DOJ grants University of Virginia extension on DEI response

The University of Virginia has until May 30 to respond to an April 28 letter from the U.S. Department of Justice demanding proof — including video and audio from the U.Va. Board of Visitors’ closed sessions — that the university is dismantling and dissolving its diversity, equity and inclusion apparatuses.

According to U.Va. spokesperson Brian Coy, the university requested an extension of the previous May 2 deadline cited in the letter, which was sent to U.Va. President Jim Ryan, Rector Robert Hardie and university legal counsel Clifton M. Iler. The DOJ moved the deadline to May 30, Coy said Tuesday.

The department’s letter is related to the March 7 vote by U.Va.’s board of visitors to dissolve the university’s DEI office in compliance with President Donald Trump’s executive order to dismantle DEI “apparatuses and instruments of discrimination based on race, skin color, ethnicity, national origin and other impermissible, immutable characteristics.” The board resolution also called for U.Va.’s administration to produce a report within 30 days with full updates on the university’s progress in ending all DEI initiatives.

Signed by Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil rights division, as well as Deputy Assistant Attorney General Gregory W. Brown and senior counsel Jeffrey Morrison, the letter says that DOJ received complaints that Ryan’s “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 letter gave U.Va. officials until May 2 to provide the following to the DOJ:

• The BOV’s March 7 resolution and “all written or electronic records (including audio or video recording) of the U.Va. Board of Visitors’ public and closed session meeting and deliberations”;
• “Certify that for every university division, department, school, foundation, unit, system (such as the health system) and graduate or professional program and school (including but not limited to the school of law, school of medicine and nursing school) of the university, the dictates of the Board of Visitors’ resolution have been fully and completely satisfied and accomplished.”
• This would include “which departments, programs, preferences, preferential systems and positions/titles/chairs have been eliminated and terminated”;
• For “employees, students, faculty members or administrators with any DEI responsibilities, ‘mandate,’ duties or title whatsoever,” the university must “identify whether that individual’s position and title have been eliminated, whether the individual is still associated with the university in any official or unofficial, paid or unpaid capacity, and if so, the name and nature of that individual’s current title or position”;
• Finally, “produce all reports submitted by you or members of your administration to the Board of Visitors, the rector, or any other body or group on or around April 7, regarding your administration’s execution of the Board of Visitors’ March 7 direction to dissolve and dismantle DEI at the University of Virginia.”

The letter was sent to Ryan, Hardie and Iler the day before U.Va.’s board met in an April 29 special session and voted for a new DEI resolution rescinding a September 2020 resolution that called for U.Va. to double the number of faculty members from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups, as well as more women in certain fields, and to aim to diversify its student body as well.

The April 29 resolution also calls for the president, interim provost and an appointee of the 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.”

Other public universities in Virginia and across the nation have taken similar action to dissolve DEI offices after Trump’s executive order, particularly with his administration’s threats to withhold federal funding from universities, accusing some of tolerating antisemitism related to pro-Palestine campus protests.

According to a May 2 New York Times report, seven universities have been explicitly warned they could lose hundreds of millions and even into the billions of federal funding: Harvard, Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Northwestern, the University of Pennsylvania and Princeton University. However, other schools are also under scrutiny by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, the story notes.

In March, U.Va. administration, including Ryan and other top leaders, sent an email to university faculty and staff urging them to curtail discretionary spending due to the possibility of reductions in federal funding and overall economic uncertainty. That meant fewer salary increases and bonuses, potential postponement of planned hiring, and possible delays of capital projects, the email said.