DOJ demands University of Virginia prove it’s dismantling DEI

The University of Virginia‘s president, rector and university legal counsel received a letter Monday from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division calling for the university to produce audio and video from a closed session of its board of visitors last month, as well as show evidence that every division of the university and its health system has dissolved and dismantled its diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, following a board vote in March.

The DOJ’s letter, dated April 28, says its civil rights office has received complaints that U.Va.’s administration has not made public a required 30-day report on its progress in ending DEI operations throughout the university, and alleges that U.Va. “may have failed to implement these directives.” The letter gives U.Va. President Jim Ryan, the university’s rector and legal counsel a May 2 deadline to update the Justice Department’s civil rights office on its progress.

Arriving one day before a Tuesday special meeting of the BOV, during which members voted on a second DEI-related resolution, the letter was signed by Harmeet K. Dhillon, the newly appointed assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division and a U.Va. law school alum, as well as Deputy Assistant Attorney General Gregory W. Brown and senior counsel Jeffrey Morrison.

According to the letter, the DOJ issued letters to U.Va.’s undergraduate institution and its law school on April 11 and April 18 regarding admissions practices, “particularly regarding racial preferences” after the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling to strike down affirmative action policies in college admissions, as well as executive orders issued by President Donald Trump to dismantle DEI “apparatuses and instruments of discrimination based on race, skin color, ethnicity, national origin and other impermissible, immutable characteristics.”

The letter issues a May 2 deadline for the university to produce the official BOV resolution from March 7, “along with all written or electronic records (including audio or video recording) of the … public and closed session meeting and deliberations,” as well as certification that the resolution’s dictates are being enacted at every part of the university, including the UVA Health system and all of U.Va.’s undergraduate, graduate and professional programs and schools.

The letter also calls for “all reports submitted by you or members of your administration” to the board and the rector from around April 7 regarding the execution of DEI dissolution at U.Va.

“Per the directives of the Board of Visitors and that unanimous [March 7] resolution, your office and you were required to report to the Board of Visitors within thirty days, confirming the total elimination of DEI at the University of Virginia,” the letter says, adding that the civil rights department has “received complaints that your office and the university may have failed to implement these directives and further that you have refused to produce the report on the matter.”

The DOJ letter was made public on the C’ville Bubble account on X Monday, the day before U.Va.’s board met in a special session in part to discuss progress on the dissolution of U.Va.’s DEI office and other DEI initiatives.

Also on Monday, The Jefferson Council, a group of conservative U.Va. alumni who have been critical of the university’s leadership particularly over pro-Palestine student protests, claims of antisemitism and free speech issues, posted Ryan speaking in an undated video about the board’s then-upcoming March 7 vote. According to the Jefferson Council’s post, Ryan was addressing the U.Va. Faculty Senate about the DEI resolution.

“The board would like to talk to us about that update,” Ryan says in the one-minute video. “I will say I’m optimistic we’re going to end up in a good place.”

However, the council alleges that “multiple Jefferson Council researchers and allies have had their FOIA requests for the 30-day DEI report denied — a stonewalling that The Cavalier Daily independently encountered as well.”

On Tuesday, board members met at the Boar’s Head Resort off campus and voted for a resolution that says in part that “the University of Virginia has made progress on implementing the directives of the Board of Visitors’ March 7 resolution on diversity, equity and inclusion, and additional work remains to be done to ensure and advance open inquiry at the university and to best prepare students to become citizen-leaders ready to serve our community.”

The resolution also rescinds a September 2020 resolution that “endorsed pursuit of numerical goals for the composition of students and faculty,” a policy that called for U.Va. to hire more faculty from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, as well as more women in certain fields, and to aim to diversify its student body as well.

Moreover, the April 29 resolution calls for the president, interim provost and an appointee of the U.Va. Faculty Senate to report to the board at its next meeting in June on “work being done to ensure an intellectual climate and campus culture where all students, faculty and staff are able to express politically diverse views, engage in constructive discussion across differences, and respond to competing perspectives in good faith.”

Ryan was among more than 550 university and college presidents and other higher education leaders who signed an American Association of Colleges and Universities letter issued April 22 that condemned what they call the Trump White House’s “unprecedented government overreach and political interference,” including threatening to pull approved federal funding for university research and revoking international students’ visas or terminating their legal statuses.

Of the six Virginia presidents who signed the letter, Ryan was the only head of a public university to do so.

U.Va. and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.