At Schools Like UVA, DEI Holdouts Demand A Reckoning

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. — President Donald Trump has ordered universities to end their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices, but the battle to oust the leftist president of the University of Virginia shows that more house-cleaning is required to rid academic institutions of Marxist ideology.

Tuesday evening, at a meeting of The Jefferson Council (TJC), a very active alumni group that has been trying to battle the left-wing shredding of one of America’s most historic schools, the University of Virginia (UVA), many members insisted that the school’s vote to ditch DEI in accordance with Trump’s order means nothing if the school’s board refuses to get rid of the leadership that helped put it there.

After the vote from the UVA Board of Visitors (BOV), Gov. Glenn Youngkin, R-Va., triumphantly declared DEI “done” at UVA, but all evidence suggests that under university president Jim Ryan, the school is simply following the playbook of other left-wing academics beholden to the DEI ideology: Change its name and squirrel it away across departments at the school, making it virtually impossible to route out, while maintaining full destructive function.

Ryan has been behind numerous left-wing changes at the university since taking over in 2018. He’s attempted to erode Jefferson’s legacy, promote revisionist history, and impose DEI, all while bending the knee to the Black Lives Matter “racial reckoning” scam from 2020 onward. Ryan did not respond to the Federalist’s request for comment.

Thomas M. Neale, TJC co-founder and president emeritus, told The Federalist that, although The Jefferson Council verified the school’s “main DEI website was deactivated,” UVA’s academic departments still have DEI “programs in place.” 

For example, DEI is still a core mission of the College and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (A&S), UVA’s biggest department by far, as detailed on its still-existent department page, noting, “diversity is critical for A&S in its pursuit of excellence, and our goal is to embed diversity considerations across the mission areas of the school.”

The same is true for engineering (archive), business (archive), and other schools. The office of Student Affairs still touts “diversity and inclusion,” and a TJC project named “DEI at UVA” documented how the human resources department “is still developing their DEI programs and events” — but the list of these programs is behind a password wall and hidden from the general public.

Neale also said that resident assistants, or RAs, are still trained on DEI.

He described Ryan as an “unrepentant leftist zealot” and stressed the need for new leadership to return UVA “to its core Jeffersonian values of truth, academic diversity of thought, and civility.” 

Calls to fire Ryan were met with raucous applause at the TJC gathering Tuesday. Alumni traveled from across the country to hear professors, donors, and Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares give speeches (nearly all of which contained quotes from Jefferson) about restoring the school after a dark time under Ryan’s leadership.

However, while replacing Ryan (and the remaining Democrat-appointed leadership at the university), could be as easy as a majority vote of the BOV, as former BOV member Bert Ellis suggests, there appear to be other political factors at play.

Youngkin Removes An Anti-DEI Stalwart

Youngkin ran and won on the promise to remove destructive ideologies from Virginia’s educational institutions. He also appointed the 13-4 majority of the members on UVA’s BOV.

During the TJC meeting, Ellis shared how Youngkin appointed him to the board to help “fight” pervasive left-wing ideology at UVA. Ellis said by last year, the board finally had a conservative majority and “enough votes to start making changes.”

Upon his appointment, Ellis recalled Youngkin’s initial demeanor, telling him to “‘take the beach and hold the beach for reinforcements’ to come over subsequent years and ‘make sure you have a helmet and a cup, because this is going to be a very, very, very tough fight.” By the time the “reinforcements” came, Ellis said, “I thought it was time to put our pedal to the metal and actually make the changes that we have the opportunity to do.”

But that is not what happened. In March, Youngkin controversially fired Ellis, citing conduct violations. But Ellis indicated his removal was rooted in him being the most vocal board member against DEI and Ryan. The Republican governor appointed Ken Cuccinelli II, former Virginia attorney general and Trump Department of Homeland Security official, to fill the seat.

“I had been asked to resign by members of the governor’s staff, to resign and basically make up a reason — that I had health problems, that I had too many calls in my time, or even the one that I thought was the most objectionable was that the mission was completed,” Ellis told the TJC audience.

Miyares, the keynote speaker at the TJC meeting, praised Ellis “for your leadership and your willingness to fight for things worth fighting for at a time few others could or would.”

“I’m totally perplexed why you put in activists on the board that’s going to make the changes you want and then take them off as you’re getting close to the changes he wants,” Ellis told The Federalist, explaining that the only way to reform now is to remove Ryan and others in leadership positions like the rector.

When pressed on the matter, Youngkin’s office did not specify whether he would call on the board to remove Ryan. Instead, Youngkin’s press secretary Peter Finocchio told The Federalist, “The Governor is confident the Board will hold the University’s top leadership accountable to his expectation that ‘DEI is done’ at UVA.”

“The Board of Visitors adopted a crystal clear resolution to end DEI. The Governor has also been crystal clear that DEI must end and he will fully support the Board as it systematically reviews the initial report from University leadership,” Finocchio wrote.

With An Election Coming, There’s No Time To Waste

However, despite having terms that will extend for several more years, Ellis explained that the BOV really only has a matter of months to exact major, lasting change at UVA, or else the opportunity could be lost for the foreseeable future. He also said that, while there are currently enough votes to remove Ryan on the BOV, the members are all waiting on the governor to make the call — and would fire him instantly if Youngkin told them to.

“[Ryan is] not going to make any changes. I mean, his strategy is just delay, delay, delay. He’s assuming that a Democrat will succeed Glenn Youngkin, and she [Democrat gubernatorial candidate former Rep. Abigail Spanberger] will either reverse the board or just [put] her own folks in over gradually,” Ellis told The Federalist.

Virginians have a gubernatorial election this year, being one of the few states in the country with off-year elections.

Given Virginia’s decades-long political history of electing governors of parties opposite the new party in the White House, and some concerns about Republican candidate Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears‘ campaign, the threat of Spanberger ascending to the Governor’s Mansion is not unfounded.

Ellis is also concerned that the precedent set by his termination by Youngkin could give a potential Spanberger administration what they need to clean house before terms are up and appoint her own people.

“If Jim Ryan is not removed, everything we have been trying to do with The Jefferson Council, everything we’ve been trying to do at this Board of Visitors, will be for naught,” Ellis said in his speech. “Nothing will happen. There’ll be a lot of lip service. DEI — some changes will be made, but it’ll be renamed, moved around.”

“We will have lost, perhaps forever, an opportunity to make this university the best university in the world, the shining light on the hill, and a major change for good,” he added.

Breccan F. Thies is a correspondent for The Federalist. He previously covered education and culture issues for the Washington Examiner and Breitbart News. He holds a degree from the University of Virginia and is a 2022 Claremont Institute Publius Fellow. You can follow him on X: @BreccanFThies.