University of Virginia strikes deal to pause Trump administration investigations

The mounting pressure prompted James Ryan to announce his resignation as university president in June, saying the stakes were too high for others on campus if he opted to “fight the federal government in order to save my job.”

The university agreed to be bound by federal guidance forbidding racial discrimination in admission and hiring, as described by the Justice Department. It also agreed to provide relevant data on a quarterly basis through 2028. The president will have to personally certify that the university is in compliance each quarter.

The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Virginia’s settlement follows other agreements signed by Columbia and Brown universities to end federal investigations and restore access to federal funding. Columbia paid $200 million to the government, and Brown paid $50 million to Rhode Island workforce development organizations.

Some of the Justice Department's letters squarely took aim at Ryan, accusing him of engaging in “attempts to defy and evade federal anti-discrimination laws and the directives of your board.” Much of the federal scrutiny centered on complaints that Ryan was too slow to implement a March 7 resolution by the university’s governing board demanding the eradication of DEI on campus.

As a public university, the University of Virginia was an outlier in the Trump administration’s effort to reform higher education according to the president’s vision. Previously, the administration had devoted most of its scrutiny to elite private colleges, including Harvard and other Ivy League institutions, accused of tolerating antisemitism.

Since then, the White House has expanded its campaign to other public campuses, including the University of California, Los Angeles, and George Mason University.

The Charlottesville campus became a flashpoint this year after conservative critics accused it of simply renaming its DEI initiatives rather than ending them. The Justice Department expanded the scope of its review several times and announced a separate investigation into alleged antisemitism in May.

Among the most prominent critics was America First Legal, a conservative group created by Trump aide Stephen Miller. In a May letter to federal officials, the group said Virginia had only moved to “rename, repackage, and redeploy the same unlawful infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms.”

Similar accusations have embroiled George Mason University, where the governing board came to the defense of the president even as the Education Department cited allegations that he promoted diversity initiatives above credentials in hiring. On Aug. 1, the board unanimously voted to give President Gregory Washington a pay increase of 1.5%. The same day, the board approved a resolution forbidding DEI in favor of a “merit-based approach” in campus policies.

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