💥 Check out this insightful post from PBS NewsHour – Politics 📖
📂 Category: colleges and universities,higher education,university of virginia
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The University of Virginia has agreed to abide by White House guidance prohibiting discrimination in admissions and hiring, becoming the latest in a growing list of universities to strike deals with the Trump administration as it tries to stop months of scrutiny by the U.S. Justice Department.
The agreement was announced by the Department of Justice, which began a review of admissions and financial aid at the Charlottesville campus in April. Officials accused its president of failing to end diversity, equality and inclusion practices that President Donald Trump has called illegal.
He watches: The president of the University of Virginia resigns under pressure from the Department of Justice
Mounting pressure prompted James Ryan to announce his resignation as university president in June, saying the risks would be too high for others on campus if he chose to “fight the federal government to save my job.”
The university agreed to adhere to federal guidelines prohibiting racial discrimination in admissions and hiring, as described by the Department of Justice. It also agreed to provide relevant data on a quarterly basis until 2028. The president will have to personally certify the university’s compliance every three months.
The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Virginia 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 workforce development organizations in Rhode Island.
Some of the Justice Department’s letters targeted Ryan directly, accusing him of engaging in “attempts to defy and evade federal anti-discrimination laws and your board’s directives.” Much of the federal scrutiny has focused on complaints that Ryan was too slow to implement a March 7 resolution by the university’s board of directors requiring the elimination of DEI on campus.
As a public university, the University of Virginia has been an outsider to the Trump administration’s efforts 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 anti-Semitism.
He watches: A look at the future of DEI on campus as hundreds of programs disappear
Since then, the White House has expanded its campaign to include other public universities, 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 anti-Semitism allegations in May.
Among the most prominent critics was America First Legal, a conservative group created by Trump aide Stephen Miller. In a letter to federal officials in May, the group said Virginia had merely moved toward “renaming, reorganizing, and redeploying the same illegal infrastructure under a lexicon of euphemisms.”
Similar accusations implicated George Mason University, where the board rushed to defend the president even as the Department of Education cited allegations that he promoted diversity initiatives above hiring credentials. On August 1, the Board of Directors voted unanimously to give President Gregory Washington a 1.5% salary increase. On the same day, the board approved a resolution banning DEI in favor of a “merit-based approach” to campus policies.
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