Washington (AP) – The President of the University of Virginia, who is exposed to the diversity, justice and inclusion of the school through conservative critics and the Trump government, announced on Friday that he resigned more than “fighting against the federal government”.
The departure of James Ryan, who has run the school since 2018, is a dramatic escalation in the efforts of the Trump government to redesign university education. If you do this at a public university, this marks a modern border in a campaign that almost exclusively aims at Ivy League schools. It also expands the reasons for the aggressive tactics of the government and focuses more on Dei than on alleged tolerance towards anti -Semitism.
Ryan had suspended conservative criticism that he did not pay attention to federal examinations to remove the DEI guidelines, and his distance was urged by the Ministry of Justice for the school, a person who was not entitled to discuss the matter by name, and spoke on the condition of the anonymity of the Associated Press.
Ryan referred to the pressure of the Trump administration in a statement to the university community on Friday, where he said he had submitted his resignation with a “very heavy heart”.
“To take a long story short, I tend to fight for what I believe in and I believe deeply in this university,” he said. “But I can’t make a one -sided decision to combat the federal government to save my job.”
Ryan had already decided that next year was his last, he said, and until then I remained “knowingly and willingly and willingly.
The New York Times for the first time reported on the resignation and existence of the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry of Justice declined to comment on Friday.
Ryan’s distance is another example of the Trump government that uses “fight instead of rational discourse”, said Ted Mitchell, President of the American Council on Education, who represents the president of the university.
“This is a dark day for the University of Virginia, a dark day for university education, and it promises more of it,” said Mitchell. “It is clear that the administration has not been done and that every tool that you can create or invent to exercise your will on university education.”
Democratic senators react in Virginia
In a joint explanation, the democratic Senators of Virginia said that it was outrageous that the Trump government would demand Ryan’s resignation about “cultural war traps”. “This is a mistake that violates Virginia’s future,” said Sens. Mark R. Warner and Tim Kaine.
After Trump a promise to end “Wokess” in education, an action in January signed the elimination of Dei programs and the “radical indoctrination” in schools and universities. The educational department has opened studies on dozens of universities and argues that diversity initiatives discriminate against white and Asian American students.
The reaction of schools was scattered. Some have closed the offices, scholarships for diversity diversity and no longer require diversity statements than part of the setting process. Some others have renamed the work under other names, while others hold on for diversity guidelines.
The University of Virginia became a flashpoint after conservative critics had accused them of simply renaming their DEI initiatives. The school management committee voted to close the Dei office in March and to end the diversity guidelines for approvals, attitudes, financial aid and other areas. Republican governor Glenn Youngkin celebrated the campaign and explained that “Dei at the University of Virginia is ready”.
Among those who drew attention to Charlottesville campus was America First Legal, a conservative group founded by Trump, Stephen Miller. In a letter to the Ministry of Justice in May, the group said that the university did not manage to reduce the programs and decided to “rename and kill the same illegal infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms”.
The group aimed directly at Ryan and found that he signed a public statement with hundreds of other college presidents in which the “over -control and political interference” of the Trump government was convicted.
On Friday, the group said that it would continue to apply every available tool to exterminate what it calls it discriminatory systems.
“The developments of this week make it clear: public universities that accept federal funds have no license to violate the constitution,” said Megan Redshaw, a lawyer of the group. “You must not carry out ideological loyalty tests, enforce racial and gender preferences or oppose the rightful executive authority.”
Ryan has headed the school since 2018
Ryan was hired in 2018 with the management of the University of Virginia and was previously Dean of the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. At the beginning of his career, he spent more than a decade as a legal professor at the University of Virginia. A biography of Harvards website attributes Ryan with the augment in the “size, strength and diversity” of the faculty and added that building a diverse community had a priority.
Robert D. Hardie, head of the University of Virginia, said that he had accepted Ryan’s resignation with “profound sadness” and added that the university “was changed forever due to Jim’s extraordinary leadership”.
So far, the White House had directed most of its attention to Harvard University and other elite institutions that Trump sees as bastions of liberalism. Harvard has lost more than $ 2.6 billion in federal research grants in the middle of its struggle against the government, which has also tried to prevent the school from the host of foreign students and threatens to revoke their tax-fighting status.
Harvard and his foundation of 53 billion US dollars are uniquely positioned to survive the government’s financial pressure. However, public universities are far more dependent on taxpayers and could be more susceptible. The 10 -billion dollars of the University of Virginia is one of the largest for public universities, while the huge majority has far less.
___
The educational cover of Associated Press receives financial support from several private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the standards of AP for working with philanthropias, a list of supporters and financed coverage areas at Ap.org.
