This morning, former University of Virginia President Jim Ryan issued a letter to the Faculty Senate addressing his view on his ousting from office this June and alleging a coordinated force of power against his presidency. The letter underscores the points made by the University community and provides new context to the breakdown of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) programs as well as investigations into UVA by the Department of Justice (“DOJ”).
In the months since Ryan’s resignation, the University has seen the rise of an interim president, a secret deal with the DOJ, and motions of no confidence in the Board of Visitors (“BOV”) from both the Faculty Senate and Student Council due to their lack of transparency and collaboration with the wider university.
Ryan’s response comes after back-and-forth letters this week between Governor-elect Spanberger and current Governor Glenn Youngkin, along with University Rector Rachel Sheridan, on the state of the University’s leadership. While Ryan wrote that these letters do not “present an accurate accounting of [his] resignation,” he clarified that this document “is not a direct response to or a point-by-point rebuttal of the letters.”
DEI Removal
First, Ryan discussed the removal of the University’s DEI office, recounting that the resolution to dissolve the branch had to go through an abundance of edits due to its “inflammatory rhetoric.” The letter goes on, stating that “confusion began, at least at the public level, that night, when Governor Youngkin went onto Fox News to crow that ‘DEI is dead’ at UVA.”
The former president claims that Youngkin’s statements were theatrical and overstated what effects the final resolution had on the functions of the school. Furthermore, the changes that did occur were not properly relayed to the community when, according to Ryan, Sheridan told his team to keep their work under the radar until the BOV returned with feedback.
“Having to remain silent about our response to the Board resolution left us in a difficult position,” Ryan continued, acknowledging the stress many experienced after learning of the DEI office’s destruction: “Our community was curious about the changes and what it might mean for them.”
The DOJ
Ryan then addressed letters from the Trump Administration’s DOJ, which targeted UVA’s admissions and diversity policies. He questioned why the Department was concerned with DEI policy within the school, as it appeared that the administration was attempting to encroach on the BOV’s autonomy to enforce University policy.
“The letter asked us to explain why we hadn’t complied with the Board’s resolution, though it exaggerated the scope and nature of that resolution,” the former president wrote, alleging that their response followed the rhetoric put out by Youngkin in his Fox News appearance.
This pressure meant that Ryan’s team was forced to continue leaving the community in the dark, claiming that the BOV urged the continued silence, “at least until [Ryan’s administration] delivered a response to the DOJ.” He went on to describe how the following weeks involved gathering evidence and statistics on University policies and demographics for the DOJ. This process, he wrote, was kept silent for so long that he had resigned before a response was even returned to the Trump administration.
Instead of delivering a preliminary response, the University instead opted to request multiple extensions, which Ryan stated were then publicly used against him and the school: “their willingness to give us extension after extension made me wonder more than once if the DOJ was not actually interested in our response, perhaps because they showed—from what I saw—that we were complying with the law.”
Finally, regarding a series of meetings in June, Ryan claimed that he had not been invited to the proceedings of the BOV or initially allowed to communicate his progress. “I never once spoke directly with the DOJ lawyers; everything was communicated through Rachel, Porter, and later another board member, Paul Manning.”
It was this restriction on communication that led to his ousting, with Sheridan telling Ryan that the lawyers sent by the DOJ insisted that his resignation would spare the University from unspecified “damage.” Paul Manning then warned him that said damage would fall on his image, and that Manning was “worried what the DOJ—and other agencies—might do to UVA.”
While Manning’s warning outwardly appeared like friendly concern, Ryan wrote that he suspected deeper implications of the BOV’s communications with him: “[Manning] wanted to make clear that any decision to resign was mine alone to make, which seemed incongruous with the conversation the day earlier. I could be wrong, but the message sounded a little forced, like he had been told to pass that along to me.”
Ryan was told by Sheridan to reach out to a lawyer named Beth Wilkinson. The lawyer informed Ryan that she was actually working with the BOV on Ryan’s case, Wilkinson then warned him that refusing to resign would likely lead to his termination. Upon asking why Wilkinson said that, he claimed that “she fumbled with the question and then offered one reason: that [he] walked out of a BOV meeting. That never happened.”
Resignation
Although Ryan wrote that he felt pressured by the summer’s events to step down urgently, he wrote that he had already been considering resignation over the next two years. “We were not aligned, and it was an increasingly combative and mutually distrustful relationship,” he stated, “if I announced my resignation, at least the Board’s attention would shift from introducing last-minute resolutions toward finding the next president.”
Ryan claims that he is unaware of who leaked the DOJ’s pressure to the New York Times, but was told that the ensuing national attention on the University led Sheridan to warn that his resignation was required by 5 p.m. on June 26th, or else the Justice Department would “basically rain hell on UVA.” Thus, around 4:30 p.m., Ryan submitted and issued his resignation to step down on July 11th.
Looking back at the controversy, Ryan wrote of conflict in the reporting of what happened behind the scenes. In particular, statements made by DOJ Lawyer Harmeet Dhillon, alleging that “neither she nor her DOJ colleagues demanded [his] resignation or offered some sort of quid pro quo.”
“Someone is obviously not telling the truth,” Ryan presumed, “and it’s not clear to me what incentive Harmeet would have to be dishonest about this.”
In the end, the former president claims that his administration did its best to comply and would have changed its policies and practices had they been given the chance. However, he would not “give up the core values of UVA or my own principles simply to satisfy the prevailing political winds or the political ambitions of some.” Furthermore, he signed off by pressuring the BOV — more specifically, Sheridan, current Vice Rector Porter Wilkinson, and Manning — to answer to the ambiguous nature of their communications throughout the ordeal.
The Faculty Response
Just hours after Ryan’s statement was released, the Faculty Senate resolved in a vote of 41-17 to call for the resignation of Rector Sheridan and Vice Rector Wilkinson. The Senate states that both Sheridan and Wilkinson refused to meet with them, accusing them of “a lack of courage, leadership and accountability.”
“The faculty, staff, students and alumni of the University of Virginia need leadership that is transparent, accountable and brave,” the resolution continued, calling for an administration that is “not tainted by the ongoing and as yet unanswered questions surrounding the decisions and actions of the BOV in the forced resignation of President Ryan.”
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