies aimed at greater diversity, equity and inclusion in government, workplaces, and various establishments and organizations across American society.
In parallel, the US president set about attacking and taking funds from elite private sector universities, with Harvard at the forefront, in an assault on the academic and research independence of higher education more broadly.
The New York Times first reported late on Thursday that the justice department had demanded that Ryan step down as part of an agreement to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices, as Trump further erodes the government agency’s distance from the White House by enlisting its investigative powers as part of his political agenda.
Ryan said in a letter, briefed to the Times by a source, that he was going to step down next year but “given the circumstances and today’s conversations” he had decided “with deep sadness” to resign now.
The justice department had reportedly told UVA that the government thought it was prioritizing race-based factors during its admissions process and other aspects of student life in a way that constitutes “widespread practices throughout every component and facet of the institution”.
Ryan’s removal is another example of the Trump administration using “thuggery instead of rational discourse,” Ted Mitchell, president of the American Council on Education, which represents university presidents, told the Associated Press.
“This is a dark day for the University of Virginia, a dark day for higher education, and it promises more of the same,” Mitchell said. “It’s clear the administration is not done and will use every tool that it can make or invent to exert its will over higher education.”
In a joint statement, Virginia’s Democratic senators said it was outrageous that the Trump administration would demand Ryan’s resignation over “‘culture war’ traps.” “This is a mistake that hurts Virginia’s future,” Senators Mark Warner and Tim Kaine said.
UVA is located in Charlottesville, and found itself in the global headlines early on in the first Trump administration when, in August 2017, hundreds of far-right demonstrators wielding torches and shouting racist slogans marched on to the historic campus ahead of a so-called Unite the Right rally in the small city, crowding towards a smaller group of counterprotesters.
The subsequent rally, to try to prevent the removal of Confederate statues from a park, was massive and became very violent as neo-Nazi groups gathered and attacked counterprotesters, then later a white supremacist drove a car into such a group and killed a woman.
Trump sparked uproar by blaming both sides for the violence, on the one hand and, on the other, saying: “You had people that were very fine people on both sides.”
The Associated Press contributed reporting
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